The twenty fifth version of the Montreal Worldwide Documentary Pageant (RIDM) is on from Nov. 17 to 27.
Octopus
Shot within the aftermath of the August 2020 explosion in Beirut, Octopus seeks to seize the intimate adjustments to the town following the explosion. With few voices, and a stark observational model, the movie has a trance-like high quality. Regardless of the town in ruins, incapacitated and torn aside, individuals proceed to reside; kids nonetheless play within the streets, males nonetheless smoke their cigarettes and ladies get their haircuts.
With little to no commentary or editorializing, Octopus reveals a way of resilience and heat. Individuals can adapt rapidly to new environments. They’re capable of finding pleasure even in destruction. With out it being a gung-ho motivational movie about resurrection, it captures a individuals unwilling to again down, unwilling to be forgotten. With out articulating the thought, the movie underlines a sure amnesia the world has confronted with catastrophe. Within the second, individuals show solidarity and even outrage, after which 48 hours later, the information cycle has modified, and little thought is given to the aftermath. Although Beirut’s particular photos and actions are the main focus, the documentary expands outward to replicate on our social and international engagement as a worldwide group.
With a brief runtime, the movie’s poetic nature doesn’t weigh too closely. It treads a cautious line between meditation and ethnography because it depicts a selected time and place with loving consideration.
Octopus is screening on Nov. 22, 3:45 PM (Cinémathèque Québécoise, Salle Crave).
Jouvencelles
What’s it prefer to be younger within the age of social media, within the shadow of the pandemic? With Jouvencelles, director Fanie Pelletier appears at three teams of Quebec teen ladies navigating life on-line and off. Of their late adolescence up till their early 20s, the women speak and play and stream, discussing what brings them happiness and what causes them ache. By means of type and dialogue, the movie engages with how on-line experiences rework our relationship with our our bodies and the creeping alienation that emerges as the net and offline selves really feel more and more at odds.
Whereas a lot of the movie is concentrated on intimate voiceovers and conversations between the women, a number of the most compelling components are from varied livestreams, from the women and in addition unknown strangers. These sequences from Instagram lives and periscopes make clear the efficiency of being on-line. The necessity to “do one thing” and embody or disregard sure magnificence requirements. It additionally showcases the impenetrable noise of abuse and longing as males flock to younger ladies’s streams to hit on them and tear them aside. It’s virtually at a sure level as in the event you don’t personal your picture in any respect, that your whole sense of self belongs to those that watch.
Superbly constructed, Jouvencelles could concentrate on the lives and longings of adlescent ladies, nevertheless it has loads to say extra usually about how all of us reside. The movie doesn’t take the simple manner out by outright condemning social media. As an alternative, it examines with openness and vulnerability the best way issues are.
Jouvencelles is enjoying on Nov. 24, 8:45 p.m. (Cinéma du Musée)
Again Dwelling
Placing a steadiness between the non-public and the extra experimental, Nisha Platzer’s Again Dwelling turns the digital camera inward. In 1999, when she was 11 years outdated, Platzer’s older brother, at 15, took his life. Twenty years later, she’s nonetheless grappling with the enormity of the expertise. Pressured to return to her hometown to take care of a medical situation as a part of her care course of, she re-establishes a reference to a lady who tremendously impacted her brother’s life. Captured over 5 years, the movie showcases how Nisha can develop nearer to her misplaced brother by this new relationship. By means of montage and intimate dialog, it articulates how individuals reside on by our love for them. Platzer even finds a method to weave her brother’s ashes into the literal movie itself, utilizing them as a part of a movie wash in an particularly stunning passage. The movie’s open and poetic construction permits viewers to replicate on their relationships with life and demise. Again Dwelling is a deeply private movie that can be extremely inviting.
A compelling and difficult meditation on grief, the movie speaks to modern life’s failures to place rituals and group into place as a part of a mourning course of. It additionally speaks to the failures of the psychological well being system, reflecting a fair bigger social and political failure to take care of these most in want.
Back Home is enjoying Nov. 23, 3:30 p.m. (Cinéma du Parc, Salle 2)
For extra on RIDM, please go to the competition’s website.
For the most recent in movie and TV, please go to our Film & TV part.
