Here Are the Best Films We Saw at TIFF

A promotional still from 'The Look of Silence.' Image via TIFF.
The Toronto International Film Festival is a lot of things. If you’re a starfucking photographer, this is where you can meet all of the A-List celebrities you can possibly stalk. If you’re a regular person with a healthy love of film, however, it provides an awesome experience to cram your brain with all of the cinema that will be sparking conversations and making headlines over the next 12 months. We soaked in as much TIFF as we possibly could, so we decided we’d share our favourite films with you wonderful people, in case you’d like to trust our awesome taste in stuff.

The Look of Silence

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence is a companion piece to 2013’s The Act of Killing; a horrifying documentary about the Indonesian genocide, which wiped out one million communists, Chinese immigrants, political dissidents, and intellectuals between 1965-1966.

In Oppenheimer’s first doc on the subject, the Danish filmmaker travels to Indonesia to meet the military perpetrators of the genocide, who are still in power. In The Look of Silence, Joshua accompanies Adi, an Indonesian man whose older brother was brutally murdered in the cleansing, to meet some of the perpetrators himself, and ask them extremely personal and heart-shattering questions that evoke an emotional range of discomfort, embarrassment, anger, and shaky boastfulness in his murderous subjects.

Both The Look of SIlence and The Act of Killing are incredibly well-crafted documentaries that are as difficult to watch as they are expertly done. For the TIFF premiere of The Look of Silence, Joshua arrived with Adi, who was only able to make it through one of the Q&A questions before he had a breakdown. Having to go through the experience of confronting your brother’s killers, on camera, then travel around the world showcasing your work to strangers, when you cannot even speak English, must be an unspeakably traumatizing process.

When I asked Joshua Oppenheimer about Adi (after Joshua mentioned he himself could never return to Indonesia safely after releasing The Look of Silence), to find out whether or not Adi can safely live in Indonesia, Oppenheimer explained that he helped facilitate for Adi’s family to move to another Indonesian community, thousands of kilometres away from his home, to a community of human rights activists and filmmakers. Oppenehimer explained that on certain shoots, they would have two getaway cars waiting, and that Adi would rarely carry identification in case they were threatened, hurt, or detained.

Oppenheimer’s documentary-diptych about genocide in Indonesia is so much more than a couple of films. It will hopefully enact a renewed, progressive discussion about state violence in Indonesia; and national media there has already begun to react. And, as far as Adi goes, hopefully his trauma will help to fuel a reawakening in himself and for Indonesia at large, given the seeming indifference or ignorance that’s been upheld for a mass murder, which occurred in very recent history.

Mommy

In Mommy, Xavier Dolan uses the charmingly tacky, suburban style of Quebec to create an immersive and stunning world made up of karaoke bars, mental institutions, burger spots, and taxi cabs. The majority of the film is shot in a 1:1 ratio, as if it were filmed vertically on a smartphone, which gives the already emotionally intense storyline an even more constrained, and muted feel.

Mommy chronicles the life of Diane (or ‘Die,’ played by Anne Dorval) and her developmentally disabled son Steve (Antoine-Oliver Pilon), in a fictional version of Canada where new laws allow parents with kids like Steve, to hand them over to the public hospital system, without any type of prohibitive legal process. This option (of trading Steve in) hangs over Die’s head throughout the film, as Steve gets crazier and crazier, and wrecks more and more havoc.

Their tumultuous relationship is relieved by Kyla, played by Suzanne Clement, a woman who lives across the street that battles with a severe speech impediment. Kyle slides into Die and Steve’s life, seemingly by accident, as she tries to help soften the ever-present tension caused by Steve’s erratic behaviour.

At 25, Xavier Dolan is already a cinematic wunderkind who has an unfair amount of talent for his age. Mommy is emotionally affecting, darkly funny, and deeply uncomfortable at times. It stays with you long after the credits roll, largely because of the incredible performances of Dorval, Pilon, and Clement. It’s a must-watch, and it’s even better that Xavier is Canadian because, hey, the more homegrown talent the better. Amiright?

Rosewater

Jon Stewart’s directorial debut is based on the memoir of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian journalist who was imprisoned during the last Iranian election. His detainment was partially due to Maziar’s appearance on The Daily Show, where one of Stewart’s correspondents joked about Maziar being a spy and a terrorist. That appearance, apparently, was taken literally by the Iranian government, who aggressively and stubbornly accused Bahari of being a spy. Bahari was detained and tortured for months, and once Jon Stewart caught wind of all this, along with his tangential role in prolonging Bahari’s imprisonment, he took time off from The Daily Show to direct Rosewater.

Rosewater is a very good film, and despite a few cringey directorial choices (at point Tehran is covered in hashtags, as the camera cuts to an aerial shot, where the entire city turns into a word cloud), Stewart does Maziar’s story justice. It’s not surprising, too, given that Maziar was on set ensuring the story was told accurately. At one point in the TIFF Q&A, Stewart quipped that he felt like the world’s biggest asshole when he would turn to Maziar and ask if movie-Maziar (played by Gael García Bernal) was being tortured accurately.

The film calls attention to the very real problem of journalists being persecuted worldwide. With the recent beheadings of Steven Sotloff and James Foley at the hands of ISIS, the imprisonment of Al-Jazeera correspondents in Egypt, and many other examples of reporters facing the wrath of oppressive legal systems in 2014, Rosewater is coming out at a good time. So, hopefully it won’t be Jon Stewart’s last shot behind the camera.

Haemoo

Despite not being directed by Chan-Wook Park, Haemoo is basically Oldboy on a boat. Sung Bo Shim’s film puts you on the deck of the Junjin, an ailing fishing boat with a busted radiator and a classic, ragtag crew of misfits. Its captain, Kang (Kim Yoon-seok), takes on a dangerous mission to smuggle Chinese-Koreans out of China and into Korea; so the team can earn enough money to keep the boat, uh, afloat. In typical Korean cinema fashion, things get really fucking dark, really fucking quickly.

Without spoiling anything, things start going haywire very early on, and they don’t cease to spin further and further out of control until the film runs its course. If you like dark, survivalist narratives where people turn on each other, expose their inner caveman, and fight their way through the sea fog (that’s what Haemoo means) then you’re in for a depressing treat with

.

Image via TIFF.
Top Five

Chris Rock’s latest directorial endeavour is pure entertainment gold. Not only is Top Five littered with extraordinary cameos, the likes of which we won’t spoil for you here, but it’s co-produced by Kanye West and Jay Z. Their contribution is unclear, but given that the instrumental for “Black Guys in Paris” plays throughout the film, they may have just received a credit in exchange for free music licensing.

The “Throne’s” contribution aside, Top Five is an accomplished comedy that tells the story of a comedian named Andre, played by Chris Rock, who has become famous for an inane, but hilarious, trilogy of films called Hammy the Cop—about a crime-fighting grizzly bear. In an attempt to be taken more seriously, he takes on the role of a Haitian slave-revolutionary, in a film that tanks at the box office.

In the midst of this artistic crisis, he agrees to allow a New York Times reporter, played by Rosario Dawson, to follow him around. All the while he is supposed to go through with a wedding, on reality TV, to his reality TV starlet fiancee Erica Long (Gabrielle Union). Reporter Rosario’s questioning conveniently serves as a smooth narrative device to let the viewer in on Andre’s booze-fueled, prostitute-laden past life. As a recovering alcoholic searching for some kind of creative renaissance, these flashbacks provide a perfect release from Andre’s struggle with credibility.

Beyond the amazing surprise cameos,

Top Five

’s supporting cast is stellar. JB Smoove (Leon from

Curb

) plays Andre’s right-hand man, and he kills it. Tracy Morgan kills it. If you like movies that are actually fun to watch, then go see

Top Five

when it comes out in theaters

.

Hollywood has high expectations for it, too: It was bought by Paramount for a whooping $12.5 million.

Big Game

Do you want to see Samuel L. Jackson play the President of the United States? If so, you really don’t need to read more of this review, you just need to see Big Game. Directed by Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander, it’s not clear how funny Big Game is actually intended to be, but watching it is a fucking riot.

As President Jackson’s plane is shot down by crazy terrorists who want the President kept alive, so they can hunt him in a forest in Northern Finland, the Prez’s only hope is a 13-year old Finnish boy who gets to Jackson first. The boy (Onni Tommila)is on his first solo-hunting trip to bag a dead animal, to prove to his village he’s a man. Sam Jackson plays an Obama-type President--physically unintimidating, scholarly, not a woodsman--so his only hope is this woefully untrained 13-year old who helps him evade the crosshairs of the terrorists who want to hunt, kill, and stuff him in the Finnish woods.

Big Game has tons of ridiculous double-crosses, explosions, Finnish landscapes, and Sam Jackson quotables. So what more do you want? Emotional complexity? Get outta here.

A behind-the-scenes feature on Gabe Polsky's process behind making "The Red Army."

The Red Army

With Russia’s recent flexing of military might in the Ukraine and the PR bungle that was #SochiProblems, Gabe Polsky’s documentary Red Army probably couldn’t have come out at a better time.

Life in Russia has always been somewhat of a mystery to the West, and the lens through which Polsky examines the Russian mindset is one that will undoubtedly interest most Canadians: hockey. Red Army is a fascinating look back at the Soviet-era hockey team that dominated the sport for almost half a decade until the 1980s. Seemingly invincible, at the height of their reign the Russian national team were not just a sports team, but also political ambassadors of communism’s superiority: proof that their way—working as a collective whole—was the best. But, as we learn throughout the film, behind the scenes the story was far more complicated and nuanced.

Wonderfully shot and edited, the film is comprised of recent interviews with some of the key players from the historic team—driven by defenseman and team captain Viacheslav Fetisov—as well as archival footage culled from the exhaustive Russian film archives. Each player candidly reveals their struggles through the Soviet system and their difficult transition into the NHL.

But while characters like Fetisov are engaging enough to help drive the film, it’s the richness and depth of the archival footage that really helps shed light on what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. The results are at once both surprising, entertaining, and emotional.

Growing up the child of Russian immigrants, and in love with hockey from an early age, Polsky—who played the sport for Yale—offers up an at once intimate and entertaining film that is as much about the Russian soul as it is about sports.

Honourable mentions—films that we wanted to see, and didn’t, but heard were awesome anyway: Nightcrawler, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting Existence, A Second Chance, and The Tribe.