Con Game, Culture Clash, Drama, Politics

SIFF 2025: Souleymane’s Story (***)

May 22, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Every minute of the next 48 hours of Souleymane’s life counts, because it will determine whether or not he will be granted the asylum he has been seeking in France. He’s barely scraping by, and has to bike around Paris day and night delivering food just to remain flush with his creditors. He has no legal papers, so he has to pay to work, forking over a fee to a fellow Guinean delivery man so he can “borrow” his identity.

Most importantly, he has a looming deadline to pay off the shady fixer who is selling him a new “story” he claims will be more likely to convince the authorities that Souleymane warrants asylum. Adding to his stress level, Soueymane has to memorize the extremely detailed narrative to a tee, or he’ll risk raising red flags for the well-seasoned bureaucrat he has been scheduled to meet with in just two days time.

Driven by a realistic lead performance by non-professional actor Abou Sangaré and imbued with a kinetic energy and sense of urgency recalling Run Lola Run, writer-director Boris Lokjine’s Souleymane’s Story is really the story of millions of émigrés all over the world who dream and strive for a better life.

Post-apocalypse, Sci-Fi

SIFF 2025: U Are the Universe (****)

May 22, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

As Elton John sang, it’s lonely out in space. Especially if there’s no Earth to come home to. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is the pilot on a garbage scow loaded with nuclear waste destined for disposal on one of Jupiter’s moons (it’s just his job, 5 days a week). When he gleans that the world’s entire population has been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, he’s saddled by the realization he may be the last living human in the universe.

Considering that there is an ample yet finite supply of food on the ship, Andriy has calculated he can survive for a while, but obviously not as long as he would have expected, had the Earth not been destroyed. His growing sense of existential despair is kept somewhat in check by the presence of his onboard AI technical assistant/personality-enhanced companion Maxim, which at least gives him “someone” to interact with.

Then, one day, out of the vacuum, a glimmer of hope. He receives a voice-only communication from a Frenchwoman named Catherine, who tells him she’s the sole occupant of a space station on a collision course with Saturn (she figures she only has a couple weeks before there’s an earth-shattering kaboom). Andriy now has a raison d’être; he immediately sets course for a rescue mission (despite Maxim’s dire warnings about his ship’s limited power reserves).

While this may be familiar territory (with shades of 2001, Solaris, Silent Running, and Miracle Mile), Ukrainian director Pavlo Ostrikov’s film (which was in the midst of wrapping production in Kyiv in 2022 as Putin began sending salvos of missiles into the city) is armed with a smart script, tight direction, a nuanced performance by Kravchuk, and a beautiful statement on love, compassion and self-sacrifice-adding up to one of the best genre entries I’ve seen in some time.

Dramedy, Politics

SIFF 2025: The Safe House (**1/2)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Lionel Baier’s dramedy (adapted from Christophe Boltanski’s novel La Cache) is a child’s-eye view of the political tumult that permeated Paris in May of 1968.

A nine-year-old boy lives in a comically cramped apartment with his parents, his grandparents, a pair of uncles, and his great-grandmother. Everyone in the family is quirky, colorful, and whimsical (despite the near-revolution raging in the streets outside).

If you can get past the initial Wes Anderson vibe (with a zest of Jacques Tati), Baier does occasionally turn down the twee enough to fold in the sociopolitical realities of the era; leading to some profound moments (e.g. the film’s best scene is completely absurd, yet unexpectedly moving).

Con Game, Documentary

SIFF 2025: Unclickable (**)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Just in: From the nanosecond you log in to a social media platform, you are being tracked. Not only are you being tracked, but you are being filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered (YOU are Number 6). In short: you are being bought and sold. That smart phone, laptop, or tablet in your hands is not the “product”. YOU are.

I know. In this day and age, any internet-savvy 8 year-old could tell you that.

Consequently, it was hard for me to be shocked, shocked by the revelations in Babis Makridis’ “torn from the headlines” investigative documentary. Although to be fair, his film does take a slightly different tack from similar exposés I’ve seen about how we’ve all become slaves to the algorithim; this one focuses on the proliferation of digital ad fraud.

To demonstrate how easily cyber scammers can cash in, Makridis enlisted a former tech executive to form a team of software developers to create a digital ad fraud operation, and basically documents thier step-by-step procedure (don’t try this at home, kids).

Unfortunately the film stalls out once the team starts getting hits and picking pockets (we are assured they did not bank the revenue). I suppose it’s interesting to learn how everyone from advertisers to phone users are getting screwed (except for Google and Meta, who still reap massive revenue-whether ad click data is legit or artificially inflated) but it leaves you wondering what you’re supposed to do with this information (maybe switch off and go touch some grass?).

Drama, Family Issues, Troubled Teens

SIFF 2025: Monarch City (**)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Set in an economically depressed small town in Washington State, writer-director Titus Richard’s network narrative drama serves up a dollop of family angst and sprinkles it with lives of quiet desperation. Hovering somewhere between Peter Bogdanovch’s The Last Picture Show in its aspirations and Larry Clark’s Kids in its vibe, Monarch City suggests both; but due to an uneven script and scattershot approach, it unfortunately achieves neither. Richard does capture and sustain a “nowheresville” mood, and there are some earnest performances, but at 70 minutes and with this many players, there’s barely enough time for any kind of meaningful character development.

Art world, Drama, Family Issues, School Days

SIFF 2025: By the Stream (***)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

I was surprised to learn that South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo has made 33 feature films over the last 20 years (which by my estimation makes him one of the most prolific filmmakers this side of Fassbinder). I also felt a bit ashamed that I didn’t discover him until I saw In Our Day at the 2024 SIFF.

With By the Stream, I may now have only two Sang-soo joints under my belt, but I think I “get” his rhythms. Like In Our Day, this is a languidly paced and understated character study about people involved in the arts; there’s lots of eating and drinking and walking and talking (with exchanges that frequently feel improvised).

Melancholic Jeonim (Kim Minhee) is a textile artist and university lecturer who coaxes her famous Uncle Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo) out of retirement to rewrite and and take over direction of a play that some of her students have been working on after the production hits a snag.

While Uncle Chu seems genuinely flattered and more than happy to get back on the boards, you sense that he mostly sees this as an opportunity to reconnect with his niece, with whom he’s been out of contact with for a number of years. This could be Jeonim’s motivation as well, although she is a more of a cypher in the emotional department.

It turns out that Jeonim’s supervisor is a Chu super-fan; when she begins a relationship with him, it triggers a dynamic shift in Jeonim’s interactions with her uncle that suggest some unresolved family business may be at play.

The film’s deliberate pacing may not be for all tastes, but the naturalistic performances and gentle rhythms makes this rumination on life, love, art and family ties relatable on all fronts and easy to digest.

Art world, Documentary, Movie Movie, Writers

SIFF 2025: Jean Cocteau (***)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland utilizes a non-linear collage of film clips, archival interviews, and a present-day actor reading from letters and diary entries to create a vivid portrait of the avant-garde poet/visual artist/playwright/film director. It’s an enlightening study; I picked up a number of new tidbits on his life and work (I was familiar with him mostly from his films – e.g. Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and Beauty and the Beast). The address he made in 1960 “to the youth of the future” is a mind-blower. I found it particularly interesting how his “apolitical” stance made him a pariah to both the Left and the Right at various junctures. Absorbing and rewarding.

Animated, Cult Movie, Fantasy

SIFF 2025: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (***)

May 18, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hulllabaloo on May 17, 2025)

How do I describe the weird micro-universe Stephen and Timothy Quay have created through their stop-motion/live action films? They’re pieces of dreams; a screen capture of that nanosecond of Jungian twilight between nodding off and jerking awake. Their latest film explores grief and memory through the eyes of a man who travels to a sanatorium where his father has died. Or that’s what he believes…until he arrives. The “reality” is left up to the viewer.

Documentary, Politics

SIFF 2025: Transfers (***)

May 18, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

There were many horrors endured by the citizens of Argentina in the course of that country’s “Dirty War” period (1974-1983). Nicolás Gil Lavedra’s documentary primarily focuses on just one them: the methodical, State-sponsored extermination of dissidents (or those accused of being such) wherein people were kidnapped, tortured, drugged, and thrown to their deaths from airplanes.

These “death flights” included the kidnapping and murder of the “twelve of Santa Cruz,” a group of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, human rights activists and two French nuns captured in December 1977, which Lavedra covers in detail, mixing archival and present-day testimonials from former detainees, eyewitnesses, and journalists.

There is some redemption when you learn how a few (if not enough) of the perpetrators were eventually brought to justice. Interestingly, this was precipitated by the fact that, not unlike the Nazis, they kept meticulous records of their crimes (in this case, vis a vis dated flight logs that notated passenger counts).

Chilling and moving, this relatively understated film brings the human cost to the fore; making it a good companion piece to Luis Puenzo’s 1985 political drama The Official Story.

This is also a cautionary tale. When you consider that the term “Dirty War” was coined by the military junta, which one would assume was its way of self-justifying its atrocities, recent statements by government officials in our own country suggesting that habeas corpus “may” be suspended under the umbrella of “war powers” (what ‘war’?) should raise a red flag.

Culture Clash, Documentary, Politics, True Crime

SIFF 2025: Free Leonard Peltier ***1/2

May 17, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

“Free Leonard Peltier!” has been a rallying cry by Native American rights activists for decades; in fact so many years have passed since his trial, conviction and sentence for the murder of two FBI agents that the circumstances surrounding his case have become obfuscated to the general public. Even those who have lobbied 50 years for his release (predicated on the government’s arguably flimsy evidence and dubious witness testimonies) didn’t see Joe Biden’s January 2025 commutation of Peltier’s life sentence coming. It wasn’t the full pardon his advocates had wished for, but they certainly welcomed it with joy and relief.

It’s been a long road for Peltier (now 80), with many twists and turns, but co-directors Jesse Short Bull (Oglala Sioux) and David France do a yeoman’s job of telling not only his story, but putting it in context with the activities of the American Indian Movement that flourished in the 1970s.

The filmmakers recount the Mt. Rushmore, Alcatraz, and Wounded Knee occupations, takeover of the BIA headquarters in Washington D.C., the Trail of Broken Treaties march, et.al., culminating with the 1975 incident at Pine Ridge Reservation involving the execution-style murders of the two FBI agents.

This is the most comprehensive study I’ve seen on Peltier’s case and the history of the A.I.M. movement. What you learn from this film is by turns enlightening and maddening, but ultimately inspiring and moving.