IFFBoston Fall Focus 2024 Wrap-Up

My project to attend more film festivals this year has been a huge success.

It all started with the New Hampshire Film Festival of course. Then, back in March, I attended the Boston Underground Film Festival for the first (and not last) time, which threw a bunch of movies my way I hadn't heard of, a few of which remain high in my yearly ranking.

Hungry for more, I took Ty Burr's suggestion and signed up for IFFBoston's mailing list. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn they run a Fall mini-festival of films which have been getting lots of buzz going into awards season. It's smaller than their main Spring festival: this was comprised of fourteen features over five days at The Brattle, as opposed to seven days featuring 40+ feature-length films and 50+ shorts spread across Boston's trifecta of indie treasures. The upshot of this more limited schedule is that none were bad! Sure, I liked some more than others, but that will always be the case. This year, I only attended half of the screenings, but given my experience I'll likely do the whole thing next year.

Without further delay, here are my favorites!

Nickel Boys

I have a new favorite film of the year.

This wasn't on my radar until recently, and I understand why it got there. For one, the filming is immediately striking: very few feature length films are shot entirely in the first-person perspective. The ones that come to mind are generally focused on grandeur: Enter the Void, Hardcore Henry, and Russian Ark come to mind. But Nickel Boys is a quiet drama, wholly concerned with putting you into the headspace of a promising Black teenager who gets thrown into a reform "school" while on his way to university. Which is achieved brilliantly not only through its filming, but also through astounding sound design utilizing perfectly crafted spacial sound which will have you looking over your shoulder for its source, and even muffling voices at various points to make them feel so close and yet so far. It is profoundly affecting and upsetting while also showing the importance of connection in the face of disgusting miscarriages of justice. Make no mistake: this is a profoundly bleak film, a historical fiction that takes its inspiration from horrifying real practices, and thus avoids slipping into blind optimism. Rather, it's a tale of what it takes to survive.

US Release Date: NYC on December 13, 2024 and LA on December 20, 2024. Expanding wide(r) in January.

The Brutalist

I managed to go into this knowing only the director, lead actor, and length: it's 3.5 hours, including a fifteen minute intermission.

What was put in front of me is a towering American epic, reminiscent of There Will Be Blood and Synecdoche, New York. The score calls to mind American Fiction, and the story is shot through with a sense of profundity and struggle and the American Dream, playing out in the decades following WWII as Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) tries to find his way in this new land. There is an incredible amount of humanity to be found here, in part bolstered by some of its most gut wrenching displays of inhumanity.

Brody easily slips away into his character, perfectly embodying the changes he goes through from the time he lands on the shores of America to the jarring and pointed epilogue reminiscent of a late scene from Oppenheimer. He's joined by Felicity Jones as his wife Erzsébet, who turns in a nuanced portrayal of what living with someone of László's ambition means while also having had a harder time escaping the horrors of Europe. As great as she is, I may argue they're both outshined by Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren, László eventual benefactor and sparring partner.

The cinematography and framing makes everything appear grand and outsized, revealing the deeper meaning behind everything being shown on screen that only snaps into place at the end.

US Release Date: Limited release on December 20, 2024. Expands wide(r) in January.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

I earnestly believe that it's worth seeing any art a government attempts to censor. If it scares those in power, that implies it captures some fundamental Truths about the world and/or status quo which threatens to disseminate their power to those they supposedly serve.

Like his countryman Jafar Panahi, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been in and out of prison and banned from leaving the country for daring to speak out against the government, both in his art and real life (in fact, Panahi's most recent arrest was due to inquiring about Rasoulof's situation). This movie continues his stark criticisms of the Iranian government, set during the protests and subsequent crackdown by the regime following their murder of Mahsa Amini for opposing mandatory hijab. It centers on a family whose patriarch (Misagh Zare) is an investigatory judge, tasked with blindly imprisoning the protesters and blaming them for any violence they experience at the hands of the authorities. Meanwhile, his two daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki) are becoming more and more outspoken themselves against him and the government's broader oppression and brutality. After filming in secret for two months, the authorities subjected the cast and crew to questioning before handing down an eight-year prison sentence to Rasoulof, forcing him to flee to Germany. That was before they added internet videos of the protests and violent crackdown in post-production, making it clear to the audience that while the narrative is fictional, the stakes very much are not.

Being worthwhile isn't the same as being good, of course, but Rasoulof's film is both. It starts out pretty slowly, gradually building the characters and their dynamic and the horrors being unleashed on the Iranian people (especially in Tehran), before all comes to a head in an explosive and incredibly tense third act. There are places it drags a bit, and an ending set piece which could use with being tightened up to maximize impact, but there's no denying its overall effectiveness.

US Release Date: November 27, 2024. Unclear how widely.

All We Imagine As Light

This had been widely seen as a very strong contender to win Best International Feature at the Oscars until passed over by both its home country of India (in favor of Laapataa Ladies) and financing partner of France (for Emilia Pérez). I wouldn't personally go that far, but it is an excellent portrayal of the outlook of three different women in India on love and relationships and societal norms concerning such matters.

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is lonely, for while she's technically married, it was an arranged marriage after which her husband immediately moved to Germany for work, and very quickly stopped calling. Yet her sense of loyalty complicates the overtures made by a doctor in the hospital in which she works as a nurse, further compounding how alone she is. An even finer point is put on it by her friend and co-worker Anu (Divya Prabha), a younger woman who's actively avoiding her parents' attempts to pick a husband for her by carrying on a "secret" relationship with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Meanwhile, their other co-worker Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is fighting to keep her home from being destroyed to make way for a high-rise, made more difficult after the passing of her husband in a society which doesn't hold unmarried women in high regard. Her plight also brings into focus the difficulty of living in a city like Mumbai as a working person on a single income, as her concern with losing her home is not just sentimentality: she's unsure how she'd afford to stay in the city without it.

The story is compelling, but there are a handful of detours and testimonies from real-life couples which drag down the proceedings and disrupt the flow. Eventually, we get a handful of dream sequences as Prabha imagines a better life for herself, which land less poignant and more as an attempt to elevate the material. The sum of which is that while the stories of the women leave an impact, the plot itself is not tremendously memorable. Still, it's worth seeking out.

US Release Date: Limited release on November 15, 2024. Expanding nationwide sometime after.