New Hampshire Film Festival 2024 Wrap-Up
My third trip to the New Hampshire Film Festival is in the books!
Spurred on by my excellent experience each time, I've begun expanding to other festivals, but as my home festival it will always be my favorite. I just love the setup: always having multiple screens going means I can create the experience I'm more interested in. Which was more important than ever going into this year, as the list of announced titles didn't contain many I was truly excited for. It mirrored what I've seen in the broader theatrical landscape this year, where there have been plenty of great films but precious few nothing reaching the stratosphere. And after last year was so strong, this year has a lot to live up to.
I needn't have been worried.
Whether I did a better job of picking what to see, or the festival curators put together a super strong slate, I can't say (it's probably the latter). I do know that I saw enough outstanding features that making the below lists were tricky. The shorts fared a bit worse, although I did watch far fewer this year, and they were all confined to New Hampshire Day. But all in all, it was a super successful four days, over which I was delighted to have succeeded in my goal of watching a truly stupid amount of movies: 20 short films and 18 features.
Here are some of the best!
Documentary Shorts
Methuselah
Methuselah has some stylistic similarities to director Nathan Sellers' previous short, The Watcher, which made my honorable mentions last year. There's a disembodied voice over from someone we never see, which combines with the images to tell a story. Whereas that previous effort told the story of a fictional cult, this tells the very real story of lynchings in the US during the era of Jim Crow, and bleeds into a general meditation on capital punishment, tied into humanity's interaction with our environment by way of trees. Using mostly locked down shots containing small movements forces you to focus in on any motion as significant, and the repeated passage which bookends the piece takes on new meaning by the end. It's stunning in its simplicity, letting the poetry of the visuals combine with the chilling words to leave you feeling haunted.
In His Léon-Bollée
Full disclosure: the director is a personal friend.
This is a strange, experimental meditation on the many different ways people come to view the same event, and how that perspective shifts over time. The visuals were created by scanning an old flat-screen TV playing The Lovers on VHS, further processed into a very low frame rate stutter which often finds shots distorted in mid-refresh. The combination of the slow stutter, warped images with hazy outlines, and wildly degraded colors make it feel like a half-remembered dream. The non-synced dialog, spliced in from other movies starring Jane March and Tony Leung, spoken in their respective native tongues, gives the impression of a communication barrier despite their responses implying there's at least some comprehension. The French subtitles are actually a passage from the Maraget Duras' novel on which The Lovers is based, recounting the same scenario with different context. If you can get your brain to lock in while letting the experience wash over you, through the discord comes a statement on the drive for human connection and the malleability of memory.
Honorable Mention: Liquid, Fragile, Perishable
Narrative Shorts
Zeppo!
I already praised this when I first saw it at the Creative Guts Shorts Festival Wrap-Up back in June, but it was once again the best narrative short, without question. Go watch it!
Honorable Mentions: Fenwick; Top Prospects
Documentary Features
A Photographic Memory
Can you truly come to know someone through what they've left behind?
Sheila Turner-Seed passed away suddenly from an aneurysm when her daughter was just 18 months old. Being a well-respected multi-media journalist who'd just released the acclaimed Images of Man, she left behind a tremendous volume of work, to say nothing of all the people whose lives she touched. Now older than her mother ever was, Rachel sets out to piece together who this woman was, and to ask herself some of the same questions. Through the course of the film, we see the arc of two lives, mother and daughter, played out in two very different yet parallel ways, culminating in a portrait of a life constructed through the wake it left behind, an image made of negative space. The final shot is a brilliant culmination of all we've seen, and absolutely wrecked me in the best possible way.
Narrative Features
Note: With so many excellent features this year, I had to choose a cutoff somewhere. While even the honorable mentions deserve full blurbs, and come with my full recommendation, I decided to cap the list at four.
Gazer
I love me a neo-noir, and while this isn't a perfect fit for that label, it's still heavily indebted to the genre. The added twist being that our protagonist suffers from dyschronometria, frustrating her perception of time and causing difficulty in remembering the sequence of events. So when she's pulled into a plot to help a woman disappear, more dangers await her than are first apparent. Shot on 16mm, the grain adds to the dark and hazy world Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni) inhabits, and makes for some absolutely stunning shots, especially once a certain aspect of her nightmare begins to reveal itself. The score is perfectly matched to the narrative, and you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat as the story careens towards its absolutely perfect conclusion, not overstaying its welcome one iota, and making a strong statement as a result.
US Release Status: Acquired by Metrograph Pictures, release date TBA.
The Girl With the Needle
This film was rough. Set in Denmark as The Great War comes to an end, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is just trying to survive. She hasn't heard anything from her husband in well over a year, so she must find her way forward, fending off darkness at every turn and trying to convert it into light. After being cast out by her lover and boss, and failing to self-induce an abortion, she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), an older woman who helps mothers find foster homes for their unwanted children. Karoline goes to work for her, finding a way to use her awful experience into a silver lining. But that doesn't inoculate her from exposure to some incredibly upsetting events, be they out in the world or at home.
I love period pieces that go to great lengths to expose just how much worse the past was, smashing the idealized version we so often encounter. And there is no limit to what director Magnus von Horn wishes to shove in our faces. There were at least half a dozen collective sharp inhalations from the audience during my screening, as everyone (myself included) needed some way to deal with what we were seeing. Yet, it was all so compelling that we couldn't turn away, even for a second.
US Release Status: December 6, 2024 (limited)
Griffin in Summer
One of the best parts of the laugh out loud hilarious Griffin in Summer is how it's an unconventional coming-of-age story. Griffin (Everett Blunck) is a teenager who thinks he's an adult, surrounded by adults who are, at best, adrift. He has the confidence and bravado and drive you expect from someone much older, and demands the same from all around him, causing him to frequently yell at his friends and his mom, whom he always refers to as Helen (Melanie Lynskey). Even more refreshing is that when he finds himself falling for 20-something handyman Brad (Owen Teague), his attitude doesn't change, although he does clearly become more self-conscious. Which has the delightful effect of both highlighting how out of his element he is, and how little Brad has going on. All anchored by a frankly brilliant performance by newcomer Blunck, who never makes you feel the difficulty inherent in pulling that off.
"House. Parent. Baby!"
US Release Status: Seeking distribution.
La Cocina
A professional kitchen is inherently a dramatic place, even more so in the heart of a heavily trafficked tourist destination like Times Square. A large staff from all walks of life makes for a rich variety of interpersonal relationships and complex power dynamics, including multiple unexpected friendships. Which is all at the heart of this intense story of people just trying to get by over the course of the day while their employer is trying to find who stole $800 from one of the registers last night. Featuring a pulsing score and some absolutely killer long takes, with the centerpiece being a ten-ish minute true oner winding though the kitchen and out to the front of the house and back, it's a gorgeous sight to behold. The storytelling gets a little poetic at times in the way characters dream of something more, which means there's plenty more to dig into on successive watches.
US Release Status: October 25, 2024 (limited)
Honorable Mentions: Universal Language; Eephus
If you want my thoughts on the rest of the 38 films I watched, check out my Letterboxd.