MUN Cinema Series

Arguably the best film to emerge from Sundance this year, PAST LIVES is one of those films that keeps surprising you with its quiet, steady revelations of truths. There is an element of “sliding doors” here, as we meet two youngsters, girl and boy, who grew up together, laughed and played together. Fate takes one of them, Nora, from Korea to Canada, while Hae Sung stays behind. Their lives intersect again over the years, even as they pursue separate paths. Director Celine Song celebrates the bittersweet nature of their connection, compelled to be at once deeply bonded and irreconcilably apart. The sense of what might have been always hovers, a familiar play of the head and the heart. Probably not a good idea to see this film with an old flame.

We love anything director Reichardt does. This is funny and wry in all the right places. Reichardt collaborates again with fine actor, Michelle Williams, centering on the day-to-day life of a sculptor residing in the laid-back off-centre city of Portland, Oregon. Lizzy has exhibition conflicts, a broken water heater, a lame landlady, and an astonishingly frumpy wardrobe. You just know Reichardt deeply understands this artist’s world, but she isn’t satirizing it, just showing us a slice of life and what it takes to survive in it with an understated resilience. Bring an artist you like to this one.

This is another quiet but highly affecting character study (aka a film for adults). Four people gather in a cottage on the Baltic shore, young people with dreams, wit, passion, and, of course, all the human flaws we own. The title refers to a nearby forest fire, almost frighteningly familiar to anyone experiencing the smoke and flames of 2023, but it also hints at the emotional intensity of the relationships under scrutiny. German audiences well know director Petzold’s oeuvre to date, and AFIRE is part of a series he is creating about the complexity of human behaviour. Note that AFIRE won a major award at this year’s Berlin film festival, a measure of the film’s powerful intelligence.

Some of the best new film and literary material is about the immigrant experience, and this lovely Canadian feature takes a place of honour in the genre. What was it like to come to Canada as a young Korean boy in the Nineties, with a lot of innocence and smelly food. This story certainly punctures the myth of Canada as a welcoming, non-racist country, but it is gorgeously shot and beautifully framed in all ways, carefully balancing the harshness of immigrant experience against the promise of hope and connection. RICEBOY SLEEPS is a stellar debut and deserves a lot more attention.

If you need some convincing, first visit The Guardian’s five-star review of this film here. None other than Peter Bradshaw celebrates the beauty and power of this feature about two men, childhood friends, for whom fate, class, and circumstance have shaped an adult friendship. Yes, it has a long running time, but, please please come see this stunning film shot in the Italian Alps which serve as an important natural frame for this moving study of what makes us human.

Veteran actors fill the screen with a view to charming even the most crooked audiences into a state of pleasant acceptance. What could have been a sappy story about a lonely older man, Milton (Sir Ben Kingsley) with hints of dementia, is instead a light-hearted treatment of what happens when one’s world is totally upended. A space ship lands in this small Pennsylvania community and an alien emerges named Jules. Before you can say take-me-to-your-7/11, Milton befriends him. Hilarity doesn’t ensue but a charming soft comedy does emerge to take us on an easy ride into the unknown.

We are here to honour the best Canadian films you’re never seeing in theatres near you. We might have experienced a joyous Pride month this year, but we also know that not so far from the surface is a viciously anti-LGBTQ+ current of hostility. Set in rural Manitoba, POLARIZED, as the title makes plain, focuses on the oppositional dynamic generated by two women who fall in love with each other. Their families, rooted in ethnic and religious differences, set up impossible and irrational barriers, but if love doesn’t conquer all at least it helps to soften hard attitudes. Director Sarif turned her own threatened relationship with her producer, Hanan Kattan, into this beautifully shot ode to hope and forgiveness.