MVFF47 - RSVP Guide

“Can you hold my hands and be my guide? Clouds filled with stars cover your skies.” This documentary shorts program reflects on the value of intergenerational community, love, and activism. In Yoontaek Hong’s Sunchong (US 2024, 14 min), an 89-year-old Korean immigrant who volunteers at a senior center reflects on his life’s journey with his beloved wife. An Indigenous women’s motorcycle group rides to end the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women while a member of their community searches for a missing sister in Prairie Rose Seminole and Katrina Lillian Sorrentino’s We Ride for Her (US 2023, 18 min). Derek Knowles’ The Bird Rescue Center (US 2023, 13 min) captures the people at a Northern California bird rescue who give wildlife a second chance. In Loren Waters’ ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (Meet Me at the Creek) (US 2023, 9 min), a Cherokee Nation citizen, a Waterkeeper Warrior, leads the effort to restore Oklahoma’s Tar Creek. From Iowa to Guam, an aspiring costume designer visits their homeland to make costumes for a children’s theater and reconnect with distanced parents in Hao Zhou’s Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way (US 2024, 20 min).

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In Andrés Baiz’s drama, a young smuggler's world unravels amidst a deadly rivalry on the Colombia-Venezuela border. With gripping performances and stunning visuals, this electrifying thriller explores betrayal, greed, and survival in a lawless land.

With intense action, raw emotion, and stunning visuals, Pimpinero: Blood and Oil captures the collision of moral, ethical, and human boundaries in a lawless land where only the ruthless thrive. Directed by Andrés Baiz, the visionary behind global hits like Narcos and Griselda, this electrifying thriller plunges us into the dangerous world of gasoline smugglers known as “pimpineros,” who toil their trade along the volatile Colombia-Venezuela border. Set in the early 2010s, against a sun-scorched desert, the film follows Juan (Alejandro Speitzer), the youngest of three brothers entwined in this treacherous business, as a deadly rivalry threatens to unravel his family and everything they hold dear—including his love for the fiery Diana (rising star Laura Osma), his partner in everything. Colombian music legend Juanes, Alberto Guerra, and Osma deliver gripping performances as the stakes rise for Juan and his kin, bringing to life a tale of betrayal, greed, and survival.

Con acción intensa, emoción cruda y efectos visuales impresionantes, “Pimpinero: Sangre y Gasolina” captura el conflicto de límites morales, éticos y humanos en una tierra sin ley donde sólo los despiadados prosperan. Dirigida por Andrés Baiz, el autor visionario detrás de éxitos globales como Narcos y Griselda, este electrizante thriller nos sumerge en el peligroso mundo de los contrabandistas de gasolina conocidos como “pimpineros”, que hacen negocio a lo largo de la volátil frontera entre Colombia y Venezuela. Ambientada a principios de la década de 2010, en un desierto abrasado por el sol, la película sigue a Juan (Alejandro Speitzer), el menor de tres hermanos enredados en este traicionero negocio, mientras una rivalidad mortal amenaza con destruir a su familia y todo lo que aprecian, incluido su amor por la impulsiva Diana (la futura estrella Laura Osma), quien es su socia en todo. La leyenda de la música colombiana Juanes, junto con Alberto Guerra y Osma, ofrecen actuaciones apasionantes a medida que aumentan los riesgos para Juan y sus familiares, dando vida a un relato de traición, codicia y supervivencia.

Home is where the mall is. Once touted as a convenient destination, meeting needs for shopping, dining, entertainment, and hanging out, the American mall truly became a home away from home for many. Eight imaginative artists carried the idea further: They created a secret apartment hidden within the shadows of a Providence, Rhode Island mall and squatted there for four years. Seventeen years later, the participants recall how they—partly in protest over gentrification—snuck in and set up a comfy domicile, complete with PlayStation and couches, in an out-of-the-way section in the mall. Filmmaker Jeremy Workman (Lily Topples the World) chronicles the project through the artists’ archival videos and in illuminating interviews in which they recall their close calls and the work they created in their clandestine dwelling. For its utterly fascinating glimpse at the intersection of art, civil disobedience, and mall culture, Secret Mall Apartment is worth a visit.

A woman (a dazzling Nisrin Erradi) pursues her dream of becoming a singer of traditional Aita with the same fierceness as the Bedouins who came before her, facing her modern-day obstacles with an exuberance equaled by her songs.

Nisrin Erradi dazzles as the charismatic Touda, a single mother determined to earn her living as a singer of Bedouin Aita, poetry defiantly written by women at a time when they were forbidden a voice. The challenges of her particular ambition are excruciatingly clear from the start when men, who see her only as a commodity they might purchase for cheap or take for free, sour her joy in performing. The camera moves in close as she persists, overcoming obstacles subtle and overt, not only for herself but also to give her deaf son a better life. Co-written by director Nabil Ayouch (Much Loved) and Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan, MVFF45), it is the latest powerful work from the longtime collaborators, whose work is always empathetic to women facing worlds hostile to their desires. In Everybody Loves Touda, they avoid sentimentality while suffusing their drama with an exuberance and complexity equaled by Touda’s songs.

In the heady days of the 1968 Prague Spring, a group of Czechoslovak Radio journalists risk not just their careers but their lives to distribute independent news amidst national and regional tumult in this thrilling historical drama. Central to the story are two orphaned brothers caught in the struggle for freedom. The elder, Tomáš (Vojtěch Vodochodský), is a radio technician working at the station that is committed to defying the Communist Party’s censorship, overwhelming propaganda, and police harassment. When security forces pressure him to spy for them, Tomáš finds himself in a bind where he has to choose between betraying his colleagues or protecting his teenage sibling. This Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Právo Audience Award winner depicts the heroism of ordinary Czechs against the Soviet puppet regime, intertwining personal stories with well-known historical events. Waves is a gripping ode to press freedom and a timely reminder of the dangers of censorship.

“I come from a family of great athletes” says young Lionel Conacher IV. His great grandfather—LC the first, also known as “The Big Train”—was such a phenomenon that he won 11 championships and was inducted into five different sports’ Halls of Fame. But the competitive “ideal man” he represented for many, and which Lionels II and III also personified, is not exactly a mold that fits this latest Conacher. After a rocky adolescence marked by “fear of being a sissy” and prescription-drug addiction, Lionel IV has embraced an identity that is queer and nonbinary, with a penchant for performance well off the playing field. This documentary draws on bounteous archival footage to chronicle a great Canadian family legacy in athletics, including interviews with Wayne Gretzky and other hockey legends. But it also makes room on the trophy shelf for a new generation’s different priorities and goals, with Lionel IV’s dad fully supportive of Junior’s “gender journey.”

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This richly enjoyable mid-1960s period piece finds a Lima socialite at loose ends after her unfaithful husband’s departure. But she discovers more inner resources than anyone expects, forging a surprising new path of independence and culinary invention.

The Paris-born trophy wife of a Peruvian politician, Norma (Barbara Mori) finds her station in the highest echelons of mid-1960s Lima society falling apart when he leaves her for a younger woman. It’s a public scandal duly noted by both hypocritical friends and hungry creditors. Once the initial rage and helplessness burn off, however, survival instincts emerge from beneath Norma’s Liz Taylor-esque veneer of pampered glamour. Chauffeur Oscar (jazz percussionist Pudy Ballumbrosio in his acting debut), a man whose own talents have been constricted by race and class, suggests she revive a long-dormant dream to open an upscale restaurant. Writer-director Ricardo de Montreuil’s astute drama blends the sensory joys of a foodie movie with the psychological lift of seeing characters join forces to cast off limitations they thought were their lot in life. It’s a forward-looking flashback set in an era of rapid change.

Norma (Barbara Mori), la esposa trofeo de un político peruano nacida en París, encuentra su posición en los niveles más altos de la sociedad limeña de mediados de la década de 1960 pero se le viene todo abajo cuando él la deja por una mujer más joven. Es un escándalo público, debidamente observado por amigos hipócritas y acreedores hambrientos. Sin embargo, una vez que la rabia y el desamparo iniciales desaparecen, el instinto de supervivencia emerge detrás de la capa de glamour al estilo Liz Taylor que tiene Norma. Oscar, el chófer (el percusionista de jazz Pudy Ballumbrosio en su debut como actor), un hombre cuyos propios talentos han sido restringidos por su raza y clase social, le sugiere que reviva el sueño que ella ha tenido por mucho tiempo de abrir un restaurante de lujo. El drama del guionista y director Ricardo de Montreuil combina los placeres sensoriales de una película gastronómica con la emoción psicológica de ver a los personajes unir fuerzas para liberarse de las limitaciones que creían ser su destino en la vida. Es un flashback con visión de futuro ambientado en una era de cambios rápidos.

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This urgent documentary reveals the devastation inflicted on pregnant Texans, effectively barred from emergency obstetric care, due to the state’s draconian post-Roe abortion ban. Women push back, giving their suffering purpose by engaging in an epic legal battle with the state. With a maternal instinct to protect others, the three phenomenal women profiled in this indelible film share harrowing stories of loss and survival. The plaintiffs unite as they heal and move forward in their unique mothering journeys, while their attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights challenges the Texas Supreme Court to clarify medical exemptions that allow patients and their doctors to make informed choices based on medicine, not fear of retaliation. A blend of vérité scenes and courtroom footage underline the high stakes involved, especially for poor women. The movement for reproductive justice for all is gaining momentum, and these lawsuits are just the beginning.

Stunning shots of a forest and a haunting soundtrack set the stage for this contemporary riff on Little Red Riding Hood. First-time feature writer-director Kelsey Taylor explores what might have inspired the original fairy tale: the Woodsman (Ivan Martin) lives a simple life, clinging to routine in his cabin nestled deep in the fog-cloaked pines of the Oregon Cascades. Isolated in his nearly off-grid property, he is hidden from his past and the outside community—until a half-frozen Dani (Maddison Brown) appears on his doorstep. Taylor’s fascination with fairy tales and their deeper meaning shines through this thriller that reveals not only Dani and the Woodsman’s difficult pasts but also what wolves they are fleeing. But the wolves may not be who we expect them to be—and neither are the ones working so hard to keep them at bay.

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MVFF47 honoree Jude Law delivers a resonant performance as Terry Husk, an FBI agent battling neo-Nazis in this harrowing 1980s-set drama inspired by true events. A recent transfer to the Pacific Northwest, Husk initially rejects deputy Jamie Bowen’s (Tye Sheridan) theory that a group of white supremacists are behind a recent string of bank robberies. That simply doesn’t track with what Husk knows about the local fascist community. But as the gang’s activities expand to include assassination, Husk takes the lead in pursuing an offshoot organization and its mastermind Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), a man who conceals his vicious white nationalism under a mask of good-natured bonhomie. Director Justin Kurzel (Macbeth, MVFF38) brilliantly portrays the racist brutality hiding in plain sight amidst the Northwest’s bucolic beauty, while Jed Kurzel’s spare, droning score adds to the sense of growing unease in a thriller where the suspense builds inexorably from its first frames to its stunning climax.

“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” In this program Indigenous filmmakers embody this belief expressed by Vice President Kamala Harris in their explorations of how, where, and who we came from informs the person we are today. Phumi Morare’s Why The Cattle Wait (South Africa 2024, 21 min) is the intimate tale of a goddess who tries to win back the affection of her former lover who has moved on in life without her. Three generations of women in a Sámi family have connected over time through practicing joik—a Sámi oral tradition that combines music and storytelling in Radio-Jus Sunná, Sunná Nousuniemi, Guhtur Niillas Rita Duomis, and Tuomas Kumpulaine’s Áhkuin (Finland 2024, 19 min). Filmmaker Lansana Mansaray documents his returns home in From God to Man (Ma ŋaye ka Masaala a se ka Wɔmɛti) (Sierra Leone 2024, 15 min). In Laha Mebow’s coming-of-age film TAYAL FOREST CLUB (Taiwan 2024, 19 min), it’s through the help of their ancestors that two Atayal teens manage to find not only their way home but also themselves. Rana Nazzal Hamadeh’s We Would Be Freer (Canada/Palestine 2023, 9 min) reflects on the connection between colonization and nature through the use of sumac by a Palestinian refugee and a woman from the Mohawk community of Kahnawá:ke.