September 10, 2017 was the day I set aside for TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. Thursday I had acquired a magazine-size program which contained all the schedules and film descriptions, and by now I'd settled on four films I thought looked interesting. There was one ticket office where I had to buy my tickets from, and from there I had to head to the various locations where the films were actually being shown. After the previous day's Spartan Beast obstacle race, being able to spend several hours sitting was a welcome break from the usual constant walking of trips like this.
Because TIFF is a really big affair, the films are screened in several theaters all over the city. The first two I was seeing were in the Cineplex Cinemas Scotiabank Theatre.
The Ritual
This was the first movie I saw that day, and probably my favorite of the bunch. Also, by sheer happenstance it's the only one I saw that day that was in English. It's a British horror film in which four men go on a hiking and camping trip in a remote Scandinavian forest to bury the ashes of their murdered friend, who was killed in a liquor store robbery that had happened right after they planned this very trip. But they find these woods are already inhabited, and the inhabitants aren't exactly hospitable, they're a group of Norse cultists who are summoning a malevolent god who is quite real. I would describe this movie as "Deliverance meets Blair Witch Project with a dose of Nordic paganism."
Gutland
This was made in a tiny little western European country I knew a little about, and would wind up backpacking in almost two years later: Luxembourg. In this movie, a German thief named Jens who just stole a few million Euros in cash from a casino runs off into Luxembourg, not into the capital city but into farm country. Yes, that tiny strip of land has rural areas. So he becomes a seasonal worker on a farm there. Weeks go by and he stays on this farm for awhile and really likes it there, he falls in love with a girl working there named Lucy, they fix up and move into this old house together, but it becomes apparent that this idyllic farm town isn't quite as idyllic as it seems. Then Jens' fellow thieves catch up with him and want to know what he's doing bumming around here and what the hell he did with the money they stole together... This isn't something I've tried to watch again since, but I was thinking about it a bit while in its country of origin two years later.
Before moving on, I have to mention something about Luxembourg's linguistic situation I also mentioned in my backpacking blog about it. The people there speak Luxembourgish as their first language, and this is a language which is very similar to German and was until recently considered a German "dialect." I bring this up because most people like me relying on subtitles probably don't notice that through the whole movie, he's speaking only German, the Luxembourgers are all speaking Luxembourgish, but they understand each other perfectly.
The next movie I had a ticket for was not being screened in a big commercial theater but in Jackman Hall, which is part of AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). So it was a little bit of a walk to find the place, as it was a little further from most of the other venues.
Cocote
Another film from a small country that doesn't have much of a film industry: the Dominican Republic. It was almost all in black and white, probably an aesthetic choice by the director. The main character, Alberto, works in the capital city Santo Domingo as a gardener at rich family's house. He has to spend several days in the rural village where he grew up after his father is murdered. His father, it seems, was murdered by the police, who are corrupt and entirely in the pocket of the local criminal element. Everyone knows exactly who was responsible and no one can do anything about it, which drives Alberto to want to take justice into his own hands...even though he didn't think too highly of his late father, who he saw as a mean, selfish drunk, and he's not shy about letting his family know how he feels. Also, to add even further to the tension, Alberto is an evangelical Christian while his family is really, really, really Catholic, and he doesn't exactly like having to participate in the Catholic rites going on. So yeah, it tackles quite a few issues. While I'll admit to feeling a little bored by the end, I'd still recommend it and would watch it again if I had the chance.
After that I made a quick stop at a McDonald's for dinner. Not much time, I had to make it to the last stop of the night for the fourth and final film. My final destination was another big theater downtown, called TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Catch the Wind
This is a French film--titled Prendre le large in French--about a lady named Édith who has spent all her adult life working in a textile factory. Then the factory's parent company shuts it down because it's cheaper to have another factory in Morocco produce the same stuff. So, unlike everyone else who accepts their pensions, she just shrugs and says "OK, guess I'll move to Morocco!" She's either widowed or divorced, I don't remember which, she's not getting along with her adult son, so she doesn't have a lot holding her in the town where she lives. This film is about culture shock more than anything else, which Édith experiences quite a bit of. While she does make friends with her apartment's landlady and her teenage son (who both speak French, like anyone in Morocco who's had any amount of schooling), Édith never successfully adapts to the work culture at the factory.
After the movie was over, the director Gaël Morel and the film's star Sandrine Bonnaire came out for a Q&A. I stuck around a little while for this, but since I had to depart the next morning, I didn't want to stay too long. I did leave while the Q&A was still going on, but on the way out I had to buy myself a TIFF magnet which still graces my refrigerator today.
The first film I saw that day, I chose just because it looked entertaining, and it was. The other three were because for me they were windows into countries and societies I knew next to nothing about. I don't have any plans to visit the Dominican Republic or Morocco anytime soon, and at that time I had no idea I'd be backpacking in Luxembourg less than two years later. Watching these movies was, thus, the next best thing to visiting in person.
Other articles in this series:
