The steamroll through my backlog of International Feature submissions continues tonight, as there remain about a dozen or so films to analyze, and only five more days until the Academy officially releases the shortlist. I know it feels like I’m just loading up here before the deadline, but I had good reason. Unlike most years, where I catch whatever I can through theatrical releases and streaming only, this time I had access to two separate film festivals, as well as a slew of private screenings through my membership to Film Independent. This also means, theoretically, that I will vote for the upcoming Spirit Awards, the nominations for which were announced this past week.
Anyway, when it comes to special screenings and festivals, the rules for reviews can be a little hinky. Strictly speaking, unless the production company or PR firm puts a firm embargo on criticism, then technically I’m free to say my piece as soon as I see it. In some cases, particularly during Awards Season, a lot of studios and distributors will actively encourage press, especially if it’s positive, because they want to generate buzz in hopes of garnering nominations and wins, as well as a market for domestic release.
Still, I wanted to defer to those business side people as much as possible, in case there was going to be a public release on the schedule. It’s always better to post a review near the premiere date, as the movie is freshest in people’s minds, preferably with a little advance notice, because the job of a critic is to alert the public if it’s worth them spending their money to see these cinematic products. I don’t worry about that so much with International Feature or the other specialty feature categories, because even if I loath the films, they’re still worth seeing from a completist standpoint, and if they end up getting nominated, you may not get another chance.
But more than that, it just feels weird to me to talk about flicks that you don’t have the opportunity to see for yourselves. I’m not a Hollywood phony. As much fun as it is attending all these screenings, I’m never going to be the type to schmooze with other voters who live in their own bubble waiting for gift baskets to sway their ballots. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, I’m not. I literally went to one screening where members of the audience – who are invited through publicist emails and get one of only about 50 seats in these tiny viewing rooms – complained about the hors d’oeuvres spread and noted that it might affect their voting decisions. That will never be me. I’m grateful that I get the chance to see these pictures, because some that aren’t shortlisted or nominated will never see the inside of a public theatre here in America, even though they’re ostensibly the best their country has to offer. I feel awful that I can’t tip valets because I don’t carry cash, and the invites only say that parking is “provided” at these events. To me, that just means an open lot, not that you have servants forced to sit in my beat-up ’05 Trailblazer with nearly 200,000 miles on it. If you tell me in clear terms that there will be valet service, I can at least hit an ATM and a 7-Eleven to get some small bills together. That said, I do get a wry sense of satisfaction whenever one of these Beverly Hills types gets a scandalized look on their face from seeing a commoner rolling up into their territory in such an old vehicle.
My point is, I hate elitism, and while I’m appreciative beyond words that my membership grants me this access, when I write about these films in this space, it’s with the hope that any of you reading will have a similar opportunity. It’s one thing to have an opinion on art, but it’s quite another to be a gatekeeper, and I hope I never become one. So yes, in my ideal world, all of these films would get full releases and I could give them the full breakdowns that most of them deserve. That includes waiting until the proverbial 11th hour to do these mini-reviews, wishing that in the time between my viewing and posting, they’d have gotten a real chance in an American movie house. Sadly, that is not often the case, which is why I even signed up for this, because it can be cumbersome in the extreme to track these contenders down after the fact. I’ve said before, but by the time the shortlist is announced on Thursday, I’ll have seen at least 32 of the 88 eligible entries, and there’s still a sizeable chance that I’ll have several more to see, as many of these films won’t get distribution until they make the semifinals at least.
For tonight’s grouping, we’re doing it by continent. I’ve already taken a look at Tunisia’s spectacular documentary, Four Daughters, but it is not the only hopeful I’ve seen from Africa. Three more have been viewed since then (two in special screenings, one in a normal theatre), and a further two are nominated for Spirit Awards. I should be getting screener access for those in due course, but there’s no reason not to delve into the ones I already have cleared. As always, I’ll include whatever release data I have available. Let’s get to it!
Voy! Voy! Voy! – Egypt – In Limited Release Now
Despite my general hatred of remakes and reboots, one of my all-time favorite films is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is a remake of 1964’s Bedtime Story. The dynamic between Steve Martin, Michael Caine, and the late Glenne Headly was absolutely perfect, and the farcical comedy superb. Part of the reason I don’t care for heist movies and other related crime films is that they never truly capture the sheer fun of that 80s caper.
However, Egypt’s submission this year, Voy! Voy! Voy!, is that rare piece that comes close. This isn’t a great movie by any means, and as of right now it’s only middle of the pack as far as my personal rankings in this category. But just like Barbie, there’s an undeniable degree of giddy fun to be had that makes it truly memorable. In fact, I’d say it’s the most purely entertaining picture I’ve seen so far in this race. It gets too dramatic in places where I feel it should just go all in on the comedy, but that doesn’t stop this from being quite the enjoyable romp.
Muhammad Farag stars as Hassan, a smart, resourceful man who is nonetheless on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Despite having a formal education, the only job he can get is as a security guard in a parking garage. His mother (Hanan Youssef) constantly harangues him about getting an administrative job in Kuwait, but at this point Hassan – along with his ne’er-do-well friends – is just looking for a get rich quick scheme so he can emigrate to Europe and have a shot at something grander. Of course, all of his plots comically blow up in his face, including an opening sequence where he’s become romantic with a rich, elderly British woman, and the instant she agrees to marry him, she dies. Cue the sad trombone.
His next brilliant idea comes when he sees a local newspaper article about a blind national soccer team (or goalball as it’s officially known; players detect the ball because it has a bell inside it and the keeper can be the sole seeing player to direct them). Watching them play and mimicking their movements, Hassan attempts to join the team in hopes of winning qualification to the sport’s World Cup, which is to be played in Poland. The team is led by Captain Adel (Bayoumi Fouad), a former player who’s hit a rut as a school gym teacher and wants the chance to do something more. Given that his own son is handicapped, he’s inspired to take on the job.
Hassan demonstrates spectacular skill on the field, and why wouldn’t he? Even when the players have to be blindfolded (as visual impairment happens by degrees), Hassan is ready to grease the wheels by scratching out some of the fabric so he can still see relatively normally. By the time they beat the Kenyan team to secure their spot in Poland, Hassan has led the group to celebrity status, and has caught the affections of Engy (Nelly Karim), a journalist assigned to cover the team.
The most hilarious bits come from the ever-expanding conspiracies and escalating shenanigans. It’s to writer-director Omar Hilal’s credit that not all that much time is spent on a “liar revealed” story (which we’ll get to shortly), focusing instead on the comic absurdity of Hassan trying to maintain this ruse. Even Captain Adel figures the scheme out pretty early, opting to blackmail Hassan to victory before he can scarper off on foreign soil. This is all based on a real incident that occurred in 2015, and like American Hustle, the facts are intentionally bent for the sake of the hijinks.
The only real flaw is when Hilal tries to make things more dramatic than they are. The commentary about economic conditions in Egypt is important, but too much time is spent on it, bringing the audience down after each hearty laugh. Similarly, while Adel’s son is the impetus for Adel to take on the job, the way any potential moral and ethical quandary is handled feels a bit misplaced and tone deaf. I would have rather not had the character involved than to play him off the way the film does.
But that’s minor in the grand scheme of things, especially when you see just how deep this scam runs. I mean, there’s an entire sequence where Hassan and his friends have to rob one of their bosses in order to bribe the team doctor, who is also aware that Hassan has full sight. As the trio pulls up on a motorcycle, having sabotaged the target’s car by poking a hole in the gas tank, a completely different gang of thugs pops up to rob him for real. That’s the level of silly we’re at here, and when Voy! Voy! Voy! maintains that, you can easily see why Egypt put it forward.
Grade: B
Banel & Adama – Senegal – No Release Information Available
The debut film from Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Banel & Adama was one of the more unique entries at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, in that it was the only first feature to screen in the main competition. That’s quite an achievement. And for what it’s worth, I can see why. In a post-screening Q&A, Sy stated that two of her major directing inspirations are Terrence Malick and Barry Jenkins, and you can see on the screen the effect they had on her. Much of the cinematography is epic and poetic, reducing vast swaths of desert into something vibrant and gorgeous to behold. Visually, the film is stunning. I just wish the story and characters kept up with it.
The title pair – played by Khady Mane and Mamadou Diallo (not to be confused with the footballer), respectively – are a young married couple in a small village in northern Senegal that raises cattle. Although they’ve been in love since they were children, they only came together through traditional rites and circumstances. Banel was the second wife of the village chief, who has recently died. As part of his duty by being a relative and the eldest member of the chief’s bloodline, Adama was able to take Banel as his wife. However, that’s as far as they wish to take the local customs. Adama is expected to become the new chief himself, because the office must stay within his family, and even at 19, he is the oldest possible heir, but it is a job and a responsibility that he doesn’t want. Also, he and Banel have a dream for their home arrangement. Rather than live in the village proper with one of their families, the couple wants to dig out some abandoned houses on the outskirts that have been buried by sandstorms, and live there alone. The title itself is a mantra that Banel repeats to herself to keep this dream alive.
Initially, both Banel and Adama are adamant in their ways, with Adama refusing the position of chief, because he wants his own life with his own bride. Meanwhile, everyone in the village, particularly Banel’s mother (Binta Racine Sy) and another young woman named Racine (Moussa Sow) – who was promised to Adama before Banel was, for lack of a better term, inherited – warns them not to scoff at their practices, as it will anger God and bring ruin upon the village. Also, a gifted young boy named Malik (Amadou Ndiaye) continually stares at Banel in silence, unnerving her at every turn. The two continue on their path, doing their normal work and spending hours together digging out the houses, waiting for the annual rainy season to occur so they can move out.
However, the rains don’t come, and a lengthy drought ensues, to the point where all the plants in the area wither and the livestock all die. Adama goes on longer and longer excursions to try to find any water source for the village’s dwindling population, eventually accepting his role as the chief despite his passive and softspoken nature. This angers Banel because a) she refuses to believe that the drought is anything more than a coincidence, b) it means Adama spends more time away from her and not digging out the buried houses, and c) Adama’s acquiescence makes her paranoid that she too will eventually be forced to abide by the life set out for her by others, basically marital servitude and bearing children, which she considers a curse. When the audience learns the lengths she went to in order to secure her wanted future, things become even more dark.
My problems with the film are two-fold. One is that there have just been too many submissions in this cycle that assert some sort of divine will for characters to act a certain way. I know not all cultures are as progressive, secular, or humanist as we might think ourselves in the West (and others are set in the distant past where these lines of thought were more prevalent), but it is tiresome to see movie after movie where no one is even willing to question fundamentalist dogma. I’ve said many a time that I have no problem with faith unless someone tries to use it to infringe on someone else’s rights, particularly my own, so to have that be the default setting for so many of these entries feels a bit lazy after a while. Surely there’s a different plot device out there that we can use to pose an obstacle to our protagonists, right?
Second is Banel herself. Mane gives a fine enough performance, but the characterization is slightly off. Being a fan of Shakespeare, Sy said she wanted Banel to start off as Juliet and end the film as Lady Macbeth. To a certain extent I get that, particularly as she starts ordering Adama around late on, but for me, most of what I saw was Veruca Salt. She doesn’t care what’s going on around her, or how dire the situation is becoming. All that matters to her is getting exactly what she wants, and getting it now (and also killing small animals with a slingshot like a psychopath). I understood her desires, and how anyone who wants to escape a small-minded provincial life might be frustrated by delays. But shit happens, and you have to adapt to the world as it is, not how you want it to be. People are literally dying all around her because of this drought. The least she could do is have a bit of sympathy. Even if she doesn’t believe in all the doomsaying – and I sure as hell didn’t – there’s no reason to not be helpful and pitch in. Similar to my complaint about Nawal and the pickup truck in Inshallah a Boy, there’s a time and a place for all this selfishness, but now ain’t it. Help your people and your family get through a crisis, then get back to digging out the sanded homes. There’s no point in succeeding in one narrow goal if it costs you everything else.
To be fair, neither of these issues are deal-breaking, but they do set the film back by a few degrees. Thankfully, Sy’s cinematic eye does a lot of heavy lifting to help you get past them. For a first effort, she’s gone about as high in the world as you can go, and that’s to be lauded. I will certainly be intrigued to see what she’s got up her sleeve next.
Grade: B-
Goodbye Julia – Sudan – No Release Information Available
It was quite a journey to see this particular candidate, as there were two private screenings that I received invites for, but both of them filled to capacity before I could get in. Thankfully, a few days ago, Film Independent put on its own screening at a local AMC, which was a much larger venue than the previous two, because the director, Mohamed Kordofani (in addition to using Africa as the theme, all three of these entries are by first-time filmmakers), developed the story through Film Independent workshops and fellowships. I’m glad I finally got a chance to see what was one of the more anticipated entries, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I really didn’t care for it all that much.
Taking place after the Sudanese Civil War, and just before South Sudan broke off to form its own independent nation, the story focuses on the racial and class dynamic between two families forced together through tragic circumstances. In Khartoum in 2005, riots occur in the streets, led by mostly black Christian southern Sudanese, who are openly discriminated against by lighter, Muslim northern folks. It is here that we find Mona (Eiman Yousif), a former singer living in a relatively well-off situation with her husband, Akram (Nazar Gomaa), who works as a machinist and craftsman. Angered with the violence and vandalism, and harboring a bigotry towards southerners, Akram secures a rifle for home protection.
On the other side of the city, a southern family is evicted from their apartment, again due to racist preconceptions. Patriarch Santino (Paulino Victor Bol) is peaceful and law-abiding, but that doesn’t stop the northern residents of his building from demanding his ouster. Now living in a shanty town with his wife Julia (Siran Riak) and son Danny (played by Louis Daniel Ding as a toddler, then Stephanos James Peter later on), the worlds collide, literally, when Mona accidentally runs over Danny with her car due to a lapse in her attentiveness. The boy is thankfully fine, but Santino is incensed. When Mona panics and drives away from the scene, Santino pursues on his motorcycle, hoping to get her to stop and wait for authorities to arrive. He follows her all the way to her home, where Akram doesn’t hesitate to shoot him dead on sight, thinking he’s another southern rioter threatening his wife. A neighbor even confiscates the bike as reparations for the rioters setting his car on fire.
Wracked with guilt, but unwilling to tell the truth about what happened, Mona takes it upon herself to find Santino’s family while Akram uses his connections with the local police department to cover up the death as self-defense. Eventually locating Julia weeks later selling food on the corner, Mona buys an awful lot of Juila’s product, then hires her as a maid, thinking that offering her money indirectly will cleanse her soul. When local authorities burn down the shanty town, Mona goes so far as to take Julia and Danny in as live-in servants, something Akram’s prejudices have a hard time getting past. Literal years go by, with Mona providing financially for both Julia and Danny’s education, and the two women becoming friends, bridging the racial gap and giving each other perspective on how the dynamic works in the soon-to-be divided country. That revolutionary temptation is presented in the form of Majier (Ger Duany), who develops romantic feelings for Julia, and wants to help Danny learn the truth of his father’s disappearance.
All of this sounds great on the surface, and a lot of the credibility of the production is down to the fantastic lead performances of Yousif and Riak. My problem, as mentioned above, is that this all boils down to an overblown “liar revealed” story. It’s one of the more annoying tropes in screenwriting, this idea that some character tells some major lie early on in the plot, and eventually they’re found out, with the third act usually dealing with the fallout. It’s been done more times than I can count, and sometimes it works, but most of the time it just comes off as trite.
This is because, in a trap that far too many writers have fallen into, Kordofani wants there to be a twist as to when and how the truth comes out. Unfortunately, it’s 100% clear exactly when Julia learns what’s really going on, only the movie is still presented as if she doesn’t know until the big bombshell at the end. Anyone who knows this story structure can pinpoint the exact moment when it happens, but we’re supposed to just sit back and play along that Julia is ignorant the entire time, counting down the minutes until she pulls out the rug, and for me, that’s just not satisfying.
We just saw with Voy! Voy! Voy! how much fun we can have when the lie is brought into the open early, and everyone knows about it. The same could have been said for Goodbye Julia. Imagine that in the obvious instance where she would find out, we see her find out. From then on this movie becomes so much more interesting, wondering when she’s taking advantage of Mona and when she’s being genuine, when she’s exploiting Mona’s guilt and bias and when she’s going for an actual rapport. It also would make the more human moments ring that much more true, with Mona realizing she can’t hide who she is for Akram’s sake anymore (he previously divorced her over her singing, then remarried when she promised to stop, and she’s been hiding infertility from him for years). Mona is the bad guy here, but she could have been a humanized villain had we gotten to see Julia turn the tables in real time.
Because let’s not forget this, the film takes place over the course of about six years. You’re going to tell me that we have to pretend that Julia is so smart as to excel in school and get recommended for teaching positions, but too dumb to see what was going on for six goddamn years. Really? Never mind the fact that the neighbor having her husband’s motorcycle goes unnoticed for that long, do you honestly expect me to buy that she wouldn’t have picked up on anything in all this time? That’s just a disservice to both Mona and Julia as characters.
That said, the one area where this falsehood trope does work is in the unintended consequences with Danny. Mona lies about the accident and the shooting. Julia lies about knowing the truth. But what no one seems to foresee is the trauma that both sets of lies inspire in the impressionable youth who just wants to know where his daddy went, and when he finds out, that’s the real tragedy. Forget all the racial and political dynamics, the real meat and bones of this story is through Danny, often shoved to the periphery, but the only pure victim of this entire saga. When you keep your intellectual focus on his circumstances, this film comes the closest to being essential.
Grade: C+
***
That’s all for this edition. We still have so many more entries to cover, and I’ll be pulling out all the stops to get them posted before the shortlist announcement on Thursday. Thanks for coming along on the ride!
Join the conversation in the comments below! Have you had a chance to see any of these films? Which stories sound the most intriguing to you? How much exposure have you had to African cinema? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) and YouTube for even more content!
I Actually Paid To See This 