Film festival 2020 roundup

So it's been a funny old year for the New Zealand International Film Festival, full of disruption and rebirth. I hope the new leadership gets to put on its preferred full lineup next year so it can be judged against the wonderful legacy Bill Gosden left over the past 40 years. But in the meantime we're very lucky in New Zealand to have been able to experience at least some of this year's festival titles in the cinema, and the online streaming option has worked well, for me at least.

Instead of the usual 20 films I've only managed nine this year: six in person at the Roxy in Miramar and three online. Here they are in rough order of personal preference:

The Kingmaker (dir. Lauren Greenfield, US/Denmark, 2019, trailer)

An object lesson in a documentarian's restraint, as Imelda Marcos displays all of the messianic pretensions that were the hallmark of the dictatorial regime she was at the head of with her equally ruthless husband Ferdinand Marcos, and seeks to perpetuate through her children, who still hold sway despite their legacy of vast corruption and thousands of extrajudicial killings during the eight years of martial law decree. Lauren Greenfield's documentary might well be the defining record of the end of three decades of Philippine democracy and the return to ruthless, kleptocratic autocracy. One can take at least a little hope from the director Lauren Greenfield's observation that there has been considerable interest in the film since it opened in the Philippines last week.

The Truth (La Vérité) (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, France/Japan, 2019, trailer)

Kore-eda's first venture outside Japan is a delicate mother-daughter fencing-match, with the great central pairing of Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche reliving old grudges and debating the legacy of a fractured childhood dominated by an alpha mum for whom acting was everything, and examining the way family memories are subjective and fluid as they calcify with age. There's a top supporting cast, with Ethan Hawke immensely likeable as Hank, the American husband, and Clementine Grenier as the charming young daughter. The film also makes good use of a film-within-a-film as a narrative device to further explore the positive and negative nature of maternal bonds.


Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson & The Band (dir. Daniel Roher, Canada, 2019, trailer)

I'm a sucker for a great music doco and Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson & The Band was a top example, helped by the fact that I love their music. It takes talent, luck, endless practice and a whole lot of living to polish a group as marvelous as these five - four Canadians and an Arkansas drummer, from teenagers supporting Ronnie Hawkins, to the hot R&B group accompanying Dylan-gone-electric and reverberating around the world to a chorus of boos from uptight folk audiences, to an incredible yet defiantly unpretentious group in their own right that had eight magical years at the top of the rock scene, inventing a whole new style of music along the way. The doco is generous and inclusive but is clearly a Robertson-led story - his eloquent, elegant wife Dominique appears to add interview context - to act as a counterbalance the embittered and not-long-for-the-world Levon Helm's 2010 doco Ain't In It For My Health, made at a time when Helm was lashing out at his former bandmate. Once Were Brothers is a fine, positive antidote to that. And where better to end than with The Band's last ever performance in 1976, The Last Waltz, captured so brilliantly by Martin Scorsese.

Driveways (dir. Andrew Ahn, US, 2019, trailer)

A big-hearted drama with gentle touches of comedy and an engaging depiction of a burgeoning friendship between a solo mum and her 8-going-on-9 year-old son venturing to upstate New York to clear out a deceased relative's house and a lonely octogenarian widower who lives next door (Brian Dennehy, in one of his final roles before his death in April at the age of 81 ). File alongside Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent as a film that enjoys dwelling on the simple pleasures of companionship, with the added charm of the surrogate grandfather relationship of Pixar's Up.

Kubrick by Kubrick (dir. Gregory Monro, France, 2020)

A valuable contribution to the canon of Kubrick film obsession, with Michel Ciment's audio interviews conducted over several years helping the film play the same role as Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home: a safe space for a notorious recluse who has little time for the fripperies of media interviews to put their real philosophy on record with a trusted interlocutor. The usual actors contribute via contemporary interviews, but ultimately it's the strange sensation of hearing the director's own voice that is deceptively powerful. The Leon Vitali documentary Filmworker was a great second-hand view of the director; Kubrick by Kubrick is one step closer.

Dinner in America (dir. Adam Rehmeier, US, 2020, not a trailer)

A rousing tale of suburban misfits bolstered by an absolute star turn by the delightful Emily Skeggs, of Broadway and The Miseducation of Cameron Post fame, as the downtrodden Patty, ably assisted by Kyle Gallner as sociopathic Simon, who shakes up Patty's dead end existence with a dose of anarchic punk energy.

The County (Héraðið) (dir. Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland, 2019) 

A strong central performance from Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir anchors this north Iceland rural drama replete with traditional Scandinavian stubbornness. New Zealand dairy farmers making their livelihoods with Fonterra will be well aware of the role of a powerful co-operative, but in Skagafjördur the co-op not only buys everything, it also controls most of the retail, and as newly-widowed Inga (Egilsdóttir) discovers, when you ask awkward questions and rock the boat, the co-op will fight back. It's telling that director Grímur Hákonarson was originally planning to make a documentary in the farming fjord but quickly learned no-one would go on the record to discuss the real co-op, so the film became a fictionalised tale filmed in a different fjord entirely. While there are perhaps too few surprises in The County, it's still a treat to witness a well-told narrative set in an island that always seems as if it's actively trying to kill its inhabitants.

The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir, Australia, 1977)

A visually stylish metaphysical thriller with an added dash of cultural appropriation that remains effective if over-long. Richard Chamberlain and David Gulpilil work well within the constraints of the material, and the increasingly apocalyptic visions of a haywire climate are convincing and well-staged. Lots of mucking about in Sydney's sewers, so you have to sympathise with the actors and the crew.

True History of the Kelly Gang (dir. Justin Kurzel, Australia, 2019)

Impressive cinematography boosts this young filmmaker's revisionist 19th-century outing, which features memorably energetic set-pieces and commendable central performances. And before people get up in arms, even if the Kelly Gang didn't do it, men dressing up in women's garb for criminal hi-jinks was actually a thing in the 19th centuries - look up the Rebecca Riots. But the over-reliance on repeated revolver-to-the-head standoffs, strobe lighting and drone shots become slightly wearying, as does an overlong prologue in which we learn the superhero childhood backstory of our 'hero' Ned but take an hour to do so, which is an unusual narrative choice. As for the NZ contingent, Thomasin McKenzie doesn't get much to do but is reliably watchable, while Marlon Williams should possibly stick to his excellent singing voice as opposed to his at times ropey American accent.

See also:
Blog: Film festival roundup 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 part 1 / part 2, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009