Top 30 Favorite Films 2022

OK. The world is going back to semi-normal, although with Covid variants still lingering, war in Ukraine has no end in sight, Trump and Kanye announced that they are running for president again, scientist found zombie virus under the permafrost and astronomers suddenly discovered a black hole ten time the size of our sun, some 16,000 light years away. But everyone was cautiously optimistic, or at least in a better mood in general this year. Cinema too, saw a spurt of ambitious and energetic filmmaking after two years of gentle, introspective and contemplative films, comparatively speaking. Caught some quality home viewings too, namely, Olivier Assayas's reworking of his own Irma Vep as an 8 part series for HBO, David Bruckner's reimagining of Hellraiser and Dan Trachtenberg's fresh take on the Predator franchise, Prey. All of which gave new dimensions to the notion of, and elevated the status of, remakes, revivals and new interpretations of the existing material.

There were some great films which largely benefitted from being seen on the big screen, once again, making a case for theater viewing experience that it still has a place in cinema discourse. Pacifiction, Decision to Leave, Tár, Moonage Daydream all excelled in larger format cinema experience.

*Petite maman, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Tsugua Diaries, In Front of your Face, Neptune Frost all made last years list.

1. Pacifiction - Serra A grand, most intoxicating cinematic experience in recent memory, Pacifiction stood far above anything else I'd seen this year. Its invisible enemies and wildly outdated Cold War paranoia of the first world suits Serra's cynical, comic take on the impotence of the former colonizers whose meaningless posturing and silly power games is spot on. This is our generation's Dr. Strangelove.

2. Aftersun - Wells Memories are subjective and selective. They also make us who we are. Charlotte Wells's poignant film about the memories of a young woman about her absent father shows us the fragility of our construction of self. Aftersun is a melancholic, futile attempt at reconciling the facts with our embellished and suppressed memories. It nearly broke me.

3. Decision to Leave - Park Not as bombastic or fantastical as his previous films, but Park's Decision to Leave is any less brilliant in its intricacy and execution. Its down to earth tone and Tang Wei and Park Hae-il's empathetic performances resonate emotionally more than any of his films. A supreme entertainment.

4. Hit the Road - Panahi A political urgency balances out with humor. In the tradition of 'moving pictures' of Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, Panah Panahi's family road trip film is life affirming and full of humanity.

5. Irma Vep - Assayas With the long form storytelling (as an 8-part HBO mini series), Olivier Assayas is allowed to develop and elaborate more from his Maggie Cheung starring 1996 film. As usual, fluidly infusing his life long obsessions, reflections on film history and compulsion to create, in order not to get lonely, Assayas creates light, airy and playful love letter to creative process.

6. El Gran Movimiento - Russo Much more inviting and personable than Koyaanisqatsi trilogy, melding of old and new, El Gran Movimiento is a stunning visual tone poem of the world in crisis complete with a dance number.

7. Hytti nro 6 - Kuosmanen Compartment No.6 has everything I love about cinema - Wanderlust, human connection, loneliness, trains, cold weather. Juho Kuosmanen, working from a novel by Rosa Liksom, finds a delicate balance in chiseling out beautiful moments of human connections without unnecessary backstories or dramatics. It's a little romance without all the fuss and stylings, but only warmth and silent mutual understanding.

8. Tár - Field Talking about gender equality in the face of sexual misconduct in the social media era, Todd Field's biting and grandiose character study Tár is at once current in its sexual politics and old fashioned in its rise and fall narrative of its subject. But Field really achieved something remarkable with Tár. It’s one of those big character driven film that is rare to be made nowadays. With its mesmerizing closeups and Blanchett’s commanding performance, the film is espetically spectacular on the big screen.

9. Un beau martin - Hansen-Løve Mia Hansen-Løve does it again, so well, observing the time passing and melancholy of life. Seydoux and Gregory are both fantastic. This year's The Worst Person in the World without all the spunky enthusiasm.

10. Nope - Peele Nope is actually very much like a Spike Lee joint, packed to the brim with ideas and messages, but in a simple, breatheable, cinematic symbolist way. It has little to do with character development or backstory or the classic structure. Things go haywire with unexpected twists and turns. Its references range from Roy Rogers, Close Encounters, Phenomena, 90s TV sitcoms, reality TV, tabloids, to Akira even, not to mention all the other clever pop culture references. It speaks volumes about the notions of the untamed west, nostalgia, colonization, captivity and spectacle. And the gaze: one of the many brilliant moments comes in when OJ understands not to look at the predator in the eye, like many traffic stops POC faces everyday. Loved the unconventional design of the entity as well as hilarious use of the air balloon modeled on Steven Yeun as a weapon. There are many more details I am forgetting to mention here.

11. Unrueh - Schäublin Cyril Schäublin sets up the two contrasting forces - capitalism fueled by industrial revolution versus collectivist agitation in his beguiling, the Swiss Jura mountains set period film, Unrest. It is a great allegory of the society we live in now, where commodifying time, as demonstrated by the news of instating permanent Daylight Savings time, as if we only exist to be productive at work. It advocates for the balance, and better yet, anarchy!

12. Geographies of Solitude - Mills Filmmaker Jacquelyn Mills, in collaboration with Lucas, lovingly documents all that a windswept remote island can offer - sand dunes, horses, seals and insects, its intricate ecosystem. She also comments on the human footprints on environment through Lucas while capturing some of the most breathtakingly gorgeous images on 16mm film. It includes naturally exposed film stocks only by moonlight and hand printed footage using natural surroundings, like horse dung, sand, kelp and yarrow.

13. Crimes of the Future - Cronenberg Watching Crimes of the Future immediately reminded me of the famed painting by Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The painter was commenting on the inadequacy of seeking knowledge and truth in the human body in the Age of Enlightenment. And this is the point Cronenberg has been making all his career- our futile quests for answers in what makes us humans, in our bodies which are the most personal, tangible things that each of us possesses, and not finding it there. And pursuing so hard to find something in all the blood and guts, you lose sight of whatever the humanity that's left in us. In a way, Cronenberg is going back to the basics - to the flesh after more cerebral musings in searching for the soul (Dangerous Methods, Cosmopolis).

14. A Night of Knowing Nothing - Kapadia Memories fade, but nostalgia remains. From Godard and May 68', Mythical Hindu God films, to Chris Marker, A Night of Knowing Nothing weaves intoxicating visual, textural contemplation of our relationship with cinema as an unintentional but nevertheless undeniably nostalgic medium, even if the image is from only few years ago. Another beautiful contemplation of memories and what they mean to us I watched this year.

15. Serre Moi Fort - Amalric Vickey Krieps gives a gut-wrenching performance in a film about grieving and letting go that is so portent and heartfelt than any other film I've seen in a long time. Constantly going back and forth with her and her family, feeling the absence of one another yet articulating the connection in a very ingenious way, Amalric, adapting from Claudine Galea's play Je reviens de loin, makes perhaps the most heartfelt film as a writer/director. Give Krieps all the acting awards there are!

16. Das Mädchen und die Spinne - Zürcher Mara, our static figure on the sidelines, is not immune to be the object of desire, as she gets attention from both sexes. Is she taking a break from the sinewy human connections because of the STD? Or is she somewhat autistic the way talented people are (she sketches gorgeous portraits of people around her). She is also capable of cruelty. Does the spider which gets passed on from Mara to others and back, signify a disease or desire or both? Twin siblings Ramon and Silvan Zürcher's second film, after enigmatic The Strange Little Cat (2013), is yet another chamber piece as a microcosm of people's inner yearning and desire to connect in the modern society. And The Girl and Spider is just as ambiguous and non-conclusive and formalist as the former, if not more so. And it's a delicious concoction.

17. The Eternal Daughter - Hogg Using the Victorian Gothic trope, Joanna Hogg creates yet another meta-autofiction about her own complicated relationship with her mother. A family is the source for all your sorrows and joy and regret. After all, many of Victorian ghost stories are manifestation of repressed emotions and feelings. Swinton is glorious in a dual role in her white wig, pretty much carrying a conversation with herself. It is a subtly devastating performance - in many of the film's close-ups both as a mother and daughter, she conveys that nervousness of not trying to hurt one another, or in this case, herself, in that educated, polite British way. Hogg aces again.

18. Avec amour et acharnement - Denis Shot during the pandemic, with her frequent collaborators, Claire Denis's moody chamber piece, Both Sides of the Blade, might be seen too wordy and conventional for the die-hard Denis acolytes who prefer her blissful visual filmmaking with colors and textures. But rest easy, because the film is nothing but. It contains enough visual/aural power and beauty, combined with blistering performances by Juliette Binoche and Vicent Lindon.

19. Ahed's Knee - Rapid It culminates to Y making Yahalom admitting that there is strong censorship within the art community in Israel, and deep down she knows it is wrong. Ahed's Knee directly confronts the well-intentioned liberals and criticises for their sheepishness and passivity. It's an angry film and shows its director's resourcefulness in saying what he has to say in the strongest terms (in the guise of making a fiction) while getting away from the grips of the censors while making a film within the country. Unflinching and direct in its message with kinetic visuals and breathless pacing, Ahed's Knee is another strong film from a talented filmmaker with strong point of view.

20. Eo - Skolimowski The film, mostly shot from the donkey's point of view, with jarring close-ups, has a visceral, raw quality only seen in haptic cinema of Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL). Unlike some cute Disney family movie starring a talking donkey, Eo is not a fairy tale. It can also be seen as sobering examination of the meat industry. But more importantly, it is an allegory for how people from different parts of the world, not by their own volition, get uprooted and go through unimaginable hardships and alienation only to be at the mercy of a handful of strangers who ultimately don't have any stake in their lives.

21. The Novelist's Film - Hong So goes another meta autofiction of Hong as he reveals sliver of his filmmaking process - 'compulsion' to make films in the director's earlier days are gone, giving way to stagnation, brought on by success, relative comfort and getting old. Story isn't as important. It can be as simple as something from the real life. Inspirations and directions can't be forced and life provides them in unexpected ways. With his consistent output, Hong's metaverse has become as comfortable as home for his fans. Watching his films is like meeting and conversing with an old friend now - they know you, you know them. But also, you start noticing small things, a delicate story within a story and small nuances in characters that you find pleasurable. The Novelist's Film is just that. And we find pleasure in many small details in the film.

22. We're All Going to the World's Fair - Schoenbrun The main point of the movie is that in the internet discourse, no one knows one another, there is no distinguishing between what's real and what is not,that everyone has been circling around one another, for comfort, for lust, for real human connections, reaching out ever so timidly and endlessly without no tangible satisfaction. On a larger context, for the last two decades, this has been the case for millions of lonely souls. There has been some internet themed horror films in recent years, but none really concentrated on the alienation and performative aspects of the internet in a heartbreaking and poignant way Schoenbrun presents here.

23. Saint Omer - Diop The film doesn't end with the verdict of the trial, but rather, ends with defense lawyer talking directly to the camera/audience and explaining the clinical term, a microchimera, an inter-change of cells between a fetus and its mother that goes both ways. That, in metaphorical sense, all women are chimeras, the mythic monster composed of different parts of the beast. Diop here is making a powerful statement, about the highly patriarchal society, colonialism, racism and women's rights, both subtly and unsubtly.

24. New Old Play - Qiu Spectacular handpainted sets and backdrops (production design done also by Qiu) and with simple but clever camera staging - slow dolly tracking and playing with deep focus, A New Old Play has in common with Roy Andersson's and Wes Anderson's cinema, if only aesthetically. Through its 3 hour runtime as these carefully orchestrated sets and movements settle you in to lived-in, comfortable feeling. And its Qiu's unbiased approach to Chinese history that gives melancholic resonance and wisdom being a witness to history on a personal level. Qiu hits home the idea of life being a stage, where we live and die on it.

25. Trenque Lauquen - Citarella Trenque Lauquen plays out like a funnier, warmer and more intimate version of 'disappearance of woman' films a.k.a. L'Avventura, seen from a woman's perspective. Endlessly charming and entertaining, the film is very much like watching a Hong Sangsoo film without all the drinking; the intricacies of character interactions, the intrigue of every day life, the men's folly, the urge to escape the city living and enjoy nature. And most of all, freedom.

26. Mato seco em chamas - Pimenta, Queirós Pimenta and Queirós fluidly combines fictional elements with reality, highlighting the lives of people in Sol Nascente are often stranger than fiction. But it's the defiance and fierce independence and self-reliance that matter. The film ends with the wrecked armored car on fire, like a carcass of completely hollowed out animal in flames.

27. Showing Up - Reichardt Many films on art and art-making, the centerpiece is usually the art itself. In those films, we are reminded of the transformative power of art and the suffering the artists must endure to produce such sublime masterpieces that inspire us all. In Reichardt’s film the art itself is secondary. The perserverance of their creators is. Showing Up is emblematic of small pleasures we get from our creations that success doesn’t measure in fame and fortune. It’s self-satisfaction of showing up every day to your studio (or basement, or shed, or garage) and create.

28. Moonage Daydream - Morgan Morgen also uses Stan Brakage inspired animation of exploding primary colors to accompany the glorious music, punctuating the isolated beats and guitar riff that starts many of the Bowie's famed songs. More than anything, Moonage Daydream sounds and feels like a rousing concert documentary where one can't help but feeling emotional several times.

29. Rien à foutre - Lacoustre, Marre With verité style candid cinematography by Olivier Boonjing and Exarchopoulos's committed performance, Zero Fucks Given comments on hyper capitalist society where work and personal life exist like oil and vinegar, yet one dictates another whether we like it or not.

30. Hellraiser - Bruckner If the original Hellraiser film by Clive Barker was all about pleasures of flesh and dark human desires, this David Bruckner version equates cenobites with manifestations of the imaginings of a vulnerable mind and how it causes the sufferings of people around her. There has been a lot of emotional trauma horror films in recent years which I am not a big fan of, but Bruckner's Hellraiser is just gorgeous to look at.

Top 10 Discoveries 2022

2022 was a recovery year. A mixed bag of getting back to work excitment and exhaustion. Vacation ruined because of still raging covid in the summer and family having tested positive, it has been an emotionally and physically unsettling year. And this choice viewing list, taking from variety of influences and sources reflects on that volatility. Sometimes fulfilling, sometimes directionless, these films guided me through some unknown territories. I am eternally grateful to Kelly and Carol for introducing me to some of these films.

Listed chronologically

Hindle Wakes (1927) - Elvey Unlike Hollywood films of this time - think of Clara Bow's It, Britain's Hindle Wakes' take on the definition of a job and woman's place in the post-industrial society is surprisingly progressive of its time. Fanny, in her Louise Brooks wig, is a mill worker who gets noticed by a mill owner's engaged son at a company sponsored outting. She gets stranded and spends the night with him in the countryside (big scandal!). Her father, a foreman of the mill and the owner tries to plug the scandal by a hasty arranged marriage. Nonplussed, Fanny announces that she is moving out of her parent's house. The ending of Hindle Wakes killed me. "I can get a job anywhere where there is a mill."

Hotel du nord (1938) - Carné There's a casualness in Hotel du Nord - amorality is given - a husband is ok with his wife being asked to go out by a womanizing cab driver, homosexuality is out in the open, prostitution is just a profession.... People hook up and break up on a whim and pledges their love as if it is as easy as blowing their noses. Are these doomed lovers an omen for the upcoming world war...I ponder.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) - Hawks Not into Hollywood comedies or comedy in general, but Bringing Up Baby’s unrelenting forward momentum is truly a juggernaut of manic energy. It was easily watchable and digestible without thinking too deeply about it. It doesn’t give you much time to mull anything over because it is over by then. It’s that unpredictability and over-the-top-ness that was enjoyable.

Los Olvidados (1950) - Buñuel Fuck them kids. Wow. Bleak. It is easy to take a jab at the bourgeoisie, but portraying the poor this way, since no one cares about the poor, only thing Buñuel was offending was the box office numbers and sensibilities of some liberal’s misplaced nationalistic pride.

Niagara (1953) - Hathaway Rose (Monroe)'s prolonged, almost silent murder scene is as good as it gets and puts most stylish giallos to shame.

Nostalgia (1971) - Frampton I really enjoyed Hollis Frampton's Nostalgia. His out of order narrations as he burns each photographs on an electric stovetop was at once whimsical and self-reflexive. I've been reading Byung-chul Han's Disappearance of Rituals. In it Han says that the lack of physicality and lack of rituals in the internet age, makes people lose respect for each other. The physicality of materials which automatically makes them nostalgic in our eyes in the modern world, in this case photographs with stories attached to them, and ritual of burning them one by one while giving it slightly out of sync context really spoke to me.

India Song (1975) - Duras Meticulously staged and filmed with slow tracking shots and intentionally wooden performances, India Song strongly resembles fellow nouveau roman scribe Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year at Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais. Highlighting decadence of the Western colonizers with their completely out of place sense of entitlement and how it rots the human hearts, India Song is a cinematic achievement that encompasses all of Duras preoccupation- colonialism, war, love, memories, from a woman's point of view, equally as man's.

Asparagus (1979) - Pitt Pitt's magical asparagus reminded me of Fantastic Planet but more coherent and subversive in its sexuality. Her combination of two dimensional, primary colored animation and claymation was really awe inspiring.

August in the Water (1995) - Ishii Mixing New Age spirituality, animism, astrophysics and advancement in technology, Gakuryu Ishii's trippy 90's relic, August in the Water can be seen as the quintessential film for vaporwave - the synth tinged soundtrack, dolphins, rainbows, dated computer graphics, aliens, etc.

O’er the Land (2008) - Stratman Deborah Stratman's film made a big impression on me. Without being didactic or judgmental, the film poses a lot of questions by showing series of seemingly (at first) unrelated images with voiceovers, resulting in viewers examining his/her own views on the society where it seems that reconciliation or understanding one another is not possible, because our paths have branched off long ago. Things have gone the opposite way and the urbanites have nothing in common with gun totting, high school football participating, RV driving and border sweeping people on any level. "We come out here for freedom. This is the only place on earth we have this freedom to do this," a man says over the image of carnage of what seems to be a gigantic gun range. What I was seeing was just as eerie and incomprehensible as the jet pilot describing his descent after ejected from the plane in the latter part of the film.

Gasolineiras

Mato seco em chamas (2022) - Pimenta, Queirós Lula's 2022 presidential election win ended the tyranny of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Started out during the fateful election of 2018, Dry Ground Burning/Mato seco em chamas is a cinematic act of political defiance of the often neglected region of Central, North East Brazil of Brasilia and its neighboring favela, Sol Nascente and its people. Adirley Quierós, the filmmaker from the region, has been making unique sci-fi fiction/documentary hybrids starring its local inhabitants - White Out, Black In (2014), Once There was Brasilia (2017). In Dry Ground Burning, with his long time cinematographer Joanna Pimenta, they create another blend of unique docufiction, where its subjects playing an extension of themselves while observing the political climate of the region.

Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado) is a local legend after she and her gang of women hijacked the underground oil pipeline and started their own makeshift oil refinery and supply to the locals at much cheaper price. There are popular songs written about her. With her tough stepsister Léa (Léa Alves da Silva) who is fresh out of jail, they guard the refinery armed and ready for any police intrusion. Léa, still under surveillance of the police, is told that the region is now swarmed with cops. As usually the case with Queirós, the film consists of long takes and monologue, laying out the dusty vistas of unpaved roads and motorcycle gangs roaming as well as what it is like growing up and living in poverty and crimes.

The flames of orange and yellow are the dominant color palettes. The flame lit profiles of these strong women against the distant villages at night are beauty to behold. As the election season approaches, we see government propaganda working overtime - social hierarchy must remain, law and order. We see cops in an armor vehicle doing Nazi salutes. There is real drive by footage of people chanting for Bolsonaro in political rallies. One of Chitara's close associate is running for a local office against a moneyed Bolsonaroite. Her party is called PPP (Prison People's Party). With her motorcycle entourage, she is running on the platform of better sewer system, free community college and loosen the law against motorcycle related commerce.

In Léa's prison stories, the film normalizes the notion of queerness as well. She is just like anybody, lust, love and devotion are universal, no matter whom.

We later find out through Chitara's monologue that Léa is in jail again, arrested in some drug charges, and she was looking forward to becoming a movie star because of this film. Pimenta and Queirós fluidly combines fictional elements with reality, highlighting the lives of people in Sol Nascente are often stranger than fiction. But it's the defiance and fierce independence and self-reliance that matter. The film ends with the wrecked armored car on fire, like a carcass of completely hollowed out animal in flames.

Fine Young Cannibals

Bones and All (2022) - Guadagnino Guadagnino's new film, based on YA novel, Bones and All, shows he might be the personification of a tribute band in a filmmaker form. It doesn't matter how technically impressive your guitar riff is at Black Dog, you are no Jimmy Page. After attempting to contextualize Dario Argento's camp classic Suspiria with serious pomp, A Bigger Splash, a La picine remake, with lesser results, Guadagnino is at it again with this American YA novel adaptation and pulls influences from every direction and packages it as Terence Malarkey Americana.

Here, cannibals equal vampires or werewolves or zombies. Maren (Taylor Russell) is a high schooler with a secret. And that secret is revealed at a girl’s sleepover (is it middle school or high school?) when she sneaks out from her dilapidated home, proving that her overly protective father (André Holland)'s concern. She has an insatiable hunger for human flesh. This also explains why they have been traveling all around, never stick to one place to settle, always on the edge of abject poverty. Soon father abandons her, leaving her with some money and her birth certificate and a cassette tape explaining what she is.

Soon she finds a fellow cannibal in the form of an older eccentric man, Sully (Mark Rylance). Who says he can smell a fellow cannibal from miles. This is Maren's first realization that there are others like her out there. But Sully seems too creepy to stick around with. Traveling all over Mid-West, looking for mom who might hold the key to her existence, she meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet), a charming grocery store clerk who happens to be a cannibal too and they become traveling companion.

Michael Stuhlbarg, David Gorden Green show up as fellow hick cannibals. Jessica Harper also has a role as grandma. And unfortunately, Chloë Sevigny seems stuck on playing a crazy mom character, forever. Rylance is, as always, so dependable a character actor, he steals the show, playing truly creepy adversary to the young lovers who are trying to have a go at being regular people. Chalamet is always the same. Riding his boyish charm and nonchalance, attracting attention from both sexes. And a forever boy who is super awkward at playing a grownup. Russell is very good as a young woman on the path of self-discovery and finding true love.

So, what is Bones and All about? Why is it set in 90s? The more you think about the film, there is nothing really you can hold on to and less you like it. 'True love needs to be consumed bones and all' is too much of an emo song lyric to be taken seriously. Is this about Gen-Xer's rejection of the Boomers? Is this about consumerism? Or is this some silly teen romance with pacing problems? Either way, it's so skin-deep.

Beast of Burden

Eo (2022) - Skolimowski You can't not talk about a donkey in cinema without Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar. Bresson's Christian allegory, where the beaten and abused donkey dies on a hill for sins of all humanity. It has always been regarded as an austere, unflinching masterpiece, if too biblical for this day and age. Fast-forward 56 years to the present: our highly globalized capitalistic world is on the brink of ecological, societal collapse. And we have Eo, a sobering, cinematic masterpiece by Polish veteran filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski. The mass migrations of people, brought on by wars, by political/economical instability in the global economy, by famine and other natural disasters, have become our daily news, which we consume for better part of the last few decades. And there had been some outstanding films made about the current refugee, immigration crises - Fire at Sea, Human Flow, Limbo and Flee, just to name a few. Anywhere in the world, from formerly homogenous nations as South Korea to Ireland, the globalist economy is pushing massive human surge everywhere and it is changing the very fabric of their society. It confronts you on a personal level too - they drive you to your destinations, cook the food you eat, deliver your goods, take care of your children - in short, they are the backbone of our society.

So how do you portray the suffering of immigrants and refugees, caught up in circumstances that they have little to no control over, with an empathetic eye? How do you give the voice to the voiceless without being too didactic? How do you show the carnivalesque atmosphere of current political situations in the Far-Right, anti-immigrant, nationalistic governments in Europe and the US?

The film starts in the circus (!) tent. Eo, our titular protagonist, is a donkey, trained and cared by Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska). It is clear that he had been abused and beaten when not taking directions by other carnies. There are animal rights activists in Warsaw violently protesting outside the circus fair ground. They succeed in seizing the rights to the circus animals. Eo gets separated from Kasandra, the only human who had shown kindness. He is transferred to a horse sanctuary in the countryside. As a working animal, unlike horses that are being treated there, Eo is being used to carry stuff around in the stable. Eo witnesses some dreadful conditions and treatments horses receive. After refusing to work, Eo is transferred once more to a small farm. As he is being taken from one place to another, our beast of burden witnesses human folly and cruelty to both him or to other animals. He travels sometimes alone, sometimes in cattle cars and treated nicely only when he is deemed useful.

Eo escapes to the forests, thinking of Kasandra, gets captured again, freed once more.... It's a road movie of the highest order.

The film, mostly shot from the donkey's point of view, with jarring close-ups, has a visceral, raw quality only seen in haptic cinema of Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) - Leviathan, Sweetgrass, The Iron Ministry or Philippe Grandrieux's more pastoral, picturesque film - Un Lac. The film visually, sensorially replicates what Eo is experiencing - disorienting sensation being in the cattle car, out of place in a football stadium, going over the bridge overlooking grand man-made structures, et cetera. Michal Dymek's cinematography is exquisite: it conveys both intimate and grand spaces of our world and accentuates its beauty and ugliness. Without much dialog, Eo plays out like a documentary at times and has its own visual rhythmic flow of a road movie.

As if the fablist, allegorical nature isn't obvious enough in the beginning of the film, it becomes loud and clear with Isabelle Huppert showing up near the end as an unnamed, dispassionate countess living in a lavish palace in Italy, obviously a stand-in for decadence of Western Europe, speaking French and Italian and flirting with her disaffected, too good looking step-son Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo) who rescued Eo from an accident and brought him home.

Unlike some cute Disney family movie starring a talking donkey, Eo is not a fairy tale. It can also be seen as sobering examination of the meat industry. But more importantly, it is an allegory for how people from different parts of the world, not by their own volition, get uprooted and go through unimaginable hardships and alienation only to be at the mercy of a handful of strangers who ultimately don't have any stake in their lives. Eo's abrupt ending heightens the disconnect, makes the audience uncomfortable and reflect on the globalist economy and its effects on Global South, which is precisely the point Skolimowski is making.

Eo is Poland's official selection entry for Oscar next year. It opens on 11/18 at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center in NYC.

Commodification of Time VS Collectivist Anarchism

Unrueh (2022) - Schäublin When we think of Switzerland, few things come up to our minds- its long standing neutrality, direct participatory democracy, an army famous for its utility knives, punctuality and, watchmaking. Little did we know that up on the Jura mountains, near French-Swiss border, in the 1870s, were the hot spot for anarchism. Cyril Schäublin sets up the two contrasting forces - capitalism fueled by industrial revolution versus collectivist agitation in his beguiling film Unrest. It starts with a mild mannered, well-known Russian anarchist, Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov), rolling into a sleepy little town in the picturesque valley in the Jura Mountains, where its largest employer is a watchmaking factory. The large swats of its workers are comprised of women. The reason being, I am assuming, the nature of its delicate, detail oriented assembly work.

The traditional watchmaking process during this time, Schäublin demonstrates for us, is an extremely regimented, rigid, hands-on ritual that is half way between artisanal and Ford style assembly line, giving way to automation in the near future. The Factory owner and supervisors (all men) are all about productivity and time saving. With the local politicians' blessing, the town has four different time keeping - municipal, factory, local and church. If workers don't keep up with factory time, they are in jeopardy of losing their jobs. With the Jura Federation, the Bakuninist anti-state, anti-war anarchist group having a stronghold, workers and townsfolks, with the help of Kropotkin, engage in workplace agitation. They vote to form a union (despite efforts to thwart the voting from happening from the management), demand not to profit from selling their watches to military around the world.

This all sounds exciting on paper. But Schäublin's approach is nothing but sensational. Shot with flair for artful composition, the sun drenched Switzerland backdrop is gorgeous to look at. And slightly suggested budding romance between Kropotkin and factory worker Josephine (Clara Gostynski) is beautifully photographed. Under the warm sunlight, with autumn leaves making patterns on her face, Josephine explains to Kropotkin, the axis of unrest, a tiny coil piece causing the swing in the center of the mechanical watch. Thus the title having its impact - under the surface of a well made, well run system such as an immaculate Swiss made watch, there is a part that controls the ticking mechanism that is highly unstable when unbalanced. Unrest is a beautiful allegory of the society we live in now where commodifying time - they just announced that daylight savings time is permanent, is completely normal and the news talk about people's productivity's down as if we exist only to be productive at work. Stunning in its unassuming beauty and timely message, Unrest is a true hidden gem of the year.

Woman Who Ran

Trenque Lauquen (2022) - Citarella Trenque Lauquen is a small city west of Buenos Aires. It means 'Round Lake' according to the locals. The city is the setting for a delicious, sprawling yarn. Laura (Laura Paredes), a biologist candidate from Buenos Aires, who was cataloging rare orchid species in the field in town, suddenly disappears. Part one of its 4 hours 10 minute running time, plays out with two men, Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd) Laura's boyfriend from the city, and Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri) known in town as 'Chincho', who was helping Laura in the field and grew affection for her, looking for now the missing woman. The men are asking locals around for her last whereabouts, driving back and forth endlessly in the small town. The film devotes much of its time between them looking for Laura and flashback of what she was up to when not collecting specimens in the field. With her likable personality, Laura made inroads in the local community. Things change when Laura discovers secret and explicit love letters inside old books while doing research in the local library. In the books she finds, the pages are stuck together, concealing the letters in between with clues to find more correspondencies between an Italian aristocrat and a mysterious woman from the area, in various books. It is slowly revealed that this amateur history snooping might have to do with Laura's disappearance. Laura finally confided the activities to smittened Ezequiel, the fact that he hides from Rafael.

Part two concerns Laura getting involved with a couple Veronica and Elisa, played by Véronica Llinás and Elisa Carricajo, who might be involved in the incident at the lake where locals found a possible humanoid creature. And Elisa might be related to the mysterious woman in the letters. Being a frequent guest at a local radio show, Laura left a long audio recording for Julia (Juliana Muras), the daily talkshow host, detailing her experience in Trenque Lauquen and the lake creature mystery and possibly where she is headed.

Trenque Lauquen is a dive into a rabbit hole that goes deeper and deeper as you dig. And the mystery thread gets more and more into a fantastic realm. In the middle of it all, is Paredes, one of the actresses from the acting company Piel de Lava (including Carricajo), featured in Mariano Llinás's epic, la Flor in 2018 and many of Mathias Pineiro films. She plays alluring Laura, who gets sidetracked in her field work by goings on in the small town where everyone knows everyone and rumors abound. Laura Citarella, part of the Argentine production group El pampero which produced La Flor, continues the long winded storytelling tradition with playful, shifting narratives with likeable, relatable characters.

Why did Laura stay on after her countract was up? Did she come to Trenque in the first place, because she didn't want to move in with Rafael in Buenos Aires as they planned? Did she not care for Ezequiel's passive puppy-dog love? Did she find her excitement in those salacious letters between an Italian nobleman and a mysterious local woman? Did she find peace and liberation in the company of lesbian couple who might or might not have captured plant/human hybrid creature and on the run from the authority? Trenque Lauquen plays out like a funnier, warmer and more intimate version of 'disappearance of woman' films a.k.a. L'Avventura, seen from a woman's perspective. Endlessly charming and entertaining, the film is very much like watching a Hong Sangsoo film without all the drinking; the intricacies of character interactions, the intrigue of every day life, the men's folly, the urge to escape the city living and enjoy nature. And most of all, freedom. It is one of my favorite films of the year.

Irma Vep

Olivier Assayas’s HBO series Irma Vep is perhaps the best film/TV series/whatev about filmmaking that I’ve seen. If his 1996 film version, starring Maggie Cheung was a grungy version and a love letter to its Hong Kong starlet, and low budget 'French' filmmaking, The series is bigger and more indepth look at filmmaking in the age of globalism with secondary characters more fleshed out - Assayas taking advantage of the long form. Thanks to Assayas, I have a better understanding of filmmakers’ compulsion to make movies one after another. That there’s a sadness in btwn projects because you see your film crew as a surrogate family and you want to have that constantly not to get lonely. I never thought of it that way before.

Also it’s a beautiful way of seeing the film as a spiritual medium capturing the ghost of the past in many different ways.

So this is Irma Vep related story. In ep.3, Mira wears what looks like a Korean folk tiger shirt and I wanted it. I did some googling and it directed me to a French band, The Great Divide, website. I ordered a t-shirt. Two weeks later, I get an email:

The Great Divide Sep 15 to The, bcc, me

Hi,

I'm Antoine, The Great Divide guitarist. I might have reach you earlier regarding your order, please find further information below.


First of all, we are deeply sorry for the lack of attention paid to your order.


As the band is on hiatus, nobody delt with the bandcamp and emails lately. We have been noticed only yesterday that our tiger T features in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vepp series on Alicia Vikander’s shoulders. Following that, our bandcamp has been crushing under orders of that tee.

We assessed the stocks and the shipping fees, and we are not in the position to fulfill the order with the set up deal. We mostly sold our merch at our shows, therefore did not pay a closer look to the fees for worldwide shippings. Almost all of these new orders are to be shipped worldwide and these fees reach €30 per item through the French postal service, way above the €5.50 we previously asked for, putting us in the position to sell at a loss.

We are canceling all orders and proceeding to full refunds. We updated the product page with the appropriate price & fees and will ship the new orders by the end October if you would kindly decide to place a new one in support of the band.

Please accept our apologies and bear in mind that we are not a company but a punk band which primary focus was to play and share music with others.

Don't hesitate to answer to this email if you did not receive your refund or if you have any questions. Best regards, Antoine Pépin