Image: Courtesy of TIFF In 2021, Rhayme Vermette’s debut feature Ste. Anne, a film about a woman’s (played by Vermette herself) return to her hometown in Manitoba, surprisingly won the Best Canadian Film Award at TIFF. I would call that a surprise, not because of its quality (which, let’s be…

Image: Courtesy of TIFF Close to the beginning of Maureen Fazendeiro’s solo debut feature (given that a feature is >45 minutes long), The Seasons, a wide shot tracks a man pushing a wheeled land surveying device. As one would expect the camera to continue following the man and his equipment,…

Image: Courtesy of TIFF Christian Petzold is simply incapable of orchestrating an uninteresting shot/countershot, a cinematic tradition that relies on finding the balance between two opposing frames and somehow relating them to one another. Complementarily, he has also been one of the finest directors working today at capturing the act…

Image: Courtesy of TIFF Meadowlarks follows a group of long-separated siblings who, in attempting to reconnect and rediscover their familial roots, go on a trip to spend time with each other. The group consists of 3 sisters and 1 brother, with an additional brother refusing to join the retreat. The…

Image: Courtesy of TIFF The visual plan of the long take can often be associated with a showcase of technical bravura, the imprimatur of a director’s “genius” that is inextricately linked to a “look at me” quality that points the frame back to the director themselves. What does a long…

Image: Courtesy of TIFF When the end credits begin rolling for With Hasan in Gaza, a film entirely made of footage taken during Kamal Aljafari’s visit to Gaza back in 2001 – a tour he carries no memory of until rediscovering the footage over two decades later – we see…

Image: Courtesy of TIFF Chasing evanescence, on the search for someone, on the search for images, and a reunion through the realization that everything that you’re seeing has already been seen before, so basically, the realization of cinema itself. Dry Leaf, Alexandre Koberidze’s newest feature centring around a father’s effort…

Image Credit: Courtesy of TIFF During the post-screening Q&A of BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions, director Khalil Joseph cited Godard as a major influence and stated his regret that the man’s passing means this film will never get seen by him. The reference makes a lot of sense, as it was…

Image Credit: Courtesy of TIFF There is a sense of kinship in seeing a familiar location onscreen; a place one passes by so frequently that its presence and unique spatial features have become an impasse and nothing but vagueness, having lost their shape due to time. This is where cinema…

Image Credit: Courtesy of TIFF The past is never just the past because we are always accessing and processing it in the present; the present is also never just the present because it is always haunted and influenced by the past. Following a series of personal short films which she…