Armand (2024)

I can to watch this movie because it is on the short list for International Feature Films for the 2025 Oscars, which is a list that I really enjoy--a curated selection of movies that being an overworked home body, I would never venture out to see (a retirement goal for me is to buy a year long pass to the independent movie theater in my small town and spend some time in the middle of the day each week watching movies. It is also the first movie written and directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, who is the grandson of the director Ingmar Bergman and the actress Liv Ullmann. Enough said, if you are familiar with their work. In my eyes, this is a movie that has a text and a subtext--whenever that happens, I am never sure if the subtext I perceive is the one that was intended. And I do think that this is an instance where you really cannot say much about the movie without tainting the experience for first time viewers. Most concisely, the parents of two six year old boys who have had a fight at school, but it is really about so much more, including kinship, jealousy, revenge, and the manipulation of children to serve the intentions of their parents.

Dahomey (2024)

The movie starts off by contextualizing exactly what the problem being addressed is. “I grew up completely ignorant that my heritage, my culture, my education, my life and soul had been kept overseas for centuries.” The problem is not unique to this culture and these people—invaders and occupiers have routinely taken what they see of value, and for centuries thought little about it and had few regrets. The indigenous people of Bolivia were enslaved by the Spanish and mined enough silver to build a bridge made of it from South America back to Spain in the early days of sea travel, and that continued for much of the next 400 years. This film depicts the return of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey, which was established in the 17th century. In late 2021, the artifacts were transported from museums in Paris back to their place of origin, The Republic of Benin. This is about reckoning with history that has been forever altered by colonialism. French troops originally seized the artifacts after war broke out between them and the Kingdom of Dahomey, in 1892. Like most colonial occupiers, France inflicted both physical and cultural violence against the people of Dahomey, robbing them of their history as well—they were especially deprived because of their historical skills as metal workers. They made things that had both artistic as well as cultural value. The current state of Africa has been largely shaped by European interference, from language and education to the state of their cultural institutions.

Flow (2024)

This move won the Golden Globe for best animated movie and it is certainly gorgeously animated, and my favorite animated movie that I have seen to date. The movie is set in a forest, though it's unclear where on Earth this forest could be — the fauna make that a little complicated. The protagonist is an ordinary black housecat, whose perspective we become closely attuned to. It's a solitary creature, dodging packs of dogs and predatory secretary birds, but it was clearly loved once. It takes refuge in an abandoned cabin adorned with more-than-life-size carvings of a cat that we presume to be it only gigantic. So humans lived here at one time, we know not when, but we soon understand why. One day, out of the blue, the forest is overtaken by an enormous flood. The water rises until only the peaks of mountains provide refuge. Our cat, by the skin of its teeth, survives, and it eventually comes across a capybara in a small, weathered sailboat. This vessel gathers a ragtag group of survivors over time, picking up a ring-tailed lemur, a secretarybird, and a yellow Labrador. As they traverse this new world, these strangers must find ways to coexist and to survive all the uncertainties that present themselves. I read a review that likened this to a video game, not to disparage the animation, but to give a sense of the journey this band of animals in on, facing down one peril only to be confronted with another, like different levels in a game. The exact meaning of it all eludes me, but it is beautiful and peaceful to watch.

Emilia Pérez (2024)

This was short listed for Best International Feature Film, but it is not a submission from Mexico, but rather from France. It has none of the charms of the best movies that come out of Mexico, nor is it's portrayal of the country in any way flattering. Its writer-director Jacques Audiard is French, but it is also not Mexican because it was almost entirely shot on Parisian soundstages where the streets of Mexico City were recreated for scenes with an international cast. Even its source material—a chapter in Boris Razon‘s 2018 novel Écoute— is foreign. The result from all these layers that remove it from Mexico is a hyper-curated, phantasmagorical melodramatic narco-opera from the mind of an artist with no direct ties to the land in which he’s chosen to set his fiction. What it is exactly is a bit hard to pin down--it is a crime thriller that boils over into melodrama, laced with violent action. Zoe Saldaña gives an excellent performance as a lawyer who has become bored with her work, making her a perfect choice to take on a formidable and dangerous assignment: to help a brutal Mexican drug kingpin disappear from sight—even from his wife and two children—and live the rest of his life as a woman. Both iterations of that character are played by trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón, who gives the breakthrough performance of the year. Love it or hate it, it is a unique portrayal and story line and I very much enjoyed it.

Touch (2024)

This movie from Iceland is shortlisted for the International Feature Film category for the 2024 Oscars, and is a parable about Iceland itself, where the population is so small that everyone needs to do two jobs. The filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur has crafted a bittersweet love story that manages to be both sad and hopeful at the same time, and goes beyond the expected. It is based on Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson’s novel (he also co-wrote the script with Kormákur--and as a typical Icelander, was both a businessman at Sony and an author) and centers on Kristófer (Egill Olafsson), who was a chef/student from Iceland who studied in London in the 1970's and now in 2020 is grappling with maybe a bad diagnosis. His doctor in one scene advises him that it is time to do the things you want to do while you still can. So he is now in search of Miko, a lost love who vanished without explanation when they were both in their twenties. This enchanting, poignant film crosscuts older Kristófer journey with a much younger Kristófer (Palmi Kormákur, the director’s son) as he decides to leave his studies to work in a Japanese restaurant where he first meets Miko and now, when he is searching for her 50 years later. Miko (Kôki) and her restaurant owner father emigrated to the UK from Hiroshima. She’s a “hibakusha” (atomic bomb survivor) whose mother died shortly after she was born, and this important plot note is key to the secrets revealed in the film’s finale--which is wildly optimistic, but in a world where that is in short supply, it was much appreciated.

Kneecap (2024)

I was in the midst of a lengthy vacation when the shortlist for the 10 categories that the Oscars release a shortlist for, and on the trip home I looked for movies on the plane that were on the list. I was so happy to see this was one of them--I like to try to see as many of the International Feature Films that I can get access to before we know what the final five that are chosen are, but am lucky if I can see a third of them. I feel like I am off to a good start this year. This is another movie set in Northern Ireland where the underlying message is the desire for independence from England. The vehicle of change is what is different--instead of revolutionary fervor mixed with guns and bombs, the thing that is inspiring young Irishmen in Northern Ireland is hip hop. Gaelic language hip hop. When Belfast schoolteacher JJ goes in his wife's stead to translate for a youth who professes not to speak English, he not only does the translating, he also spirits away his notebook--which includes a sheet of LSD hits as well as chronicling invovlement with drug trading. What he doesn't expect to find is that the Irish poetry that the young man writes translates very well to a hip hop beat, and he convinces them to go into his storage unit cum recording studio and see how it sounds. And then they go into public performances, and in the end, they get into a lot of trouble but that is mixed with a fair amount of success. Rapping in their native Irish language, KNEECAP fast become the unlikely figureheads of a Civil Rights movement to save their mother tongue. But the trio must first overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians trying to silence their defiant sound -- whilst their anarchic approach to life often makes them their own worst enemies. In this fiercely original sex, drugs and hip-hop biopic KNEECAP play themselves, laying down a global rallying cry for the defense of native cultures. It is fantastic.