Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival 2022: Eight must see movies – صحيفة الصوت

New Zealand’s annual feast of global cinema is back.

While the ongoing pandemic has greatly affected the Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival over the past two years, the 2022 edition will roll out in 14 towns and cities across the nation over the next five weeks.

A little smaller than pre-Covid times, this year’s programme still includes a selection of top titles that were selected for renowned festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. As usual, the line-up offers something for everyone, from devastating dramas to quirky comedies and documentaries on a wide range of subjects.

Stuff to Watch has had the opportunity to view a number of titles and come up with this list of eight, great, widely-screening films that we believe are well worth checking out.

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Ali and Ava (M)

Rightly nominated for two Baftas and a double-winner at the British Independent Film Awards, Clio Barnard’s heartfelt, Bradford-set romantic-drama about a budding relationship between an Irish-British teacher’s assistant and five-time grandmother and a British-Pakistani landlord still coming to terms with the breakdown of his marriage, will remind you of the best works of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.

Claire Rushbrook and Adeel Akhtar are both magnificent, together and apart, bringing a genuine sense of separate heartache and combined chemistry that’s both engrossing and life-affirming, while very much still rooted in a, sometimes, depressing reality.

Corsage (M)

Phantom Thread’s breakout star Vicky Krieps plays Empress Elizabeth of Austria in this sumptuous and sensory late 19th Century Austrian period drama.

Already the subject of intense public scrutiny – especially about her weight – Elizabeth’s 40th birthday provides the catalyst for rebellion, as she attempts to retreat from public life and focus on her desires. That puts her offside, not only with the Emperor, but also other members of the Royal household and court.

Her subversiveness evokes echoes of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and Elle Fanning’s Catherine in The Great.

Fire of Love (E)

This year’s answer to the Bafta-nominated Becoming Costeau (the subjects even have a penchant for the same red caps), Sara Dosa’s quite astonishing documentary has enlightened the modern world to the work of French volcanologists Maurice and Katia Kraft.

Through jaw-dropping and thoroughly entertaining archival footage – the pair were just as much film-makers, as they were scientists – you’ll witness their sometimes dangerous passion for lakes of lava, lahars – and each other.

Miranda July provides a sparingly used, haunting narration, but it’s the geologist and chemist couple’s visceral adventures that stay with you long after the credits roll.

Full Time (M)

While its examination of the struggle to make ends meet in contemporary France covers similar ground to Juliette Binoche’s recent Between Two Worlds, writer-director Eric Gravel’s tale offers a far more immersive and emotional watch.

That’s thanks largely to an incredible performance from Laure Calamy (who deservedly took home an acting award from last year’s Venice Film Festival) as Julie Roy, whose increasingly complicated life is an endless juggle between work and home. Made even more fraught by the effect of transport strikes, she’s desperate to return to market research, instead of shift work at a luxury hotel, but in trying to undertake the job interview process in secret, she is rapidly wearing out the goodwill of her current fellow employees.

Exhausting, heartrending and truly compelling viewing.

The Good Boss (M)

Javier Bardem is at his charismatic and calculating best in this pitch-black Spanish workplace comedy about a family-owned scales business experiencing a week from hell.

In line to win a prestigious civic award, the factory is beset by mistakes caused by a senior member of staff distracted by marital strife, a recently sacked employee is a waging a one-man war against Bardem’s CEO Julio Blanco and the boss himself has discovered the intern he has had a dalliance with is actually someone he first met long ago.

Perfectly paced and pitched, writer-director Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s tale is an entertaining, engrossing watch – from start to finish.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song (E)

More than a decade-and-a-half after they gave festival audiences around the globe one of the best dance documentaries of the noughties (Ballet Russes), directors Dayna Goldfine and Daniel Geller are back with this soup-to-nuts look at the life and times of the Canadian troubadour.

While not exactly covering unique ground, what sets this apart is not just the focus on “the minor falls and the major lifts” of his career, but rather the ongoing cultural impact and ever-evolving interpretations of a song (both spiritually and sexually charged, depending on which of the seemingly vast lyrical options are used) he originally recorded in June 1984.

Navalny (E)

The movie Vladimir Putin probably doesn’t want you to see.

Canadian documentarian Daniel Roher takes a deep dive into the world of aspiring Russian leader Alexei Navalny, a charismatic lawyer whose very public opposition of the current inhabitants of the Kremlin was curtailed by a near-fatal poisoning in August 2020.

Evacuated to Germany, much of this sometimes astonishing tale focuses on his recovery in the Black Forest and attempts to unravel what he, his family and supporters believed was an attempted assassination, research that culminates in one of the most amazing phone calls ever captured on film.

Where is Anne Frank? (PG)

Bridgerton’s Ruby Stokes voices the World War II diarist’s imaginary best friend Kitty in this poignant and beautifully told animated feature.

As with his Oscar and Bafta-nominated Waltz with Bashir, writer-director Ari Folman seamlessly combines historical fact with occasionally whimsical, sometimes heartbreaking imagery, as Kitty is first “brought to life” via a lightning strike and then has her memories reawakened by reading her creator Anne Frank’s famous journal.

Dedicated to his parents, who arrived at the gates of Auschwitz in the same week as the Frank family, Folman makes Anne’s near 80-year-old story urgently relevant, offering modern day allegories and lessons for audiences of all ages.

Kicking off in Auckland on Thursday (July 28 until August 7), this year’s edition of Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival will also visit Wellington (August 4-14), Christchurch (August 5-14), Dunedin (August 11-21), New Plymouth (August 11-21), Masterton (August 17-31), Matakana (August 18-28), Hamilton (August 18-31), Tauranga (August 18-28), Hawke’s Bay (August 18-28), Palmerston North (August 18-28), Nelson (August 18-28), Timaru (August 18-28) and Gore (August 18-25).