A film still from Four Daughters.
An array of films by world cinema heavyweights will play at the upcoming Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 27-November 5) - Ken Loach's The Old Oak, Wim Wenders' Perfect Days,, Aki Kaurismaki's Fallen Leaves, Hong Sang-soo's In Our Day, Agnieszka Holland's Green Border and Justine Triet's Palme d'Or-winning Anatomy Of A Fall, to name a few. Who would want to miss these films? But that isn't all there is to the festival. Venture beyond these acclaimed titles and you will find in its massive trove an array of sparkling gems made by accomplished directors (several of them debutants) who may not be instant draws but, on the strength of what they have up their sleeves here, are second to none not only for what they have to say, but also for how they say it. Their films either speak truth to power with firm conviction or push the boundaries of narrative conventions in other significant ways.
Here are seven such must-watch films in the Mumbai Film Festival 2023 programme that pack great cinematic power in more ways than one:
TERRESTRIAL VERSES
Directors: Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami
A scathing critique of Iran's authoritarian regime, Terrestrial Verses, directed by Ali Asgari (he is banned from leaving Iran and making films until further notice) and Canada-based Iranian-American Alireza Khatami, bowed in Cannes earlier this year. Shot in Tehran immediately after the Mahsa Amini protest movement, the film is composed of nine segments that depict the absurdity of the restrictions imposed on ordinary Iranians and enforced by various arms of the government. A short-haired girl caught by a surveillance camera driving without a hijab, a filmmaker seeking permission for his next film, a man who has tattooed his body with the poetry of Rumi, a schoolgirl dancing in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt - they are all fair game for bureaucrats, policemen, headmistresses and other guardians of morality armed with medieval rules. A deadpan tone couches bristling anger and drives home the predicament of men and women who simply want to go about their lives without being manacled. Is that too much to hope for?
THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER
Directors: Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba
Another film that portrays the repercussions of totalitarianism on society and culture but in a style and medium very different to the one employed in Terrestrial Verses, They Shot the Piano Player is a collaboration between Spanish artist and designer Javier Mariscal and seasoned filmmaker Academy Award-winning Fernando Trueba (their last creative duet yielded the magnificent animated romantic drama Chico and Rita 13 years ago). They Shot... is a thrilling animated film that focuses on the disappearance of Brazilian jazz pianist Franciso Tenorio Junior in 1970s Argentina. It is an ode to the bossa nova ("new wave") samba movement in Brazil as well as a procedural featuring a fictional journalist (voice acted by Jeff Goldblum) who probes the musician's disappearance amid the rise of fascistic regimes across Latin America. A hybrid of fiction and documentary, They Shot the Piano Player is not only a brilliant hand-drawn animation film but also a gritty political probe and vibrant musical drama. A true-blue artistic triumph.
CELLULOID UNDERGROUND
Director: Ehsan Khoshbakht
A film that showcases love for cinema as a tool of political resistance against religious fundamentalism and autocracy, Celluloid Underground is an autobiographical documentary by London-based filmmaker, writer and film curator Ehsan Khoshbakht. The feature-length film delivers a highly cinematic account of his teen years in post-Islamic Revolution Iran and of a friendship that exposed him to world cinema and instilled in him a lifelong passion for film. An important strand of Celluloid Underground spotlights the work and sacrifices of intrepid film collector Ahmad Jorghanian, who risked his life to hide priceless 35mm prints and classic posters in underground vaults in downtown Tehran to save them from fanatics. The world has seen great documentaries about film preservation pioneers Henri Langlois and P.K. Nair, but the man Khoshbakht remembers and celebrates in his film was one who stood up until he died against the worst form of cultural philistinism and governmental oppression.
FOUR DAUGHTERS
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Oscar-nominated Kaouther Ben Hania (The Man Who Sold His Skin, Beauty and the Dogs) blurs the line between fiction and documentary in this remarkable examination of the radicalization of Tunisian mother Olfa Hamrouni's two teenage girls and the impact of their disappearance on the family, including their two younger sisters. The director engages a pair of professional actors to play the eldest daughters (then aged 16 and 15) who left to join the Islamic State in 2015. This facilitates a freewheeling, often disturbing, exploration of motherhood, memory and mourning. When matters get too close to the bones for comfort, veteran actress Hend Sabri steps in to impersonate Olfa. Four Daughters, co-winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Golden Eye Award this year, is a moving and trenchant study of a group of remarkable women caught in the vortex of contemporary history. It delves deep into the nature of family bonding and the trauma of separation with an unfailing insight and empathy.
THE BREAKING ICE
Director: Anthony Chen
Moving away from Singapore, where his first two films (Ilo Ilo and Wet Season) were set, Anthony Chen crafts a delectably immersive drama about three young people who form an unusual relationship in icy northeast China. The writer-director's understanding of human psychology and his ability to tell stories that resonate across cultures shine through in The Breaking Ice. The setting - both majestic and remote - approximate the daring of youth as well as the melancholia that grips minds in search of stability. Chen's storytelling style is perfectly in sync with the spirit that the trio - a wealthy young man from Shanghai, a girl who works as a tour guide in the Yanji town and her best friend employed in a restaurant - embody. Each deals with anxieties and doubts and seeks solace in each other's company amid their frequently shifting emotional needs and compulsions. The Breaking Ice is a fine cinematic tableau, intimate, immersive and illuminating.
THE SETTLERS
Director: Felipe Galvez
In early 20th century Chile, a rich and powerful landowner sends three horsemen to clear large tracts of his property of the Indigenous population that occupies them. As the three - a manic British ex-soldier, a Texan cowboy and a mixed-blood Chilean man who can only watch in fear and horror - go about their job, the exercise turns into a brutal mission to 'tame' and 'civilize' the natives. Felipe Galvez's long-gestating debut film explores the country's troubled colonial past and lifts the veil off a suppressed chapter of history. The diligently crafted, powerful period film has a timeless resonance in that it is a reminder that the approach of capitalists never quite changes and that history is always written by those that believe they are conquerors. Visually grand and consistently disquieting, the film lays bare the brutality of the violence, physical and systemic, that the powerful unleash on those that they seek to overpower and eliminate.
GRACE
Director: Ilya Povolotsky
In a camper van driving from one end of Russia to another, a father and daughter duo devises various ways to make ends meet in Ilya Povolotsky's bleak and dark debut film Grace (Blazh). Much of what they do as they negotiate multiple obstacles is outside the purview of the law - the film itself was produced independently, outside the government film funding system and it could, therefore, make it to Directors' Fortnight in Cannes - but that is the only way that they can, ironically, stay on their feet and keep moving. Grace is in many ways at par with Kantemir Balagov's 2017 debut, Closeness, with regard to its raw beauty and potency. It is a spare but scalding commentary on what life can turn into within a joyless, cold, oppressive political structure where human freedom is curtailed to the point where intransigence and rebellion are the only means of survival available to those who seek to thrive on the act of not falling in line.