MVFF 38 celebrates this year the women of film with many of its highlighted events and films: Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan; spotlights on and tributes to Sarah Silverman, Brie Larson, Catherine Hardwicke; and, a very special exhibition honoring screen icon Ingrid Bergman on the centennial of her birth. In addition, the festival’s cleverly-named “Mind the Gap” focus this year highlights the gender gap in American filmmaking which the MVFF tries to fill with a significantly female-centric line-up. Women or not, our picks this year include Ain’t Misbehavin’ /Un Voyageur, a documentary/autobiography starring and directed by Marcel Ophuls; All Eyes and Ears, a personal-political documentary concerning US and China, by Vanessa Hope; Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s gorgeous The Assassin; Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl/Le Noir De…, which has lost none of its freshness and impact from when it premiered in 1966; Body, by the wonderful and unpredictable Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska; El Club, from one of our favorite cinema hotspots, Chile (is it the terrain? the pungent mix of the native and colonial cultures?); Dheepan, the much-acclaimed 2015 Palme D’Or winner (and highly relevant in today’s globally-turbulent times); The Dressmaker, a rollicking (and very Australian) romp from Jocelyn Moorhouse; Golden Kingdom, which carries us beautifully through Myanmar and its political and spiritual transitions; the entertaining Hitchcock/Truffaut, which we are certain will have die-hard cinéastes lining out the door; Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words; Ixcamul, the début of Guatelmalan director Jayro Bustamante; Love Between the Covers, which brings the art of the romance novel to the screen (you may know director Laurie Kahn’s TV/radio work, including on Eyes on the Prize, Frontline and All Things Considered); Mardan, a moody, surreal film from Iraqi Kurdistan and the début of director Batin Ghobadi; Mustang, about the uncertain fates of five young Turkish sisters; My Mother/Mia Madre, Nanni Moretti’s Fellini-esque tale where art and life collide; La Prenda, a documentary about the fight against kidnappings in Guatemala; Marcel Ophuls’ classic The Sorrow and The Pity; Taxi, by our very favorite Iranian director Jafar Panahi, and Under The Same Sun, where the innocent kindness of childhood and the complex world of adulthood collide. Finally, a long drought of Shakespeare films (well, for us, one year since Cymbeline feels like a long time), ends with the gloomy and misty Macbeth, which really should be seen if only for Marion Cotillard.
Leonine Films 