Attending a major film festival like LA’s AFI Fest is all about choices. Will this movie be opening in theaters soon? Will I have to wait in line for two hours only to not get a seat? Should I see the black-and-white Romanian Western, or the dialogue-free modern-dance interpretation of Mary’s pilgrimage to give birth to Jesus? Could I fit two obscure movies into the same time slot as this well-regarded but lengthy festival favorite? In my sixth year attending AFI Fest, I made some good choices (including devoting extra time to shorts programs) and some bad ones (leading to my first-ever AFI Fest walkout), but the great thing about a festival like this is that almost any choice will turn out okay.
AFI Fest always has a strong lineup of foreign films, and the best movie I saw at this year’s festival was the Turkish coming-of-age drama Mustang, which is (confusingly) France’s official selection for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (recent rule changes have allowed a country to submit a movie in any non-English language, as long as a local production company was involved). Director and co-writer Deniz Gamze Ergüven explores the limited options available to women in her country, especially in smaller towns, but the movie isn’t a parade of misery and disappointment. Instead, it’s almost constantly joyous, even when the main characters, five sisters whose ages range from tween to teen, are dealing with mistreatment and heartbreak.
The sun-dappled look of the film contrasts with the harsh conditions the sisters deal with, but it also reflects their indomitable spirit. The five young stars are so believable as siblings that their characters almost seem like a single entity, which makes it all the more affecting when their bond is forcibly shattered. Mustang will be released in theaters starting at the end of this month, and if it snags a deserved Oscar nomination, it may even open in Las Vegas.
Southbound
My other festival favorite was the anthology horror film Southbound, part of the small but intriguing Midnight section of the festival. Although it comes from the producers of the V/H/S series, Southbound is much more consistent and cohesive than those scattershot anthologies, since the filmmaking teams worked together to create a flowing narrative connecting the various stories. At times it’s not even entirely clear when one story ends and another begins, even though they all have different directors. The whole movie takes place in the Southern California desert that will be familiar to anyone who’s driven regularly from Vegas to LA or San Diego, and the filmmakers make great use of its sparse and haunting beauty, and the potential for horrors in such a remote, unforgiving location. It will be out on VOD in February, and is perfect for late-night home viewing.
Horrors of a different kind abound in Son of Saul, a harrowing Holocaust story that won several prizes at Cannes. Director and co-writer László Nemes finds a new approach to a subject that’s been portrayed in countless movies, narrowing his focus to a single character, a Hungarian Jew who works as a Sonderkommando, a concentration-camp prisoner who performs menial tasks (including burning bodies and rummaging through the belongings of the dead) for his Nazi captors. Nemes keeps the camera directly on star Géza Röhrig at almost all times, so that the atrocities around him are often happening in the background or just off-screen. By removing much of the context, Nemes creates a visceral experience of being in the middle of unimaginable horrors, and Röhrig gives a strong performance as a man whose single-minded determination both keeps him alive and ultimately dooms him.
I made extra time for shorts programs at this year’s festival, partially because friends and family who joined me (thanks to the free tickets that AFI Fest gives to the public for every screening) wanted to see them, and I’m glad I did, because shorts often get lost at a big festival like this. The highlight of the animated program was Don Hertzfeldt’s acclaimed World of Tomorrow, a profound, funny and melancholy animated movie that’s worth all of the praise that’s been heaped on it. I was also captivated by the German live-action short film Everything Will Be OK, a heartbreaking story about a desperate man attempting to kidnap his own daughter.
Two shorts with Vegas connections played in the special AFI Conservatory Showcase, a program of films created by students at the American Film Institute. UNLV alum Jeremy Cloe’s This Way Up, a drama about a homeless man attempting to hide his misfortune from his visiting daughter, was shot in Las Vegas, and features the storm-drain tunnels under the city. Bennett Lasseter’s Stealth stars Las Vegas actress Kristina Hernandez as a young transgender girl attempting to make friends at school. Both movies previously played the Las Vegas Film Festival, and both were winners of Student Academy Awards this year, making them eligible for nominations at the main Oscars.
Although AFI Fest is mainly about showcasing new movies, I took a detour to see one of the festival’s handful of repertory showings, a screening of the Harold Lloyd silent comedy classic Safety Last!, featuring live musical accompaniment from DJ Thomas Golubic and multi-instrumentalist Mocean Worker. It’s always exciting to see silent movies with live scores, and the use of contemporary music was a refreshing change from the orchestral pieces that are typically performed with silent movies. Lloyd’s film is a delight, and its inclusion in the festival demonstrated another facet of AFI’s dedication to celebrating cinema in all its forms—and giving the public a chance to experience it, free of charge, if they choose wisely.
