montreal world film festival

The Montreal World Film Festival! Now over. I did a marathon on Monday, the last day of the festival, and attended five films in a row! And believe it or not, I remember each one vividly! Montreal has a bit of a rivalry with Toronto and the same holds true for our film festivals. The Toronto Film Festival is one of the most well-known worldwide and attracts all the attention. The reason I love ours is that it does not have the glitz and glamour and parties and celebrities and "hollywood" influence that the Toronto Film Festival has. It's just about films and everyday people who love films. Many of the films are obscure and rough around the edges. But there are diamonds in those roughs! And the adventure of searching for those diamonds is part of the appeal for me.

It's not just the films I love about the festival. It's the whole process. I love the way the glossy, crinkly, pages of the schedule feel and sound as I peruse the film offerings. I love the way my yellow highlighter slides across those glossy pages as I highlight the films that interest me and the way my red hi-tecpoint ink pen smoothly outlines a rough box around the ones I will definitely see - a ritual I've had for years. I love scouring the film blurbs looking for clues that hint at which films might be great. I love the process of deciding which films to see, often based on avoiding rush-hour traffic and securing parking on a tiny stretch of street that has the only free parking in the area during certain times. I love the energy of the other film-goers scrambling around to get to their films and listening in to the quiet corner conversations discussing what they've just seen. I love that each time you screen a film, you never know what to expect.

This year I was away for a good part of the festival but I did manage to squeeze in 13 films, which is about standard for me.

1. The Home of Dark Butterflies (Finland): A boy deals with a secret in his past while at a boy's home on an isolated island. Wonderfully dark and moody. Beautifully shot.


2. All Will Be Well (Poland): A boy tries to save his ailing mother by jogging to a shrine of the Madonna, with his alcoholic coach in tow. Touching tale with lots of humour.


3. What If Death Do Us Part? (Germany): People confronted by death in various forms. Several stories merging into one with humour and humanity. Love those.


4. Katyn (Poland): By the great Polish Director Andrzej Wajda. An account of Stalin's murder of 15,000 reserve officers in 1940, most of them Polish intelligentsia. Very meaningful to us as Jerzy's uncle was among those murdered.


5. All Inclusive (Chile-Mexico): A family drama at a holiday resort. Funny and touching.


6. Cowards (Spain): An account of a boy who is being bullied. Heart-wrenching at times.


7. Be Calm and Count to Seven (Iran): A roughly told tale of life in a fishing village where smuggling people and goods is the way of life.


8. The Song of Sparrows (Iran): Possibly my favourite of this year's festival. A poetic and humanistic slice-of-life story.


9. Mermaid (Russia): A dark comedy about a girl who has the power to make her wishes come true. Delightfully quirky.


10. Rain (Argentina): Two people meet in an unexpected way and their stories unfold. Nicely told.
    
11. Son of a Lion (Australia-Pakistan): A young boy, living on the Pakistan-Afghan border, struggles to get an education despite his father's wish that he remain in the family business of arms-making.
    
12. The Stranger in Me (Germany): Excellent portrait of a woman dealing with post-partum depression.
    
13. Parking (Taiwan): A man tries to find the person who has double-parked and blocked his car, meeting interesting characters along the way. Scattered story but entertaining.