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Program
- 1131
Sunday 23 March 2025, 3:30 pm
Rainbow Cinemas, Northumberland Mall
Synopsis
A Montréal copywriter sets out to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps despite knowing literally nothing about the centuries-old craft, in this adaptation from director and co-writer Sophie Deraspe.
Following a medical wake-up call, Montréal copywriter Mathyas Lefebure (Félix-Antoine Duval) abandons his life in Canada to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps. After a rough start, he’s joined by Élise (Solène Rigot), a civil servant tempted by his stories of pastoral life, and together they commit to a summer on the mountainside. Just the two of them. And one border collie. And 800 sheep.
Director and co-writer: Sophie Deraspe.
Cast: Félix-Antoine Duval, Solène Rigot, Younes Boucif
Run time: 113m
Language: French
Genre: Drama
Review by Steve Kopian
Shepherd should not work. Everything about this film should make this just an okay film that is exactly the sort of thing we’ve seen before in other forms, and yet director Sophie Deraspe and her crew have made a film that you will fall in love with and want to see over and over again, especially on a big screen.
- 1088
Sunday 6 April 2025, 3:30 pm
Rainbow Cinemas, Northumberland Mall
Synopsis
A mother is forced to reinvent herself when her family's life is shattered by an act of arbitrary violence during the tightening grip of a military dictatorship in Brazil, 1971.
One afternoon in 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil's newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a "deposition" to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva's memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens's wife, Eunice (a shattering Fernanda Torres), whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. A devastating true story, I'm Still Here is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice.
Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Fernanda Montenegro
Running time: 138 minutes
Country/Language: Brazil/Portuguese
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG13
Winner of Oscar for Best International Feature Film
Review by John Odette
After the violent 1964 coup d’état in Brazil led to the instillation of an oppressive regime that lasted decades, citizens deemed dissidents were routinely kidnapped, some never being seen again. The film I’m Still Here by director Walter Salles deeply explores these actions and their effects on one family. This true story, adapted from the 2015 book Ainda Estou Aqui, shows a family ruptured and a mother committed to preserving her family and her life-long pursuit of the truth and closure.
- 1202
Sunday 27 April 2025, 3:30 pm
Rainbow Cinemas, Northumberland Mall
Synopsis
You can't trade your dad at the dad store, but you can find a new one on Facebook. That's what 25-year-old Lily Trevino does in Bob Trevino Likes It, a coming-of-age drama about a lonely young woman seeking a connection when her dad abandons her – inspired by the true friendship that writer/director Tracie Laymon found with a stranger when looking for her father online. Have to love it when your friendship with a man with the same name as your dad is so strong that you made a movie about it and won SXSW 2024's Best Narrative Feature award.
Director: Tracie Laymon
Writer: Tracie Laymon
Cast: Barbie Ferreira, John Leguizamo, French Stewart, Lauren "Lolo" Spencer, Rachel Bay Jones
Runtime: 1 Hr and 42 Minutes
Language: English
Review by Abe Friedtanzer
Not everyone is meant to be a parent. Children, on the other hand, don't have any choice in the matter, and there can be very toxic relationships and dynamics that develop when a parent makes their child feel as if they owe them something for all they had to give up in order to raise them. Breaking out of an unhealthy situation like this can be challenging because parents provide the most enduring model for how to treat other people. Based on an affirming true story, Bob Trevino Likes It shows how one person decided to take her identity into her own hands and forge a new path.
- 1080
Sunday 11 May 2025, 3:30 pm
Rainbow Cinemas, Northumberland Mall
Synopsis
Wondrously adapted from the Claire Keegan's novel, Small Things Like These is a strong film, emotional, radical, deep. It explores the infamous Magdalene Laundries, the Irish Catholic institution where pregnant or "promiscuous" women could effectively be incarcerated for life.
The story is told through the kinder eyes of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a dutiful father and coal wholesaler who, while delivering coal over Christmas 1985 discovers the shocking truth about the local convent. Bill's discovery forces him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a town controlled by the local Catholic church.
Directed By: Tim Mielants
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne, & Helen Behan.
Genre: Drama
Country/Language: Ireland/English
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 1h 37m
Review by Graham
Set in 1985 and right before Christmas, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong. He is the local coalman and is a respected family man. During this time of year, he seems to be having trouble finding rest though. He awakes at night and stares out onto the street, remembering his youth with his mother. Then one day he comes across a girl in the coalhouse of the local convent and it sparks something in him.
- 1123
Sunday 25 May 2025, 3:30 pm
Rainbow Cinemas, Northumberland Mall
Synopsis
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a large sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-absurd walking tour of Winnipeg monuments and historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Quebec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother. Time, geography and identities crossfade, interweave and collide into a surreal comedy of misdirection.
Structured like a Venn diagram — at the point of confluence between Jacques Tati and Abbas Kiarostami's The Koker Trilogy — Universal Language is at once a diary film, an absurdist city symphony and a welling-up of confinement-era emotion exploring the mysterious interzone where one person ends and the rest of the world begins. An elusive, half-remembered dream of home, solitude, our responsibilities to others and the wild turkeys that haunt us.
Director: Matthew Rankin
Cast: Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Sobhan Javadi, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou, Danielle Fichaud, Matthew Rankin
Genre: Surreal absurdist Comedy
Languages: Persian, French
Run time: 89 min
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The indie Canadian director Matthew Rankin ("The Twentieth Century") co-writes with Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati this absurdist satirical comedy. It features an Iranian cast and a fair amount of strange visuals and odd takes (a store that only sells Kleenex). The genial film has cult film potential. It's basically a story of Iranian immigrants assimilating into the Western culture while being a heavy influence on the Canadian French and English culture.