FNC 2021 Archives - Awesome Friday!

11 September 202217 December 2022

Podcast: Pinocchio & Saloum

Greetings programs! We’re back after a two-week break with two new movies, one hot off the presses from the largest media conglomerate in history and the other finally seeing wide release after a successful festival run last year. First up is Robert Zemeckis’ live-action remake of Disney’s Pinocchio, followed by the Senegalese action horror movie Saloum. One of these movies we really didn’t like, listen to find out which and then watch the other!

You’ll find JustWatch-powered streaming links below, as well as our ratings, how you can listen, how you can support us, and all of our other content. Join us!

5 April 20225 April 2022

Home Video: The 2022 Canadian Screen Award Nominees and where to buy, rent, or stream them

For many, the Oscars are the last stop of awards season. Up here in Canada though, the highest awards that the Canadian Academy gives out are being awarded this coming Sunday, April 10th. Canada produces a ton of great movies each year, and 2021 was no different.

Presented here is a list of all the nominees for Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Actor and Actress, Best Director, The John Dunning Best First Feature Award, and Best Picture, along with where you can buy, rent, or stream them.

20 October 20218 January 2022

FNC ’21 Review: ‘Wildhood’ is a tender coming of age tale

No good comes from denying the self. If it seems like a thing easier said than done, that’s because it is. Living in a trailer park with his abusive father and staring down a road or petty crime and everything that follows, Wildhood is the story of a young man who is in so much self-denial that he is dying his hair blond in an effort to distance himself from his indigenous heritage, and that’s before he even begins to examine his sexuality.

19 October 20218 January 2022

FNC ’21 Review: ‘The White Fortress’ sets young love among a divided city

Young love set against a backdrop of crime is a tale as old as time. In The White Fortress, the story is set in modern-day Sarajevo and follows a young man called Faruk (Pavle Čemerikić) as he navigates the current realities of growing up poor in the politically divided city.

19 October 202119 October 2021

Heads Up: The 2021 Festival du Nouveau Cinema is on now!

2021 Festival du Nouveau Cinema Festival_Header

Good news, everyone! Montreal’s Festival du nouveau Cinema is celebrating its 50th year this year! The in-person festival is over, but the online version runs through the end of October, and I will be covering it –albeit in a limited fashion.

Film are available to watch on the festival website, and you can follow my coverage here on the site using the FNC 2021 tag or click the banner below wherever you see it.

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16 October 20218 January 2022

VIFF ’21 Review: ‘Bootlegger’ is a gorgeously shot story of findings one’s place

A young woman returns to her small, rural community and begins to effect change. It’s a setup as old as the movies themselves and one we love to return to because so much can be mined from this kind of setup. In Bootlegger, a young woman returns to the reserve she called home as a child and begins a campaign to open up the sale of alcohol, free the community from some amount of the oppression they face.

It’s a gorgeously shot and very Canadian story.

9 October 20218 January 2022

VIFF ’21 Review: ‘Memoria’ is an experience

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a unique filmmaker with only a few films under his belt, but each of them garnering widespread acclaim, probably most notably with 2010s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, for which he won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Memoria is the first film he has made outside of his native Thailand, and the first time he has worked with an international cast. While the film is beautifully shot and singular in its vision, it’s also overlong, incredibly indulgent, and will reach into your soul and pull out… something.

8 October 202128 October 2021

VIFF ’21 Interview: Danis Goulet on her film ‘Night Raiders’

Night Raiders is one of the biggest Canadian films to come through VIFF this year, at least in terms of buzz and word of mouth. I had the chance to see it last week (and you can read my review here), and this week I had the great privilege to speak with Danis Goulet, the film’s writer and director.

8 October 20218 January 2022

VIFF ’21 Review: ‘Paris, 13th District’ is a gorgeous, if slightly thin, look at how we deal with trauma

The first thing you will notice is the cinematography. Shot in elegant black and white, the camera in Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, en Francais) is a character unto itself, peering into the windows and lives of the residential towers of the district before settling on three to follow. The camera then follows them, like a close friend, and while the resulting film is lightly paced and slight with the details, it never doesn’t feel intimate and empathetic.

30 September 202119 October 2021

Fantastic Fest Review: ‘Saloum’ is a wild, genre-twisting ride from start to finish

A trio of inseparable brothers in arms, one with second sight, one with a temper, and one with a hidden past, get stranded in an unfamiliar place. An effective setup for any film, but Saloum adds folklore and the unspeakable atrocities of Africa’s recent past to the mix to make something unique.

30 September 20218 January 2022

VIFF ’21 Review: ‘Night Raiders’ draws on Canada’s dark past to imagine a dark future

Canada has a certain reputation that we like to uphold. We’re viewed as America’s nice neighbour, as the reasonable ones. The thoughtful and the multicultural ones. If you’re from here, though, you know that Canada’s reputation is not as deserved as we would like you to think it is, and we have a dark history of racism and colonialism that persists to this day.

This is the history that writer and director Danis Goulet draws on to imagine the post-apocalyptic world of Night Raiders, one in which the legacy of Canada’s treatment of indigenous people –and the Residential School system in particular– is drawn out to its logical darkest endpoint.