Film Festivals

NYFF 2017: ‘The Rape of Recy Taylor’

By Chris Barsanti / 3 October 2017

This haunting documentary about a black woman assaulted by six white men in 1944 Alabama pivots deftly from crime story to history lesson without losing track of the human pain at its core.

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NYFF 2017: ‘The Florida Project’

By Chris Barsanti / 2 October 2017

Sean Baker’s rollicking movie about kids running loose in a rundown Florida hotel starts as colorful entertainment and ends up as a portrait of how people fall through the cracks in modern America.

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TIFF 2017: ‘The Shape of Water’

By Chelsea Phillips-Carr / 19 September 2017

The Shape of Water comes off as uninformed political correctness, which is more detrimental to its cause than it is progressive.

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TIFF 2017: ‘The Royal Hibiscus Hotel’

By Chelsea Phillips-Carr / 18 September 2017

Though a typical rom-com, Ishaya Bako's film is never boring.

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TIFF 2017: ‘Never Steady, Never Still’

By Chelsea Phillips-Carr / 10 September 2017

The troubled characters in this film deserve a more complex, nuanced approach.

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TIFF 2017: ‘Ta peau si lisse’ (A Skin So Soft)

By Chelsea Phillips-Carr / 10 September 2017

Denis Côté introduces viewers to five bodybuilders, the alternative beauty of their insular community, and their magnificent descent into nature.

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Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2017: ‘Black Code’ + ‘Bill Nye’ + ‘The Blood Is at the Doorstep’

By Chris Barsanti / 12 June 2017

A trio of documentaries on ostensibly diverse subjects (suppression of online dissent, a climate change crusade, a family’s struggle for justice after a police shooting) all circle back to the fight for agency in the modern world.