Just ahead of today’s opening of the Forest City Film Festival, my friend Keith Tomasek, publisher of Stratford Festival Reviews and the Performers Podcast, kindly asked me to write a guest post on “Three to See” at this year’s festival. I happily obliged; the result is here.
It was a challenge. In the SFR guest post, I offered up my reasons for wanting to see Forest City, Goliath and La Mentirita Blanca (Little White Lie).
I had, however, offered Tomasek six picks rather than three, as a kind of bonus. He thought it might be unfair to the other guests posters, Jeff Culbert and Ryner Stoetzer, to publish all six on the site while they got to choose only three. So my three runners-up follow below:
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band The music of The Band formed part of the soundtrack of my youth, so this feature doc, directed by young Daniel Roher and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Brian Grazer, and Ron Howard, is a magnetic draw.
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk I’m old enough to remember when the word “Eskimo” was acceptable in common parlance; it was taught to me in elementary school. I’m always on the lookout to improve my understanding of settler impact on Canada’s Indigenous Peoples. This doc promises that.
Mouthpiece This feature by veteran producer and director Patricia Rozema is built on an intriguing conceit: Two sides of the same character come into conflict as she prepares for her mother’s funeral while dealing with patriarchy and the expectations of modern womanhood.
The festival runs through Sunday. Ticket information is available here.
ArtsBeat 