If you think life is hard for women in our 2022 world, try being a 14 year old daughter of an impoverished English aristocrat in the 1290. As much as girls have always been girls, in that era, ‘coming of age’ happened while restrained and controlled in a thousand different ways. This included being married …
toronto international film festival
Something You Said Last Night TIFF AWFJ.org Review
Trans writer/director Luis de Filippis scored a Special Jury Prize at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival with her short For Nonna Anna, a jumping off point for her feature film Something You Said Last Night, which just had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Starring trans actor Carmen Madonia in her onscreen and …
TIFF 2021 Silent Night AWFJ.org Review
Can you remember the first time you really knew you were going to die? You know, when you learned that every human and living being on the planet has an expiration date, including you? What if that date was Christmas, and everyone else was going to die, too? That’s the premise for writer/director Camille Griffin’s …
TIFF 2021 Mad Women’s Ball AWFJ.org Review
One of my most powerful cinematic memories is from 1948’s The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing Virginia Cunningham. That movie, and the book it was based on, literally changed mental health in the United States. In it, Virginia has been sent to a state mental hospital after …
TIFF 2021 Encounter AWFJ.org Review
An alien threat leads decorated soldier Malik (Riz Ahmed) to kidnap his sons Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Geddada) and take them across the Southwest desert highways in Encounter, the latest genre-bender by English director Michael Pearce. The film, which is also co-written by Pearce, affirms him as a talent with vision, showing he has …