Mill Valley Film Festival Turns 45!

Readers may have missed seeing the 45th edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival (hereafter “MVFF”) opening with “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”  However, fall’s biggest and oldest film festival still runs through to October 16, 2022 at such core venues as the Smith Rafael Film Center, the CineArts Sequoia, and the Lark Theater.  In addition, selections from this year’s MVFF will also run at the Pacific Film Archive and the Roxie Theater.  And for those still nervous about doing in-person screenings, more than a few titles will be streamed online.

Even without the new Benoit Blanc puzzler, there are still other films you can check out at MVFF 45:

MVFF 45 Screenwriting Award winner Noah Baumbach tries filming the unfilmable with his adaptation of Don De Lillo’s “White Noise.”  In the early 1980s, much-loved Midwestern college professor “Jack” Gladney (Adam Driver) teaches “advanced Nazism.”  His home-life is equally blessed with beautiful wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) and four intelligent kids.  But thanks to a chemical spill that gets upgraded to an “airborne toxic event,” his ordered intellectual lifestyle gets blown to the winds. 

Maria Schrader’s drama “She Said” adapts Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan)’s book about their investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long history of sexual harassment and assault.  The two New York Times reporters must face a Hollywood institutional machine which both enabled and covered up Weinstein’s crimes.  But with the courage of the women who came forward and the women who brought their stories to light, justice eventually comes for the women hurt by Weinstein.

Sexual politics also play a role in “Carol” screenwriter Phyllis Nagy’s directorial debut “Call Jane.”  In the late 1960s, contented suburban housewife Joy (Elizabeth Banks) becomes radicalized when her need for an abortion runs into that period’s medical indifference.  Fortunately, the Jane Collective gets Joy the abortion she needs.  In return Joy becomes a volunteer with the collective.  That’s when she begins to see just how much American society treats women as second class citizens.

An older consideration of the intersection of history and justice is offered by Margaret Brown’s documentary “Descendant.”  In 2018, the world was set abuzz by the discovery of the remains of the Clotilda, the last-known US slave ship.  But for Brown, her interest was in seeing how the discovery affected the residents of Africatown, a community founded by survivors from the Clotilda and their descendants.  As it turns out, the discovery provides an opportunity to publicly talk about previously suppressed family history and the legacy of the slave trade on modern-day Black Americans.

White Noise

The complications of dealing with another racial legacy provides the core of the Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman documentary “Town Destroyer.”  The odd title refers to the Iroquois nickname for George Washington, earned thanks to the first US President’s complicity in Native American genocide.  The film itself concerns the recent controversy over Victor Arnautoff’s simultaneously celebratory and critical mural “The Life Of Washington,” which is displayed on the walls of San Francisco’s George Washington High School.  As the filmmakers talk to everyone from historians to Washington High students, questions about the roles of history and the purpose of art come up.       

Weirdest MVFF 45 film honors would have to go to Homer Flynn and The Residents’ “Triple Trouble.”  It’s the tale of a skateboarding priest turned plumber who navigates a San Francisco that’s far from the YIMBY dream.  Think of a city that looks like a mix of German expressionism and film noir.  There are also lots of references to the avant-rock band The Residents, particularly excerpts from their uncompleted cult movie to end all cult movies “Vileness Fats.”

A must-see at MVFF 45 is Yvan Iturriaga and Francisco Nunez Capriles’ documentary “Fantastic Negrito:  Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?”  It’s a portrait of Grammy-winning Oakland bluesman Fantastic Negrito.  The man born Xavier Dephrepaulezz talks about everything from being a Black Muslim kid growing up in rural Massachusetts to his search for a musical genre that would truly capture his creative voice.  For a man who’s done everything from win an NPR music contest to nearly get blown away, he’s managed to somehow stay sane.

For a fictionalized take on breaking creative barriers, check out Todd Field’s “Tar.”  The titular character is the incredibly gifted composer-conductor Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett).  Tar has become the first woman to conduct a major German symphony orchestra.  This deep dive character study considers both Tar’s public and private personas, which means seeing everything from Tar’s relationship with an up-and-coming Russian cellist to her personal manipulativeness.

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s new documentary “Body Parts” shows how the shooting of sex scenes for Hollywood films can be a fraught enterprise thanks to such problems as predatory scene partners and the availability of explicit images on the Internet.  Employing more intimacy coordinators can be one part of the solution to countering the male gaze-centric status quo in Hollywood.

A far different take on women’s bodily autonomy provides part of the drama in Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking.”  This adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel takes place in a cloistered Mennonite community located somewhere in 2010 Middle America.  The women of this community have been left alone for three days to decide whether they will leave or stay and fight a system that allowed the men in this community to go from sexual abuse to outright drugging and raping them.

Abuse and religion are also intertwined in Ellie Foumbi’s “Our Father, The Devil,” a Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award-winner for Best Narrative Feature.  Marie Cisse may currently be the head chef at a small-town French retirement home.  But when new priest Father Patrick visits Marie Cisse’s workplace, traumatic memories Cisse thought she’d left behind resurface.  The chef turns out to be a refugee from a violent African conflict, and the priest turns out to have played a particularly terrifying role in that years-old conflict.

Fantastic Negrito

Serving as the MVFF 45 Centerpiece Film is Chinonye Chukwu’s historical drama “Till.”  It recounts the tragedy of Emmett Till through the viewpoint of his mother Mamie Till Mobley.  This mother’s grief over the tragic injustice would lead to an unforgettable act of political protest.

Ensuring powerful people face justice is the theme of Santiago Mitre’s historical drama “Argentina, 1985.”  In 1983, democracy finally returns to Argentina after decades of military coups.  President Raul Alfonsin greenlights prosecutors Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo to lead an effort to prosecute the heads of Argentina’s bloodiest military dictatorship for  crimes against humanity.  However, the prosecutors face the challenges of both time and actionable threats to stop their David vs. Goliath-like struggle for justice for the junta’s victims.

Definitely not fictionalized is Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Freedom On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom.”  The sequel to his Oscar-nominated film “Winter On Fire” drops viewers into the middle of Russia’s military assault against Ukraine while it’s happening.  Aside from previously unseen footage of bombings and mass evacuations, the new film shows how Ukrainian resistance takes many forms from a stand-up comedy show mocking the Russian invaders to the sight of Russian soldiers getting shouted down by ordinary Ukrainians.

A leader who waged a far less violent conflict gets the biopic treatment in James Napier Robertson and Paula Whetu Jones’ “Whina.”  It’s doubtful the average American has ever heard of Dame Whina Cooper.  But the Maoris of New Zealand revere her as a proponent of nonviolent civil disobedience on a par with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.  This dramatic re-telling of Cooper’s life uses three different actresses to embody the various phases of this incredible activist’s life.

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (“Blackfish”)’s new documentary “The Grab” focuses on a different type of struggle.  The film has a Bay Area connection in the form of its central subject, investigative journalist Nathan Halverson and his team.  Halverson noticed that a Chinese company had bought up a quarter of America’s pigs, and he wanted to know why.  Finding the answer led to such places as Arizona, Zambia, and the Crimea.  What turns out to be the center of their investigation is a secretive group with far-less-than-altruistic plans for dealing with the climate change-induced prospect of food shortages and famine.

“Alcarras,” the title of Carla Simon’s Golden Bear winner at the 2022 Berlinale, is the name of the tiny Catalonian town where Simon’s parents once grew peaches.  This ensemble drama begins when the Sole family gets a notice evicting them from the peach farm that they’ve long considered their home. The Pinyols, the wealthy owners of the land the Sole’s farm is on, want to dig up the unprofitable peach trees and replace them with solar panels.  How can the Sole family move forward with their lives?  And can patriarch Rogelio Sole forgive himself for not securing the land rights in writing?

Alcerras

Revered Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Eo” follows a donkey on an odyssey across Poland and Italy.  This Cannes Jury Prize winner uses the donkey’s viewpoint to show both the madness and magic of everyday life.  And keep an eye out for the legendary Isabelle Huppert’s scene-stealing cameo appearance.

Nikyata Jusu’s stunning debut feature “Nanny” might be described as what you get when you mix the immigrant experience with West African folklore.  Senegalese immigrant Aisha is the titular child care worker.  She may be caring for the child of a wealthy New York couple, but she dreams of bringing her own son to the United States.  Work has gotten more stressful for Aisha lately.  What relation is there to her recently being haunted by Mami Wata the water deity and Anansi the Spider?

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first film shot in South Korea features a Cannes Best Actor winning performance by Song Kang-ho (“Parasite”).  In “Broker,” Sang-hyeon (Song) and buddy Dong-soo run a black market business selling kids abandoned at baby boxes to prospective adoptive parents.  But when So-young has second thoughts about abandoning her child, the two baby brokers try to help find a good home for the woman’s child. 

By contrast, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy), the lead character of Oliver Hermanus’ drama “Living,” faces the certainty of his life coming to an end.  The doctors tell the repressed and ineffectual bureaucrat he has only six months left to live.  Can Mr. Williams use his remaining life to quietly change lives and even inspire a few people?  Noted writer Kazuo Ishiguro penned the script, which brings the Akira Kurosawa classic “Ikiru” to post-World War II England.

With his dark comedy “The Banshees Of Inisherin,” director Martin McDonagh completes his Aran Islands trilogy.  In the 1920s, while civil war rages on the Irish mainland, a different conflict breaks out on tiny Inisherin island.  Fiddler Colm (Brendan Gleeson) has severed his friendship with dairy farmer Padraic (Colin Farrell), possibly because of the latter’s banal chatter.  The severance is accompanied by Colm’s threat of dire consequences should the farmer speak to him again.

The Good Nurse

Director Sebastian Leilo helms the Emma Donoghue (“Room”)  novel adaptation “The Wonder.”  It’s set in the Irish Midlands of 1862, a decade after Ireland’s Great Famine.  11-year-old Anna O’Donnell is an alleged “fasting girl” who hasn’t eaten a bite since her birthday four months ago.  Supposedly, she subsists solely on “manna from above.”  English nurse Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) is asked to examine Anna over the next 15 days and determine the truth of the matter.  What will happen if whatever truth Lib discovers clashes with the village’s preference for not having its beliefs challenged?     

Closing out MVFF 45 is Tobias Lindholm’s true-crime drama “The Good Nurse.”  Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) is a hard working but overburdened ICU nurse at a New Jersey hospital.  A medical condition which requires a heart transplant (which Loughren’s insurance won’t cover yet) makes her welcome the assistance of new nurse Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) despite his social awkwardness.  But Cullen has a huge secret that may prove fatal to the patients under his and Loughren’s care.