Las Acacias
(Argentina/Spain)
Don’t turn to this almost wordless Argentine road trip if you’re looking for action. But patience pays off in the slow-boil story of an overworked log trucker who agrees to transport a Paraguayan woman and her baby down to Buenos Aires. At first he treats her gruffly and stiffens when she asks to stop to heat a milk bottle; but gradually, and ever so subtly, the lonely driver warms up to his passenger and her angelic child. In fact, though it’s never expressed in words, you can sense he’s become achingly attached. Studied and quiet, with the most restrained kind of yearning.
Granville 7, September 29 (6:40 p.m.) and October 10 (11 a.m.)
> Janet Smith

Amador
(Spain)
This wickedly dark comedy of bad manners centres on a Latin American immigrant (the excellent Magaly Solier) who takes a job in Madrid, caring for an ailing Spaniard. He promptly dies, leaving her with a dilemma, and an apartment far preferable to her home life—despite the smell. The tale stretches credulity but says a lot about women living on the margins.
Granville 7, October 1 (3 p.m.), 2 (1:30 p.m.), and 3 (8 p.m.)
> Ken Eisner

Black Butterflies
(Germany/Netherlands/South Africa)
Tormented artists and biopics go together like slapstick and custard pies. In this case, the agonized creator is Ingrid Jonker (Carice van Houten), a poet known as the South African Sylvia Plath on account of the intensity of her verse. Her arch enemy is her own father (Rutger Hauer), who would happily ban all her works after he becomes government censor during the heyday of apartheid. Great acting and terrific cinematography backed up by generous dollops of tragic, triumphant poetry.
Granville 7, September 30 (4 p.m.) and the Vogue, October 13 (7 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

Cinema Komunisto
(Serbia/Montenegro) Ostalgie, it seems, is not experienced exclusively by disgruntled ex–East Germans. Although by no means a hagiography, this nonfictional look at both the long-vanished Balkan regime established by Josip Broz Tito and the celebratory cinema it inspired is surprisingly upbeat. For all its faults, the Yugoslavia that is shown here is infinitely superior to the torn tapestry of violent states that succeeded it. Even Communist kitsch is forgiven in this defiantly heterodox look backward.
Pacific Cinémathèque, September 30 (10:45 a.m.); Granville 7, October 2 (6 p.m.) and 3 (11:45 a.m.)
> Mark Harris

Corpo Celeste
(France/Italy/Switzerland)
For most Italians, the Pope is now the most famous and influential of their fellow countrymen, not the spiritual shepherd of their lives. The 13-year-old protagonist of this feature, however, has the bad luck to grow up in an enclave where Roman Catholicism is still taken very seriously. Of great interest to those who have had to endure childhoods tormented by catechism; of less interest to those who have not.
Granville 7, September 30 (5:30 p.m.), October 1 (9 p.m.) and 3 (1 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

The Day He Arrives
(South Korea)
At this year’s festival, the films that remind one most of the French New Wave come from somewhere else. Bonsai is Chilean, and The Day He Arrives is South Korean. Nothing much happens in this movie, really. A filmmaker/professor wanders the streets of Seoul, drinking beer with old pals and making contact with old and potentially new girlfriends. Must-see viewing for all lovers of lustrous, deep focus black-and-white cinematography.
Pacific Cinematheque, September 30 (4 p.m.), October 4 (7 p.m.) and 6 (10:45 a.m.)
> Mark Harris

Dendera
(Japan)
It’s a bit like making The Three Samurai, but Tengan Daisuke’s sequel to his father’s masterpiece, The Ballad of Narayama, is more fascinating than presumptuous. To be sure, the director lacks Shohei Imamura’s profound sense of animism, but this drama about abandoned old women revolting against both tradition and a giant bear with supernatural powers is unique enough to seduce viewers in a manner all its own.
Granville 7, September 30 (6:45 p.m.), October 4 (4 p.m.) and 12 (6:20 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

Eighty Letters
(Czech Republic)
In recapturing the final, dog days of his life as a boy in bureaucratically sclerotic Czechoslovakia, filmmaker Václav Kadrnka does his job a little too well. The noisy footfalls and claustrophobic close-ups held past the breaking point do convey the torpor, and so have the ring of painful truth. But the well-acted story still feels dragged-out, even at 75 minutes.
Granville 7, September 29 (4 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 2 (6:45 p.m.)
> Ken Eisner

Elena
(Russia)
In post-Communist Russia, the line between free enterprise and criminal enterprise is even thinner than it is most everywhere else. On the other hand, blood is still thicker than vodka. Both these truisms coalesce in this quietly chilling social study from director Andreï Zvyagintsev.
Granville 7, September 29 (1 p.m.), October 8 (9:30 p.m.) and 10 (4 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

The Family Jams
(USA)
It’s all DIY fun and very occasional revelation in banjoist-turned-filmmaker Kevin Barker’s tour diary of a 2004 trek following neo-folkie Devendra Banhart, harp prodigy Joanna Newsom, and the various people they meet and play with along the way. Murky and ragged, to say the least, the film has its own inspirational charm, especially for fans of the squeaky-voiced Newsom.
Granville 7, September 29 (8:45 p.m.) and October 11 (9:30 p.m.); Vogue, October 5 (4:15 p.m.)
> Ken Eisner

How to Die in Oregon
(USA)
Brace yourself: in the first 15 minutes, you will witness an elderly man take his own life with his doctor-prescribed Seconal. “What will this medication do?” an assistant asks, testing his mental awareness, as Oregon’s laws demand. “It will kill me and make me happier,” he says. The scene is apt preparation for an unblinking look at legalized euthanasia, focusing on several tragic stories—none more moving than that of Cody Curtis, a bright and likable 54-year-old mother and wife who faces the uncertain indignities of liver cancer. Her remarkable journey, and those of others in this sensitively told film, make a convincing argument for the right to die with dignity—even if you question whether you could ever do it yourself. The key is that filmmaker Peter D. Richardson realizes it’s impossible to understand the issue until you can intimately get to know people who are dying a slow death and want to face the void on their own terms. Unforgettable, wrenching, and utterly provocative in an era when we avoid issues of mortality.
Vancity Theatre, September 30 (7:15 p.m.); Granville 7, October 1 (12:45 p.m.) and 10 (2:50 p.m.)
> Janet Smith

Letters from the Big Man
(U.S.)
Well, it’s definitely an odd mix: environmental plea, nature doc, conspiracy story, and romance, with the magic realism of Sasquatch appearances thrown in. Sarah (Lily Rabe) is a feisty National Forestry Services consultant who spends long stretches of the movie hiking through the breathtaking Oregon wilderness. She can’t decide whether Sasquatch is real or a hallucination, and she has a budding romance with a wilderness advocate. The acting is strong and the scenery has a gorgeous depth of field, but there is something that feels earnest and awkwardly stacked with enviro facts despite the innovations here.
Granville 7, September 29 (2:50 p.m.), October 12 (9:30 p.m.) and 14 (2:50 p.m.)
> Janet Smith

Michel Petrucciani
(France)
French pianist Petrucciani, who was born with brittle-bone disease and died in 1999, was a tiny powerhouse of jazz excitement who started as Bill Evans on speed and then found his own unique, technically dazzling voice. Endearingly rough around the edges, the laudatory (but not uncritical) doc was directed by Michael Radford, who has made such slick fare as Flawless and the Al Pacino Merchant of Venice.
Vogue, September 30 (4 p.m.); Granville 7, October 2 (6:45 p.m.) and 14 (6:45 p.m.)
> Ken Eisner

Mrs. Carey’s Concert
(Australia)
The casual-sounding doc title actually refers to quite a huge deal. All 1,200 girls at an Aussie prep school must participate in an annual classical performance at the Sydney opera house. Some are budding (if shy) geniuses and others gum-chewers who have to be dragged along, snarling. The musical level is shockingly high, and the drama surprisingly emotional.
Granville 7, October 1 (4:20 p.m.), 4 (7 p.m.), and 8 (10:30 a.m.)
> Ken Eisner

My Little Princess
(France)
Autobiographical films don’t get much more sulphurous than this. First-time director Eva Ionesco was photographed in the nude by her mother Irina from the age of four onward, back in the days when child pornography could pass as art. My Little Princess is essentially a settling of accounts with this tortured past (using different names, of course). Isabelle Huppert gives another brilliantly “mad” performance, this time as a twisted photographer who abuses her own child with lens and eye. Very sad, often angry, but surprisingly free of hate.
Granville 7, September 29 (6:20 p.m.), October 8 (11:40 a.m.) and 9 (9 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

Outside Satan
(France)
Bruno Dumont hasn’t given up his New French Extremist street cred, exactly, but his latest offering is shadowed by the peasant mysticism of Pier Paolo Pasolini and the stark asceticism of Robert Bresson. A wandering miracle worker (David Dewaele) seems to be in the service of God, the Devil, or something else altogether. What he does can be classified as neither good nor bad, only mysterious. Despite the director’s self-professed atheism, the film unfolds like an extended ritual in an unknown religion. Fascinating stuff.
Granville 7, September 30 (1:30 p.m.) and October 4 (9:30 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

Por El Camino
(Brazil/Uruguay)
A breezy road flick that compensates for somewhat flat acting (from attractive nonprofessionals and one top model) with a light touch in the story—Argentine rich kid meets flighty Belgian beauty in Montevideo—and a wonderful feel for places and people in Uruguay that filmgoers have rarely seen before. Charly Braun is the Peanutsian nom du film for the clever writer-director, who hails from a distinguished Brazilian family.
Granville 7, September 29 (11 a.m.), October 3 (6:20 p.m.) and 4 (11:40 a.m.)
> Ken Eisner

Roadie
(USA)
Ron Eldard is impressive as a Queens striver who comes home tattered after 20 years on the road with Blue Öyster Cult—a perfect choice for an off-screen band—to pick up where he left off with his failing mother (veteran Lois Smith). His sexy, folk-singing ex (Jill Hennessy), meanwhile, is now married to his high-school tormentor (scene-stealer Bobby Cannavale). Director and cowriter Michael Cuesta sets up this potentially engaging situation only to have his terrific cast go through predictable indie-flick motions, with stretches of unusually dull dialogue.
Granville 7, September 29 (12:20 p.m.), October 12 (2:30 p.m.) and 13 (9:15 p.m.)
> Ken Eisner

Sleeping Sickness
(Germany)
Think Heart of Darkness for the NGO age. The hero of this odd little drama is a World Health Organization doctor who winds up staying longer than he intended in a French-speaking African country he doesn’t like very much. Director Ulrich Köhler pumps new meaning into the usually tired cliché “going native” (which will only become clear during the last 30 seconds of this film).
Granville 7, September 30 (3 p.m.), October 2 (5:30 p.m.) and 4 (6:20 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

There Once Was An Island:Te Henua E Nnoho
(New Zealand/USA)
A sobering, sensitively shot look at Morlock Island (Taku’u), a tiny, remote Papua New Guinean speck in the south Pacific that is showing the first signs of sinking into the sea due to global warming. For 1,000 years, it’s been an idyllic South Seas paradise where children learn to fish from their fathers and everyone shares their food. The larger implications are scary—it’s expected many more islands will eventually face the same fate. But this doc isn’t so much a scientific environmental treatise as a moving portrait of a people trying to cling to a dying, thousand-year-old culture. As saltwater destroys their crucial taro crops and erodes their shores, people who have never known any other home face an even bigger threat: relocation.
Granville 7, September 30 (noon) and October 2 (9:15 p.m.); Pacific Cinematheque, October 9 (10:45 a.m.)
> Janet Smith

Top Floor, Left Wing
(France)
If Le Jour se lève were remade today in an immigrant housing complex, with bad coke deals and the fear of terrorism standing in for doomed proletarian love affairs and the Great Depression, with the original tragic tone recast as semi-farce, it would look a lot like Top Floor, Left Wing. As an added incentive, the film touches on a fairly taboo subject (the persecution of Berbers in contemporary Algeria).
Granville 7, September 29 (9:15 p.m.) and 30 (9 p.m.), October 4 (1 p.m.)
> Mark Harris

The Water at the End of the World
(Argentina)
Here’s a tale of two sisters: Adriana (the fierce Diana Lamas) has a terminal illness and wants to travel to the “end of the world”—Tierra del Fuego—before she dies; Laura (Guadalupe Docampo) is frantically trying to figure out how she’ll grant this last wish on the pittance she makes working at a dumpy pizzeria. When Laura starts to fall for a down-and-out busker, things become even more complicated. Brutally honest, Water resists falling into the maudlin; instead it bristles with that uniquely Argentine strength and spiky humour in the face of adversity.
Granville 7, September 29 (noon) and October 3 (9:15 p.m.) and 6 (2:30 p.m.)
> Janet Smith

White
(South Korea)
The curse attached to the song at the centre of this South Korean horror movie seems to be even more sinister than the one traditionally associated with “Gloomy Sunday”. Desperate to revive their flagging careers, a girl group decides to sing it anyway. A smashing horror flick from talented brothers Kim Sun and Kim Gok in which the cinematic references fly by faster than a flock of rabid bats. Great guilty fun.
Granville 7, September 30 (9 p.m.), October 6 (4 p.m.) and 8 (4 p.m.)
> Mark Harris