Three films have stood out to me this week. You will notice all three of them have a large medical component to them so it is clear I’m bias to the subject matter. One, “Never Let Me Go” from the UK I already talked about. Then there is “In a Better World” from Denmark, the 2011 Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Film and “Oxygen” from Belgium. I don’t know if you would be able to get these films from Netflix or iTunes or anywhere else on the internet but it would definitely be worth the effort it took.
“In a Better World” is a glimpse at one of the biggest problems in our world today: bullying. Whether it is done by gang members in the third world or in your child’s school it is a serious problem with serious consequences that happens universally. How to deal with bullying is addressed. Is it better to be the pacifist or to attack before you are attacked? And what do you do when neither of these led to a solution. The movie is truly chilling in the fact that it is not off base with reality. In addition, the acting from the adults and children is remarkable. Definitely a movie to find if you can…
I also recommend “Oxygen” to everyone, but especially to those of you in a healthcare profession. This film follows the life of a boy with cystic fibrosis. He has an older brother with the disease and due to the amount of time he spends in hospitals many of his friends are CF patients as well. What would you do if from the moment you were diagnosed (usually at birth these days) you knew that your life span was about thirty years? I’m spending the first twenty-six of mine in school. With a CF diagnosis I doubt that would have been my course of my life. The movie shows different ways to deal with the disease: accept it, fight against it, run away from it. The movie makes you ask yourself the basic question, would you want to know when you were going to die? Would you rather plan for your death or plan for your life? On top of the questions the movie poises and the glimpse into the disease, the movie has one of the cutest and sweetest love scenes. Overall just a great movie that I would check out if you can find it.
In other TIFF news, there was a short film called “Night Fishing” that we saw the other night, before one of the full length films, that was shot entirely on the iPhone4. The video quality was wonderful, if we hadn’t been told I would have never known. So, I think I need to bust out my iPhone and start making some video blogs. Also Jessica Shoemaker, what are your thoughts on short films? I haven’t seen that many but I generally don’t like them and it disappoints me because I love short stories. Also, the other night we went to one of the competition films called “King’s Road”. The director Valdís Óskarsdóttir was there for the screening which was neat and when they listened off her previous experience and said that she was an editor for “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” I got very excited. I’m not going to talk much about the film, not because it wasn’t good, but because it was one of those movies that you were part of during the film, but, once it ends you just leave it and move on. I wasn’t left with my mind racing like I have with several of the movies I have seen this week. So far this week we have seen 11 films and have 4 more remaining and then sadly we will say farewell to TIFF.
If you would like a better explanation of these movies or would like to explore international films that would fit your interests more go to: http://www.tiff.ro/en.
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