FIMS Film Festival Critics Lab
An Insider Experience at TIFF 2023
Film festivals are dynamic non-profit ecosystems where creative practitioners (filmmakers, producers, writers, actors, cinematographers, composers) meet industry (sales and talent agencies, distributors, investors), the press (critics), and public audiences. The FIMS Film Festival Critics Lab offers undergraduate and graduate FIMS students the opportunity to attend a number of films at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), experience the environment, and write their own critical work. Participants will be introduced to the practice of film criticism through reading and writing festival coverage and film reviews, and have the opportunity to post their work here in the Film Festival Critics Lab and on Instagram.
About the Director
About the Lab
TIFF 2023
TIFF 2023 Reviews
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Banel & Adama by Billie Anderson
In a cinematic era dominated by narratives celebrating empowered women directed by women, with recent releases like Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig), Bottoms (dir. Emma Seligman), Saint Omer (dir. Alice Diop), and Joy Ride (dir. Adele Lim), Banel & Adama offers a profound exploration of womanhood in a rural Senegalese village where the line between reality…
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Banel & Adama by Santasil Mallik
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s debut feature, Banel & Adama, is an acutely measured film that concocts a fable-like story around the passionate liaison between its eponymous protagonists. It begins with an almost idyllic state of things, casting the lovers in the halcyon of unwavering affection. Outside the precincts of a Senegalese village, they hope to live together…
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Smugglers by Busra Copuroglu
Set in the 1970s South Korea when it was closed to the outside world, Ryoo Seung-wan’s Smugglers revolves around a group of women free divers –haenyo- who retrieve the loot from the deepest, darkest corners of the sea for a smuggling operation run by men in a small sea village of Guncheon. As a nearby…
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“Smugglers”: An Entertaining Yet Shallow Dive by Eduard Sviridenko
In the vibrant landscape of Ryoo Seung-wan’s “Smugglers,” we’re introduced to a tempting array of ideas. At its core, the film is an ambitious blend of comedy, action, and drama which, while engaging, sometimes balances on the edge of losing its identity amid its attempt to encompass all genres. The cinematography offers an evident playfulness.…
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Smugglers by Revna Altiok
Seung-wan Ryoo’s “Smugglers”, originally intended to be an aquatic crime thriller, explores the intricacies of female friendship. While initially flirting with stereotypical character tropes for its female leads – the more traditionally masculine, honest, and honorable Jin-sook; the strong but selfish and mischievous femme-fatale-esque Chun-ja; and Ok-bun, a not-very-bright tea-shop owner who wields her femininity…
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Smugglers by Santasil Mallik
Ryoo Seung-wan’s comic-action flick Smugglers offers a cinematic salutation to the indomitable spirit of haenyeo – a dying, semi-matriarchal commune of female divers from the South Korean district of Jeju whose livelihood constitutes harvesting molluscs and seaweed from the ocean. The film tells the story of six divers set in the middle of a nationwide…
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“The Breaking Ice”: Timeless Pursuit of Freedom by Eduard Sviridenko
While “The Breaking Ice” paints a picture of cold landscapes, it radiates surprising warmth, underscored by the beautifully executed cinematography and montage. The movie deliberately contrasts these snowy images with its characters’ intense and emotional journeys. Indeed, the wide shots of the icy scenes are mixed with intimate close-ups, capturing the expansive yet personal feel…
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The Breaking Ice by Billie Anderson
Loneliness is a prison that we all yearn to escape—or accept. The Breaking Ice asks the question: how do you find yourself after life leaves you behind? What if your dreams fail you? Maybe you find all the success you desire, and it’s still not enough, what then? The Breaking Ice follows three emotionally and…
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The Breaking Ice Review: A Touch of Frost, An Ode to Lost Youth by Gigi Wong
Weather is always emotional and sensual. In The Breaking Ice, weather becomes an integral part of the film’s narrative. Set in a small Chinese border city of Yanji, the film’s snow-covered cityscape and icy surroundings function as a chilling metaphor for loneliness and alienation. The bleak, white landscape of Yanji brings to screen the anxiety…
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The Breaking Ice by Revna Altiok
Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice introduces a visually captivating yet imperfect journey through the states of matter – ice, water, and steam. The film extends an invitation for reflection on the nature of human existence through the intimacy shared by its main characters: Haofeng, Nana and Xiao. Haofeng, a young man embodying the rigors of…
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Smugglers by Farah Shohib
Dancing on the edge of crime and action, with a frequent glimmer of comedy, is Ryoo Seung-wan’s newest cinematic offering, Smugglers. Set in South Korea during the 1970s, Seung-wan grants the audience a riveting and immersive glimpse into the era, using a vibrant colour palette and a retro soundtrack to aid in its facilitation. It’s…
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Smugglers by Russell Seton
Ryoo-Seung wan trained his flashlight on a familiar sunken treasure chest, scraped off the barnacles, and crowbarred it open. After nearly a decade, the South Korean filmmaker decided it was time to rekindle the youthful exuberance that catapulted him to action-auteur status. The shadow of twentieth century atrocities that darkened his previous two films has…
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Ryoo Seung-Wan’s Smugglers has heaps of laughs and violence, but it is not your average action-comedy by Kate Belford
Smugglers is director Ryoo Seung-Wan’s fresh attempt at a crime thriller and action-comedy that captures many of the desired characteristics of the genre that fans are looking for: well-placed comedic moments and expertly choregraphed action sequences that are not for the faint of heart. Do not be fooled, however, as this is not your typical…
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Smugglers by Madeline Mansell
Occasionally, I will watch a scene in a film and think, “this is something I never knew I needed to see, but I am very glad I did”; and I am sure, like myself, many people had this exact thought when watching the final underwater fight scene in Ryoo Seung-Wan’s crime-drama-action film, Smugglers. Set…
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Smugglers by Paige Quinn
Ryoo Seung-wan Smugglers blew me away. With the combination of the film’s mise-en-scene, cinematography, and captivating storyline, I was left inspired by Ryoo Seung-wan’s attention to detail. In a way I find that many action/thriller movies lack; Smugglers was able to make this genre of movie artful. Along with these elements, Ryoo Seung-wan accompanied a violent…
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The Breaking Ice- a sultry tropical rain pouring down on an Ontario winter by Leslie Li
From ILO ILO to his latest film, The Breaking Ice, marks Anthony Chen’s tenth year in the industry and showcases his ability to capture and convey the subtle nuances of everyday emotions. Throughout his career, Chen has demonstrated a talent for depicting ordinary life with delicacy and a slow, flowing pace, and this film is…
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The Breaking Ice by Russell Seton
Ranking among the iconic images of international cinema is the euphoric sprint across the footbridge in Francois Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Shot straight-on using a handheld camera that trembles in tune with their every stride, the moment captured the dynamic between Jules, Jim, and Katherine and sang the spontaneous spirit of the Nouvelle Vague. Singapore…
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‘The Breaking Ice’ Review: Anthony Chen’s Emotional Depiction of Struggle & Human Connection by Karina Pakalnis
Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice is a hauntingly beautiful film illustrating the relationship between three young adults who navigate their personal struggles through an unexpected, briskly blooming friendship. One is held down by the trauma of losing their lifelong dream; Another held back by their lack of education and an inability to improve their everyday…
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The Breaking Ice by Madeline Mansell
Life is unpredictable; we can never truly know who will waltz into our lives next, and how they might change the trajectory of it forever. In Anthony Chen’s quiet and cold drama, The Breaking Ice, he observes three young people as they merge into each other’s lives and question childhood memories, present relationships, and the…
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The Breaking Ice by Samantha Cox
The Breaking Ice, directed by Anthony Chen, demonstrates the piercing realities of getting older. Each character must face the painful reality of life. The protagonist, played by Liu Haoran, worked hard his entire life to become successful until he realized that success was meaningless to him. Nana, played by Zhou Dongyu, dreamed of being an…
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The Breaking Ice by Sara Moccia
In the freezing, quiet city of Yanji, writer and director Anthony Chen creates a bleak universe for Nana, Haofeng, and Xiao – the film’s three main characters who, each facing feelings of isolation and displacement from the world, form a bond in an attempt to melt their hardened, icy exteriors. Chen’s camerawork is perceptive, feeling…
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“The Breaking Ice”: Exploring At The Border Of The Soulby Yawen Liu
The Breaking Ice (2023) by Anthony Chen is a remarkable movie that can leave a deep impression and endless imagination for audiences. It’s hard for me to simply define it as a common romantic movie, instead, it skillfully illustrates the story of three independent, young, but also insignificant and confused individuals finding a new way…
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Pictures of Ghosts by Busra Copuroglu
At first glance, one would be tempted to call Kleber Mendonça Filho’s documentary Pictures of Ghosts the director’s love letter to his hometown Recife, Brazil’s fourth largest city and the home of the underappreciated Recife Carnaval. Midway through the film, one would be tempted to call it a love letter to cinema, but it would…
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Pictures of Ghosts by Billie Anderson
Pictures of Ghosts offers an exploration of the evolving urban landscape of Recife, Brazil, through the lens of Kleber Filho’s archival footage, personal narrative, and reflection on the transformation of his hometown. The narrative begins within the confines of Filho’s childhood apartment, where he ventured into the world of filmmaking, experimenting with various formats like…
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Pictures of Ghosts by Santasil Mallik
The archive is as much a site of invention and improvisation as of the preservation of time. In the documentary Pictures of Ghosts, Kleber Mendonça Filho undertakes an introspective archival exercise by engaging with a life-long repository of home videos, photographs, and footage from films he shot during his formative years. He structures a porous…
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Pictures of Ghosts by Cameron Bell
While the film has multiple “Best Documentary” wins at other film festivals this year, Pictures of Ghosts can best be described as a personal love letter that simultaneously spans numerous generations and remains timeless. Acclaimed director Kleber Mendonça Filho set out to tell the story of the Brazilian city he grew up in, Recife, by…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Billie Anderson
I Do Not Come to You by Chance offers a compelling premise—examining the complexities and origins of Nigerian prince scams—a subject surprisingly underexplored in cinema. Directed by Ishaya Bako and adapted from Adaobi Nwaubani’s novel of the same name, I Do Not Come to You by Chance offers a profound exploration of poverty, attempting to…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Revna Altiok
I Do Not Come to You by Chance delves into the world of scams, family dynamics, and the pursuit of a better life. Directed by Ishaya Bako, this gripping drama offers a unique perspective on a prevalent issue. Paul Nnadiekwe delivers a satisfactory performance as Kingsley, a young man reluctantly drawn into the world of…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Santasil Mallik
Structural problems underlining excruciating economic disparity, corruption, financial scams, and the lack of political accountability are as dreadful as absurdly comical. In the feature-length adaptation of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s novel, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, Nigerian film director Ishaya Bako foregrounds this comicality garbed in an underplayed critique. The story follows Kingsley,…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Samantha Cox
I Do Not Come To You By Chance directed by Ishaya Bako is a heart-warming story about Kingsley Ibe’s moral struggle while determining how to financially support his family. Kingsley, played by Paul Nnadiekwe, is surrounded by beautifully distinct characters with strong moral compasses who believe they each know best. Kingsley struggles to decide if…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Madeline Mansell
Based on Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s 2009 novel of the same name, I Do Not Come To You By Chance is a comedy-drama directed by Ishaya Bako that looks at the inner-workings of one of the infamous ‘Nigerian Prince’ email scams. Kingsley, played by Paul Nnadiekwe, is a lovable college graduate who seemingly cannot find work…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Kate Belford
In spite of a variety of ambiguous themes, Ishaya Bako’s I Do Not Come To You By Chance is a film that inspires empathy in its audience, encouraging viewers to consider the circumstances of the individuals that have wronged them. The film demonstrates how poverty is a difficult cycle to break, and how far people…
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I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Jouzian Wahhab
Adapted from the Nigerian novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, I Do Not Come to You by Chance is a film with an easy to follow, rounded plot that engages audiences from beginning to end. Telling a heartfelt story of poverty, firstborn responsibilities, and familial love in a world surrounded by Nigerian email scams; the film…
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I Do Not Come to You By Chance by Sophie Siew
Nigerian fraudulent email scams are revitalized with an air of humor and lightness in Ishaya Bako’s fresh dramatic comedy I Do Not Come to You By Chance. Unemployed graduate Kingsley has always doted on his Uncle Boniface, a sleazy bum-turned-billionaire who orchestrates fraudulent scams to swindle money from naïve victims. The family possesses a strong…
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Aphasia Film Review by Revna Altiok
In the animated short film Aphasia, directed by Marielle Dalpé, a captivating and multi-layered narrative unfolds, immersing the audience in the perplexing world of aphasia. The film’s narrative approach is a nuanced interplay between the protagonist’s struggle with aphasia and the narrator’s own immersion in this linguistic labyrinth. As we bear witness to the character…
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City of Wind Film Review by Santasil Mallik
Set in and around the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s debut feature, City of Wind, is a quintessential tale situating the spiritual conflicts at the juncture between nomadic tradition and global urbanism. At the centrepiece of this dilemma is the young adult protagonist, Ze, who distributes his life between serving as a shaman to…
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Between Reality and Fiction: Raw Emotional Exploration in “Four Daughters” by Eduard Sviridenko
Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” is a cinematographic blend of documentary and fiction, an honest exploration of memory, loss, and the complexity of reality and fantasy. The lines between the two are blurred in the film’s captivating use of cinematography and unique narrative, specifically its semi-fictionalized form, inviting the viewers to navigate a perplexing web…
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Four Daughters Film Review by Farah Shohib
Kaouther Ben Hania’s newest experimental docu-drama hybrid, Four Daughters, depicts a world of vicious and merciless creatures, ravenous for prey, a world where Olfa Hamrouni’s two eldest daughters are “devoured by the wolf.” In this case, the wolf is emblematic of the Islamic State and the radicalization of her children. It’s 2015, only a few…
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Four Daughters Film Review by Santasil Mallik
A few years back, the news of a single mother, Olfa Hamrouni, losing two of her four daughters, Rahma and Ghofrane, to the influence of ISIS filled the Tunisian national news. In the hybrid documentary Four Daughters, director Kaouther Ben Hania develops a participatory environment with Hamrouni and her remaining two daughters in a processual…
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Four Daughters Film Review by Bursa Copuroglu
Co-winner of the Golden Eye for Best Documentary at this year’s Cannes, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hanja’s docudrama Four Daughters tells the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters –Ghofrane, Rahma, Eya, and Tayssir— in a desperate effort to understand why Ghofrane and Rahma, in 2015 (aged 15 and 16), left home to join…
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Four Daughters Film Review by Jouzian Wahhab
Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, Four Daughters is a Documentary film that tells the stories of a Tunisian family — Olfa and her daughters (Ghofrane, Rahma, Tayssir, and Eya) — while challenging methods of nonfiction storytelling. The film explores the struggles of women, a spectrum of extremes, and radicalization while highlighting memory, grief, and truth…
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Four Daughters Film Review by Samantha Cox
By Samantha Cox Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters retells the story of a mother, Olfa, whose eldest daughters, Ghofrane and Rahma, disappear to join ISIS. It is a documentary that both recreates what happened and lets the real family recount the events leading up to the disappearance. In the beginning, the two youngest daughters recount…
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Short Cuts Programme Five by Russell Seton
MacKenzie Davis’ WOACA heralds this programme’s veneration for humanity’s unspoken daily traumas. Largely shot using a single camera set-up, a woman stands stoically before her bathroom mirror and performs her ablutions. Staring out from the mirror, directly at the viewer, the meticulous routine, normalized over her lifetime, grows increasingly excruciating. When a seemingly insignificant pimple…
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Short Cuts Programme Five by Samantha Cox
Short Cuts 2023 Programme 05 is an interesting medley of stories showcasing people from different backgrounds experiencing loss. The two that specifically stood out to me were WOACA directed by Mackenzie Davis and Sawo Matang directed by Andrea Nirmala Widjajanto. These shorts start very pleasant. WOACA comments on the vanity of women in society and…
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Four Daughters Review: The Construction of Different Realities as a Form of Transgressive Poetics by Gigi Wong
Four Daughters is an emotional and poignant docudrama that restages a tragic news story in Tunisia with professional actors. The film tells the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters, which made international headlines because the two eldest – Rahma and Ghofrane – left their family and decided to join the Islamic State in…