The 2017 edition of the Mumbai Film Festival feels like the 2016 edition with power armour – meaning it’s new, improved, robust and more awesome than before. The wonderful team of MAMI, led by Creative Director Smriti Kiran, got the three basics of the festival absolutely right:
- The lineup of the films as well as the programming is very strong this year. There are very few films clashing, and even if they are, there are opportunities to watch them at a later date.
- The logistics team has doubled down on housekeeping – the ticket booking system (on bookmyshow.com) has been buttery smooth. It takes less than a second for the booked ticket to pop on your phone screen. There’s also a convenient ‘cancel booking’ button, which also works instantaneously. Kudos to the MAMI team for making this happen.
- South Bombay has festival venues too, so the crowds at the Andheri venues aren’t total murder.
Logistics aside, here’s a wrap of the most noteworthy films during the first three days of the Mumbai Film festival.
The opening film got a giant standing ovation at Liberty as Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz turned out to be his first genuinely crowd pleasing film. Vineet Singh (a Kashyap regular from GOW, Ugly and Murabba) packed in a quite a punch as a boxer in Bareili dealing with the choice between love, a wayward but passionate career in boxing and a stable but unfulfilling government job.
Mukkabaaz is a nice change from Kashyap’s usual palette of dark, brooding and f*cked up, while still retaining the earthy realist milieu it is set in. You’re going to want to see it when it hits theatres in January.
Beach Rats
Beach Rats, directed by Eliza Hittman, is an intimately shot exploration of a sexually confused Brooklyn teenager. It doesn’t have much of a story as the cameras follow Frankie (Harris Dickinson) lost in thoughts, trying to understand himself desperately, perpetually frustrated because he has no one to share his secret with. The only people he can confide in are the rowdy junkies he hangs out with, who are ironically closer to him than his own mother.
The focus on moments rather than writing does feel like an episode out of a larger story but it’s still a fascinating watch thanks largely to an amazing performance from Dickinson who has no trace of his English accent playing the Brooklyn kid.
Spoor
The Polish film Spoor directed by Agnieszka Holland turned out to be an oddball of sorts, mashing together B-movie sensibilities with avant garde European cinema aesthetics. The film is a whodunit but also a diatribe in environmental protection – the undercurrent of which could have been executed in a subtler manner. Yet the film is a fun romp as we follow a small town crazy old lady (Agnieszka Mandat) trying to track down a serial killer offing people with ritualistic glee.
Thelma
Reprise and Oslo 31 August director Joaquim Trier’s new film Thelma is an exceptional thriller with a touch of horror. The film follows the titular college kid (played superbly by Eili Harboe) who often suffers from seizures, but then discovers some supernatural phenomenon, when she meets another girl from her class. Like in his previous films, Trier executes familiar themes in new and exciting ways turning Thelma into thought provoking social commentary under the guise of a ‘spooky girl’ horror sub-genre. The lush Norwegian setting, the exquisite cinematography and the well-hidden mystery which is impossible to crack until the very end makes for a memorable, low key watch.
It Comes At Night
It Comes At Night is a slight disappointment considering how good Trey Edwards Schultz’s previous film Krisha was. This is a horror film but with a misleading premise of a monster lurking outside a cabin in the woods, and an underwhelming final reveal. One could blame the marketing, because it promised a scary movie, but is more of a dramatic rumination with long silences.
City Of Ghosts
City of Ghosts is yet another disturbing documentary from Cartel Land, director Matthew Heineman. This time Heineman takes us through the horrors of ISIS and a band of brave young men called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), who risk their lives every day to conduct citizen journalism and expose the atrocities of the terrorist group to the world. It’s hard to keep your tear ducts dry as we follow the members of RBSS, who no longer have a home, and the racist folks in the country they seek asylum in treat them like rats in their kingdom.
Even though the film ends on a hopeful note, it’s difficult to contain the utter cynicism you’re left with at how we have become as humans.
Loveless
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless can leave a void in your heart with its powerfully dreary themes. It’s not a film as much as it is a gloomy roll in the bleak snow of Russia, as we follow an estranged couple teaming up to find their missing son. Much like his previous film Leviathan, Zvyagintsev uses its main characters as a metaphor for Russia and how truly effed up the world’s largest nation is.
With stunning cinematography, a terrific performance from Maryana Spivak as the mother and absolutely brutal exploration of broken relationships in a cold unforgiving world, this is definitely the best film of the fest and also this year’s foreign language Oscar contender.
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