Austin Film Festival 2019: Day 2
I encountered my first big disappointment of the festival today. I couldn’t get in to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire, one of the best reviewed films of the year. I’ll have to wait until it comes out in theaters like the rest of you chumps. I still had a solid day though. I saw four movies including two documentaries and three foreign language films.
Paradise Without People
Paradise Without People documents the intimate journeys of two Syrian families with newborn babies seeking asylum in Europe. Time Magazine reporter Francesca Trianni follows the families over several years from a Greek refugee camp to their arrivals in their designated countries and their attempts to once again become productive members of society.
The families remain stranded at the Greek refugee camp far longer than they anticipated. They’re forced to sleep in tents inside a large warehouse as they await the results of their asylum applications. It’s heartbreaking to watch their infant children grow as their parents’ lives remain stagnant. Both families want to go to Germany as it has a large Syrian population, and they have friends there. One of the families gets its wish while the other is forced to immigrate to Estonia, where they struggle to adapt to the culture.
Trianni shines a light on the seemingly never-ending bureaucratic hurdles that Syrians encounter throughout the asylum process. She puts faces to the refugee crisis and attempts to elicit empathy from viewers that may understand the situation academically but struggle to connect emotionally. It’s difficult to watch the families struggle to maintain hope as they work to acclimate and survive, but it’s worth it to gain a deeper understanding of one of the biggest crises plaguing our planet.
Cows With No Name
This is one of the smallest films of the festival in more ways than one. It’s only fifty-one minutes long, and it has no IMDb page. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film so obscure that it flies completely under the radar of the ubiquitous Internet Movie Database.
Director Hubert Charuel documents his parents’ dairy farm in rural France as his father retires and his mother reluctantly agrees to sell her beloved cows to a more modern farm that replaces their names with numbers. The film is as forgettable as its name. It’s a commentary on aging, retirement, and the modernization of the dairy farming industry. Charuel seems to believe that modern farming is less humane with its milking machines and nameless cows, but the family farm is already impregnating and milking cows against their will, so the particular brand of torture feels like less of an issue than the general concept of milking cows for profit. The film has a couple emotional moments, but overall it’s pretty dull.
Limbo
Limbo is a fast-paced German crime thriller that takes place in one single exhilarating 89-minute shot. It’s Birdman meets The Departed, and it’s a fucking blast. The story begins with a young idealistic compliance officer uncovering some fishy accounting at her company. This discovery very quickly leads her into a world of gangsters, undercover cops, money laundering, and bare knuckle boxing.
The cinematography is incredible. If the film isn’t actually a single take, it sure looks like it. I can’t imagine the coordination necessary to pull that off. The camera is constantly placed right next to the characters, drawing the viewers in and making them feel part of the story. It’s a uniquely engrossing movie experience, and you should go see it. Limbo screens again on Wednesday, October 30th at 5:45PM at Galaxy Highland.
The VICE Guide to Bigfoot
This mockumentary follows a VICE reporter and his producer on an expedition through the Georgia backwoods in search of an interesting story to add meaning to their plateauing careers. Brian Emond is sick and tired of reporting cutesy click-bait stories, and a bigfoot assignment is the last thing he wants to do. At the behest of his longtime producer, he agrees to take the assignment seriously and try to craft an interesting documentary. As their journey leads them further into the woods, they begin to realize that their guide, a famous bigfoot hunter and Eagle Scout (as he constantly reminds them), may be less qualified than he lets on.
Director Zach Lamplugh crafts a hilarious film that gets increasingly absurd as it goes. It starts out a little slow, but it really ramps up about halfway through as the search for sasquatch brings the journalists in contact with crooked cops and an illegal opioid ring. I love laughing at the idiotic sasquatch hunters in Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot, and you get the sense that Lamplugh pulls a lot of his humor from that show. If you like mockumentaries and laughing at dumb redneck shit, this is right up your alley.
Michael Dixon is covering the Austin Film Festival because he has a crippling movie addiction, and he’d like to share it with you. See the rest of his festival coverage at the links below.
Editor’s note: Movie addiction is highly contagious. Symptoms include watching four movies in a day, writing about those movies at night, and using those activities as an excuse to avoid human interaction. If you or a loved one is experiencing any of these symptoms, please consult a therapist immediately.
2019 Austin Film Festival Preview
Austin Film Festival 2019: Day 1
Austin Film Festival 2019: Day 3
Austin Film Festival 2019: Day 4
Austin Film Festival 2019: Day 6
Austin Film Festival 2019: Day 7
