The 37th Miami Film Festival opens this Friday; with a wide range of prorgamming, from dramas and comedies to documentaries, shorts and features, as well as master classes from local filmmakers. I'll be in attendance, to check out some of these amazing films. We published an overview of the festival highlights a few weeks ago, but here are some of the titles I'll be covering, hopefully coming to a cinema or VOD service near you soon.
I love a good thriller, and The Burnt Orange Heresy looks right my alley. Starring Claes Bang as an art critic hired to steal a painting from a reclusive artist (Donald Sutherland), it seems to have the lying, cheating, sexiness, and intrigue that all good thrillers possess, with Elizabeth Debicki and Mick Jagger rounding out the cast.
Winner of a Special Jury prize at Sundance for the ensemble cast, Charm City Kings tells the story of Baltimore's famed dirt bike riders, one young boy who worships them, and the mountains of problems it brings him.
Of all the fantastic genres, sci fi is my greatest love. Put that together with one of my favourite actors, Eva Green, and you've already sold me on it. In Alice Wincour's Proxima Green plays an astronaut assigned to go into space for a year, which would mean leaving her already-neglected daughter.
I cannot begin to imagine, not only the perilous journey, but the almost insurmountable difficulties of starting a new life in another country, as a single parent, barely speaking the language, all to keep your children safe and give them a better chance. Los Lobos looks at the journey of one such mother and her two young boys.
We don't get enough comedies from Middle Eastern Cinema; so that, coupled with the fact that there's a psychoanalyst in my family, draws me to Manele Labidi's feature debut Arab Blues. Golfshiteh Farahani stars as a psychoanalyst who returns to her native Tunis, and finds out how much things have changed since the Arab Spring.
We may have come a long way, baby, but we still have a long way to go. Women are still constantly questioned about when they're going to get married and have children, as if to not do so means they've not fulfilled their destiny. Canadian filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and American comedian Chelsea Peretti bring one such story to life in Spinster
Dancing and painting were always two talents that I wished I possessed, so I'm always happy to explore either world in film. Alberto Arvelo's documentary Free Color looks at acclaimed Latin American artist Carlos Cruz-Diez and his late-life obsession with freeing color from form.
As a Canadian, I've always been a bit smug about our public health care system (while far from perfect, I'd take it over the USA's system any day). So I'll be interested to see Calvin Thomas & Yonah Lewis' feature about how one young woman tells a lie about her health, and the wanted and unwanted attention it brings.