There's a reason why I never quite make the trip up north to the Tribeca Film Festival, and it's because Filmfest DC compels me to stay closer to home. As the Washington DC International Film Festival gets ready to launch its unbelievable 29th year today, the diverse array of movies on their slate is perhaps the best yet. Once again festival director Tony Gittens has gathered a collection of over 70 films from around the world to be shown between April 16th-26th. The bulk of the screenings will take place at Landmark E Street and AMC Mazza, both Metro accessible.
Enduring the DC traffic will be worth it, too, as the festival boasts a number of acclaimed international dramas, comedies, thrillers, documentaries, and short films, broken down into categories by genre. Some of them have gained awards notoriety in other parts of the world. Some have been burning up the festival circuit right here in America, like the online hoax documentary The Amina Profile, which debuted at Sundance and was reviewed by us here. Also playing at Filmfest DC this year is the buzzed-about teen dramedy, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which you can read my review of here. Trust me when I say that's one you're not going to want to miss. You can even hang spend time and pick the brains of DC's two top film critics as the great Arch Campbell shares the stage with The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday for one special night.
While the Nation's Capital has no shortage of film festivals, Filmfest DC is the crown jewel; it's the standard-bearer and the place to be for district cinephiles. Tickets are $13 and you can buy them online here. To show my own excitement for what's to come, here's a rundown of my most anticipated Filmfest DC movies:
The Water Diviner
Director: Russell Crowe
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jai Courtney, Olga Kurylenko, Dylan Georgiades, Isabel Lucas, Yılmaz Erdoğan, Cem Yılmaz
The highest-grossing Australian film of 2014, the ambitious and affecting The Water Diviner is star Russell Crowe's directorial debut. He plays to his solid strengths as the farmer-artisan of the title, struggling with life after his three boys are lost in World War I's battle at Gallipoli. When his wife succumbs to her grief, he travels to Turkey in search of their remains or at least some facts of their fate. During his stay in Constantinople, he befriends hotelier Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and clashes not only with a pair of Turkish war vets (Yilmaz Erdogan and Cem Yilmaz, director and co-star of FFDC 2002 hit Viziontele) but with a stuffy British officer (Jai Courtney) as well. What he finds, in his journey to the truth, is both life-affirming and inspirational.
The Water Diviner Official US Release Trailer (2015) - Russell Crowe Movie by Trailer-Addict
The Connection
Director: Cedric Jimenez
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lellouche
We've all seen The French Connection, William Friedkin's masterful 1971 Oscar®-winning film. In Cédric Jimenez's The Connection, we learn the story from the French point of view. Set in Marseilles in the 1970s and just as gritty as the New York version, The Connection adds a bit of Gallic savoir-faire to the standard police procedural. We follow a no-nonsense magistrate as he tries to take down the sprawling drug empire. Portrayed as a stylish force of nature by the always telegenic Jean Dujardin, magistrate Pierre Michel is often at odds with his own bureaucracy. Michel must resort to extra-legal tactics to bring ruthless kingpin Gaëtan "Tany" Zampa (a suitably slithery Gilles Lellouche) to justice. Michel's battles are fought over the course of years, as his home life suffers and Tany keeps slipping from his grasp. A terrific soundtrack perfectly captures the feel of the era perfectly. -Eddie Cockrell
THE CONNECTION (2015) Official HD Trailer # 2 Jean Dujardin by Farah Rani
In Order of Disappearance
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Cast: Stellan Skarsgard, Bruno Ganz, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen
Transplanted Swedish snowplow driver Nils (Stellan Skarsgard) works clearing the same remote stretch of Norwegian road, a task that wins him an unexpected civic award (not much, competition, apparently). When his clean son is brutally murdered during a drug deal, Nils executes some single-minded, imaginative revenge against the foppish local crime lord (Pal Sverre Hagen) and ruthless Serbian gang patriarch (Bruno Ganz) who dare disrupt his quiet life. Director Hans Petter Moland and Skarsgard have made four films together in 20 years, including the little-seen gem Aberdeen (FFDC 2001), and their creative shorthand here pays great dividends. Veteran genre screenwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson's script is a model of underplayed wit and non-sequitur tangents, highlighted by somber title cards announcing the names of the departed. Forget this past winter; the most fun you can have in the snow now is In Order of Disappearance. -Eddie Cockrell
In Order of Disappearance (2014) International Trailer by ViralToday
The Tribe
Director: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
Cast: Grygoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova
A wild success at this year's Cannes festival—where it garnered three Critics' Week awards, including the Grand Prix— Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's feature debut, The Tribe, is an unforgettably original drama set entirely in the world of the deaf. When he arrives at a boarding school for the deaf and mute, teenage Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko) is greeted by more than the usual challenges of integration. Put through the requisite initiation rites, he proves himself worthy and is brought under the protective wing of the school's gang leader. Balancing regular activities of bribery, robbery, and prostitution with youthful proclivities, Sergey's newfound clique operates along the fine lines between business and pleasure, adolescence and adulthood. But as soon as he moves up the ranks to become a pimp, Sergey compromises his rapid ascent by falling in love with one of the tribe's escorts, setting off a tragic series of events.-TIFF
The Tribe (2014) Feature Trailer - Yana Novikova, Grigoriy Fesenko by Trailers
Happy Times
Director: Luis Javier M. Henaine
Cast: Luis Arrieta, Cassandra Ciangherotti
"Not every love lasts forever…fortunately" is the telling tagline for Happy Times, a smart, offbeat comedy about how hard it is to end a romantic relationship. Mild-mannered cartoonist Max (Luis Arrieta) isn't pleased with the way his life currently is going. He works as an illustrator at an ad agency simply for the money, and he just can't break things off with Monica (Cassandra Ciangherotti), the overbearing girlfriend from hell. When he tries, despite his best efforts he can't even get the words out; unfortunately, Monica assumes that he is proposing. Although it's common to encounter films about looking for and embracing love, it's rare to find a comedy about the dissolution of a relationship. What makes Happy Times stand out, and lends it considerable charm, is that it also acknowledges how contradictory human beings and their relationships can be.—Variety
I Can Quit Whenever I Want
Director: Sydney Sibilia
Cast: Edoardo Leo, Valeria Solarino, Neri Marcore, Paolo Calabresi
A candy-colored criminal comedy confection that improbably yet deftly reimagines the "Breaking Bad" dynamic in the halls of Italian academia and nightclubs of Rome, this local box-office smash stars Eduardo Leo as Pietro, a talented, principled, and cash-strapped molecular research scientist who is also something of a milquetoast. When he loses out on a pivotal university appointment and must lie about his income to his increasingly exasperated live-in girlfriend Giulia (Valeria Solarino), Pietro desperately pursues one of many students who owe him tutoring fees to a popular club and has an inadvertent substance-induced epiphany. An obscure Italian law allows new, and thus unclassifiable, drugs in the marketplace. All Pietro has to do is gather together a group of his eccentric, socially challenged, and equally desperate brainiac colleagues, manufacture a synthetic Ecstasy variant, and peddle it in the most popular clubs under the noses of the established local drug lords. What could possibly go wrong? Director and co-scenarist Sydney Sibilia creates and sustains a breakneck comic pace that relies on relatable character comedy and the blinkered blindness of sheer greed to propel a narrative that is at once unpredictable and inevitable. These wolves are far from Wall Street and Pietro is no Walter White, confirming that I Can Quit Whenever I Want breaks bad in its own distinctive way and thus sets just the right tone for a wrap-up celebration at FFDC 2015.—Eddie Cockrell
