Is it a film fest, or a film feast???
For seventeen days, the
Portland International Film Festival will be harvesting what the city's Northwest Film Center deems the golden crop of world cinema features, shorts and documentaries for audiences ready eat up. Somewhere around 125 films will screen, this year, plenty to keep our eyes full. And with two new "social hubs" providing chill space--and food--it should be a feast all 'round.
Many of the movie menu selections are award-winning delectables. If I might make a few recommendations for your viewing pleasure, madames et monsieurs?
His&Hers (short)
Even if the
Irish accent is difficult for you,
I'm sure you'll be gettin' the jist of it. (And if you've any Irish blood in you at all, you'll want catch this charming, award-winning short.)
How To Die In Oregon
This film won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance at the end of January.
Also don't miss
Incendies (pronounced "on-sohn-deez") and
In A Better World (Haevenen), both Academy Award Nominees for this year.
Son of Babylon
I know I've featured this film before, but it bears repeating. Set amid the sweeping landscape of a world that has seen more histories than we can conceive in its thousands of years as the hearth of human civilizations, this beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking film offers a rare glimpse into the stark realities of the aftermath of wartime atrocities and the difficult journey toward healing. Ahmed, a young Kurdish boy (Yasser Talib) and his grandmother (Shazda Hussein) are traveling south through Iraq in an attempt to find the boy's missing father (the grandmother's son), who was conscripted into the Iraqi army during the Gulf War. Along the way, Ahmed realizes he is no longer a just passenger but a determined participant as the weight of responsibility shifts to his shoulders.
You should know going into the theater that only a very few of the actors were professional. The boy and his grandmother were not among them, yet their performances are deeply emotional because they are drawing on real-life experiences of the horrors of their war-torn country (Shazda Hussein was herself jailed by Saddam's army and lost a baby while in prison, there). It soon becomes clear that the change from boy to young man that we see is deeper than what is on the screen.
According to award-winning Director Mohamed Al-Daradji, the movie was filmed entirely on location in Iraq, and in chronological order, as the pair travel from the Kurdish north toward the city of Babylon. IMDb reviewer
Dick Steel writes, "This is as close as you can go on a road trip from Northern Iraq to Baghdad, onward to Nasiriyah then Babylon." A soldier in the audience at the film's Sundance screening appreciated the authenticity of the depiction, claiming
This is how it really is there. Though it didn't win one of the coveted Sundance awards, the film has won several others since then, and with good reason.
Boy
A hilarious account of a Maori boy with an imagination just grand enough to make his idiot father's schemes look like the love Boy so desperately craves. Stars Taika Waititi of
Flight of the Condors fame and an untrained, downright magical cast full of characters who will make you shake your head and laugh though the tears.
Venues can be found on both sides of the city, though most are centered around the neighborhood of the
Portland Art Museum, which hosts the Advance Ticket Outlet and the Closing Night Party. Two social venues tie the events together, east and west: the PIFF Lounge at Nel Centro (grab a PIFFtini and some grub while you check the Festival's update board) and the PIFFbar at 20th and SE Hawthorne (Indian food and Belgian Lagers from 2/18-2/24). Check
this Google map for venue locations.
Tickets are still available for most films, but they'll start to disappear soon--be sure to check the
ticket and pass info page and the
event calendar for prices and availability, as well as dates and times.
