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This weekend, catch up with the great doc Flee if you're in the US, have a mini Céline Sciamma film festival to celebrate Petite Maman (now in UK cinemas, soon out in North America), and watch the hilarious and biting satire Quebexit on Prime in Canada and the US.

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Films from Subjective Realities

In the summer, we released the ebook Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film which explores the spectrum between fiction and nonfiction in contemporary documentary. Several of the films that appear in the book had their world premieres in 2021 and have yet to be released in cinemas (or acquire North American/UK distribution!).

Fortunately, several of those films have just hit VOD/streaming services or will be at virtual film festivals in the coming weeks. We recommend catching them while you can!

Get your copy of Subjective realities

Flee - across US - until Nov 28 at DOCNYC

One of the very best films of 2021 full stop is the animated documentary Flee about Amin, who was forced to flee Afghanistan as a teenager and ended up in Denmark. The film follows Amin in present day as he recounts the story of his flight to Denmark (with documentary sound), and his memories are illuminated by animation.

We loved the film so much that we invited its director Jonas Poher Rasmussen on to the 2021 Creative Nonfiction Workshop (in conversation with Eliane Raheb!) and he is also interviewed in the book.

An animated frame of a man sitting in a hotel room in front of a cityscape in Flee.

Here's an excerpt from my interview with director Jonas Poher Rasmussen:

In the final shot of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s beautiful, heartrending animated documentary, Flee, the animation fades into the live footage on which it’s based, and they’re remarkably similar. It’s a clever reminder that the story you’ve just been swept up in is in fact real, and a hint at just how faithful to reality the animation style has been throughout the film. Having seen some of the reference images on which the rest of the film’s animation is based, it’s incredible how true to life the film is.

Flee opens with silhouettes in gray and blue, an image of legs running, and the sound of heavy breathing. In voiceover, Rasmussen asks his dear friend, Amin, “What does the word ‘home’ mean to you?” It’s a strong distillation of the story the film will explore, of a man who has been constantly on the run, unable to find somewhere comfortable to call home, not just physically but emotionally, because he’s never told his story of fleeing as a refugee in full to the people who are closest to him. It’s also an introduction to the more abstract animation style that will characterise the moments of trauma that Amin recalls, more by evoking feelings than by faithfully depicting the facts of events.

Rasmussen and Amin met as teenagers, when Amin was a new refugee to Denmark, having been forced to flee Afghanistan during the war. Starting at the beginning, with Amin recalling his childhood in Afghanistan, Rasmussen follows Amin’s narration of his story as he flees Kabul for Russia, gets stuck in Estonia, returns to Russia again, and finally, makes safe passage to Denmark. The film shifts between Amin in the present day, figuring out whether he’s ready to settle down with his partner, Kasper, and Amin telling the story of his past, which is tied up with the decisions about his future.

To read the full interview, get the book!

Click here for tickets.

Get your copy of Subjective realities

Now streaming

Quebexit - Prime Canada/US

One of the best (and funniest) Canadian films to premiere on the festival circuit last year is now streaming! It's a great satire of the Canadian military, the divide between the English and French (and how silly it is in the face of land theft from Indigenous people), and much more.

Here's an excerpt from my intro to my interview with director Joshua Demers:

When Québexit begins, Quebec has had another referendum to separate from Canada, only this time, the leave vote won by 51%, rather than the opposite. Quebec members of the Canadian military have immediately decided to take action: covering the Canadian flags on their uniforms, setting up checkpoints at the provincial borders, all while wondering why they haven’t seen their latest paycheck from the Canadian government. Their former (anglophone) colleagues in the Canadian army arrive on the scene to try to keep them in check; at first, the Quebec army’s primary concern seems to be to get people to tweet with the hashtag “#Québexit”.

Set entirely over a small patch of land at the Quebec-New Brunswick border, Québexit is a biting satire about the pettiness of French-English relations on land that they both stole from Indigenous people. The film doesn’t take sides so much as celebrate, or at least depict, the cultural and linguistic differences in Canada, the political issues these cause, and the bureaucratic silliness and chaos that it causes. It’s very funny and whip-smart, with Yuvens and Maurice, who also star, as particular standouts.

Read the full interview.

Céline Sciamma Fest

Céline Sciamma's new film, Petite Maman, is one of the very best films to premiere in 2021. It won't be rolling out widely in cinemas until 2022 (though watch this space for every early virtual screening we can find!), but that makes this a perfect time to catch up with her earlier films you've missed, or rewatch them again.

Fortunately, most of Sciamma's films are streaming right now (except for the ever-elusive Water Lilies) so here's a look at where you can watch them.

As you make your way through Sciamma's work, there's no better viewing companion than our ebook on her work — the first full-length study of Sciamma's work ever published — Portraits of resistance: The cinema of Céline Sciamma.

In the book, we explore how, in Céline Sciamma’s films, social outcasts take centre stage. Their gaze is centred as they learn to be themselves through interacting with nature (much of Tomboy takes place outside; the ocean is the backdrop to the story in Portrait), inhabiting women’s spaces (the changing rooms in Water Lilies; hotel rooms and bedrooms in Girlhood), and making connections with people who understand and accept them (the best friends in Water Lilies; Laure’s/Mickäel’s relationship with their younger sister in Tomboy; Girlhood’s girl gang; the romance between painter and subject in Portrait). Yet even these safe spaces cannot hold forever against the weight of societal prejudices and injustices.

Portraits of resistance, contains interviews with Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire actresses Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, as well as Sciamma’s sound editor. On top of that, essays from EIC Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, Associate Editor Brett Pardy, and writers Lena Wilson, Ben Flanagan, and Angelo Muredda will delve into what makes Sciamma’s films so special. Read entire chapters on Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011), and Girlhood (2014), plus several essays on Portrait, focusing on its exploration of the gaze of the two central lovers.

Praise for Portraits of resistance:

"Portraits of Resistance covers enormous ground, reading Sciamma's work as queer cinema, women's cinema, European cinema, looking at the both the stories and the aesthetics, and how Sciamma has already created distinct and unique films with a singular voice. Not only is it a great introduction for any who want to learn more about the filmmaker, it will be a cornerstone for any future Sciamma scholarship." - Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Screen Anarchy

"Fascinated by the ways in which women across continents and centuries create spaces of intimacy, Céline Sciamma stands as one of contemporary film's most necessary directors. Alex Heeney and Orla Smith have assembled a collection that does justice to the range of Sciamma's interests, talents, and achievements. Erudite and casual, Portraits of Resistance will force readers into an essential task: running back to watch every Sciamma film to see what they missed.” - Alfred Soto, Film Critic

Get your copy of Portraits of resistance

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - BBC iPlayer UK; Kanopy/Crave+ Canada; Kanopy/Hulu US; Stan AU... and many more worldwide

Here's an excerpt from my review:

Céline Sciamma’s gorgeous, heart-wrenching Portrait of a Lady on Fire screened on the first day of TIFF, and it became the gold standard by which I evaluated all other films. Watching The Burnt Orange Heresy, I kept thinking, not only how could you cast Elizabeth Debicki, who played Virginia Woolf just last year, as a muse, but in the year of Portrait of a Lady on Fire!? Why should I accept the sexism of Martin Eden, where every female character was an accessory, just because it’s from an early 1900s text, when Portrait of a Lady on Fire, set in the 1700s, gave me three complex women?

Sure, the brute force sound design of Sound of Metal was immersive, despite literally spelling out what it was doing for the audience with subtitles. But how could I be impressed with that when Sciamma’s Portrait almost invisibly used the crashing of waves to ratchet up tension; she also choreographed the rhythm of every step and breath her actors took, crucial to creating the film’s emotional maelstrom, and yet essentially imperceptible.

Setting Portrait of a Lady on Fire in the 1700s allowed Sciamma to create a heightened romance, what she referred to at TIFF as “cinema plus plus”: the costumes had to be carefully chosen because everyone wore the same thing throughout, the setting became all the more important and romantic, and the stakes for the romance were higher, too. Like Call Me by Your Name before it, Portrait is the story of a queer romance bound to a particular place and time — that it has an expiration date makes it no less intense or important.

Read the full review.

Girlhood - Criterion Channel in Canada + US, Kanopy/Showtime US, BFI Player UK, VOD AU

Here's an excerpt from my intro to my interview with Sciamma about the film:

Set in the Paris suburbs, the film follows a young black woman, Marieme (Karidja Touré), with a large family and an abusive brother. The world seems to be against her: her grades aren’t high enough to allow her to pursue the academic track she wanted; her home is a pressure cooker; and every decision she makes to empower herself has unintended, painful consequences. We follow her as she becomes a part of a group of rebellious girls, the Bande des Filles of the French title, where she finds support and her voice. It’s a wholly moving and touching story that’s a useful reminder that growing up is different for girls.

Read the full interview.

Tomboy - Mubi UK/Ireland/Austria/Germany, Tubi Canada, VOD AU, Kanopy US (and VOD on Microsoft)

Here's an excerpt from Lena Wilson's essay on Tomboy in the book:

The opening shot of Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy (2011) is a dreamy, sunlit view of the back of a child’s head. Next, sunshine filtering through green treetops, the child’s relaxed fingers stretching up to the light. Finally, a closeup on her pensive, androgynous face, eyes closed and short hair tousled by the wind as she enjoys a top-down car ride with her father. The day is silent and still but for the sounds of tires on pavement and birds singing. Her father, holding protectively to her leg, asks if she is okay. She says yes, and the film title flashes: first with the letters in blue, then in red, then with those colours alternating. That gendered colour-coding should be obvious to anyone who’s ever attended a baby shower, and Tomboy’s protagonist, Laure (Zoé Héran), lives most comfortably in that jumbly in-between. Tomboy seeks not to depict a female child easily recognizable as “girl,” nor a female child easily recognizable as “boy” — but rather, a female-bodied child recognizable as either.

Tomboy takes place in the summer before Laure begins to attend a new school — a fairytale space, an opportunity to reinvent oneself free of pre-existing expectations. Sciamma aligns this freedom with nature and the outdoors, conjuring a space where Laure can slip free of the strictures of gender itself. When Laure is able to exist just as she is — as a gender non-conforming child — she is most often enjoying nature, as in the film’s opening sequence. A shift that will bring Laure outdoors and closer to boyhood than ever before occurs early on in the film, when Laure meets Lisa (Jeanne Disson), a girl her age in her new building, and decides to introduce herself with a boy’s name: Mickäel. This leads to a pre-teen summer romance with Lisa, the only girl in the group. But is Laure really attracted to Lisa, or just to the way Lisa sees her as Mickäel? Is Laure not a “her” at all? Is Mickäel Laure’s true self? Or is Laure, as the title suggests, a tomboy – a boyish young girl? Is Laure a budding lesbian? Transgender person? Just a boy? Just a girl? Sciamma has said she’s not interested in answering these questions.Laure herself is not equipped to answer them. Different viewers may interpret Laure’s gender differently, too.

To read the full essay, get the book here.

Get your copy of Portraits of resistance

Happy watching!

Best,

Alex Heeney, Editor-in-Chief

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Quebexit, Céline Sciamma films, and more to watch this weekend