The Shaman's Apprentice, This is Going to Hurt, and more to watch this weekend

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If you're in Canada, one of the best shorts from TIFF,The Shaman's Apprentice, is now streaming free. In Canada, the US, and beyond, catch up with Berlinale favourite Mr Bachmann and His Class. If you're in the UK, catch the new Céline Sciamma film, Petite Maman, on Mubi, and watch the best TV show of the year, This is Going to Hurt, on BBC iPlayer.

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Petite Maman

Mubi UK; coming in April to cinemas in North America

We wrote a book on Sciamma's previous film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, so we were of course thrilled to see her latest, Petite Maman, at the Berlinale earlier this year. It was our favourite film at the festival.

Click here to get your copy of the Sciamma book.

Even if France has once again overlooked Sciamma's work as their Oscar submission, make no mistake: a new Sciamma film is always a BIG DEAL. You won't want to miss it. It's likely not out until 2022 in North America, but why wait? It's fantastic and eminently rewatchable.

Here's an excerpt from my Berlinale review:

In Céline Sciamma’s fifth feature, Petite Maman, getting to know your mother is like chasing after a ghost. Parents are elusive, in life and death, living in an adult world that, as a child, you only ever get to visit. The disconnect between parent and child is in the constantly moving camera of the opening scene, which follows eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) as she says goodbye to the many women in the hospital where her grandmother recently died, chasing the goodbye she didn’t get to have with her own grandmother. And in the first moment of stillness, when Nelly’s mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), looks out the window of her mother’s room, at the grass and trees below, exhaustedly resting on a table, as if she might find her mother outside. As the camera pulls back, we feel the weight of Marion’s grief — and Nelly’s absence from the frame. They’re both experiencing loss, but it’s not quite a joint experience. Mother and daughter are moving at different speeds, in different rhythms. The camera reveals Nelly’s perspective, watching from behind, aware of her mother’s slumped physique, but unable to reach it.

Leaving the hospital, Nelly, Marion, and Nelly’s father (Stéphane Varupenne) head to Nelly’s grandmother’s house to pack it up and close out that chapter of their lives. The house feels haunted with secrets, the furniture covered with sheets, the contents of the home unknown to Nelly, as the hallways are shrouded in shadows. Like the house in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, it’s a former home for the protagonist’s obsession — be it love interest or parent — and a new place for the protagonist. It’s also a ghost of its former self. The only rooms Marianne (Noémie Merlant) enters in Portrait of a Lady on Fire are her own and the kitchen — both devoid of memories — while for Nelly, it’s the house that represents a time in her mother’s life — childhood — now lost, and the home of someone — her grandmother — now entirely gone.

Read the full review.

Get the ebook on Céline Sciamma

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

Mr. Bachmann and His Class

Mubi Canada/US and many other countries except UK; UK release in the spring

This four-hour fly-on-the-wall doc will go by so fast you won't believe that the runtime was this long. It was one of our favourites at Berlin last year.

A smiling teacher sits among his laughing, young students, next to a guitar, in Mr. Bachmann and His Class.

Here's Orla on the film:

The three-and-a-half-hour length of Maria Speth’s documentary, Mr. Bachmann and His Class, might make you think of the work of Frederick Wiseman. But Mr. Bachmann is less interested in institutions than it is in character growth. Over the course of one school year, Speth follows Dieter Bachmann, a soon-to-be-retired school teacher, and his last class of pupils.

In the small and rural city of Stadtallendorf, Germany, many of the pupils are immigrants or children of immigrants, and for some, German isn’t their first language. In an education system that might otherwise cast these children aside, Bachmann carves a space for them to grow. His unconventional teaching methods — allowing naps during school time, holding musical jamming sessions with the pupils — nurture the kids. He encourages open dialogue in his classroom as a way to teach his kids empathy and to persuade the higher achieving amongst them to help those who are struggling. It’s a film that, I’m sure, will encourage many people to become teachers, because it shows how much of a difference one teacher can make if they’re willing to fight for their students.

The Shaman's Apprentice

CBC Gem Canada, coming soon to international film festivals.

C.J. Prince named this one of the best shorts at TIFF 2021. It's now streaming free across Canada on CBC Gem, with some international film festival showcases on the way.

A still of stop motion, in which two Inuk men crawl through a tunnel of ice in Angakusajaujuq - The Shaman's Apprentice, one of the best shorts at TIFF 2021.

Here's C.J . on the film:

Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk (most famously known for Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, 2001) delves into animation with his latest work Angakusajaujuq – The Shaman’s Apprentice). He uses stop motion to show a shaman and her apprentice as they enter the underworld to help cure an ailing man. Kunuk has no issues with the transition into animation. Shooting in Scope with multiple closeups, he puts an emphasis on facial expressions to create a more cinematic experience. It also provides him an opportunity to be more imaginative, creating vivid portrayals of massive, man-eating creatures and people separating their physical and spiritual selves that would be difficult to pull off with live action. Even more of a surprise is how assured and playful Kunuk’s direction is, using the liminal space of the underworld to blend in 2D drawings and other forms of animation before using a series of tableaus for the climax. It’s one of the most engaging shorts in this year’s programme.

This is Going to Hurt

BBC iPlayer; coming soon to AMC+ US

Ben Whishaw acting at you for 7 hours straight with both comedy and drama... what more could you want?! We were getting a drip feed of press previews in December and going nuts waiting for the next episode to drop (both Orla and I read the book in the interim because the wait was brutal!). Fortunately, all 7 episodes are on iPlayer now so you can zoom right through it. Orla mentions it's very funny (it is), but expect to cry at least once, too. It's Ben Whishaw, after all!

I swear it's not hyperbole when I say this is probably the best show of 2022; I realise I am saying this in February. Stay tuned for a members only podcast episode on the show in the coming weeks!

Here's Orla on the show:

If you, like me, are extremely depressed about your country’s healthcare system (whether UK or otherwise), This is Going to Hurt is going to give you a lot of feelings. Written by former doctor Adam Kay, based on his own memoir, This is Going to Hurt stars the AMAZING Ben Whishaw as a fictionalised Adam Kay. The show’s Adam is a Junior Doctor on a labour ward, dealing with the everyday chaos and challenges of life working in the NHS.

As well as being pretty hilarious at times, this show (surely an early contender for best show of the year) will make you angry and upset. It does a brilliant job of showing the structural failings of the severely underfunded NHS, and how, as a result, doctors basically aren’t allowed social lives and are expected to work horribly long hours while running on empty. The show is set in the mid-2000s, so it’s depressing to watch it now, when the NHS is even more overwhelmed by the shit show that is Covid. The show is a total empathy machine for healthcare workers; it does the vital job of getting you to understand just how impossible a job it is, at a time when the country really needs to understand that. But like I said, it’s also very funny, and it has to be, or you’d spend the whole thing sobbing.

Happy watching!

Best,

Alex Heeney, Editor-in-Chief

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