Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
TIFF 2024 has begun! And so has our podcast & our list of the best shorts
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Hello Reader, The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival kicks off today...and so does our coverage. On the website, I've published a list of 8 must-see shorts at the festival. I've also launched the TIFF 2024 Podcast Season! Whether you're at the festival, or following along at home, the season is for you. With themed episodes, I'll be putting several films in conversation to tease out some similar themes and ideas that films (from around the world) are exploring during the festival. The podcast will help you build your watchlist for future festivals (and releases), but also just offer an interesting survey of new world cinema, that's accessible (and spoiler-free!) even if you haven't seen the films or never plan to. The first episode, where I introduce the season and its purpose, is live now. 8 Must-See Short Films at TIFF 2024I've curated a list of 8 must-see short films. Many of these films will be making the rounds at festivals, so I suggest keeping an eye out for them at your local. The films come from Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Kosovo, the UK, and Croatia. Some are animated, nonfiction, musicals, and dramas. When they eventually make it to streaming (in a year or more!), I'll also keep you posted. Stay tuned for more updates from the festival on the website and on the podcast. You can bookmark those pages: Alex
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Seventh Row
Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
What do Mad Men, The Good Wife, Gossip Girl, and Looking have in common? Aside from being four of the best TV series of this century? (I said what I said.) On the surface, they look very different. Mad Men is about advertising creatives in 1960s New York. The Good Wife is about a Chicago lawyer rebuilding her career after years spent raising children. Gossip Girl (the OG one) is Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth — if it were about teenagers with smartphones. And Looking is about three gay...
On Sunday night at 9:15 pm, I filed into the InsideOut screening of Allan Deberton’s Gugu’s World, a Brazilian film about an 11-year-old queer boy growing up with his doting but ailing grandmother — after his father couldn’t accept him as he is. Earlier this year, the film premiered in the Berlinale’s Generation section — dedicated to films about young people, for young audiences — where it won the Crystal Bear for Best Film for audiences under 12. So why was it screening at 9:15 pm? And why...
There's a moment at the beginning of Lean on Pete that seems so naturalistic and incidental, it hadn't even occurred to me it might reveal a lot about the central character, Charley. On his way out for his morning run, Charley picks up a moving box lying on the ground in front of his house and puts it in a recycling bin. When I talked to writer-director Andrew Haigh about the film, I discovered that this moment was actually written into the script. As Haigh put it, "He’s leaving the house,...