It’s like the opening of a Fringe episode!

I had trouble with this after moving to a new country. Not exactly an irl place but I found a subreddit for making friends in my city. It wasn’t particularly useful but they also had a discord for organising meet-ups which has been a huge help and led to making in-person friends

Worth a subscription
www.heinetwork.tv/on-cinema-at...

That's the 15 I watched at VIFFthis year! My favourites tied together in 1st are:
SIRĀT dir. Oliver Laxe
FUCKTOYS dir. Annapurna Sriram
NO OTHER CHOICE dir. Park Chan-wook

SIRĀT 📽️
My final film of the festival on the last night was this and I couldn't have been happier with that decision. There are turns in this story that truly blew me away. The use of sound and music rattled me to my core. A must-see with an audience if possible. I needed to go for a walk after.

Divine Intervention 📽️ Consistently amusing, slow-paced minimalist sketches. I immensely enjoyed being present in a Palestine of a different era. The film rebels with absurdist comedy and indirect confrontations with occupying forces - except for one extremely direct scene that is insanely memorable

I love Kafka but knew little about his life, so this was a good format for me. I could fill in the gaps with his fascinating and incomplete writing. Without this, the power + character of his prose isn't conveyed. Standout performance was Jenovéfa Boková - wish she had more of a presence in the film

FRANZ 📽️ depicts Kafka's personal frustrations and inability to communicate, juxtaposed with visions of a future in which he's a literary icon. In avoiding biopic tropes, this fails to integrate his work and worldview and remains oddly dissatisfying. Which I suppose is part of the point.