10 films to see at FNC
With 340 films (138 features) over 11 days — including many prizewinners from the world’s top film festivals — the 45th Festival du nouveau cinéma offers a ton to choose from. To help guide you through the madness, here are 10 movies to put on your must-see list.
1. American Honey (Oct. 6 at 7 p.m., Cinéma du Parc)
Andrea Arnold’s sensorially charged look at youth culture gone wild, starring newcomer Sasha Lane as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who finds freedom with a travelling, party-hard crew of teenage magazine-sellers. Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize.
2. Neruda (Oct. 7 at 6:30 p.m., Quartier Latin)
Gael García Bernal plays a police inspector on the hunt for famed Chilean poet and politician Pablo Neruda in Pablo Larraín’s latest feature looking into his country’s past.
3. Ceux qui font des révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau (Oct. 8 at 7 p.m., Imperial)
Mathieu Denis continues to mine Quebec’s political climate for inspiration with his latest. Set amid the student protests of the Printemps érable, it won best Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival.
4. X Quinientos (Oct. 9 and 13 at 6 p.m., Quartier Latin)
Colombian filmmaker Juan Andrés Arango Garcia’s first film La Playa D.C. premièred at Cannes in 2012. Now based in Montreal, the filmmaker’s followup looks at the struggles of three migrants in three different countries: Colombia, Mexico and Canada.
5. Toni Erdmann (Oct. 10 at 4 p.m., Cinéma du Parc; Oct. 12 at 8 p.m., Quartier Latin)
Garnering huge buzz among critics upon premièring in competition at Cannes, German director Maren Ade’s hilarious and touching dramedy about a kooky father’s attempt to reconnect with his allbusiness adult daughter is one of the year’s best films.
6. Gimme Danger (Oct. 10 at 9:15 p.m., Quartier Latin)
Indie auteur Jim Jarmusch’s new fiction feature Paterson premièred in competition at Cannes, while this in-depth documentary on Iggy Pop’s proto-punk band The Stooges opened in the fest’s midnight section.
7. Antiporno (Oct. 10 at 9:30 p.m. and Oct. 15 at 5:15 p.m., Cinéma du Parc)
Japanese auteur Sion Sono appears as crazy as ever with his latest, an anarchist/feminist rampage of sex and insanity. Also at the festival is Arata Oshima’s documentary The Sion Sono.
8. The Woman Who Left (Oct. 11 at 1 p.m., Pavillon JudithJasmin Annexe; Oct. 16 at 7 p.m., Cinémathèque québécoise)
Clocking in at nearly four hours, Filipino director Lav Diaz’s blackand-white revenge tale won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It’s the story of a schoolteacher released from prison, after 30 years, for a murder she didn’t commit.
9. Shadows of Paradise (Oct. 11 at 9:30 p.m. and Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m., Cinéma du Parc)
Montrealer Sebastian Lange looks at transcendental meditation through the twisted mind of David Lynch and fellow director/ practitioner Bobby Roth.
10. The Handmaiden (Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m., Imperial)
The twisted universe of South Korea’s Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) finds a civilized facade in this period piece about a female grifter and her boss out to swindle a naive heiress. Sex, deception and depravity ensue.