DEPICTING SOCIAL STRUGGLE THROUGH A TALE ABOUT RATS
Palestine fest and Denis Villeneuve celebration among screen options
Rat Film: Not to be confused with the new American indie drama Beach Rats or Morgan Spurlock’s similarly themed Netflix doc Rats, Rat Film may in fact be the boldest entry in this recent surge of vermin-related filmmaking. In his ingenious debut fulllength mix of doc and essay film — which first played Toronto at Hot Docs and returns for a one-night engagement this weekend — Baltimore photographer and director Theo Anthony explores the parallels between his hometown’s efforts to curtail its rat problems with a subtler and more insidious campaign to isolate and disempower the city’s African-American community. Deftly drawing connections between seemingly disparate matters of science, urban planning, animal control, Black Lives Matter and Baltimore’s very unique personality, Anthony’s film gets additional layers of weirdness thanks to the creepy electronic score by Baltimore musician Dan Deacon and Maureen Jones’ deadpan narration. Rat Film plays the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Friday with Anthony in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. Toronto Palestine Film Festival: Founded in 2008, the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) is an annual celebration of not just Palestinian cinema but Palestinian music, cuisine, art and literature, too. As expected, the slate for this weekend’s edition at TIFF Bell Lightbox and other venues is nothing if not wideranging. Along with Canadian and Toronto premieres for such films as
Waiting for Giraffe — a documentary about a veterinarian’s quest to bring new giraffes to the Qalqilya Zoo — the TPFF includes an author talk by Hala Alyan and Leila Abdelrazaq and a concert by the Trio Joubran with percussionist Youssef Hbeich at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. Both those events take place on Saturday. TPFF then closes on Sunday with
Junction 48, a drama about an aspiring Arab rap star that earned some love at TIFF 2016. Director Udi Aloni and star Tamer Nafar will be at the Lightbox for a Q&A and a special performance.
High Concept: The Films of Denis
Villeneuve: Timed to give moviegoers a working knowledge of one of Canada’s preeminent auteurs right before the release of his very highly anticipated new film Blade Runner
2049, High Concept: The Films of Denis Villeneuve opens Tuesday at the Lightbox. The retrospective offers chances for moviegoers who only know the director from recent hits like Sicario and Arrival to investigate such equally arresting early works as 2000’s Maelstrom, a surreal drama that includes amazing performances by both Marie-Josée Croze and a talking fish, and 2009’s Polytech
nique, Villeneuve’s stylistically austere yet deeply affecting portrayal of the 1989 massacre at Montreal’s École Polytechnique. Other highlights of the series are Villeneuve’s rarely screened 1998 debut feature August
32nd on Earth and his early short REW-FFWd.
Let There Be Light: An official selection at the Hot Docs and SXSW film fests, the new Canadian documentary Let There Be Light returns for a week-long run this week. Directors Mila Aung-Thwin and Van Royko aim to enlighten (ha!) viewers with a look at the efforts by some of the science world’s most talented minds to create alternative energy sources, including an artificial sun. Let There Be
Light opens Friday at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
MDFF moves to the Lightbox: Along with making some of the strongest indie films to emerge from Toronto this decade — including Kazik Radwanski’s terrific new short Scaffold, which plays the New York Film Festival next week — the MDFF (Medium Density Fibreboard Films) team has introduced local cinephiles to many remarkable movies by other filmmakers too via its screening series MDFF Selects. After a few years at the Royal, it’s now moved to TIFF Bell Lightbox. The first film to screen in
The Toronto Shorts International Film Festival presents a robust slate of Canadian and international minimovies at AGO’s Jackman Hall until Sunday.
The Carlton’s weeklong engagement for The Terminator begins Friday.
The Toronto Film Society presents an old-time musical-comedy double bill of Irene and Fashions of 1934 at the Carlton on Sunday. Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the
Valley of the Wind plays Sunday and Wednesday at Cineplex’s Studio Ghibli series in participating locations.
And for those about to rock, select Cineplex locations present the new concert docs Slipknot: Day of the Gusano on Monday and Black Sab
bath: The End of the End on Thursday.