DUMBO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW
After an amazing weekend at the Dumbo Film Festival in Brooklyn, New York, let's break it down!
We’re back from the DUMBO FILM FESTIVAL!!! I had the most incredible weekend in Brooklyn watching so many phenomenal works of art. If you’re not familiar with film festivals or the ins-and-outs of how they work, you should check out last week’s post here.
The festival was hosted at the Stuart Cinema and Café, a small movie theater with just one screen and a few rows of seats. It was an incredibly intimate environment where the ~20 of us at each session (with people coming in and out throughout) got to experience great film.
There was a huge variety in content in every possible way. I saw works from all over the world in over a dozen languages. Everything from high-octane espionage thrillers , to children’s animated stories, to real-life documentaries, to experimental work (including a 30-minute long black and white ‘nature documentary’ of 2 people dressed up as animals).
(last year’s trailer because they haven’t posted this year’s yet)
Like I said last week, the beauty in shorts is in their flexibility. The structure of film shorts gives artists so much freedom to innovate. They’re not bound by studio interests or a set run-time to fill, they have no need to neatly fill in a plot and storyline. A short can be as simple as two people chatting in a restaurant, of two people rehearsing for a play, of a refugee going to school. It’s real life. These feel like real humans on the screen, not just characters.
The best part of the festival were the Q&A’s with the invited filmmakers and actors. There was one short where I was just wowed by the main actress’s performance, and it turns out she was sitting right next to me the entire time!
I watched around 30 total pieces this weekend. I’m going to discuss my favorites below, what they were about, and what stood out to me the most about them! I’ll try to share links to watch where possible, but most of these aren’t available online.
Favorite works of the weekend:
Masel Tov Cocktail (2020) dir. Arkadij Khaet, Mickey Paatzsch (Germany)
Hands down my favorite of the weekend. In a still anti-semitic Germany taking in thousands of Jewish refugees from fallen Soviet states, Russian-Jewish teen Dima gets into a school fight. In the aftermath, he breaks the fourth wall and walks us, the viewer, through just how absurd this country is. This was laugh-out-loud funny and carried by Alexander Wertmann’s performance. I loved every second of this and could’ve watched a full 2 hours of his character.
Laut Memanggilku (The Sea Calls for Me) (2021) dir. Tumpal Tampubolon (Indonesia)
A young boy lives alone in a destitute fishing village, making money by collecting trash on the coastline and waiting for his father to come back home. One day, he finds and repairs a sex doll. This premise may sound bizarre but this was one of the most touching pieces of the weekend. This boy, less than 10 years old with no one in his life, clings to this doll for his only sense of human connection. To see that so sharply juxtaposed with what we know is the true nature of the doll is just a heart-wrenching thing to see.
Bacon ‘n’ Laces dir. Stephen Michael Simon
A documentary about a blind-owner of a deli and his three kids. This was a good reminder that documentaries are all about human stories, which need not be depressing or soul-crushing. This was a heart-warming piece of work and a reminder that cool people are everywhere if you look hard enough. The director did a Q&A after and discussed how, as a documentary filmmaker, you shoulder an immense responsibility to tell someone else’s story after becoming so close with them. He talked about how he’s still in a groupchat with the guy’s kids years after finishing filming, and how the eldest son now works at a hedge fund after going to Harvard (of course). (Watch the documentary here)
Matar a Pinochet (Kill Pinochet) (2020) dir. J.J. Sabatini (Chile)
In 1986 Chile, a guerilla Communist group seeks out to assassinate the tyrant Pinochet. This was a movie that certainly could’ve been a huge blockbuster thriller, with loads of action scenes and huge setpieces. Instead, its small-scale elevated it to a kind of thriller I’d never seen before. Every character felt viscerally real on screen, and I found myself caring far more about them than I did their actual plan of assassination. Dark, gritty, foreboding. The effects that being a guerilla fighter has on the psyche.
Me to Play (2021) dir. Jim Bernfield
Two aging actors with Parkinson's rehearsal Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," an absurdist play about two men awaiting the ends of their lives. Jim Bernfield spoke after this showing about his father, who died from Parkinson’s. He described the difficulty of telling a story so personal to himself, while staying true to the actors at the center of it. It was a tough watch but uplifting at its core.
Black Slide (2021) dir. Uri Lotan (Israel)
A young boy sneaks into the scariest waterslide in the world, which prepares him for the trauma that comes at home. This animated short was filmed like a kid’s TV show but with content that transcended far deeper. The kid’s fear of the waterslide paralleled so well with his struggles at home, and the short cuts back and forth between the two.
Le Monde en Soi (The World Within) (2020) dir. Jean-Clark Finke, Sandrine Stoïanov (France)
While preparing for her first exhibition, a young painter commits so passionately to her creations that she loses touch with reality and descends into hallucinatory chaos. Confined in a clinic, she progressively rebuilds herself through painting and the daily observation of a squirrel. This was also animated but in the same style as the woman’s paintings. Just gorgeously made, and it was particularly disturbing to see the scenes of her mental breakdown painted in the same style as her art.
Hey, Night dir. Taha Long
In the dead of night, a lonely cop searching for his missing cat and an immigrant driver make an unlikely connection. This was one of my favorite experiences of the theater – I remember watching and thinking the driver’s performance was one of my favorites of the weekend. Turns out the actress was sitting right next to me the entire time – she went up for Q&A and we spoke after! Just a remarkable experience all around.
I am still so grateful that I got to go to a film festival like this. I implore you – check out a local film festival! It’s the easiest and most low-stakes way to get into the artform, and you’ll almost certainly find something that resonates. Thank you again to the Dumbo Film Festival team for having me and I cannot wait to come next year!
See you all again next week. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.
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