TIFF Reviews: A Cannes prize-winner, a Korean action comeback, Kaniehtiio Horn directs & more

The 2024 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival began on Sept. 5 and runs through Sept. 15.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

It’s difficult to separate Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig from the fate of its director. Shortly after it was announced that the film would screen at Cannes earlier this year, Rasoulof was sentenced by the Islamic Republic to eight years in prison, along with whipping and a fine. He was able to escape Iran and find refuge in a safe house in Germany.

It doesn’t take long for paranoia to set in in The Seed of the Sacred Fig. After being promoted as an investigative judge within the Iranian regime’s justice system, Iman (Misagh Zare) finds his life falling out of balance. Set during the 2022 protests after the death of Mahsa Amini whle she was in police custody, the film veers from familial drama to outright horror film. With increased pressure to uphold the regime and the impossible standards of morality now imposed on the family unit, Iman’s wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and his daughters Rezvan (Setareh Maleki) and Sana (Mahsa Rostami) struggle with Iman’s new role, particularly amidst rising political unrest. 

As the family unit devolves within the film, we see the slow unravelling of truth within a repressive regime. Iman is tested immediately after his promotion to sign death sentences without evaluating facts. His daughters watch brutal TikToks and Instagram videos of police violence as the TV news program characterizes protesters as agitators and criminals. Even as they witness violence firsthand, they’re pressured and coerced into concealing and subverting reality as they witness it. 

Najmeh is initially presented as a quasi-villain. She believes in the regime and proudly adapts her life to suit their new stature. Yet, as the film progresses, we understand how she’s motivated by fear and a desire to protect her daughters from harm. While she initially seems to believe that proximity to power and obedience to the state will protect her family, it becomes increasingly clear that her loyalty will not be rewarded. As the film enters its harrowing final act, paranoia rips through the household. With shades of Nicolas Ray’s suburban nightmare Bigger Than Life, about a father’s mental collapse under the pressure to uphold the American dream, we see similar shades of a social home invasion film. The private realm of the perfect family unit becomes a resonant and horrifying metaphor for an empire of violence and repression. Like Ray’s film, the movie invokes poetry and metaphors as a means of connecting the micro with the macro, in one of the year’s most compelling films. (Justine Smith)

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is scheduled to open in Montreal in November. 

Seven Days

Written by Mohammad Rasoulof, whose film The Seed of the Sacred Fig is also screening at the festival, Seven Days is a harrowing portrait of resilience and resistance. Vishka Asayesh stars as Maryam, a women’s rights activist in Iran who has been in prison for six years due to her political actions. Given a rare seven-day medical leave, Maryam is temporarily freed in order to treat a heart problem. Unbeknownst to her or the authorities, her brother and husband are plotting to smuggle her out of the country so she can reunite with her two children in Germany.

Torn between her obligation to her country and her family, Maryam must choose between remaining in Iran or returning to Germany. She nonetheless undertakes the difficult journey of escape with the promise to reunite, however briefly, with the children she hasn’t seen in years.

Stylistically veering from contemporary melodrama stylings, particularly within scenes that emphasize the family, and a naturalistic approach to her escape, Seven Days becomes a moral play on revolutionary responsibility. While often more successful as a document of a political moment than a gripping work of fiction, the movie maintains a consistent and relevant tension. Maryam’s reluctance to abandon her political life, even if it means she remains behind bars, is at the heart of the drama. Invoking her fight for women’s rights, the film effectively conveys that the difficulty of her decision is also weighted by her gender. She even asks her husband at one point whether people be so willing to challenge her decision to stay and fight if she were a man.

Perhaps the most interesting element of Seven Days, though, exists in the film’s most intimate moments. Maryam’s political struggle is deeply connected to identity. Director Ali Samadi Ahadi successfully balances the specifics of Maryam’s story with broader questions about the value and challenges of political resistance. Leaving behind her country doesn’t just mean abandoning (as she sees it) her struggle, but also resituating her sense of self. Leaving Iran means leaving behind her life, her language and her home. It’s not just a question of nationhood but personhood as well. (Justine Smith)

Seven Days does not currently have a scheduled Montreal release date. 

Dahomey

With her first feature film since her Cannes contender Atlantics, Mati Diop uses the documentary form in unusual ways to weave together a narrative about heritage, colonialism and identity. In November 2021, 26 treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) were returned. The arrival of these artefacts — just a dozen among thousands of stolen items, pilfered in the late 1800s by French soldiers — in their ancestral home represents a moment of intense and contentious public debate. Challenging the confines of nonfiction, Diop structures the film around the narration of one of the statues, a likeness of King Ghézo, whose mystical and all-seeing eye offers context and perspective on the events.

As the film opens in Paris, the handful of items are packaged by museum workers. Their journey from darkness to light draws the viewer into their perspective, imbuing the relics and art with life. As we re-emerge in Benin, the country is decorated with celebratory posters and banners welcoming the statues home. Much of the second half of Dahomey takes place in the halls of the University of Abomey-Calavi, where students debate the significance of the event. Some are jubilant, pleased by the opportunity to witness history. Others are melancholic, even angry, as they express frustration over the continued colonial significance of the return. As most of the statues and works remain in Paris, is this gesture merely a means to pacify or a sincere effort at reconciliation?

Diop’s skill as a filmmaker allows Dahomey to transcend mere documentation. She breathes life not only into the statues but into Benin. In the film’s final chapter, we see Benin through the eyes of King Ghézo. It’s a scintillating and poetic sequence of movement and intimacy through city streets overflowing with people. Capturing the loneliness of this long-dead king returning home to a land that is no longer familiar, with his jubilance of reuniting with his people, the sequence situates the viewer in the now. It’s a movie not only about contemporary Africa, but an Africa of the future. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. (Justine Smith)

Dahomey does not currently have a scheduled Montreal release date. 

I, The Executioner

When Veteran was released in 2015, it quickly became one of the most successful Korean films of all time. Nine years later, writer and director Ryoo Seung-wan brings back Hwang Jung-min as the beloved veteran police detective Seo Do-cheol, pitting the police against a serial killer in an action-packed crowd-pleaser. Putting most American action films to shame, this impossibly stylish film dazzles from its earliest moments. With extravagant camera movements, lush saturated colour and an indecently charismatic cast, I, The Executioner has nary a dull moment. While this devotion to entertaining can often come at the expense of narrative connectedness, the experience is no more incoherent than the drab and dull excuses that pass for action in contemporary American cinema. 

While the movie could have been an all-timer if the script were a little stronger, it doesn’t allow itself to get lost in the details. There are some missed opportunities for added suspense and clarity, but the story takes a conscious backseat to formalist play. If the movie is at times confusing, it’s quickly forgotten as the movie moves from one set piece to another. Each action sequence is startling in its ridiculousness and originality, and will be an absolute treat for action fans thirsting for extravagance. While perhaps lacking in substance and operating quite openly as copaganda, the movie won’t disappoint fans of Veteran. For audiences who haven’t seen the first film, though, no worries — I, The Executioner is completely self-contained. While recommended, it’s not necessary to have seen the first film. (Justine Smith)

I, The Executioner does not currently have a scheduled Montreal release date. 

Seeds

Known for roles on shows like Hemlock Grove, Letterkenny and Reservation Dogs, Kaniehtiio Horn is one of the most compelling actors working in Canada. Equally talented working in comedy and drama, Horn has that intangible star quality. Effortlessly likeable, she has a naturalism that easily confuses the line between actor and character. With Seeds, she makes her feature film debut as a director with a world premiere in TIFF’s Discovery section.

In recent years, TIFF has become a landing ground for many actors’ directorial efforts. Last year, we saw the disastrous attempts of Michael Keaton’s Knox Goes Away and Finn Wolfhard’s Hell of a Summer. Often a showcase for the festival’s worst stargazing impulses, quality often takes a backseat to notoriety when it comes to actors turned directors. It only makes Horn’s feature directorial (and writing) debut all the more impressive as she translates her likability, timing and audaciousness to create one of the most exciting Canadian genre films in recent memory.

Horn stars as Ziggy, a burgeoning influencer and part-time delivery driver on the brink of a big break. Just as she signs an important contract that could launch her career, though, she’s called back to housesit on the rez. Pulled outside of her feedback loop of adoring social media fans, she becomes the immediate victim of notoriously spotty reservation internet and her cousin’s warnings that she’s made a deal with the enemy.

What begins as a kind of loose, hang-out comedy soon turns into a bloodsoaked horror film. By leaning on humour and drawing out absurdity from even its darkest elements, Horn manages to reconcile otherwise challenging tonal shifts to create a film that’s homey and entertaining, while also a powerful warning against predatory corporations that aim to quash traditional practices and natural life cycles. The film succeeds in large part due to the film’s incredible sense of timing; Seeds has the cadence and rhythm of a great comedy, reflected not only through performance, but editing and composition. It’s a movie that does things simply but well, creating a comedy-horror that is bound to be a future classic of the genre. (Justine Smith)

Seeds is scheduled to open in Montreal in October. 

Mistress Dispeller

Before the story begins, a warning sets the stage: “In China, people who discover their spouse is cheating can hire professionals to break up the affair. This documentary follows a real, unfolding case of ‘mistress dispelling.’ Everyone agreed to participate both at the beginning and end of production, as their understanding of the film and the mistress dispeller’s role evolved over time.” With this unsettling preface, Mistress Dispeller takes us into an intimate and strikingly complex world of love, betrayal and manipulation in modern-day China. Directed by Elizabeth Lo, the film follows a middle-aged wife, a woman who, after uncovering her husband’s affair with a younger woman, takes an unconventional approach to win him back. She hires Wang Zhenxi, a “mistress dispeller,” a professional who goes undercover to break up the affair from the inside. Lo’s unintrusive, fly-on-the-wall approach offers private access to the messy entanglements at play. 

Often funny and using genuine intimate introspective moments of private life and rich visual metaphors to dissect the institution of marriage and interpersonal relationships in deeply surprising ways, Elizabeth Lo crafts exquisitely framed shots and sequences that carry significant thematic and symbolic weight. Her respectful lens captures the nuanced performances of the real-life individuals, offering a fair and honest portrayal without passing judgement. Co-Editor Charlotte Munch Bengtsen and Lo enhance the storytelling with a keen sense of pacing and rhythm, ensuring the narrative unfolds with the right balance of tension and empathy.

What sets Mistress Dispeller apart is its ability to evoke empathy for all parties involved while making the audience active voyeuristic conspirators in the drama. Spending time with the young mistress, we can’t help but feel for her: filled with love and loneliness, the camera makes us silent accomplices as we witness private personal moments that blur the lines between right and wrong. The husband comes off as very sweet and his internal struggle is palpable. He’s torn between his love for his wife and his strong feelings for his mistress Fei Fei. More than a tale of infidelity, this documentary is a compelling look at the lengths people will go to to preserve love and the intricate dance of modern relationships. (Chico Peres Smith)

Mistress Dispeller does not currently have a scheduled Montreal release date. 

For more on the Toronto International Film Festival, please visit the TIFF website.

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