In the world of cinema and amongst cinephiles of New York, if autumn is synonymous with the New York Film Festival (NYFF), then New Directors/New Films (ND/NF) means spring is in the air and a new season of the potentially future best and brightest is about to be ushered in. Taking place April 2 through April 13, the over 50-year-old festival of emerging new filmmakers also marks the long lasting collaboration between hosts, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Although for many of the FLC festivals throughout the year, such as the prestigious NYFF and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema they include some new talent, it is only the highly anticipated New Directors/New Films that is dedicated solely to revelatory new works and their fearless leaders (filmmakers), with an emphasis on “distinctive visions and risk-taking works highlight the vitality and potential of cinema.” To be sure, over the many decades history of ND/NF that standard has been met, with directors such as Win Winders (1972), Peter Greenaway (1978), Spike Lee (1983), Guillermo del Toro (1992), Jim McKay (2003) and Sarah Polley (2012), just to name a very few, that are boasted among the festival’s alumni. 

While this year the “risk-taking” criteria is definitely upheld, the quality level of writing and storytelling, and in some cases, execution, gave one pause. Is it the selection committee? Is it the submissions they had to choose from? Is it a lack of funding for aspiring directors? Or maybe it’s reflective of a generation of filmmakers influenced by quick hits from social media. Whatever it is, this reviewer and frequent festival goer was at times hard pressed to find plots and well-crafted stories and character development in some of this year’s selections that was previewed (Full disclosure: While I saw many of the films, I did not see everything selected).

There are a few very noteworthy exceptions. As such, this overview will focus on a couple of them.

“Stranger” by Zhengfan Yang is a collection of compelling vignettes that make one fantastic movie you won’t want to end. Any one of the shorts would probably make a good feature film and is worth the price of admission, but collectively, what a treat. From the opening story of two men being interrogated by agitated police for seemingly bogus reasons, you’re intrigued. Next, a personal favorite of a post-wedding photo session in which the groom indulges a major secret. Another vignette features a husband quizzing his very pregnant wife as to how to get through U.S. airport security questions under the guise of short-term travel. These and other scenarios unfold in “Stranger”, which makes commentary on China’s social, political, and economic identity while exploring themes of where and what is home. Yang uses long takes, without context no less, that manage to continuously captivate, surprise and delight. In fact, the last of the vignettes has absolutely no dialogue. The long continuous, probably one-take scene is of an apartment building in which the audience sees all the tenant’s front window and their various activities. It is all about the visual storytelling, with a bit of natural background sounds. 

Zhengfan seems as much a visual director as an actors director. He makes it hard to believe this is his first film. He is truly one to watch.

Stranger
Director/Writer: Zhengfan Yang
Stars: Jin Jing, Liguo Yuan 
Country: U.S./China/Netherlands/Norway/France, 113m
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese, and English with English subtitles

Another noteworthy selection hails from Lithuania/Latvia. “Drowning Dry” starts off as one thing- in the middle of a mix martial arts match and the locker room afterwards as the winner (Lukas) is surrounded by his family and close friends and their various reactions to his victory- leading viewers to assume it could be a story about the athlete, his sport and his wife’s anguish over it. But soon all the characters, made up of Lukas’ young family and his wife’s sister’s family, are at their shared vacation house in the country and the scene is set for fun, bonding as well as unexpected setbacks and eventual tragedies. Although not much seemingly happens beyond house cleaning, sparse jovial conversations, eating and swimming at the nearby lake, things take a turn, with a couple more twists for good measure.

Writer-director Laurynas Bareiša, an ND/NF returning participant, shoots in a non-linear format, which can be both confusing at times, but also intriguing and interesting. Through it, he presents certain characters’ experiences and their different memories of those experiences.

Title: Drowning Dry 
Director & Writer: Laurynas Bareiša, 2024, Lithuania/Latvia, 88m
Stars: Gemlike Glemzaite, Agne Kaktaite
Language: Lithuanian with English subtitles
Production company: Trickster Pictures

This year’s ND/NF will present 24 features and nine short films, including 20 North American or U.S. premieres. More information on New Directors/New Films and additional film selections can be found here: 

 A Classic Film Festival of New French Films
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If you can’t have springtime in Paris- as in actual Paris- Film Lincoln Center’s (FLC) Annual French film festival can give you the next best thing. Rendez-Vous With French Cinema, co-sponsored by Unifrance, is a welcome breath of fresh air showcasing a wide variety contemporary movies of French filmmakers, both new and emerging as well as established and revered. The 23 movie lineup over 10 days (March 6-16), covers multiple genres, but has a particular focus on drama, comedy and thrillers.

Some of the featured highlights include festival opener, “This Amies”/ “Three Friends” by Emmanuel Mouret. The film explores the complexities of friendship and romantic relationships through the perspectives of three close friends (played by Hair, Camille Cottin, and Sara Forestier). Each friend is experiencing specific life and romance milestone and enlists one another’s advice and support. On the surface and certainly through this film’s trailer, it appears to be almost a light hearted romp, but in actuality, “Three Friends” is a tender and poignant drama that both surprises and delights. In more of the thriller category and a personal favorite is “Les Fantomes”/ “Ghost Trail” directed by Jonathan Millet and featuring a quiet and powerful performance by Adam Bessa. Recently released from Syrian jail, Hamid (Bessa) is seemingly just going through the motions of life, working in construction in Strasbourg, but haunted by his taunted by his past in prison and obsessed by the man who tortured him. As a result, he strikes out to find him and exact revenge by joining a small unofficial network of like-minded people looking for justice for war crimes. Making its U.S. premiere is the six-episode documentary miniseries “DJ Mehdi: Made in France,” an in-depth and pulsating examination of the legacy of this huge talent and star. “DJ Mehdi” is directed by one of Mehdi’s closest friends, Thibaut de Longeville who, not surprisingly, got incredible access and footage.

In the category of quietly arresting is “Hiver à Sokcho”/ “Winter in Sokcho”. Twenty-something Son-ha (Bella Kim) works in a rustic hotel in a small Korean town.Having never met her French father, new emotions arise in her when artist Yan Kerrand (Roschdy Zem) arrives to stay at the hotel. The half-Korean literature student and the French outsider strike up a rapport, but Son-ha thinks she wants more and knows she needs answers regarding her father. This is an intimate and utterly alluring drama set against the rugged and wintry  background of this quiet sea-side town.

Also in the lineup is “Hors du temps”/ “Suspended Hours,” a new release and partially autobiographical movie from seasoned director Olivier Assayas (“Summer Hours”). Taking place during Covid lockdown of 2020, filmmaker Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne) retreats to a family house in the country, along with his music critic brother and their romantic partners. The brothers endure the stress of a global pandemic while navigating their current relationships and family memories and the arts. This seemingly has all the elements of a meaty family drama similar to Assayas’s masterpiece, “Summer Hours,” but unfortunately it falls short of that. Although at times charming and delightful, and other times a bit dramatic, the somewhat bland writing and one-dimensional characterizations make it difficult for the film to find its footing or its way to strike the right tone.

Other films directed by Rendez-Vous returning favorites that are sure not to disappoint, include the U.S. premiere of In “His Own Image” by Thierry de Peretti, a film where politics and romance meet at the intersection of a noble fight for justice and independence; “When Fall Is Coming” is the latest from legendary filmmaker François Ozon. It is a dark thriller about a retiree whose simple life in the country is not reflective of her complicated past. Just as welcome as returning directors to the festival are festival and French film favorite actors such as the great Vincent Lindon in not just one festival entry, but three: “Le Croix”/ “Cross Away,”“Jouer avec le feu”/ “The Quiet Son” and “The Second Act” / “Le Deuxième Acte” Also participating in the Rendezvous is Isabelle Huppert- small in stature but a giant of French cinema. She stars along with Hafsia Herzi, (“The Secret of the Grain), a relatively new actress with an already big appeal and acclaim. The two are paired up in “La Prisonniere de Bordeaux”/ “Visiting Hours”. This is a moving drama from Patricia Mazuy. Alma (Huppert) is an affluent housewife who meets working-class single mom, Mina (Herzi) during their visits to a prison where both of their husbands are serving time. Despite their different backgrounds, the two forge a bond, with Alma inviting Mina to move her family temporarily with her. It doesn’t take long before their friendship and trust are put to the test. This cinematic pairing is worth the price of admission.

With this being the festival’s 30th season, there seems to be no love lost between New York film goers and French cinema. Likewise, FLC has no plans to stop this annual showcase of beloved filmmakers and their art. Florence Almozini, Vice President of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center, said, “French cinema remains as inspiring as ever, with the strength, vitality, and depth of the films featured in the 30th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema serving as a testament to its enduring power… Film at Lincoln Center is proud to mark 30 years of presenting new French films to New York audiences, in collaboration with our long-standing partners at Unifrance.”

As with all the FLC festivals throughout the year, the directors and/or cast members will be in attendance and on hand for Q & A sessions after most screenings. There are also some festival talks that are free to the public and available online. For more festival information and tickets, go to https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/rendez-vous-with-french-cinema/#films

A haunting tip prompts a Los Angeles Times reporter to discover that as many as a half a million barrels of toxic waste had been dumped into the ocean in the 50s through the early 60s. Thus begins the career-defining investigative reporting work from Los Angeles Times environmental journalist Rosanna Xia. In 2020, she was the first to break the story of DDT chemicals dumped into the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Southern California. The alarming and important journalistic series has gone from the pages of the newspaper now to big screens throughout the country as the independent documentary, “Out of Plain Sight.” DDT was once a heralded and frequently used pesticide, particularly known for controlling insects and vectors of disease, like malaria. While many at the time assumed the dumped chemicals would just be absorbed by the water, having little or no impact, quite the opposite is the case, with the dangerous effects lingering, if not rearing its ugly head all these decades later. To contradict an old turn of phrase that reporter Xia brings up in the film, dilution is NOT a solution to pollution.
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One of the earlier scenes from the documentary is of a wildlife veterinary team rescuing a sea lion washed ashore on a Southern California. It is one of many rescues of late in which the symptoms are the same: a sickly, middle-aged sea lion whose body is racked with cancer. As team member/veterinarian and cancer researcher, Alissa Deming explains how troubling these rescues and finding are. “When you say that 25 per cent of the sea lions we see in our hospital have cancer, that would be a ridiculously high rate even in a human hospital. It’s very abnormal to have a wildlife species, especially these young adults developing a cancer at such a high prevalence. They’re telling us something is going on in the environment.” What’s been going on, as the documentary reveals, is long term effects of the DDT toxic dumping by California Salvage as hired by Montrose Chemical Corporation.

Also early on in Xia’s exploration, are the questions she poses to herself and her editor that serve as catalyst for the investigation. “Is this (toxic dumping) an unknown chapter of history or a forgotten chapter of history?” She, along with the audience, quickly realize that this was not at all a secret. In fact, it was legal and sanctioned. If anything was a secret or unknown until recently, is the fact that what was originally thought of barrels of the chemical used for the dumping, was actually more of a measurement. In reality, the DDT waste was directly poured into the ocean. Since the uncovering of the DDT-related marine issues, a combination of federal and state funding has been dedicated to studying the full scope of the issues at hand. Next steps will involve research for solutions.

Xia who also serves as the film’s producer/director, takes viewers along as she interviews various scientists and experts that are gathering information on the situation and looking for solutions. Soon after the LA Times agreed to partner on the project, Xia joined forces with director Daniel Straub and a small, but experienced film team “with a track record of documenting issues with compassion and nuance.” According to Xia, they came up with a unique approach. “We agreed to approach each filming day as journalism first, which allowed my reporting to open doors that would otherwise have been impossible. Most notably, to bring the audience to hard-to-reach spaces across the silos of science, we pared down the film crew to only three people: myself, Straub and our cinematographer, who doubled as our film editor and deftly operated just one camera in the field.”

While there are a lot of academic-like, science-y type interviews, as to be expected, that at times can pull the average, non-science viewer out for just a bit, they are, thankfully, not done in the traditional “talking heads” format. Instead, the interviewees are in their environment talking things over with and explaining issues to Xia. The viewer gets the sense of following a reporter in the midst of uncovering the story. “We transcended the conventional documentary approach by replacing the sit-down interview with deeply-felt reflections that were captured at sea, in the lab, and during the process of my reporting. We spent entire weeks learning the rhythms of wildlife – and felt their suffering firsthand as we sought to give their lives meaning beyond death,” describes Xia. The film’s style and approach, coupled with the disturbing, yet invaluable information, and shot in way that is richly layered and deeply engaging, make for a vital addition to environmental storytelling. “Out of Plain Sight” is a documentary worth seeking out when at an independent theater and film festival near you, or when available for streaming.

April 21 - Roxy Theater,  Missoula, Montana  at 7:15pm, with filmmakers Q & A to follow.
April 23 - Roxy Theater,  Missoula, Montana  at 7:45pm, with filmmakers Q&A to follow
April 25 - San Diego Asian Film Festival/Ultrastars Cinema Mission Valley at 7pm

Directors: Rosanna Xia & Daniel Straub
Country: United States
Language: English
Run time: 1 hour 34 minutes
Production companies: LA Times Studios, Sypher Studios
Trailer - https://www.outofplainsight.com/about#trailer

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