The formal device is effective and accomplished, and keeps the pace and appeal over the film’s concise run-time of barely an hour. Just a few detail shots (hands doing paperwork, smartphone screens, an insufficiently topped-up travel card being scanned…) break the rigid visual form.
In Sachs’ work all I find – and all I want to find – is respectful practice. There is more than just an artist at work, here, there is a generous exploration at play.
The scope of the turbid phenomenon of kidnappings, killings, forced disappearance, and other atrocities committed daily for decades in Mexico, under democracy, is hard to fathom, and the vast majority of the cases, especially the hundreds of thousands of humble, low-profile victims will never be elucidated.
Neille and Poplak’s plot deftly jumps between the different locations and timelines, creating the feeling of a nauseating roller coaster ride through the reality of the post-truth world, where a created narrative directs the reality and not the other way around.
Detailed and chronologically clear in its scope, Flint could be sub-titled “Anatomy of a Sh*tstorm”.
All things considered, Aswang is a solid debut and a film with its heart at the right place that could do well at the human rights type of the film festivals.
What is money and where does it come from? It seems like a simple enough question, but in Carmen Losmann’s new film it becomes increasingly obvious that even those at the highest reaches of international finance:
The documentary assumes a level of knowledge about the Sarin attacks which presumably won’t be an issue for its domestic audience, but non-Japanese viewers will find themselves googling to find out more.
Widely mocked and reviled on its 1995 release, Showgirls soon exploded into a Chernobyl-sized catastrophe that remains culturally radioactive even 25 years later.
