Movies are a form of entertainment, but at their most powerful, they are empathy machines capable of bridging gaps across borders, continents and cultures.
This year’s World Cinema offerings at MVFF48 feature humanistic stories that at once educate us on ways of life from countries across the globe, while illuminating universal issues and experiences that bind us all.
From Chloé Zhao, Academy Award-winning director of Nomadland, comes MVFF48 opening night film Hamnet (UK), the story of Agnes (Jessie Buckley, Women Talking), the wife of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, Gladiator II). The story follows Agnes as she mourns the death of her only son, Hamnet, whose loss inspires the creation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet.
Taiwanese family drama Left-Handed Girl follows a single mother and her two young daughters as they move to the bustling city of Taipei. The characters find their familial bond is challenged amid the upheaval of their personal and professional lives. Produced and co-written by Academy Award-winning director Sean Baker (Anora), the film is directed by Baker’s frequent collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou (Take Out) and features a breakout performance by Taiwanese child star Nina Ye (Ren Sheng quing li yuan).
From one of the most eccentric, one-of-one filmmakers on the planet comes Bugonia (Ireland, South Korea), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things). Starring Alicia Silverstone (Clueless), Emma Stone (La La Land), and Jesse Plemons (Civil War), the film follows two young conspiracy theorists (Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap the CEO of a powerful company (who they believe to be an alien in disguise) to save humanity…and bees. If you’ve never seen a Lanthimos film before, buckle up and expect the unexpected.
In Polish production Mama, Mila (Evgenia Dodina, One Week and a Day) has sacrificed 15 years of her life away from her husband and daughter to support them from afar, but has to reckon with years of built-up tension and resentment when she returns to her small home village.
Once Upon a Time in Gaza offers a poignant, enthralling thriller set in the Gaza Strip. Yahya (Nader Abd Alhay, The Turkish Detective) is out for revenge after he witnesses the murder of his friend Osama (Majd Eid, Inheritance). The tightening grip of Hamas on the people of Gaza, and the daily threat Israel’s occupation poses, looms over the film’s blend of genre elements.
Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs) plays Lilian Steiner, a psychiatrist who launches an amateur sleuth investigation into the murder of one of her patients in A Private Life. The genre-blending French production comes to us from French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski (Other People’s Children), with Foster comfortably leading the cast as a fluent French speaker herself.
MVFF closing night film Rental Family stars Brendan Fraser (The Mummy) as an American actor in Tokyo who finds himself working for a Japanese “rental family” service, which sees him filling “roles” in the families of strangers. The film is directed by emerging filmmaker Hikari and could see Fraser vying for yet another Best Actor Academy Award following his career-defining win in 2022 for The Whale. The film also features the phenomenal Takehiro Hira (Shōgun), who has been making waves in film and TV of late.
Here are even more terrific films from around the globe playing at MVFF48:
- Happy Birthday (Egypt)
- It Was Just An Accident (Iran)
- La Grazia (Italy)
- Living the Land (China)
- The Love That Remains (Iceland)
- A Luminous Life (Portugal)
- The Message (Argentina)
- My Father’s Shadow (Nigeria)
- The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Chile)
- No Other Choice (South Korea)
- Nouvelle Vague (France)
- Orphan (Hungary)
- Perpetual Adolescent (Mexico)
- The Plague (Romania)
- The President’s Cake (Iraq)
- Promised Sky (Tunisia)
- The Secret Agent (Brazil)
- Sentimental Value (Norway)
- Sirât (Morocco)
- Sound of Falling (Germany)
- Summer Beats (France)
