By Ray Rogers
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Fresh off its Grand Jury Prize-winning world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a 23-minute standing ovation, this film from Tunisian writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania makes its U.S. premiere at HIFF, as part of the Conflict and Resolution program. “It’s about a 6-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza who was in a car with her family, many of whom were shot at by tanks,” explains HIFF artistic director David Nugent. “She survived [the initial attack] and called the Red Crescent Ambulance Services to be rescued.” This hybrid docudrama is built around the actual audio file of the child’s call, with the rest of the movie being a dramatized version of the aid workers debating whether or not they could go and save her. Says Nugent, “It’s a powerful film that helps put some faces—or voices, in this case—to what is going on in a conflict region in the world.”
All the Empty Rooms
This timely short film comes on the heels of repeated gun deaths in the U.S. “I just turned on the news an hour ago to see that Charlie Kirk was shot and then just saw that there was another school shooting in Colorado,” says Nugent, underscoring this film’s immediate resonance. “This amazing short by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Seftel is built around the CBS News Sunday Morning journalist Steve Hartman. He and a photographer [Lou Bopp] put together a photograph exhibit of the empty rooms left behind from children who were killed in school shootings. This film chronicles that photo exhibit and goes to visit the families of the children whose rooms were left behind.”
The Cycle of Love
This tender documentary tells the true-life tale of a Delhi street artist who meets and falls in love with a Swedish woman who visits India. When she moves back to Sweden, he buys a bike and cycles nearly 6,000 miles from India to Sweden to reunite with her. “This movie chronicles this journey,” says Nugent. “And it’s so fun, life-affirming, romantic, sweet and passionate.”
Eternity / A Conversation With Elizabeth Olsen
Opening night film Eternity makes its U.S. premiere at HIFF, with star Elizabeth Olsen in attendance. This romantic comedy is “a little old-fashioned in a sense, almost like a Frank Capra movie,” says Nugent. “In the very beginning, this elderly couple are in a car crash and are going to the afterlife. But then they show up in the afterlife as 25-year-old versions of themselves. They get to pick where they want to go and how they want to spend the afterlife. And it turns out that Elizabeth Olsen’s character is there with her husband, but also her first husband, who had died in the war. She has to choose which of her two husbands she wants to spend her life with.”
The Kiss of The Spider Woman / Breakthrough Performer Tonatiuh
One of the big breakouts from the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year was the actor Tonatiuh, HIFF’s UBS Breakthrough Performer this year for his performance in filmmaker Bill Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Woman. “He stars opposite Jennifer Lopez, someone who draws a lot of attention to herself, but he just has such a captivating presence, you can’t take your eyes off him,” notes Nugent. “He’s funny and sexy, and just really has it all.”
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
“Your mind will be blown when you see the performance Rose Byrne gives in this movie that was largely shot out here in the Hamptons by director Mary Bronstein, who will attend the screening,” says Nugent. Byrne plays a working mother with a small child. Her husband travels a lot, and she’s on her own with her kid, who has a sickness that takes a lot of energy, and she’s struggling to balance it all. “This movie—almost part horror movie and part comedy,” says Nugent, “is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”
The Eyes of Ghana
Barack and Michelle Obama executive-produced this film from two-time Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot about Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse. “This documentary filmmaker [Hesse, now in his 90s] was chronicling one of the first leaders of Ghana after the country exited from colonial rule,” says Nugent. “My colleagues absolutely loved this film. We have the first screening of it in America, and we’ve got Ben Proudfoot coming out.”
Ask E. Jean
Ivy Meeropol’s thrilling documentary is about writer and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump. “Trump is liable for both sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll—they just upheld her $83 million suit against him,” notes Nugent. “We have this film about her life, and she’s coming to the screening, which I’m excited about.”
Blue Moon / A Conversation With Ethan Hawke
Festivalgoers get not one but two Richard Linklater films this year: Nouvelle Vague, which Nugent describes as “a great film about the making of the movie Breathless, which kicked off the French New Wave,” and Blue Moon, in which Ethan Hawke plays Lorenz Hart, the former writing partner of Richard Rodgers—the pair wrote “Blue Moon,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Manhattan” and “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.” “Later in his life, Rodgers moved on, and thus we have Rodgers and Hammerstein,” says Nugent. “This is a film about the end of their time together.”
A Private Life
This French black comedy/mystery film premiered at Cannes earlier this year. “I think our audiences are going to absolutely love this film. It’s all in French, with Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira and Mathieu Amalric, some of the biggest actors in France. Jodie Foster is in it—she speaks French for the whole movie—and she’s coming for the midweek screening.”