This year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), viewers were treated to an emotional journey in films like The First Grader and Blessed Events which screened under the category of Contemporary World Cinema.
In The First Grader, Justin Chadwick, the English director of The Other Boleyn Girl, takes the audience to Kenya in the true story of an 84-year -old man who went to elementary school out of his longing for an education. Chadwick said the locals and Kenyan children that acted in the film gave a performance that was "true and subtle."
“I always have to ask myself, is it modern, is it relevant, why do we need to make this film now?” said Chadwick about his thought process when making a movie.
As one of several moving films in the Contemporary World Cinema, The First Grader tells the story of Maruge, a Kenyan tribesman who fought for his country’s freedom from British colonization, a history forgotten by British and Kenyans alike, said Chadwick.
“We love to go to the cinema to experience emotion together as a group, sit in the dark and watch an emotional story and those can be true stories… people want to laugh, cry, and rejoice life together,” says Chadwick about the current trend in the world of film.
Oliver Litondo, who plays Maruge, brings the audience moments of joy, sorrow and sympathy as his flashbacks reveal a difficult life in the prison camps after he and fellow tribesman were captured by the Brits. The theatre filled with sound of soft sobbing and sniffing as the audience was taken by their emotional connection with story before them.
Blessed Events, another contemporary cinema film but made in Germany by producer Isabelle Stever, has a completely different approach to connecting with the audience on an emotional level.
While The First Grader takes the viewers to the story, revealing the tale through the actions and dialogue of the characters, Blessed Events plants a thought, relying on the viewer's interpretation.
The two main characters in the movie do not communicate much which makes the audience listen closely to what the say and absorb every carefully chosen word in the dialogue. “I created a vocabulary of visuals and sounds, which attempts to enable viewers to experience Simone’s inner horror,” said Stever in a private interview.
Simone, played by Annika Kuhl portrays a woman unsatisfied with her life and thinks that her pregnancy and new found boyfriend are just too good to be true. Most of the movie carries forward her pessimism, leaving the audience waiting for the disaster she expects to befall her. Will her boyfriend leave, will her baby be healthy? But Stever doesn't take the obvious route and leaves the audience surprised and satisfied, with a conclusion that leaves a person ready to reflect on their own lives.
