Trois Filles
It was hard to find anything much on this Moroccan telefilm, called Trois Filles or, simply, 3 Girls...but I did find a few references! At any rate, the movie follows the lives of 3 adult women and how they negotiate making a living, relationships and just surviving in the world. It is not unlike - at least in very broad outward contours - to the more known Israeli-Palestinian movie In Between. Yet, choppy and a bit sudden though this movie seemed, it is not without its charms and a certain grittiness about the way the three single women go about leading their lives in Morocco, a country not known for a vast output of movies - and hence - this movie provides a wonderful window into Moroccan/Arab/French/Mediterranean lives.
The women are gutsy, fearless, smart and have distinct personalities. Two of them have boyfriends but when those relationaships do not work out, and their own lives seem headed nowhere, they decide to move to Marrakech from the smaller seaside town they were in (I could not tell what that was). Life in Marrakech is not easy either, but the girls find ways to cope, amids a constant threat of sexual harassment.
What makes the film watchable are the effervescent personalities of the three women, whose faces display the pain of ordinary tragedies like losing their jobs, the breaking up of relationships etc; yet, they smile and dance, they take pleasure in dolling themselves up and are there for each other. They don't give up! Here's an excerpted interview with the director:
What is the story of the TV movie "Three Girls"?
Driss Chouika: My TV movie is a social drama that tells the story of three girls who graduated from university that same year. After a period of unemployment and job search, each decided to choose and trace their path and destiny. Girls are faced with a big challenge: choosing between prostitution and looking for money in other ways. Nawal and Rabiaâ have decided to create a small project, that of renting a small room to turn it into a small restaurant. While Nadia chose prostitution to make a living. The main roles of these characters were performed by actresses Touria Alaoui, Maria Chiadmi and Sara Tekaya. Other roles have been interpreted by Abdellatif Chaouqi, Mohamed Ayad, Driss Karimi, Aicha Mahmah, Khadija Adly and others. We shot this TV movie in two cities, Safi and Marrakech.
Driss Chouika: My TV movie is a social drama that tells the story of three girls who graduated from university that same year. After a period of unemployment and job search, each decided to choose and trace their path and destiny. Girls are faced with a big challenge: choosing between prostitution and looking for money in other ways. Nawal and Rabiaâ have decided to create a small project, that of renting a small room to turn it into a small restaurant. While Nadia chose prostitution to make a living. The main roles of these characters were performed by actresses Touria Alaoui, Maria Chiadmi and Sara Tekaya. Other roles have been interpreted by Abdellatif Chaouqi, Mohamed Ayad, Driss Karimi, Aicha Mahmah, Khadija Adly and others. We shot this TV movie in two cities, Safi and Marrakech.
What message would you like to convey through this TV movie?
Of course, there are several messages to transmit. There is the relationship of couples, love of the family, unemployment and its consequences on the life of the person. I can say that whatever the social conditions, work is the safest value to fight misery.
Of course, there are several messages to transmit. There is the relationship of couples, love of the family, unemployment and its consequences on the life of the person. I can say that whatever the social conditions, work is the safest value to fight misery.
The Clash
The setting for co-writer/director Mohamed Diab’s harrowing film is that of Cairo, Egypt in 2013, two years after the Arab Spring. People have taken to the streets to protest the army’s forceful ouster of President Morsi, who was a member of a group called the Muslim Brotherhood. Introducing its events as “one such day,” “Clash” presents people of all beliefs caught in the crossfire, who are brought into the van whether protesting the army, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the overall chaos itself. Diab conveys this to us with the limited, impressively-realized perspective of being trapped inside a sweaty, cramped police van.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/clash-2017
Miss Hokusai
Keiichi Hara’s “Miss Hokusai,” an adaptation of the Hinako Sugiura manga series, is an undeniably unique biopic, and not merely because it’s an animated one. Rather than tell a traditional tale of a famous artist—in this case, Katsushika Hokusai, a legendary Japanese painter most well-known for the world-famous “The Great Wave”—it allows us to see him through his daughter’s eyes, and to do so with a most unusual style.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/miss-hokusai-2016
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)
The Turkish-German director Fatih Akin's new film has been given a poetic English title for its UK release, but the German original, Auf der Anderen Seite, "On the Other Side", is better. This is an intriguing, complex, beautifully acted and directed piece of work, partly a realist drama of elaborate coincidences, near-misses and near-hits, further tangled with shifts in the timeline - and partly an almost dreamlike meditation with visual symmetries and narrative rhymes.
It is about the tension between Germany and Turkey, to whom postwar West Germany opened its doors for "guest-worker" labourers, thereby getting an economic boost but creating for itself an unacknowledged quasi-imperial legacy of guilt and cultural division. And it is about the gulf between the first- and second-generation Turkish-Germans, conflicted about their identity and their relation with the old country, itself conflicted as it prepares to join the European Union.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/feb/22/worldcinema.drama
Tangerines ( Zaza Urushadze)
Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Neruda
Not sure what is going on in this movie...Luis Gnecco as Neruda is brilliant...but Gael Garcia Bernal is the hapless inspector/specter (?)...? Question mark indeed - somehow not fleshed-out too well...NYT report here...
The Yacoubian Building
Creature from Black Lagoon
Mogambo
Manuscripts Don't Burn - Mohammad Rassoulef
About Elly - Ashghar Farhadi
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