Waiting. But for what? Jeff Roda?s 18 to Party is all about waiting. It is the kind of waiting we have all experienced?waiting for life. Set in 1984, we spend an afternoon and evening with a group of eighth graders outside a local teen nightclub. But they can?t go in...
A broken relationship fueled by grief is the engine that runs Johannes Nyholm?s Koko-di Koko-da. The film is prefaced with a vacation Tobias and Elin are taking with their young daughter Maya. They are hit with a seemingly innocuous case food poisoning, but it changes...
?Are you sorry you woke up?? What makes it worth living for another day, or two, or a few months? In Eric Styles?s film That Good Night, based on a play by N.J. Crisp, that becomes the real question, not just to be or not to be. Ralph (the late John Herd in his final...
As AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi comes to an end, I want to thank the festival for allowing me to cover it again this year. This is always one of the highlights of my cinematic year. It is always an enormous task to put on a festival, especially one like AFIFest....
My cat has enjoyed AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi a great deal this year. She rarely has a chance to spend a whole afternoon on my lap when I actually have to go to movies. I doubt she realizes the qualities of movies she?s sleeping through. She?s missing out on some...
AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi has teamed up with NBC News to present the Meet the Press Film Festival, programs of short documentaries about issues facing the world. Today I took in the program entitled ?Justice for All? which included three shorts. My Brother?s...
Monday was a light day for me at AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi. But even though I only have two films to report on today, the films themselves were not light. ?Inanimate object, do you have a soul that sticks to our soul and forces us to love?? Belgian director Zo?...
What do we make of someone who refuses to live conventionally? Is there something wrong with them that needs to be fixed? Or should we find a way into their world to see things in new ways? The Sounding (the first feature film by Catherine Eaton) presents viewers with...
As AFIFest Presented by Audi continues to unfold, each day new films are being opened for viewing. During normal years, most films would play a couple times during the week. That challenge was to find the day and time that you could fit things. This year, I get to...