With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
American Factory (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert)
When the Rust Belt was hit hard in the financial crisis of 2008, the blue-collar workers of Dayton, Ohio found a savior in a Chinese billionaire. Six years after the lifeblood that was a General Motors plant was shut down, the car-glass manufacturers Fuyao opened up their first American factory in the town, meaning thousands of new job opportunities. The promise of a steady income lifts the spirits of the workers, but an East vs. West clash of working methods quickly emerges, causing labor division, personal strife, and some unexpected camaraderie amongst the workforce. Directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert...
American Factory (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert)
When the Rust Belt was hit hard in the financial crisis of 2008, the blue-collar workers of Dayton, Ohio found a savior in a Chinese billionaire. Six years after the lifeblood that was a General Motors plant was shut down, the car-glass manufacturers Fuyao opened up their first American factory in the town, meaning thousands of new job opportunities. The promise of a steady income lifts the spirits of the workers, but an East vs. West clash of working methods quickly emerges, causing labor division, personal strife, and some unexpected camaraderie amongst the workforce. Directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert...
- 8/23/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
There are a multitude of reasons why any film may get unfairly overlooked. It could be a lack of marketing resources to provide a substantial push, or, due to a minuscule roll-out, not enough critics and audiences to be the champions it might require. It could simply be the timing of the picture itself; even in the world of studio filmmaking, some features take time to get their due. With an increasingly crowded marketplace, there are more reasons than ever that something might not find an audience and we’ve rounded up the releases that deserved more attention.
Note that all of the below films made less than $500K at the domestic box office at the time of posting–Netflix/VOD figures are not accounted for, as they normally aren’t made public–and are, for the most part, left out of most year-end conversations. Sadly, many documentaries would qualify for this list,...
Note that all of the below films made less than $500K at the domestic box office at the time of posting–Netflix/VOD figures are not accounted for, as they normally aren’t made public–and are, for the most part, left out of most year-end conversations. Sadly, many documentaries would qualify for this list,...
- 12/20/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’re highlighting the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Araby (Affonso Uchoa and João Duman)
“I’m like everyone else,” writes about himself Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), the working class hero at the center of Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby, “It’s just my life that was a little bit different.” Calling that an understatement would be a euphemism. An average-sized and average-looking factory worker in the Southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Cristiano is an everyman par excellence. Neither charismatic nor particularly striking – at least not on a first look – he seems so ordinary it takes us twenty minutes to understand he’s Araby’s protagonist, and not some flickering extra. When we first meet him,...
Araby (Affonso Uchoa and João Duman)
“I’m like everyone else,” writes about himself Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), the working class hero at the center of Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby, “It’s just my life that was a little bit different.” Calling that an understatement would be a euphemism. An average-sized and average-looking factory worker in the Southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Cristiano is an everyman par excellence. Neither charismatic nor particularly striking – at least not on a first look – he seems so ordinary it takes us twenty minutes to understand he’s Araby’s protagonist, and not some flickering extra. When we first meet him,...
- 11/23/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
“I’m like everyone else,” writes about himself Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), the working class hero at the center of Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby, “It’s just my life that was a little bit different.” Calling that an understatement would be a euphemism. An average-sized and average-looking factory worker in the Southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Cristiano is an everyman par excellence. Neither charismatic nor particularly striking – at least not on a first look – he seems so ordinary it takes us twenty minutes to understand he’s Araby’s protagonist, and not some flickering extra. When we first meet him, he is given a lift to his steel factory; up until then, Uchoa and Dumans had followed Andre (Murilo Caliari), a pensive and bookish teenage boy living with his aunt Márcia (Gláucia Vandeveld) in a derelict house close to the hellish steel mill. By the time we next hear about him,...
- 6/23/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Since its premiere in the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hivos Tiger competition in 2017, Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby has become a sleeper festival hit, welcomed at prestigious series such as New Directors/New Films, Fid Marseille, Karlovy Vary, Viennale, San Sebastian, London and Bafici. Focusing on the life experiences of a journeyman laborer (Aristides de Sousa) in the inland states of Brazil as seen through his own autobiographical journal, it’s another small, unassuming jewel in the current outpouring of great cinema from that country; a look at the daily lives of the rural and suburban disenfranchised that inspire so many of these directors interested in telling real stories of the real country. But Dumans and Uchoa, while solidly anchored in a (reasonably conventional) narrative, also borrow from the playbook of documentary, with a non-professional cast enacting scenes from everyday life that are not a million miles away from their own hard-scrabble existence.
- 6/20/2018
- MUBI
"I'm like anybody else. It's just my life that was a little bit different." Grasshopper Films has released the official Us trailer for an acclaimed Brazilian indie film titled Araby, originally titled Arábia in Portuguese. The film played at numerous big film festivals last year, and is a James Joyce-inspired Brazilian road movie. The film follows Andre, a young boy living in an industrial neighborhood in Ouro Preto, Brazil, near an old aluminum factory. One day he finds a notebook from one of the factory workers, which sets him off on a journey unlike any he has been on before. The film stars Murilo Caliari, Aristides de Sousa, Gláucia Vandeveld, Renata Cabral, and Renan Rovida. This looks like a very contemplative, engaging film that might offer up some unique and important wisdom about life. I quite like the music they use in this trailer. Here's the official Us trailer...
- 6/8/2018
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The Night I SwamThe Vienna International Film Festival—or the Viennale, for short—has for many years been a kind of respite, perhaps even a bit of a beautiful secret outside of European cinephilia, for those looking to be invigorated by the ever-renewing promise of cinema. First under the direction of Alexander Horwath, who left the festival in 1997 and in 2002 took the lead of the illustrious Austrian Film Museum, and for the last 21 years under the guidance of Hans Hurch, the Viennale has cultivated that rare thing: A cultural institution that has a distinct and idiosyncratic sensibility of taste. It is a yearly event in which you can find the rare gems of the mainstream vividly mixed with expansive retrospectives, the latest films from major auteurs and exciting debutantes alike, with no fear of short or medium length works, a strong love for the avant-garde and an even more fierce...
- 11/8/2017
- MUBI
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