SIFF 2017: Homestretch Roundtable

Josh: SunBreak Roundtable Assemble! Or, I guess, per this year’s SIFF tagline, GATHER. We’re writing this on Day 21 of the SIFF Occupation. How’s everyone feeling?

Tony: My batting average ran pretty solid again this week–mostly good-to-great selections, and even the ones that fell short were worthwhile. I’m almost hungering for an outright travesty, just to get a chance to stretch and flex my acerbic snark muscles, but (for the most part) that ain’t coming from this corner this time out.

Odawni: It was a sicky-SIFF week for this girl. One hundred degree Fahrenheit fevers, cold night sweats and panic attack, oh my! Hence, I had an uber slow week but I really enjoyed what SIFF-ing I did do.

Highs

Josh: Per usual, let’s start off on the sunny side. What’s at the top of your list from the last week in SIFF-ing?

Tony: Three of the movies I’ve seen during this roundtable period will definitely rank among my favorites of SIFF 2017. I’ve written about Lane 1974 in detail elsewhere, but it’s one of those movies that’s good enough to hold up to repeat viewings. I’ve seen it five times, but last week marked the first time I’d seen it on a big screen. It’s unaffected but indisputably great visual storytelling. Obviously, you saw it in light of your fine interview, Chris, you too saw it. Anything else you want to add?

Chris: I agree with what you said. I think I gushed plenty about Lane 1974 when I interviewed SJ Chiro last week, but what struck me about the movie was how great the performances were from Katherine Moennig and Sophia Mitri Schloss. I do think it was the strongest feature in the Northwest Connections program.

Odawni: I’ll have to check that one out. Can I just say, OMG the Prom Queen Puget Soundtrack event at the Triple Door was so much fun! It was an eclectically hip smorgasbord of an on-screen variety show. A feast for the eyes and ears! My mouth was feasting on tasty curried dal and paratha from Wild Ginger. Prom Queen was the perfect musical ventriloquist. We learned about meat in a can and saw visions of what the short film love child would look like if Inland Empire, Donnie Darko and Zardoz got it on in the video editing room.

Tony: Yeah, we’re totally on the same page, Odawni. The Prom Queen Puget Soundtrack event at the Triple Door was, in a word, fan-frickin’-TASTIC. I’ve been to several of the Northwest Film Forum’s Puget Soundtrack events, and this might’ve been the best I’ve seen.  Anyone who’s a hardcore fan of the magickal, warped Something Weird Video catalog and archives (that’d include Yours Truly) woulda been in Hog Heaven. Prom Queen’s aesthetic fit those clips like an elbow glove on a decadent socialite. Any SW hardcores paying attention: Clips included footage of burlesque/pin-up goddesses Bettie Page and Tempest Storm; several trailers from horror and sexploitation flicks; that amazing meat-in-a-can clip you already mentioned; and Brian DePalma’s (!) student film Woton’s Wake.

Odawni: Love child.

Tony: That’s not even covering how great the band was. Lead singer Leeni’s always a sublime chanteuse, but the backing band (outlined here) was in-the-pocket perfect. To these ears, the MVP of the set was guitarist Ben von Wildenhaus, who went from zero to surf to twang to flat-out ceiling-spattering psychedelia on a dime. Just great.

Odawni: So much, yes. Though, I’ve gotta give the MVP to Miss Leeni. I was captivated by her sexy, swampy, raspy vocals; not to mention her sparkly heels and little pink guitar amp. Did you see that thing? It was adorbz and Iwantit.

Tony: My second SIFF movie-crush of this Roundtable period is Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey, an incredibly strong and absorbing documentary on one of the world’s most iconic (and eccentric) mountaineers. Again, I’ve prattled on about this movie in much more detail elsewhere, but for me it’s the doc to beat this SIFF. Given the subject matter, you might expect this to be your formula inspirational-sports-rah-rah showcase, but it’s funner, smarter, richer, and more complex than that. Beckey is one singular, funny, uncompromising character–less hero, and more a driven climbing savant–and director Dave O’Leske does a great job of showing the uncomfortable truths inherent in pursuing a dream so doggedly, it subsumes any trace of a normal, balanced existence. Were you as smitten as I was, Chris?

Chris: I liked it a lot. I was fortunate that I had seen a talk by rock climbing superstar Tommy Caldwell at Town Hall two or three days before I watched Dirtbag because the sport was towards the forefront of my mind when I watched it. Fred Beckey is such a fascinating character and it was great to hear him tell his story, while his friends and colleagues shared their best Beckey stories.

Josh: Neither are likely  to be my ultimate SIFF favorites, but two highly crowd-pleasing movies were among the most “fun” I had at the movies last week. Patti Cake$, the story of a white rapper in economically-challenged Jersey suburbs with big dreams (portrayed in goofy detail) of ascending to hip-hop royalty, hews a bit close to making-the-band conventions with dead-end jobs and misunderstanding mothers. However, Australian actress Danielle Macdonald anchors an admirably multi-cultural and multi-generational cast with heart and some truly convincing performances, surprisingly catchy songs, and a final set piece that erases most of the previous doubts. Unconventional Argentinian thriller At the End of the Tunnel — about a solitary wheelchair-bound computer technician who sleuths out a bank heist unfolding under his house soon after taking in a beautiful boarder and her young daughter — had enough truly suspenseful moments to overcome its long running time and minor plot confusions. A two hour running time can be a tough sell, but whenever I thought to check my watch director Rodrigo Grande dropped a new twist or turn to keep the full house on the edge of their seats. I was only disappointed that I didn’t stick around for the Q&A — it sounds like he was in high and hilarious spirits after a few hours at the Centerpiece Gala.

Tony: Finally, I will totally cop to the fact that the average civilian’s mileage will vary massively when it comes to Without Name, my third movie-crush from last week, but I was mesmerized by it. The SIFF guide describes it as an eco-horror movie, but it also incorporates drug-horror and dark folkloric elements. It’s unabashedly strange and enigmatic and leaves a lot more questions than answers in the end. If that kind of movie turns you off, stay far away. But Lorcan Finnegan’s feature debut is a well-acted, creepy and carefully-crafted bit of atmosphere that’s equal parts slow burn and tripping-balls sensory overload. This and Lane 1974 are the only two SIFF movies I’ve watched more than once, so that’s saying something (not sure what).

The Lows, or Complications of Big City Traffic

Josh: Did anything go off the rails for anyone? I usually love talking about the festival misfires, so I find myself almost disappointed not to have hated anything either!

Odawni: I’m super bummed I missed Chronicles of Hari and Pavlensky – Man and Might.

Chris: My biggest disappointment so far this SIFF wasn’t with a movie, per se, but that traffic was so bad on Wednesday night that I couldn’t make it from my apartment in Lower Queen Anne at 5:45 to the Egyptian by 7:00 on the bus for the Anjelica Huston tribute. I know Tony was headed there, and I’m hoping he’ll report that the evening was marred by a lackluster Q&A and technical difficulties.

Tony: Sorry, Chris, no technical difficulties with the Huston tribute, and the Q&A–while not exactly incisive–was lively, smart, and pleasant. Sorry you missed it. My Cliff’s Notes take on Trouble, the movie that premiered after it: Great actor’s showcase (Anjelica Huston and especially Bill Pullman are firing on all eight cylinders), and writer/director Teresa Rebeck has a knack for crisp dialogue (she’s an Emmy and Pulitzer nominee). Downside: Things feel a little too compact, and Rebeck shoots like a stage director, so the look of the movie isn’t very inspiring as y’know, a movie movie. But if this gets picked up as a cable-channel movie, it’ll be a shoo-in a basket of Emmy nominations (that’s actually a compliment).

Josh: I feel the same thing in the other direction! This is why The SunBreak has long been Team Gondola. As the festival stumbles into its third week, my least favorite thing about the festival is the dreaded trek between Capitol Hill and Lower Queen Anne. For the first week or so, it feels like such a fun adventure to be in a new neighborhood, but by the end I’m beginning to prioritize my selections based on proximity and likelihood of traffic than on how good the movie looks. In other words: Miss you, Harvard Exit; H8U, Metro Bus 8.

Tony: I feel your pain, Josh. The notorious stinkiness of Seattle traffic has often made me leap off the bus several stops early (or to skip busing outright), to walk from point A to point B–even if they’re a long ways apart from one another.  At least twice, making SIFF jaunts from the Egyptian to the Uptown and vice versa, I just foreswore the bus outright and walked the entire way. I deliberately walked the #8 route, and as I did, I passed not one, but two, gridlocked #8 buses one afternoon last week. The silver lining on the fetid cloud that is our shite traffic is that this city’s smaller (and more walkable) than people give it credit for sometimes.

Josh: I will say that sometimes traffic exhaustion leads to happy accidents. Wanting to stay close to home is part of why I braved the dreaded STANDBY line at the Egyptian for Landline last Saturday. On top of getting a ticket from a friendly do-gooder, the movie turned out to be a really nice surprise. The latest gentle comedy from Gillian Robespierre and her muse Jenny Slate (who previously collaborated on the excellent Obvious Child) finds a twentysomething reconnecting with her teen sister to do some detective work on a case of paternal infidelity. Infused with more 1990s nostalgia than I thought possible (floppy disks, pay phones, world music listening stations) and with John Turturro, Edie Falco, Abby Quinn, Jay Duplass rounding out the strong cast, the story was a nice, loose, family dramedy that reminds us of the messy complexities of love and the existence of the California Raisins as a cultural phenomenon. Simpler times, indeed.

Tony: I just remembered: There was one movie that was a pretty big misfire for me, the Vietnamese rom-com She’s the Boss. I’d blocked it from my memory, but to paraphrase my Tweet, the movie proved that Sugary-enough-to-rot-your-teeth-rom-com-ese is a universal language.

The Rest

Josh: Sounds like everyone had a pretty good week. Other thoughts on SIFF so far?

the Elephant in the Room

Chris:  Was anyone else able to catch Wallflower? I’m still composing my thoughts on the Elephant in the room, if you will, a day later, and I suspect I will continue to do so for the next week or so. I went to the premiere on Tuesday night, and found that I liked more parts than I disliked. It is far from a perfect movie, but I found it to be an interesting meditation inside the mind of a dangerous, loner sociopath. I can understand the apprehension because it is easy to see the unnamed “perpetrator” finding comfort and acceptance in a red MAGA hat in 2016, and director Jagger Gravning went to such extraordinary lengths to deny that the movie was about sympathizing with Capitol Hill massacrer Kyle Huff that it had to have raised some suspicions. Each press note and interview I read felt akin to Gravning telling the on-duty manager at Safeway that he had absolutely no intention of shoplifting: likely true but they’ll still keep an eye on you.

That wasn’t the movie that I saw, though. I never felt any sympathy for the Kyle Huff/”the perpetrator” character, but accepted that living inside of his mind was probably a pretty shitty place to be.

Josh: Despite the controversy and curiosity, I just couldn’t convince myself to see Wallflower. Glad that you found it more nuanced than the pre-screening grumbles suggested.

Tony: I missed Wallflower, but I am intrigued. Gus van Sant’s very powerful meditation on a similar subject/take popped into my head when I read the description in the SIFF guide.

Odawni: Wallflower is totally up my alley but I missed that one. It would have been fun to discuss with you, Chris! I’ll look forward to chatting it up with you about it later.

Other Northwest Connections

Chris: Last year, I saw every feature film from the Northwest Connections program, and this year I saw all, save for the documentary CRAZYWISE. This year’s program was considerably smaller, with just eight new features. It had some real gems, though. I liked Robinson Devor’s weird documentary Pow Wow a lot. I mean, what kind of movie is ostensibly about a 1908 manhunt but includes Shecky Greene telling his famous joke about Frank Sinatra saving his life?

Josh: The screener of Pow Wow has been on my digital to-do list since I couldn’t make it to any of the theatrical presentations. Looking forward to it!

Odawni: Chris, when the opportunity presents itself, I highly recommend checking out Crazywise and not just because I try to push my mental health advocacy agenda any chance I get. Filmmakers Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson really make us reconsider our understanding of non-Western cultural practices and perspectives. What we may identify as psychosis, can be explained as a spiritual awakening in another country. Borges talks more about this in his TEDx Talk.

Chris: There’s a scene in the Cage Fighter that I have been unable to shake from my psyche. It’s where the documentary’s troubled protagonist Joe Carman’s parents had failed to show up and speak on his behalf at a hearing in court for his ex-wife to move to Spokane with their children. The ‘rents don’t really have any excuse, they just dropped the ball, but his mom thinks they probably should’ve. It’s heartbreaking and raw.

The Official Competition

Josh: You’re making me feel like probably should’ve tried harder w/the Northwest Connections! But the program that I’ve been trying to prioritize has been the Official Competition (six down, two to go). So far, it’s been a rewarding slate, with an emerging theme of small revolutions that have abrupt ambiguous endings.

My favorite of the bunch so far is probably Michele Placido’s 7 Minutes. When a long-time family-run Italian textile factory is acquired by a French conglomerate, the (all-female) workers council is given only couple hours to approve of one seemingly minor change to their contracts: cut the shift break by seven minutes and preserve everyone’s jobs. With the whole town and factory on edge, everyone except the council’s chairwoman is elated at the news that their town’s factory will remain open without any lost jobs. However, over the course of their heated deliberations, the women confront the very meaning of their own council and labor rights in general as they debate whether to accept the new contract or take a stand against the slow constant erosion of their rights. The council’s demographic balance is maybe too perfectly representative in its demographic diversity — a thirty-year factory veteran to a twenty-year-old newbie, plus a mother and pregnant daughter pair, several immigrants, and a clerk whose on-the-job accident took her off the floor and put her into a wheelchair — but their interactions reveal a rich web of allegiances and tensions in modern Italian society. It may sound dry, but it plays out as as an intense jury deliberation with tough questions and no easy answers, like an Eleven Angry Women in the age of multinational concerns. 4⭐️

The other films in competition dealt less directly with structural revolution and more with individuals confronting the expectations of their assumed places in societies or families, which played out in a fascinating and engaging array of films.

Adapted from a short that originally premiered at Sundance, Sami Blood opens (and closes) with an elderly woman being reluctantly dragged to her sister’s rural funeral. Rather than spend time at the wake she stubbornly returns on foot to a hotel and refuses to join her son and granddaughter on an expedition to the country. The rest of the film plays out as an extended flashback to her youth in picturesquely photographed northern 1930s Sweden. Sent away from her traditional, tent-dwelling, reindeer herding family to a special boarding school for Laplanders, she experiences near-universal harassment from ‘real Swedes’ (crass abuse from townspeople to government anthropologists who study the children as if they’re another species), eventually making the decision to to try to ‘pass’ as one herself, first at a village dance, and later in more urban and upscale Uppsalla. Swedish-Sami director Amanda Kernell seems to recognize that racism is inexplicable; and rather rather than delve into the history of the Sami, she relies on an insightful and delicate performance from young actress Lene Cecilia Sparroka to convey the indignities, determination, heartbreak, and consequences of breaking with her family and traditional lifestyle to assimilate.

Bad Influence also tackled issues facing indigenous peoples being crowded out by increasing industrialization in Chile by way of a reunion when a largely absent father brings his city-raised son to the mountains to keep him out of a youth detention center. There, an unlikely teen friendship develops, providing an empathetic window into the Mapuche culture and their resistance movement. The topic is near and dear to Chilean director Claudia Huaiquimillais, who is herself a young woman of Mapuche origin.

After a brief solo apartment-hunting expedition, My Happy Family drops us into a crowded multi-generational family home in Tbilisi, Georgia where middle-aged teacher Manana (portrayed with quiet resilience by Ia Shugliashvili) lives with her parents, husband, and their twenty-something children and their fiancees. Although it took me at least thirty minutes to figure out who everyone was and how they were related to each other, I instantly understood her apparently-radical decision to move into a place of her own. More perplexing was everyone else’s disbelief at her decision and the extent that they go to to prompt her to reconsider. As Manana navigates a life that for perhaps the first time includes both her family as well as some much-needed personal space, directing team Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross regularly fill wide frames with people and surround the audience with their overlapping voices. Either alone, or sidelining herself from these busy scenes, Shugliashvili’s performance as we experience revelations along with Manana convey a lot without saying many words.

Along similar lines, in Hedi, a Tunisian car salesman’s wedding jitters play out on a business trip to the beach. We spend much of the film hovering over title character Hedi’s shoulder so we barely see his reaction as he learns that he’ll forced to go business trip in the days surrounding his wedding, witnesses the final negotiations of his arranged marriage, tells his bride that they’ll have to postpone the honeymoon, and futile jaunts into town to drum up business. This effectively creates the sense of a man without agency who’s more interested in drawing in his notebooks than in the world around him. When he meets a traveling dancer while wandering around his beachfront business hotel, we share in his sense of discovery as he considers his own wants and needs and grapples with the consequences of pursuing them.

So far, I’m not sure which of the films I’d bet on to take the top honors, but it’s been a real benefit to audiences that SIFF has showcased stories like these, often told by directors from these communities, as a priority of their programming this year.

Catching Up on the Rest of the Fest

Odawni: I wanted to talk a bit about two films I mentioned at last’s week’s roundtable but didn’t get a chance to review. I imagine a little Dustin Guy Defa (Director and Screenwriter) geeking out on Woody Allen movies (circa 1977). His film Person to Person has the same feel – multiple storylines stuffed with quirky interactions one autumn day in Manhattan. It’s a mostly new (to me) cast, which I prefer in movies. Leonardo DiCaprio will always be the disabled kid from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape climbing up the water tower and Johnny Depp will always be Benny à la Benny and Joon making grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron. Catch my drift? I digress. Person to Person is an enjoyable film. It’s easy going and doesn’t ask anything of you. There’s a time theme, I noticed. Michael Cera (who does awkward so well, as he does) plays Phil, a journalist and bassist in his heavy metal band, “Cocktails.” He spends the day training and trying too hard with his new assistant Claire (Abbi Jacobson, “Broad City”). They’re trying to scoop a fresh murder mystery involving a dead husband’s broken watch.

I also noticed that the five storylines represent different generations. (Was this done intentionally, I wonder? It’s brilliant.) I realized this before I watched the movie for a second time and it made the experience pretty funsies. There are life lessons to be learned at each stage of life/in each story. I will attempt a nutshell synopsis with life lesson of each:

• Teenager, Wendy (Tavi Gevinson), philosophizes just about everything, wrestles with her gender identity, and learns that guys and girls can be friends.
• Young adults (20s-ish) are Phil and Claire, who I mentioned already. Both are bumbling about in their lives. Claire wonders if she should have left her librarian job and Phil wonders why he can’t get anybody to like him (there’s a great scene at the end of the movie related to this.)
• Adults (30s-ish) Ray (George Sample III) totally screws up and posts revealing pics of his maybe-ex-girlfriend after she sleeps with another guy. Ray learns the tough lesson that there are some things you can’t undo. He also has trouble showing his emotions.
• More adults (40s-ish) – Groovy and loving Benny (Bene Coopersmith) gets ripped off by a dude selling counterfeit “Bird Plays the Blues” (Charlie Parker) records. When he runs down the thief, he lectures him about violating trust and tells him, “I hope something happens to you to make you grow up,” before he walks away to tell his girlfriend he loves her for the first time. “I’ve got love for you – big love,” he says to her on their date. She reciprocates. They go back to his place and dance the night away with friends. (I like to think I fit into this category.)
• Older adults (70s-ish) – Phillip Baker Hall plays Jimmy, who spends the day watching the world go by with his buddies (one of whom is played by Isiah Whitlock Jr.) at his clock shop, where the widow of the broken watch owner takes it to get fixed.

I’ll stop there.

Tony: My last notable was a revival screening of Brainstorm, the 1983 sci-fi film directed by special effects legend Douglas Trumbull (who worked on 2001 and Blade Runner, among others) about a research team who devises a way of recording human experiences for immersive re-play. It’s often ridiculous, the acting from a cast full of Oscar nominees and winners (Louise Fletcher, Christopher Walken, Cliff Robertson, and Natalie Wood in her last role) is uniformly terrible, and the dialogue’s wince-worthy. So why isn’t this in the misfires category? Because Trumbull’s movie is brimming with interesting ideas and lays bare his technical vision: It foretells virtual reality and computer hacking with surprising prescience, and a post-film panel with Trumbull and a team of tech experts from POP Multimedia made for a thought-provoking bonus.

Odawni:  The other film from last week is anime director Kenji Kamiyama’s Napping Princess. It was a packed house and I had to ask the guy two seats away from me if he could move over so the two people, who were clearly trying to find seats together, could take the two seats by the aisle. The gent seated on the other side saw this interaction and said, “We use to live in New York and there is no way that would have worked there.” Napping Princess! I’m a Miyazaki fan (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) so thought I’d give this a go and I’m glad I did. Kokone discovers family secrets in her dreams, where she is a princess with magical powers fighting enemy “machineheads,” but are they only dreams? As we toggle between the waking and dreaming worlds, they begin to fuse. It’s a fun, futuristic adventure involving self-driving cars and a female lead who kicks butt. What more could you ask for?

Tony: As for the rest, I’ll  throw down a few bite-sized capsules myself.

• A Dragon Arrives!: Just your routine, formula Iranian existential film-noir/found footage/ghost story. I’m still processing what I saw, but I really, really liked it and want to see it again.
• Godspeed: This Taiwanese crime flick/buddy dramedy was a slow burn that seemed to leave a few audience members nonplussed, but leads Michael Hui and Na Dow were spot perfect and it drew me in pretty effectively. Think Quentin Tarantino gone Taiwanese, meeting Jean-Pierre Melville at his most languid, while they both get lazily high on indica weed, and you’re in the right ballpark.
• Footnotes: A French feminist pro-socialist shoe-porn musical? Yup, you read that right. Surprisingly, it possesses a unique, utilitarian charm that also serves as a pert but defiant little middle finger in the direction of soulless capitalism. Those wacky French.
• Meatball Machine Kodoku is part of a weird Japanese horror/sci-fi sub-genre that I call the Bloody Mucousy Borg sub-genre. There’s a warm-and-fuzzy romance amidst an alien invasion scenario, wherein alien-generated spider-things infect hapless humans so that they become goopy, bloody machine-human hybrids that like to kill. A lot. This is the kind of movie where a topless Japanese girl in a Sailor Moon dress steers a bloody half-human, half-motor vehicle with her recently-removed bra in the final few minutes. If you’re vulnerable to such warped charms (I’ll neither confirm not deny that Jones, myself), drink deep of the well, Bucky.

Josh:  On the topic of other film festivals and their non-Space Needle competitions, I was glad to see I, Daniel Blake at SIFF last week. Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner shows that in Britain’s rule-bound welfare state, one must rely on the kindness of strangers. We meet the title character (Dave Johns, bringing warmth and exasperation to the role) as he’s answering a series of routine questions about his fitness to work that completely, aggressively, and systematically ignore the fact that he’s had a massive heart attack and is under doctor’s orders not to return to his trade as a carpenter. Aside from finding a surrogate family and a sense of purpose with a single mother (Hayley Squires, covering desperation with determination) and her children that he meets at the benefits office, things go predictably downhill from there. Loach creates a human-scale view of how the burdens imposed by compliance with often absurd requirements wear away at these lead characters, while still making room to highlights the notes of human kindness and charity that sustain them as they struggle with poverty. It’s certainly less flashy than some of Cannes other 2016 competitors (ahem, the shut-out, Toni Erdmann), but I can see how its humanistic portrayal built consensus among the jury.

Chris: I, Daniel Blake has been towards the top of my to-see list for several months, but I talked myself out of seeing it earlier this week, worried that seeing that movie a few days before what I assumed would be a May reelection would be bad for my well-being. I was relieved to see that didn’t pan out that way, but now I’m disappointed to have missed my best opportunity to catch it.

Josh: I wouldn’t worry too much, Chris. I think it’s scheduled for a proper US release later this summer, so you’ll probably get a chance to watch it from the perspective of a (possibly) reconfigured British parliament.

Odawni: I was hoping to step outside of my SIFFty comfort zone in terms of balancing time investment and movie picks. I tend to watch the more serious films (in case you didn’t pick up on that.) I noticed I don’t have a lot of movie-watching overlap with any of you, gents, but then, there’s very little overlap among us four. It’s neat that we are each drawn to different film styles and storylines.

I also wanted to share — cheese spoiler alert — that I’ve been thinking often about how fortunate I feel to be your number four at the SIFF 2017 Roundtable. I’ve written for years and years but have never been a writer so it’s been a steep learning curve. I’m learning a lot by collaborating with you, gents; not only about the boring style and grammar stuff but also being a good writer. I appreciate your warm welcome and friendly patience as I attempt not to question myself at every turn. Truly and in so many ways, thank you.

Tony: Yer makin’ us blush, Odawni. Thanks.

Josh: And with that warm, fuzzy, cinematic conclusion, let’s head off into the dark for the last few days of SIFF. Looking to reconvening with everyone after Closing Night festivities, when we’ll bestow our own Golden SunBreak Awards and consider the rest of the festival.