All posts tagged: Chronicle

An Understated and Mysterious Chronicle of Loss

An Understated and Mysterious Chronicle of Loss

Published by Daniella Wilson

Austrian auteur Sandra Wollner’s haunting second feature, The Trouble With Being Born, was an impressive genre-bending thriller that played like an episode of Westworld directed by Michael Haneke. Quietly mesmerizing and altogether demented, it told the story of a child robot who finds herself in the care of a man with major — and I mean MAJOR — issues. It’s not worth spoiling that movie, which is currently available on Mubi and definitely deserves a look. Wollner’s follow-up, Everytime, isn’t worth spoiling either, although one of the problems with this mildly intriguing family saga is that the spoilers arrive too far behind schedule. So subtle that it’s hard, at times, to discern much of a plot, this delicately made tale of grieving and recovery doesn’t resonate until it ultimately does so in a big way. But when that happens, it can feel like too much, too late. Everytime The Bottom Line Delicately crafted and dramatically diffuse. Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)Cast: Birgit Minichmayr, Lotte Keiling, Tristan López, Carla HüttermannDirector, screenwriter: Sandra Wollner 2 …

A Playful Chronicle of a Faked Pregnancy

A Playful Chronicle of a Faked Pregnancy

Published by Daniella Wilson

Following her justly acclaimed documentaries (The Mole Agent, The Eternal Memory) that play like dramas and a scripted feature inspired by actual events (In Her Place), Chilean director Maite Alberdi continues to blur, smudge and gleefully mess with the lines between fiction and fact in her latest, the by-turns highly comical and then suddenly moving A Child of My Own (Un hijo propio). Revolving around a news story from the early 2000s that brings Alberdi north of the equator for her first Mexican-set feature, Child layers interviews with the actual participants in this strange tale with a scripted and performed re-enactment of the events. But don’t worry, this is nothing like the tacky reconstructions one often sees in made-for-TV docs to break up the monotony of talking heads telling the story, thanks in part to Alberdi’s deft narrative footwork. It helps that the cast is led by the immensely engaging Ana Celeste Montalvo Peña, who stars as Alejandra, a young hospital administrator who fakes a pregnancy and takes drastic measures to assuage her intense maternal …

Chronicle of a mass kidnapping: The day Nigeria’s Kurmin Wali changed | Armed Groups News

Chronicle of a mass kidnapping: The day Nigeria’s Kurmin Wali changed | Armed Groups News

Published by Sam Flores

Kurmin Wali, Nigeria – Like most Sundays in Kurmin Wali, the morning of January 18 began with early preparations for church and, later on, shopping at the weekly market. But by 9:30am, it became clear to residents of the village in the Kajuru local government area of Nigeria’s Kaduna State that this Sunday would not be a normal one. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Gunmen known locally as bandits arrived in the village in numbers, armed with AK47 rifles. They broke down doors and ordered people out of their homes and the village’s three churches. They blocked the village exits before taking people and marching dozens into the forest at gunpoint. Some captives were taken from church, while others were forcibly kidnapped as gunmen moved from house to house. In one house, more than 30 members of an extended family were abducted. Jummai Idris, a relative of the family that was taken, remains inconsolable. She was home the day of the attack and did not go out. “When I heard shouting, I …