Torino Film Festival 2023 – Failed State, Soleils Atikamekw, and Oltre La Valle
It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since I wrote about Pacifiction, but here we are again, just in time for 41TFF, otherwise known as the Torino Film Festival 2023. I haven’t watched Pacifiction again, but I still think about it from time and time, and would watch it again, which tells me it had something that really stuck with me. And I will stick by that film, no matter what! Aside from all the screenings, this year’s edition featured a Master Class with Oliver Stone, among others. This year I made it to three films, three days in a row (what luxury!), for three completely different cinematic experiences. Sadly, I didn’t have time to get to any of the John Wayne films that were part of the Festival’s retrospectives. This year’s promo ad for the Festival transforms the Torino streets and monuments into a Wild West spectacle. Read on for my impressions of Failed State, Soleils Atikamekw, and Oltre La Valle.
Failed State – Nuovi Mondi (New Worlds)
I saw Failed State (co-directed by Mitch Blummer and Christopher Jason Bell) exactly one week before its official release date. Because of this, it was hard to get a lot of information about it, which, in a way, is a good thing, as I wasn’t influenced by other reviews or comments online. And afterwards, when I had a chance to find out more about Dale (played by Dale A. Smith), the main character, I have to say it did change the way I thought about things. The film was part of the Nuovi Mondi (New Worlds) category, which is one of the out-of-competition categories.
More Miles than Forrest Gump
Dale, a man of somewhat indeterminate age, could be anywhere from mid-40’s to early 60’s. We follow him as he walks more miles than Forrest Gump delivering all kinds of objects for a local New York City courier service, A-1 Courier. He doesn’t ask for anyone’s pity and, in fact, he stops any type of pity we might feel for him in its tracks. I mean this in the best possible way. Every time he opens his mouth, he says something that contradicts the prejudicial emotions we might assign to him based on the clothes he wears or the giant shopping bag that is his constant companion. He’s intelligent and has a home, one he shared with his mother until her death five years prior.
At a certain point I felt like I wanted to know him more, that I wasn’t getting the true Dale. But then I realized that what I was seeing was Dale — what you see is what you get. While he struggles to maintain connections during Covid, he begins to crack under the physical and mental weight of errands which become increasingly absurd. Cemetery just too far away to deliver flowers? Dale’s got your back (even if it takes him hours to try to find the right headstones). Can’t write your own greeting cards? No problem, he’ll pen a note to your mother as he thinks about his own, tears dripping off his nose. Crushed under the weight of loneliness, his inability to pay his bills, and a callous boss who doesn’t inform him of his co-worker/friend’s death, Dale finds himself with his hands tied, quickly accelerating towards a nervous breakdown.
An Interesting Realization
As mentioned above, I didn’t do much checking on the movie before I watched it, and afterwards I had the interesting realization that Dale may, in fact, be more like his character than you would initially think. See this interview with Christopher Jason Bell, which includes a link to Trammel, a 2020 short where Dale makes his first appearance. Bell’s film Incorrectional screened at the 2018 Torino Film Festival and, as he states in the above interview, it was well-received by the audiences here, but in a lot of other places, there were too many questions as to what the connections were (meaning: what or where was the story?). I didn’t hear too many comments after the screening, but at least one person experienced a similar confusion with this film, asking what the ending had to do with the rest. I personally didn’t find the connection difficult to make, but it’s true that the story is more of a “slice of life” work than something plot-based. Is Dale an actor playing a role? Or is he himself, improvising in front of the cameras? It’s an interesting question to ponder.
Soleils Atikamekw – Feature Film Competition
Soleils Atikamekw (Atikamekw Suns), an even sadder film, blurs the line between fiction and fact, too. Selected as an entrant in the Feature Film Competition (this year’s winner was the Ukrainian film La Palisiada), it is based on the true-life story of five Indigenous residents of Manawan (the Province of Quebec) who died under tragic and mysterious circumstances in the summer of 1977 after partying with two non-Indigenous men who lived in the area. Their bodies were found inside a van, itself submerged at a relatively shallow depth in the Milieu River, near Saint-Michel-des-Saints, north of Montreal. After waiting several hours and then stopping for coffee, the two non-Indigenous men involved went to talk to the police about what happened. The police went to the scene but did no investigation.
Ensemble Cast
You can listen to an interview with writer and director, Chloé Leriche, here (in French), from the Festival. The ensemble cast features Mirociw Chilton, Wikwasa Bewashish-Petiquay, Oshim Ottawa, Carl-David Ottawa, and Jacques Newashish, many of whom have starred in Leriche’s other projects. It’s hard to pick one standout — I thought they were all excellent.
The film uses voiceovers of family members of the survivors, along with actual video footage of them intertwined with the film’s others scenes to muddy the lines between documentary and fiction. Tragedies such as the one depicted are burdens whose weight bears down on those involved for years, even decades, as this film demonstrates. The weight is particularly unbearable when questions are brushed off and remain unanswered. Despicable treatment by the non-Indigenous locals permeates the interactions between the two groups, from something as “small” as being served coffee in Styrofoam cups when non-Indigenous patrons are given china cups and saucers, to the even more inexcusable behavior related to the lack of any kind of proper investigation — no autopsies were performed on the victims, despite suspicious marks on at least one of their bodies.
No Charges Were Filed
After pressure from the families of the five deceased, an investigation was finally opened, some 40 years after the incident. However, no charges were filed against either the driver or the other man involved.
Oltre La Valle (Beyond the Valley) – Italian Documentary Competition
Oltre La Valle (Beyond the Valley), directed by Virginia Bellizzi, was selected as an entry for the Italian documentary competition (won this year by Giganti Rosse). Bellizzi is a young director from Milan, and this documentary, made with the support of the Film Commission Torino Piemonte, is her first full-length film. Where Failed State talks about a realistic but still fictional character, and Soleils Atikamekw fictionalizes a true story, Oltre La Valle is a true documentary. The director remains objective, keeping a distance from the people filmed.
Dangerous Border Crossing
An almost continuous flow of migrants and refugees attempt the dangerous border crossing near the town of Claviere, which sits on the Italian and French border. Footage shows staff at an Italian refuge in the nearby town of Oulx as they go about their daily chores, their French counterparts at a similar refuge across the border. Red Cross volunteers make regular rounds to the border crossing station in Claviere to pick up people who have been refused entry by French border police (I would say this is a euphemism for having been discovered in the vicinity). This begs the question of why Italy is willing to house these souls while France is not, but the film makes no comment on this (nor do I, since I have no answer).
Filmed from 2022 to 2023 (with a scene from around Christmas time in 2022), we see the stories of a mixed bag of people. The most heartbreaking is that of two young Afghan boys who were traveling alone to try to reach their mother somewhere in France. We see them as they rest at the refuge in Oulx. They eat rice and beans; sing; and string up Christmas lights.
The Situation on the Border
The situation on the border is complicated, to say the least. Located only about an hour from our house, we saw some of the exact scenes that play out in Oltre La Valle first-hand in September when we were in the area for a pleasant mountain walk. We waited at the train station in Oulx to come home and saw a busload of people, ostensibly housed in the town, boarding a bus for Claviere, just like some of those shown in the documentary. They make the journey there, sometimes accompanied by a retired anthropologist who is shown in the documentary, in the hopes of disembarking and making a run for the French border. However, just since August three people have died in this area, including one person who was found buried in the snow.
RIP John Nichols
Our friend, writer John Nichols (John Treadwell Nichols), passed away last week in Taos, New Mexico. What you’ll read about him is that he was most known for his Taos allegory, The Milagro Beanfield War, part of a trilogy which included The Magic Journey and The Nirvana Blues (he told us in 2019 that The Magic Journey was probably his favorite of the three). Favorites of mine include The Wizard of Loneliness and his 2022 memoir, I Got Mine: Confessions of a Mid-List Writer. The song Come Saturday Morning, by The Sandpipers, also always comes to mind. Why? It’s the theme song for the movie starring Liza Minnelli based on John’s book, The Sterile Cuckoo. A quick digression: The song was nominated for an Academy Award for best original song in 1970, but it lost to Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head. Tough competition.
But those are all works created by an artist. Granted, someone truly skilled at and dedicated to his craft, but still. The fun was spending time with John, laughing over a plate of food at The Guadalajara Grill in Taos, or walking out at the Rio Grande Gorge when he was still able. More recently, we would meet him for lunch in town, or have a picnic lunch at his casita. This past summer he wasn’t up to it but when I spoke to him at the beginning of July, he said if he made it to his birthday later in the month he would be 83, a fact that amazed him. He loved telling stories, of course, but also loved playing guitar and would break into song, his wide grin lighting up his face. At the end of one visit, as he was headed to his little Toyota pickup, he said he was on his way to get a copy of The New York Times. Toni Morrison had just died and he wanted to read her obituary. How sad that we can now read his there. RIP John Nichols.
Pulling at Threads is my occasional newsletter. It always accompanies my blog posts but I sometimes send infrequent updates on other goings on. If you want more of an “insider’s” view on what’s happening in my reading and writing life, you can sign up here.