MAMI 2014: Top ten movies at the 16th Mumbai Film Festival

Mumbai: A film festival is like life itself. Too much is packed in a short span of time. There is a mad rush to get as much as we can, and are limited only by our own constrains of body and spirit. There are lots of hits and misses, depending on the choices we make. And in spite of all this we can only have a limited slice of this gigantic pie - it is all over before we realise it. As the 16th year of the Mumbai Film Festival begins after fighting all odds, we have handpicked the must-watch films for our readers:    

1. Boyhood: (Director, Richard Linklater) Filmed from 2002 to 2013, Boyhood covers 12 years in the life of a family. Mason and his older sister, Samantha, learn to face the realities of growing up, while their divorced parents cope with the ongoing challenges of parenting in an ever-evolving landscape.

2. Mommy: (Director Xavier Dolan) A widowed single mom finds herself burdened with the full-time custody of her explosive 15-year-old ADHD son. As they try to make ends meet and struggle with their impetuous and unpredictable ménage, the new girl across the street, Kyla, benevolently offers needed support. Together, they find a new sense of balance, and hope is regained.

3. Two Days One Night: (Director, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne) Sandra has only one weekend to visit sacrifice their bonuses so she can her colleagues and - with the help keep her job of her husband.

4. Court: (Director Chaitanya Tamhane) A sewage worker’s dead body is found inside a manhole in Mumbai. An ageing folk singer is arrested and accused of performing an inflammatory song, which may have incited the worker to commit suicide. The trial unfolds in a lower court, where the hopes and dreams of the city’s ordinary people play out. Forging these fates are the lawyers and judge, who are observed in their personal lives beyond the theatre of the courtroom.

5. Coming Home: (Director Zhang Yimou) Lu Yanshi and FengWanyu are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labour camp as a political prisoner, just as his wife is injured in an accident. Released during the last days of the Cultural Revolution, he finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife has amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize Lu, she patiently waits for her husband’s return. A stranger alone in the heart of his broken family, Lu Yanshi determines to resurrect their past together and reawaken his wife’s memory.

6. Goodbye to Language: (Director Jean-Luc Godard) The idea is simple — A married woman and a single man meet. They love, they argue, fists fly. A dog strays between town and country. The seasons pass. The man and woman meet again. The dog finds itself between them. The other is in one, the one is in the other and they are three. The former husband shatters everything. A second film begins: the same as the first, and yet not. From the human race we pass to metaphor. This ends in barking and a baby’s cries. In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin.

7. Clouds of Sils Maria: (Director Olivier Assayas) French filmmaker Oliver Assayas wowed us two years ago with ‘Something in the Air’, and now he’s back this year with ‘Clouds of Sils Mara’. It is a ghost story with three powerhouse female performances from stars Juliette Binoche, Chloe Moretz and Kristen Stewart.

8. Party Girl: (Director  Samuel Theis, Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger) One of the most intriguing films at this year’s festival is Party Girl, directed by three first-time filmmakers, Samuel Theis, Marie Amachoukeli and Claire Burger. The film follows the semi-fictionalized life of one of the filmmaker’s mothers. The protagonist, Angelique, quits her blossoming job at a nightclub in France to marry a man she barely knows. Incidentally, the actor playing her groom was found three days before the shoot. Party Girl won the Un Certain Regard and Camera d’Or at Cannes earlier this year.

9. She's Lost Control: (Director Anja Marquardt) Marquardt’s debut film, set in New York, won rave reviews at the Berlin Film Festival. This indie film began as a kickstarter project and blossomed into a chilling thriller a protagonist who works as a sex surrogate.

10. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: (Director Ana Lily Amirpour) Hailed as an ‘Iranian vampire western’ and set in post-apocalyptic Iran, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a black and white film that redefines the vampire genre by mashing together elements of horror, thriller, romance and drama. It opened to rave reviews at Sundance Film Festival.

You can check the entire line up at the official website.