VTIFF Program-Guide 2024 - Flipbook - Page 25
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FILMS A TO Z
WHO DO I BELONG TO?
Directed by Meryam Joobeur
Tunisia | 2024 | Fiction | 120 min | Arabic w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Québec Delegation
SHOWTIMES
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 | 7:15 PM | BB
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23 | 1:45 PM | BB
Aicha’s shattered family lives an isolated existence in the North African desert. Her two
oldest sons have left home to fight for ISIS, breaking Aicha’s heart. Then one son returns,
suffering badly from PTSD and bringing with him a pregnant bride, who remains covered
and silent. Things get weird, then go bad, and Aicha is caught between her maternal love
and her need for the truth. An answer comes, but it’s not what anyone expects. Director
Joobeur created her feature debut by expanding the story from her Oscar-nominated
short film of 2018, Brotherhood. As first films go, this one is remarkably assured, as the
Montreal-based Tunisian filmmaker creates a visceral sense of place in her native
Tunisia—you feel the heat around you, the sand between your teeth, the sun beating
down. But this isn’t realism—an atmosphere of narcotic dreaminess dissolves into a
growing dread and fear that Joobeur amps up almost ruthlessly. She’s a visual director,
creating haunting, surreal images that carry metaphorical weight, but ask more
questions than they answer. Joobeur kept much of the same cast from her short film,
including the three brothers, all non-professional actors, who play the three brothers. But
this is a film from a mother’s perspective, and Salha Nasraoui is remarkable as Aicha,
giving vent to the anguished woman’s full range of feelings, her love for her sons in
distinct contrast with her disgust at their cause, and her moral certainty at odds with her
dismay at how it all plays out. ~SM
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024
WORKING GIRLS
Directed by Lizzie Borden
USA | 1986 | Fiction | 93 min | English
Sponsored by: Rena Koopman
SHOWTIMES
MONDAY, OCTOBER 21 | 1:30 PM | BB
In Lizzie Borden’s second great film of the ’80s, she looks at sex work through the lens of
labor, free of judgement and full of compassion—it’s a viewpoint we still don’t see in a
society that stigmatizes the profession and its workers, and an entertainment industry
that uses their experience in the name of cheap sensationalism. Borden’s richly detailed
film was inspired by the experiences of sex workers whom she met during her five-year
shoot for 1983’s Born in Flames. The film follows Molly (Louise Smith), a photographer
by trade, as she goes through her working day, navigating a steady stream of clients
while getting support from her warm and nurturing work family. Through it all, she seeks
to stay grounded in a business where the personal and the professional dissolve into
each other all too easily. Given the thousands of times that prostitution has been
dramatized on screen, it’s startling to see Borden boldly desensationalize the subject,
offering an empathetic, humanizing, often humorous depiction of women for whom this
work is just another day at the office. ~SM
The film is followed by a Q&A with Lizzie Borden, this year’s recipient of the
VTIFF Award for Outstanding Contribution to American Cinema, sponsored
by CSE Holding Co.
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