The New Orleans Film Festival is back for its 35th year running, and I couldn’t miss the chance to go and check it out. Tucked away in the Contemporary Arts Centre located in the Warehouse District, just a stone’s throw away from the French Quarter, I was greeted at the door upon entry and immersed into a film bros’ dreamworld; light installations, animated artwork, and even a bar.
The first film screening I attended was ‘Blitz’ – An epic thriller cast onto the backdrop of the Blitz bombings on the East End of London. Steve McQueen delivers a chilling yet emotionally bold story about a half-Grenadian’s boy’s quest to reunite with his mother (Saoirse Ronan) after having to evacuate their home. The pairing of renowned composer Hans Zimmer’s beautiful score, and McQueen’s unique artistic vision shined, creating a visually arresting cinematic epic. Though the film impresses with a dual-plot structure, certain moments were slightly episodic, disrupting the momentum of the central narrative, resulting in some moments in the narrative feeling unfinished.
‘Nickel Boys’ was my second viewing at the festival, the centrepiece of the whole festival. It was a one-of-a-kind film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s eponymous 2019 novel, director RaMell Ross goes beyond the boundaries of just a story, through a first-person POV. Ross offers a unique portrait of a human experience, set in the 1960s deep South, shot completely on 35mm film. The story follows two boys Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) throughout their time at reform juvenile school amongst the bleakness of the civil rights movement.
The cinematography and music were prismatic, dark, and bold, incorporating historic footage from the true events into the film as well as filming in Louisiana. Upon the film’s conclusion, I was surrounded by a well deserved grand applause from the audience and lots of the cast and crew who were present. I won’t be surprised to see this film up for an Academy Award.
Additionally, I visited the Broad Theatre in Mid City to view ‘The White House Effect’, an archival documentary exploring how the George H. W. Bush administration shifted from being a hopeful environmental leader to disappointment in binding commissions on the international scale, contributing to the negative impacts of global warming and climate change at such a turning point in modern history. Denial, disparity, and conceit are at the heart of this time-traveling documentary, an extremely clever way of storytelling to showcase the events that occurred.
Following the film, producers Josh Penn and Nathaniel Rich participated in a Q&A, explaining their goal of the film was to craft a story of “irrefutable footage” without having to “pick up a camera”. Instead, the aim was to dig and create the film through just archives, piecing together the final narrative that came to be with the ending only being decided in the final week of production.
The New Orleans Film Festival ran from Wednesday 16 October to Tuesday 22 October.
See www.neworleansfilmsociety.org/festival/ for more.