'Flee': Film Review | Sundance 2021

Being pressured to read a friend's extensive text conversation with their vexatious significant other is one of the scourges of modern life. As it happens, that comprises much of what's asked of the audience by R#J, the un-Googleable desktop film that adapts Romeo and Juliet for the Instagram age.

When Molly, the troubled but dogged protagonist of Knocking, moves into her new apartment, she notices the word "Help" scrawled high on the elevator wall. Whether this is a random bit of graffiti or a sign of a particular hyperawareness on Molly's part — a sensitivity to cries of anguish — goes to the heart of this smart, disquieting film.

More than 20 years ago, the Kosovo war with Serbia and Montenegro left 12,000 dead and more than 3,000 missing, mainly Kosovar Albanians. In Hive (Zgjoi), her first feature, writer-director Blerta Basholli is inspired by the true story of Fahrije Hoti, a single mother who, many years after her husband goes missing, is forced by economic necessity to face his loss.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the 15 shortlisted films for the International Film Oscar and despite the lack of screenings and in-person events, it’s a worthy list that should satisfy any cinephile. Among the 93 submissions, acclaimed films such as Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round” (Denmark), Jayro Bustamante’s “La Llorona” (Guatemala), and Philippe Lacôte’s “Night of Kings” (Ivory Coast) all made the cut.

The enormity of nature hits you like a freight train in the early scenes of James Ashcroft's taut and sinewy first feature, Coming Home in the Dark. The majestic rural landscape of Greater Wellington, on the southernmost tip of New Zealand's north island, changes in an instant from a place of enveloping tranquility to one of terrifying, helpless isolation as a family's encounter with a pair of murderous drifters uncovers past trauma.

Love triangles seem to occur more often in the movies than in real life — unless I’ve been hanging out in all the wrong places. They are a convenient choice for storytellers looking for a piquant, offbeat way to dress up the green-eyed monster.

Much of Erin Vassilopoulos’ moody, something’s-wrong-in-the-suburbs directorial debut, Superior, takes place in a Reagan-era Barbie Dreamhouse come to life. Within its mint and pink-punch walls live Vivian (Ani Mesa) and Michael (Jake Hoffman), a young couple who are dismayed when her estranged twin sister, Marian (Alessandra Mesa, Ani’s own twin), a touring rock musician, drops by unannounced during a thawing winter and asks to stay for a few days.

The Berlin Film Festival has announced the first group of films for its 71st edition, unveiling the official lineups for its Retrospective and Generation sections on Monday.

Multidisciplinary artist Amalia Ulman makes an appealingly idiosyncratic first foray into features with El Planeta, a captivating throwback to the shaggy aesthetic of micro-budget '90s New York indies that plays like Grey Gardens with a hint of early Almodóvar. Ulman and her real-life mother Ale play a reduced family unit in the Spanish seaside town of Gijón, living beyond their dwindling means in willful denial as the foundations crumble beneath them.

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet is very much its own creature. In ways that can pull you in and also keep you at a distance, it has no use for movie conventions of plot and characterization as it traces turning points in its 30-something protagonist's life — a life shaped by ordinary strife and joy and, for a while, a strange planetary phenomenon.

Just as Waltz with Bashir did 13 years ago, director Jonas Poher Rasmussen robustly reaffirms in Flee that animation can be used not just for amusement but for any purpose, in this case to tell the harrowing story of what some refugees from Afghanistan went through in order to forge new lives in the West.

Director Rod Lurie, an Army veteran and West Point alum, drew upon his years of military experience while making “The Outpost,” a war film based on Jake Tapper’s book about the Battle of Kamdesh, during which a few dozen Americans were ambushed by hundreds of Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan.“I’m a military guy, I served a long time ago,” Lurie told TheWrap’s Steve Pond as part of TheWrap’s Screening Series.

Also Read: Neon Acquires Jonas Poher Rasmussen's 'Flee' in 7-Figure DealMade lucid in hand-drawn animated form, Amin’s memories are expressed in two distinguishable styles: The most traumatic, and thus the foggiest, appear through rough lines in muted black-and-white, like an apparition barely visible in the mist of his subconscious, but with tangible sensorial impact. That minimalist approach changes for sequences in the present and the larger part of the past.

"If anyone's taking that gay horse, it's me," declares ruthless ex-military cryptid poacher Nicholas, while Lauren Gray, the heroic protector of mythological creatures in Cryptozoo, prepares to take off on a snowy white Pegasus with a mane and wings in pastel rainbow shades. That kind of droll humor was a constant in graphic novelist Dash Shaw's 2016 feature debut, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea.

Within just a few years, Theo Anthony has proven himself a master of the cine-essay. He doesn't neatly connect the dots for us, instead creating dynamic, synapse-sparking terrains, with particular focus on city life and social justice.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentDenmark’s Maja Jul Larsen has bested strong opposition to take this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for DR’s “Cry Wolf,” Larsen’s first series as a creator and lead-writer.The win, announced at a Göteborg Festival TV Drama Vision award ceremony on Tuesday, goes to one of the rising stars on Denmark’s screenwriting scene who in a relatively short career – she graduated from Denmark’s National Film School in 2007 – has run an up an impressive

Angelique Jackson Participant has partnered with NEON on the North American distribution of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s documentary “Flee” after its Sundance debut.The film, a largely animated documentary about the life of a gay Afghan refugee, earned the grand jury prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition category on Tuesday night, just hours after the new partnership was announced.“We were awestruck by Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s beautiful and intimate Flee and are so proud to join with NEON

A group of 20 or so women — young, barefoot and in saris — sit in a circle on the floor in the new documentary Writing With Fire. Comprising the staff of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only all-female newspaper (whose title translates to “waves of news”), the women are told that the publication will expand its online operations soon, and they must adapt.

Against-the-odds gambles and the hope for one last chance — these are the dreams that drive horse-racing movies, whether the mood is noir-bleak (The Killing) or feel-good rousing (Seabiscuit). Jockey fits right into that lineage, but what sets it apart is its focus on the working-class realities of the riders, grooms and trainers who travel the smaller circuits, far from the glamour and money of the Triple Crown.

Also Read: 'Summer of Soul' Film Review: Questlove's Vibrant Concert Film Captures a Pivotal Harlem Moment“Flee” is produced by Final Cut for Real, in co-production with animation studio Sun Creature, Denmark, Vivement Lundi!, France, MostFilm, Sweden, and Mer Film, Norway. ARTE France and Vpro, Nederland.