With the 36th annual Image+Nation Film Festival commencing tonight, Thursday, November 16th, here are five films to keep on your radar.
Fancy Dance
Jax (Lily Gladstone, star of Killers Of The Flower Moon) takes her niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), from the reservation they live on in search of Jax’s sister’s killer—a drama that tackles familial tension and systemic justice, directed and co-written by Erica Tremblay. Fancy Dance is Tremblay’s first narrative feature-length film, but she has worked on Reservation Dogs and directed Heartland: a Portrait of Survival, along with other documentaries.
Femme
Jules (Nathan Stewart-Harett) grapples with the fallout of a brutal homophobic attack and discovers more about his attacker, Preston (George MacKay, star of 1917). The thriller interrogates the performance of gender, strength, and sexuality through its story of violence, deception, and intimacy. The film, directed by Sam Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, is based on a critically-acclaimed 2021 short film they made with the same name.
Close to You
Elliot Page stars as Sam, a trans man navigating the implications — at once difficult, raw, and beautiful — of transness in his relationships with people from his past. Directed by Dominic Savage and co-written by Savage and Page, the film was heavily improvised; aiming for a naturalistic and authentic depiction of the story.
My Animal
Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), a hockey player and bodybuilder, struggles with urges of all sorts: some a result of her feelings for newly-arrived Jonny (Amandla Steinberg, star of The Hate U Give), a figure skater, and some a result of her secret lycanthropy. In other words: Heather is a werewolf. Jacqueline Castel’s debut feature invokes folklore and fairytales in a subversive fusion of a horror movie and a love story.
Opponent (Motståndaren)
Iman (Payman Maadi), the father of a family of Iranian refugees, returns to wrestling to support his asylum application. Iman trains to make the Swedish national team while trying to keep his past a secret. The film is Sweden’s 2023 Oscar entry, directed by Milad Alami, and it intertwines a timely social critique with an emotionally fraught personal drama.
The 36th annual IMAGE+NATION film festival, featuring an international selection of contemporary queer films, will run in Montreal from November 16-26. For more information, visit https://www.image-nation.org/en/home-page/.
