In the coming days, the Miami Film Festival launches GEMS, their fall festival hosting a wonderful film selection. Like the film festivals throughout the year, you’ll find indie darlings starring your favourite stars, or you can discover some fresh faces whose work makes you fall in love.
From October 8th through 11th, Miami Film Festival GEMS will bring some of the year’s hottest films with stars that include Riz Ahmed, Christopher Abbott, and Aubrey Plaza. Below, I’ve included five films you must keep an eye out for this coming weekend:
5. Shiva Baby
One of the most-talked-about independent films of the year, Shiva Baby, takes a lighter look on a fairly dark time in one’s life.
“Danielle is having a bit of an off day. A near college graduate, her parents think she’s making extra cash by working as a babysitter while finishing her degree. In reality, she has a sugar daddy and is struggling to figure out what she’s going to do with her life once she graduates.
Running late to meet her neurotic parents at a family shiva, no sooner than she steps through the front door Danielle is accosted by a barrage of estranged relatives about her appearance and lack of post-grad plans. But things take an unexpected turn when her sugar daddy, Max, arrives at the shiva with his accomplished wife and crying baby. As the day unfolds, Danielle struggles to keep up different versions of herself without completely losing it. Endlessly witty and expertly paced, Shiva Baby handles the building tensions with a comic seriousness that’ll make you both cringe and laugh out loud.”
4. Black Bear
Black Bear, a Sundance breakout, just unleashed its first trailer and sold fans on this trippy Aubrey Plaza-led film.
“Looking for inspiration for her next project, filmmaker Allison (Aubrey Plaza) decamps the urban core for a writer’s retreat at a remote lake house owned by Gabe and Blair (Sarah Gadon and Christopher Abbott), a couple who are attempting a relationship reboot by dropping out of city life. Feeling the need to begin her stay with at least a perfunctory evening of obligatory social pleasantries, Allison soon discovers she has inadvertently waded into something deeply ominous going on between Gabe and Blair. A wine-fueled evening unleashes a torrent of jealousy, desire and gender politics in a calculated – and frightening – game of psychological manipulation.
Or has it? Funny, dark, and ready to subvert your expectations at every turn, Black Bear is a wild and twisty look at the creative process. In this film, the boundaries between autobiography and invention are blurred, toyed with, and turned on their head – all in the name of the pursuit of art.”
3. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
Kicking off the GEMS Film Festival is this powerhouse documentary. Fans of the iconic band The Bee Gees will eat this look at the band’s wild story.
“To Love Somebody, You Should be Dancing, How Deep is Your Love, Stayin’ Alive – with 20 number one hits and over 1000 songs to their name, the Bee Gees weren’t just a band: they were musical icons who created the original Miami Sound. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart follows the rise to fame of brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb, from their early years in Australia to the sheer disco mania that enveloped them after the release of Saturday Night Fever.
But the Bee Gees were more than just high falsettos: they were extraordinarily talented songwriters that penned some of the greatest songs of their generation. Directed by five-time Oscar nominee Frank Marshall and featuring incredible archival access, this is the type of documentary that makes it hard for you to sit still. Song after song, hit after hit, The Bee Gees will transport you to a night of music and nostalgia — and will remind you of just how good it feels to get up and dance.”
2. Sound of Metal
Riz Ahmed enters the awards season race with the buzzed-about Sound of Metal, which follows a drummer who is battling addiction and the loss of his hearing.
“During a series of adrenaline-fueled one-night gigs, punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) begins to experience severe hearing loss. When a specialist tells him that it’s only a matter of time until his condition rapidly worsens, Ruben fears that his life is over. With the support of his bandmate and girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke), he checks into a secluded sober house for the deaf in hopes it will help him learn to adapt to his new situation. But giving up the life he once knew is no easy feat, as Ruben must choose between a community that accepts him and his disability, or to put everything on the line in hopes of reclaiming the music career – and life – he once knew.
Featuring a gut-punch performance from Riz Ahmed and utilizing innovative sound design techniques, director Darius Marder throws audiences headfirst into Ruben’s experience, giving us startlingly immersive insight into a rarely examined world.”
1. Us Kids
One of the most gripping films of 2020, Us Kids, showcases a story that’s not unique to Florida but sadly rings true worldwide.
“When students and teachers leave for school in the morning, they are not supposed to come home in a casket – but that is what happened to 17 people (plus many others injured) on February 14, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Broward County when a teenage gunman open-fired on students and faculty. How do we deal with the unfathomable, the senseless? The story of how the student survivors of this horrific event channeled their grief into activism for gun control is chronicled in filmmaker Kim Snyder’s Us Kids, a cathartic laudation of human fragility and resilience.
Just four days after the shooting, students announced plans for a march on Washington to demand gun control reform – and students across the world created sibling events that culminated in 1.2 million people forming what became known as March for Our Lives. After the march, student leaders continue to confront political leaders across America who have failed to protect them. Fueled forward by the shocking horror of what happened to their friends, classmates and themselves, the students have no time for inhibition or negotiation. You haven’t seen bravery like that of a vulnerable 17-year-old confronting a US senator on live national television at a CNN Town Hall – as occurred on February 22, just eight days after the massacre at his school.
In our polarized nation of extremes, the March for Our Lives students are sadly subjected to the indignity of vilification from right-wing extremists, but even that does not break their resolve. Emotional exhaustion is held at bay, until others come to carry the torch. THIS IS ESSENTIAL, ESSENTIAL VIEWING.”
Passes for GEMS Film Festival are still available here.
