Courtesy of 1-2 Special.

The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler)
Possibly the biggest discovery of the year, albeit one from a slightly known quantity: Mumenthaler made her debut with Back to Stay, which won the Golden Leopard in 2011 over such works as Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet, Nadav Lapid’s Policeman, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Goodbye First Love, and Nicolas Kotz’s Low Life, the festival where her follow-up The Idea of a Lake bowed in 2016. For whatever reason, this particular film had to wait until the Toronto Platform competitive section to first screen, but has since received decent festival play and a belated but very welcome distribution announcement from Kino Lorber. Describing exactly what The Currents is doing is exceedingly difficult, steeped as it is in the kind of hazy psychology that typified the likes of The Headless Woman. However, its willingness to follow its protagonist down the rabbit holes prompted by her mental state, including some fascinatingly daft details that shouldn’t be mentioned here, is in turn mediated by the cool assurance of Mumenthaler’s camera, always in just the right spot to instill a vague unease. And in the mix is one of the most rhapsodic scenes of the year, a city symphony set to Holst that reminded me of, of all things, the Ravel sequence in La Flor. That such a controlled film can burst forth into such pure emotion and observation is as clear a sign of a great talent as any.

Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch)
A film whose reception has been influenced by the expectations that people have brought to it—occasioned by its well-deserved Golden Lion win over the much flashier, emptier, and more dubious The Voice of Hind Rajab and its status as Jarmusch’s long-belated follow-up to his unfairly reviled The Dead Don’t Die—to an unusual extent. It’s tempting to view his return to anthology filmmaking and his starry cast as constituting a more sedate, self-satisfied effort than the likes of Paterson and Only Lovers Left Alive, but the rhythms and resulting resonances that Father Mother Sister Brother forms across its three stories speak more wisely—about how to live one’s life and what impact that can have on your loved ones—than many have given it credit for. Some of the rhymes that Jarmusch relies upon, including skateboarders flying past the stymied protagonists in slow-motion, are a little more unsubtle than others, yet the attention to the emotional dynamics on display—between pairings and the trio as a whole (in the first two sections)—is acute, unafraid of leaning into awkwardness or pettiness as the characters allow and able to enter the kind of meditative state an extended, polite but interminable conversation can achieve. Appearances and preconceptions are everything, with little character details concealed from the other participants are revealed to the viewer, until the third segment gives a measure of grace to its less-recognized but tighter-knit duo. Jarmusch’s ability to inhabit the moment, to sum up everything the viewer needs to know about this particular familial situation at this particular time thrice over, is something to be treasured.

Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude)
I’m not certain whether this was filmed before or after Dracula (which I’ll have more to say about in a day or two) but this seems destined to join the likes of Chungking Express and Let the Sunshine In in terms of casually brilliant films almost tossed-off during a director’s more involved production. Jude has specifically cited Rossellini’s Europe ’51 as a primary reference point, and indeed the central narrative—a bailiff (Eszter Tompa) attempts to evict an unhoused man, resulting in the latter’s suicide and an extended period of soul-searching for the former—bears a connection to the Italian master’s heroine’s own awakening prompted by tragedy. But the opening, a frank portrait of the man’s final few days before the bailiff enters the film, indicate a broader focus than just the (significant) struggles of this woman. In this light, the decision to shoot this on an iPhone, breaking with Jude’s general preference for celluloid, is almost a statement of intent, an implicit declaration that urgency dictates that this tale could not be told in any other way. Many philosophical musings and ribald jokes are made, and religion and the bailiff’s contentious Hungarian ancestry are treated with unusual seriousness of purpose, but it’s crucial that the film does not attempt to steer her towards the near sainthood of Ingrid Bergman. Instead, her life must go on, and Jude correspondingly takes his closing sequence’s inspiration from a different modernist masterpiece made ten years later. In the 21st century, everyone will get swallowed up by the march of “progress.”