let’s talk movies

I am sick of politics, sick of partisanship, sick of worrying myself sick about the state of the world. So I’m changing the subject.

Over at the Hot Button, David Poland is writing about the San Francisco International Film Festival. As usual, he gives good inside info about behind-the-scenes jockeying (the SFIFF and Tribeca Film Festival are big competitors, apparently—their schedules overlap). He’s also great at casting a critical eye over all aspects of a film, always remembering that the movies are an art form.

Here, he writes about an interesting-sounding German film:

Seeds of Doubt …is about a German couple. He’s Arab. She’s native and as blonde as a Nazi promotional photo. They have a young son and a still-vibrant marriage.

But in a post-9/11 word, he is suspect. He’s become used to being looked at funny and feeling the cold shoulder and has learned to let it roll off his shoulders. She doesn’t seem to think much about it. But when a series of coincidences occur at the same time and the police take interest, all the players in the life of this family are forced to reevaluate how they feel.

I don’t want to walk you through the ups and downs of the story, but you can imagine some of the twists. Is he really a terrorist? Is there something he’s not telling his wife? And can the relationship - should the relationship - survive?

This is a film that walks the line between intelligent political conversation and soap opera very effectively. Everytime you think it’s about to tip over, it seems to slow down and right itself.

It’s heartening to know that filmmakers somewhere—though, notably, not in America (for the time being)—are beginning to engage with the world as it is today, with the new personal moral conflicts and terrifying realities we face.

Here’s another positive review of the film:

We found that there were many elements of Seeds of Doubt that anyone who’s been in a relationship, presumably a challenged relationship, could relate to. It was painful to watch Maya and Tariq’s relationship unravel before our eyes. We wanted to lock the two of them in a room and force them to talk about what was happening. The film did an excellent job of demonstrating the consequential damage wrought by misunderstandings and a failure to communicate. But, there was so much more. . . .

Here’s the SFIFF’s promotional material:

Tarik (Mehdi Nebbou), an Algerian scientist living happily in Hamburg with his German wife Maya (Silke Bodenbender) and their young son, responds sarcastically to an anti-Muslim remark made by Maya’s boss at a dinner party. In a post-9/11 world, the retort is all that is needed to spark an official investigation into Tariq’s possible connection with a terrorist cell. The film then follows Maya, who, beginning with her questioning by federal police, travels through a Hitchockian psychological realm, where circumstances seem orchestrated to prove that we can never really know anyone—even the person closest to us. While it propels an edgy, compelling narrative, Maya’s resolution of the truth of whether the man she loves is actually a terrorist is not the central concern of Seeds of Doubt, whose German title, Folgeschäden, translates as “consequential damage.” Set firmly in the turbulent present of subway bombings and anthrax threats, the film is an intensive examination of how insistently the current political climate of fear and suspicion intrudes into Maya’s interpretation of events and corrodes a loving relationship. In keeping with Egyptian/German director Samir Nasr’s desire to “create an atmosphere of complicity between the spectator and the camera,” the film’s framing, sound and pacing contribute to a sense that we are tracking Maya—forming our own judgments of Tariq along with her—and perhaps subject to the very same cultural preconceptions and fears.

Now, what are the chances that this film will actually be shown in theaters? (It will probably come to New York, but I’m thinking of the rest of the country.)

Where is the Long Tail entrepreneur who will find a way to connect interesting indie films with the audiences who want to see them—even on DVD. Say, a specialty foreign films Netflix type of arrangement.