Started strong and petered out. Probably 30 mins too long.

You can keep your It’s A Wonderful Lifes. This is the true story of Christmas.

This was a lot for a first film of MIFF.

An utter gut-punch. Phenomenal performances, incredible cinematography, and a temporal cut that absolutely breaks the heart.

So much to say about gender politics, but the sisters just don't. They don't say much at all. They just look at the audience, and each other, and plead to be freed from their respective prisons.

Languages have power, and are irrevocably linked to histories, to memories, to personalities.

Sometimes it might be okay for a language, a culture, to fade. It is the nature of things, after all.

That's the tension here: preservation versus progress. And weaved through this tension, walking along it like tightrope walkers, are a few characters. They are simply drawn, but their story is heartbreaking and sweet.

Language is also about what is not said, and that's where the real beauty of this film lies, I think: in its silences.

[ MIFF'17-7 ]