The whole VIFF office (along with the rest of the entertainment world) was abuzz after Sunday night’s 74th Annual Golden Globes Awards! Of course there was the fact that “La La Land” completely slayed in every category it was nominated and walked away with a Golden Globes record-breaking seven awards, an incredible feat for many reasons that all stem from the creative genius of Damien Chazelle, the 31-year old director who dared to defy Hollywood odds by making a throw back musical and convincing the powers that be that people would want to watch it. And who could get over the mic drop moment when the indomitable Meryl Streep took to the stage to receive her Lifetime Cecil B. DeMille Award but instead took a marked stand against disrespect, violence and division with a prolonged 6-minute speech that included perfectly articulated statements like the one below that will sure to be quoted for years to come:
“This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing,” she said. “Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” (Meryl Streep)
But beyond that, we were so absolutely thrilled to celebrate the Golden Globe wins for films that we had the joy of presenting at this past year’s Vancouver International Film Festival in September/October 2016. In celebration of these wonderful films that we were fortunate to have among us, we wanted to take a moment to congratulate a few of these exceptionally talented creators and teams behind the scenes. Bravo!
Moonlight – Best Motion Picture – Drama
Richard Lawson, Variety: “… ‘Moonlight’ takes on the quality of an Ian McEwan story, showing how a single moment of intimacy, however doomed or blissful, can come to shape an entire life. Jenkins deftly, insightfully meditates on the fraught intersection of black masculinity and homosexuality, while also giving his film the quiet murmur of something mythic and elemental.”
Isabelle Huppert Elle – Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama & French film ELLE Best Motion Picture Modern Language
“A possible career high for Paul Verhoeven… You’ve never seen a rape-revenge fantasy quite like Elle… Knowingly incendiary but remarkably cool-headed, and built around yet another of Isabelle Huppert’s staggering psychological dissections, [Verhoeven’s] long-awaited return to notional genre filmmaking pulls off a breathtaking bait-and-switch: Audiences arriving for a lurid slab of arthouse exploitation will be taken off-guard by the complex, compassionate, often corrosively funny examination of unconventional desires that awaits them.”—Guy Lodge, Variety
Casey Affleck – Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (Performance in MANCHESTER BY THE SEA)
Masterfully told and beautifully acted, Manchester By The Sea is a shattering yet graceful elegy of loss and grief. (Empire Magazine)
It’s Affleck’s movie to quietly own as layer upon layer of Irish impassivity is stripped away from his visage until the unspeakable can be spoken. (San Diego Reader)
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