MSP International Film Festival: Not sure what to watch? Here are MPR's picks
MSP Film at the Main: Artist rendering of the new exterior planned for MSP Film at The Main, the the five-theater complex now be run by the MSP Film Society.
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The Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival begins April 13 and runs through April 27 and the Main Cinema in Minneapolis.
The festival features nearly 200 films so there’s something for everybody. MPR News arts reporters Jacob Aloi and Alex Cipolle have seen many of the films and they joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about them.
Arts programming on MPR News is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
CATHY WURZER: Glad you're with us here on Minnesota Now from MPR News. I'm Cathy Wurzer. The Minneapolis St Paul Film Festival begins tonight at the main cinema in Minneapolis and runs through April 27. This year's festival features nearly 200 films, so there's something for everybody. Our arts reporters Jacob Aloi and Alex V. Cipolle have seen many of the films and they're here to talk about some of their favorites. Hey, you two. How are you?
JACOB ALOI: Great, how are you?
CATHY WURZER: Good, thank you.
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: So excited to be here.
CATHY WURZER: Oh my gosh, thanks for being here. All right, so for those not familiar, give us a refresher on this festival. It's been around, well, at least since the '80s, right, Jacob?
JACOB ALOI: Right, yeah. The annual Film Festival was first held in Minnesota in 1981, and of course, that means that this is the 42nd Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival. It's organized by the Minneapolis St Paul Film Society, a nonprofit organization, and it offers more than 100 films from around the world.
CATHY WURZER: But there are some local films too, right?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Oh, yeah. There's a ton of local films. There's Doua Mouas's The Harvest. He is from Minnesota, and he's a Hmong-American director. There's Minnesota Mean, which is about the roller derby girls here in the Twin Cities. Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, perfect. I love that. [LAUGHS]
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: There's some welcome moments at this festival. So it's returning to the St. Anthony main theater, which the Minneapolis Film Society actually purchased and renovated last year. And there's some nostalgia, too. For this festival, they are reopening the Pracna restaurant on Main.
CATHY WURZER: Oh.
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, wow.
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Which is-- was, until it closed in 2015-- one of Minnesota's oldest restaurants.
CATHY WURZER: That sounds fantastic, and the Pracna is great. OK, I want to hear a bit about your favorite films. Alex, I understand your first pick was Ojibwa Warrior: The Legacy Of Dennis Banks. We'll hear a little bit of that trailer.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- He was doing a benefit for Dennis Banks?
- Tony Bennett?
- Yeah, and Marlon was there, when Marlon was alive? I was telling Tony, tonight I said, before I go to the spirit world, I want you to teach me one song. Just one song. The name of that is "Tennessee Waltz." It's a country of song. [VOCALIZING]
(SINGING) I remember the night on the Tennessee walls.
[END PLAYBACK]
CATHY WURZER: OK Alex, what's the film about?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Well, the film is about Dennis Banks, who, for those who don't know, is maybe one of the most important activists in US history. He co-founded the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis in 1968, and this documentary really follows his journey from founding that movement, which was really the beginning of civil rights activism from the Native American perspective. He-- It talks about how when he was in prison in Minnesota-- which he was in prison for stealing some groceries to feed his family-- he was watching the Civil Rights movement unfold from prison, and he really wanted to have a Native voice in that movement. So when he left prison, he started this movement in Minneapolis.
CATHY WURZER: And I'm presuming that was Dennis that we heard singing "Tennessee Waltz"?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: That was Dennis, and one of the things that makes this documentary really special is the archival footage and the very intimate interviews with Dennis kind of over his lifetime, leading up to right before his death in 2017. And, you know, the documentary can be a bit disjointed at time, but it really shines with this archival footage and gets into the history of this resistance movement that Minnesota can be really, really proud of to have started here.
CATHY WURZER: So The Legacy of Dennis Banks. All right, Jacob, we're going to go to you next. Your first pick was Sam Now. Let's hear a little bit of that trailer.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- This is my half-brother, Sam.
[CHILDREN LAUGHING]
I've been filming him since he was 11.
- Ah!
- Oh my god!
- Oh, joys?
- This is his mom.
- I felt so special around her.
- Grace is here and Sam. She would dance to music with me on his shoulders.
- When he was 14, she vanished without telling anyone. Did you say goodbye, or?
- No. Didn't say goodbye that time.
- At age 17, Sam and I take a road trip to find her.
- Mother! Come out, come out, wherever you are! I want her to know that I'm not mad at her.
[END PLAYBACK]
CATHY WURZER: All right, give us a rundown on this one.
JACOB ALOI: Well, like the trailer just mentioned, Sam Now, we take a look at the life and times of Sam Harkness, whose mother, Joyce, left the family, abandoned them, when he was only 14. And the film is actually made by his older half-brother Reed Harkness, and it spans about 20 years and takes a real look at how that one singular event cascaded into an estranged family and a different family dynamic and is a wonderful mix of kind of mystery and documentary, parlor drama, family intrigue all wrapped up in one.
CATHY WURZER: I like the parlor drama. All right, Alex, let's hear about your second pick. It's called Our Father The Devil. Let's hear a little bit.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- [SPEAKING FRENCH]
[END PLAYBACK]
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: So this is absolutely my favorite film that I watched for this festival. It is by a Cameroonian director who's based in New York, and it's crazy because this is her first feature film. It follows Marie, who is a West African living in rural France. She's a chef at a retirement home, and one day she hears the voice of Father Patrick, who happens to be the warlord that killed her family several decades before. It's a thriller, but it's also an exquisite examination of trauma and-- Yeah, it's just-- It's so unpredictable. I highly recommend it.
CATHY WURZER: Jacob, back to you. Your second pick was Alam. Let's hear a clip.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[DOOR SLAMS]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- Oh.
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[END PLAYBACK]
JACOB ALOI: So Alam is a coming-of-age story set upon the backdrop of Palestinian life, and it follows the main character, Tamer, who's this kind of quiet teenager who ends up getting in trouble with his friends. And of course, you see all of the things that you'd expect from a coming-of-age story, any John Hughes movie, but you also see what life is like as a Palestinian living under the Israeli government. So you see his-- The film depicts his entire friend group and him facing police brutality, second-class status. There's even one scene in the film where the entire-- almost the entire class stands up from a history lecture and leaves in protest of how they see their history being taught to them in school. So it's a really interesting story about identity. And the struggle for our main character Tamer is the entire time he is somewhere between wanting to be an activist and wanting to fight against the oppression he's facing, but also trying to stay under the radar in some ways to appease his father. And through the story, we see some of the reasons why his family might want him to not be this revolutionary figure.
CATHY WURZER: Are there any other movies you both are looking forward to seeing? Alex?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Well, just a couple movies that I would recommend, the Israeli dark comedy Concerned Citizen is really amazing, as well as the American documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light. That was definitely one of my favorites as well.
CATHY WURZER: And what do you think, Jacob?
JACOB ALOI: Well there's one event that I don't know what the movie is, because it is a special secret screening event happening on April 20. They say the movie is about 90 minutes long. It's a documentary, and it released this year in 2023. And as according to the website, they want you to join them for a quote, "super sneaky top secret screening of an intercontinental documentary." So be sure to go check that out. I know I'm going to.
CATHY WURZER: Excellent. All right, you both are terrific. Thank you so much.
JACOB ALOI: Thank you!
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Thank you, Cathy.
JACOB ALOI: Great, how are you?
CATHY WURZER: Good, thank you.
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: So excited to be here.
CATHY WURZER: Oh my gosh, thanks for being here. All right, so for those not familiar, give us a refresher on this festival. It's been around, well, at least since the '80s, right, Jacob?
JACOB ALOI: Right, yeah. The annual Film Festival was first held in Minnesota in 1981, and of course, that means that this is the 42nd Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival. It's organized by the Minneapolis St Paul Film Society, a nonprofit organization, and it offers more than 100 films from around the world.
CATHY WURZER: But there are some local films too, right?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Oh, yeah. There's a ton of local films. There's Doua Mouas's The Harvest. He is from Minnesota, and he's a Hmong-American director. There's Minnesota Mean, which is about the roller derby girls here in the Twin Cities. Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, perfect. I love that. [LAUGHS]
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: There's some welcome moments at this festival. So it's returning to the St. Anthony main theater, which the Minneapolis Film Society actually purchased and renovated last year. And there's some nostalgia, too. For this festival, they are reopening the Pracna restaurant on Main.
CATHY WURZER: Oh.
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, wow.
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Which is-- was, until it closed in 2015-- one of Minnesota's oldest restaurants.
CATHY WURZER: That sounds fantastic, and the Pracna is great. OK, I want to hear a bit about your favorite films. Alex, I understand your first pick was Ojibwa Warrior: The Legacy Of Dennis Banks. We'll hear a little bit of that trailer.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- He was doing a benefit for Dennis Banks?
- Tony Bennett?
- Yeah, and Marlon was there, when Marlon was alive? I was telling Tony, tonight I said, before I go to the spirit world, I want you to teach me one song. Just one song. The name of that is "Tennessee Waltz." It's a country of song. [VOCALIZING]
(SINGING) I remember the night on the Tennessee walls.
[END PLAYBACK]
CATHY WURZER: OK Alex, what's the film about?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Well, the film is about Dennis Banks, who, for those who don't know, is maybe one of the most important activists in US history. He co-founded the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis in 1968, and this documentary really follows his journey from founding that movement, which was really the beginning of civil rights activism from the Native American perspective. He-- It talks about how when he was in prison in Minnesota-- which he was in prison for stealing some groceries to feed his family-- he was watching the Civil Rights movement unfold from prison, and he really wanted to have a Native voice in that movement. So when he left prison, he started this movement in Minneapolis.
CATHY WURZER: And I'm presuming that was Dennis that we heard singing "Tennessee Waltz"?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: That was Dennis, and one of the things that makes this documentary really special is the archival footage and the very intimate interviews with Dennis kind of over his lifetime, leading up to right before his death in 2017. And, you know, the documentary can be a bit disjointed at time, but it really shines with this archival footage and gets into the history of this resistance movement that Minnesota can be really, really proud of to have started here.
CATHY WURZER: So The Legacy of Dennis Banks. All right, Jacob, we're going to go to you next. Your first pick was Sam Now. Let's hear a little bit of that trailer.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- This is my half-brother, Sam.
[CHILDREN LAUGHING]
I've been filming him since he was 11.
- Ah!
- Oh my god!
- Oh, joys?
- This is his mom.
- I felt so special around her.
- Grace is here and Sam. She would dance to music with me on his shoulders.
- When he was 14, she vanished without telling anyone. Did you say goodbye, or?
- No. Didn't say goodbye that time.
- At age 17, Sam and I take a road trip to find her.
- Mother! Come out, come out, wherever you are! I want her to know that I'm not mad at her.
[END PLAYBACK]
CATHY WURZER: All right, give us a rundown on this one.
JACOB ALOI: Well, like the trailer just mentioned, Sam Now, we take a look at the life and times of Sam Harkness, whose mother, Joyce, left the family, abandoned them, when he was only 14. And the film is actually made by his older half-brother Reed Harkness, and it spans about 20 years and takes a real look at how that one singular event cascaded into an estranged family and a different family dynamic and is a wonderful mix of kind of mystery and documentary, parlor drama, family intrigue all wrapped up in one.
CATHY WURZER: I like the parlor drama. All right, Alex, let's hear about your second pick. It's called Our Father The Devil. Let's hear a little bit.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- [SPEAKING FRENCH]
[END PLAYBACK]
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: So this is absolutely my favorite film that I watched for this festival. It is by a Cameroonian director who's based in New York, and it's crazy because this is her first feature film. It follows Marie, who is a West African living in rural France. She's a chef at a retirement home, and one day she hears the voice of Father Patrick, who happens to be the warlord that killed her family several decades before. It's a thriller, but it's also an exquisite examination of trauma and-- Yeah, it's just-- It's so unpredictable. I highly recommend it.
CATHY WURZER: Jacob, back to you. Your second pick was Alam. Let's hear a clip.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[DOOR SLAMS]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- Oh.
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[END PLAYBACK]
JACOB ALOI: So Alam is a coming-of-age story set upon the backdrop of Palestinian life, and it follows the main character, Tamer, who's this kind of quiet teenager who ends up getting in trouble with his friends. And of course, you see all of the things that you'd expect from a coming-of-age story, any John Hughes movie, but you also see what life is like as a Palestinian living under the Israeli government. So you see his-- The film depicts his entire friend group and him facing police brutality, second-class status. There's even one scene in the film where the entire-- almost the entire class stands up from a history lecture and leaves in protest of how they see their history being taught to them in school. So it's a really interesting story about identity. And the struggle for our main character Tamer is the entire time he is somewhere between wanting to be an activist and wanting to fight against the oppression he's facing, but also trying to stay under the radar in some ways to appease his father. And through the story, we see some of the reasons why his family might want him to not be this revolutionary figure.
CATHY WURZER: Are there any other movies you both are looking forward to seeing? Alex?
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Well, just a couple movies that I would recommend, the Israeli dark comedy Concerned Citizen is really amazing, as well as the American documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light. That was definitely one of my favorites as well.
CATHY WURZER: And what do you think, Jacob?
JACOB ALOI: Well there's one event that I don't know what the movie is, because it is a special secret screening event happening on April 20. They say the movie is about 90 minutes long. It's a documentary, and it released this year in 2023. And as according to the website, they want you to join them for a quote, "super sneaky top secret screening of an intercontinental documentary." So be sure to go check that out. I know I'm going to.
CATHY WURZER: Excellent. All right, you both are terrific. Thank you so much.
JACOB ALOI: Thank you!
ALEX V. CIPOLLE: Thank you, Cathy.
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