This year’s programme includes films that discuss social, psychological and political issues from a wide range of angles.
The opening film is Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Berlinale, along with awards from several other film festivals around the world. Mascaro, who co-wrote the script with Tibério Azul, Murilo Hauser, and Heitor Lorega, focuses on a very poor part of a Brazilian city. He follows Tereza (Denise Weinberg), a 77-year-old woman who lives alone and works as a cleaner in a food factory that specialises in canning crocodile meat. The central conflict arises when the Brazilian government decides to reduce the retirement age from 80 to 75, while simultaneously establishing a colony for the elderly outside the city. On her last day at work, Tereza feels she has lost everything at once. Legally in the custody of her daughter, she cannot even buy a plane ticket without her permission. The film follows the protagonist’s attempts to escape her destiny.
The story conveys her feelings of despair regarding the new government regulation, introduced under the slogan “The Future Is for All.” This new retirement law appears to be a kind of dystopian vision from the filmmaker, yet it lacks the sci-fi elements that usually characterise dystopian films. The script unfolds as a road trip filled with Tereza’s escape attempts to avoid being taken to the colony, which she believes would mark the end of her freedom. The first part of her journey is in the company Cadu (Rodrigo Santoro), a sailor and perhaps a smuggler, on his boat down the Amazon River. This sequence showcases the natural beauty of the region. Cadu’s trip is meant to drop her off with the pilot of an ultralight aircraft so she can travel somewhere far enough to avoid being caught. Unfortunately, the pilot is a gambling addict, and she loses her money with him.
It is clear that the filmmaker is influenced by the aesthetics of magical realism that characterise Latin American drama in film as well as literature. One of that approach’s defining features is the mixture of reality and fantasy often seen in the work of 20th-century Latin American authors such as the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez. Although the main storyline seems common and may have been explored in many other films, the filmmaker’s approach is entirely unique. The magical elements he introduces are deeply alluring, blending reality with fantasy and supernatural motifs. Some of those motifs are directly woven into the drama, while others are purely artistic elements that enhance the visual beauty and complete the film’s magical atmosphere. Visually, the opening scenes in the protagonist’s workplace feel highly distinctive — a crocodile slaughterhouse and meat-canning factory is a rare setting. During her trip with Cadu on the Amazon, Cadu discovers a rare snail that secretes blue saliva. Before proceeding to demonstrate on himself, he tells her that placing a drop of this saliva in one’s eyes allows one to see the future.
This scene creates a mysterious and surreal atmosphere, further elevated by the beautiful imagery and compelling performances, especially when, on waking from a blackout, he tells her he himself reunited with his beloved in the future. A similar moment occurs when Tereza, now on a boat with Roberta (Miriam Socarrás), encounters the same snail. Roberta, who sells digital Bibles along the Amazon, becomes Tereza’s closest companion and suggests that she continue travelling with her. The script is carefully structured, using each motif introduced in the first half of the story as a key element in the second half. The story raises profound questions about the freedom of senior citizens, especially those who remain in good health and still have much to do with their lives.
***
Maroun Baghdadi lives on in the minds and souls of most Lebanese filmmakers and cinephiles. His impact lies not just in his cinematic contribution, but in the history that his works documented. He made his films at the peak of the brutal Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). Most of his works were well recognised by audiences and critics. But his most famous film is Out of Life (Hors la Vie), for which he won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, two years before he tragically passed away. Nicolas Khoury’s Souraya Mon Amour, premiering in the CIFF International Competition, opens with the voice of Souraya Baghdadi, Maroun’s widow, on a black screen, saying that she was angry when Khoury contacted her about this film. From the very first scene, the filmmaker shares the difficulties he has faced trying to convince Souraya to be part of the film. In fact, this scene shows how Souraya herself feels burdened by the need to talk of her late husband. It is obvious that the filmmaker is eager to weave his shots, sounds, and thoughts into an avant-garde construction.
Building a narrative based on memories is not easy when the living partner seems to have moved on with her life. The film is filled with shattered memories. However, Souraya, who says that she doesn’t want to play the role of the widow who is grieving for all these years, does provide Khoury with all the videos Maroun took of her and their three children. But what is perhaps most outstanding about the film is her reciting the letters she sent Maroun. These scenes are very moving, as if they were poems read over footage from the past. Scenes of the couple’s first encounters feature Maroun casting for his film Little Wars during a Caracalla Dance Troupe training session in 1982. Souraya at this time was a young dancer in the troupe. He had chosen her for a leading role in the film, which was screened in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 1982.
The filmmaker captures the essence of his narrative by playing on these words and using these archival images. He is keen on throwing the audience into a sea of nostalgia. One sequence shows Baghdadi’s converted eighties sports car on top of a truck, with Souraya in the passenger’s seat, on what looks like the Lebanese countryside. The audience cannot be sure of the place because she says she doesn’t like to go to back to Beirut. The film delves into Souraya’s deepest emotions. Every now and then, her implicit anger keeps surfacing. She has a very quiet anger inside her, which may give a false alarm that she will burst into tears or shout. What is interesting is that she shows some of the happiness she felt with Maroun but also how he left her out many times. The film reveals a true love story with both heavenly moments and dreadful times. Although it lacks some information about Souraya (like how she earns her living now or what her relationship with her children and grandchildren is like), Khoury manages to take the audience on the burdensome trip of creating a film, not showing the film itself. It is an exploration of the inner, short life of the love story that created Baghdadi’s little family.
***
The “Yellow Vests” movement began in France in November 2018, initially as a protest against rising fuel taxes. The high-visibility safety vests, which French drivers are legally required to carry, were adopted as a symbol of the grassroots movement. The protests quickly grew into a wider anti-government uprising against high costs of living, economic inequality and President Emmanuel Macron’s policies. The demonstrators demanded measures like a higher minimum wage and increased democratic accountability. The protests often involved blocking roads and occasionally escalated into violent riots.
The film Case 137 (Dossier 137), directed by Dominik Moll and screened in CIFF’s official out of competition programme, is about a true incident that took place during those protests. It premiered in the Cannes Film Festival official competition 2025. The script, written by Moll and Gilles Marchand, is about Guillaume Girard, a young man critically injured by a direct shot to his skull. The story follows a police internal affairs (IGPN) inspector, Stephanie Bertrand (Léa Drucker), tasked with investigating the circumstances around this brutal incident. The filmmaker depicts the protagonist and her colleagues in internal affairs as they conduct their investigation: interrogating the riot police, Girard’s family members, and his fellow protesters. This part of the film adopts a documentary style, recording a number of testimonies from some of the witnesses who participated in confronting the demonstrators.
The film is structured like a thriller, revealing the solution of the case step by step. Stephanie’s team limits their circle of accusations to match one or more suspects, using interrogation and also surveillance camera footage from the incident. The drama is built on two main sides: the IGPN team’s desire to collect information regarding the officers who mounted the assault versus the police officers—including some IGPN leaders—who are trying to protect those who participated in “defending the state”.
The filmmaker tries to add a few details to make this dramatic conflict more human. Stephanie’s personal story as a divorced woman living with her son Victor is one such aspect. Stephanie’s ex-husband is an anti-narcotics police officer whose girlfriend is also in the same department. The first part of the film shows how Stephanie becomes the subject of harassment from other police officers, especially her ex-husband’s girlfriend. When she meets the victim’s mother by coincidence, she is also subjected to accusations because her final report is late. The mother feels injustice, telling her that some Yellow Vest protesters received an immediate verdict on arrest, but regarding Guillaume’s case, just a report takes months.
The filmmaker uses a very interesting motif that symbolises the protagonist’s psychological state at the end of the film after all the tension she has faced during. The screenwriters introduce a seemingly trivial detail in the middle of the film when Stephanie and her son visit her parents at the village where she was born. Her father complains of her mother’s addiction to watching playful and funny cats on social media. At the end, when Stephanie is with her son at home, the camera moves from the son who is studying in the living room to her, where she is laughing out loud watching funny cat videos, feeling defeated. The end of the drama may be a little predictable, even though it is still very intelligent and moving. The filmmaker reveals Girard, the victim, speaking directly to the camera in a direct statement, after he has slightly recovered from the skull injury — a positive gesture.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: