Independent Film Festival Boston has a very special place in my heart — not just because it’s in the city I’ve come to love so much, but because they’re so welcoming to critics and accessible to the community. Needless to say, if you love movies and you live in Boston, then IFF is the place to be every spring. I was invited back this year to cover the festival and promote the films that were part of it, of which I saw five. Based on last year’s lineup — which included a Donna Summer documentary, Brooklyn 45, Past Lives, and my favorite movie of 2023, Fremont — I’ve come to expect quality, thoughtful programming from IFF Boston. I went in with rather high expectations this year, and 2024 didn’t disappoint.
I was able to catch five movies, including the closing-night film, and genuinely enjoyed what I did see. Daughters, a documentary about father-daughter dances held in the DC prison system as a form of rehabilitation and prevention of returning inmates. Tuesday, a dramedy exploring what happens when we try to control death in the context of chronic illness featuring a very-snarky, very-old tropical bird as Death. Sebastian, a drama about an aspiring fiction writer moonlighting as a sex worker in order to write his first full-length novel. Handling the Undead, a Norwegian horror exploring death and loss through the zombie. Thelma, a comedy about an elderly woman running around Los Angeles (much to the chagrin of her family, who worry for her safety) tracking down the man who scammed her out of $10k. Some titles I missed but have already received great press include: I Saw the TV Glow, Fear of Flying, and Secret Mall Apartment, the two latter of which won jury and audience prizes in their respective categories of feature film and documentary.
The films that succeeded were created by members of that community with valuable, in-group perspectives. The father-daughter dance program in Daughters was founded, the directors tell us, by young Black girls who wanted to connect with their fathers while they were still in prison. The opening lines by program director Angela Pat, which I immediately wrote down clandestinely, were “[i]f there’s one thing I learned in ten years of working with girls, it’s that they know what they want.” This was reflected so aptly in the several “storylines” of the documentary, namely KJ and his academic overachiever Aubrey, who started filming oh-so-hopeful that her dad would be coming home early; she thought nothing but the highest of him and did everything she could to impress him. Mark and Santana were also an incredible counterbalance, and one of the program’s success stories in the end. Santana’s first words in the documentary were her admonishing her father for making the choices that led to him being incarcerated and explaining that she would never be a mother. She was even rather resistant to the dance in the first half of the documentary, but watching her run to her father at the dance itself? Pure electricity. Pure love.
Where Daughters succeeded was in taking the focus away from circumstance and these criminal, illicit, traumatizing pasts and placing it on the future. On hope. We don’t hear any explicit talk about why these men are in prison, just passing mentions. That’s because their pasts aren’t the point — it’s their futures of family and love. One of the fathers says during group therapy that they’re in prison because they “thought the streets love us. They don’t love us. Our kids love us.” This documentary did everything to show the audience that incarcerated men are not faceless numbers, but fathers with families who actually want to make an effort to atone and heal for their pasts. The documentary tells us that 95% of the fathers who partake in the program do not return to prison, which made me wonder why this program that prioritizes rehabilitation, connection, and physical touch — something these fathers are denied while incarcerated — isn’t more widespread.
Sebastian is one of the most mature gay films I’ve ever seen. It constantly struggles with questions of authenticity and story-telling, with the ever-present specter of “what is the gay experience” and “what is the sex worker experience” looming over main character Max/Sebastian. He fights with his editor about these authentic moments, all the while holding himself back from saying “These are my experiences,” breaking free of the “but these are from my interviews, my research” line he gives everyone who asks about his book. He has more “traditional” experiences with clients where it’s purely transactional sex for money — and even has a very scary experience with a client in Brussels where he’s assaulted, his passport and bag are stolen, and he’s stranded after the client discovers his book on his laptop. Later he has an encounter with an older gay man lonely after the death of his husband that’s more romantic, supportive. It’s this beautiful relationship that Max’s editor finds “unrealistic,” which left me furious. Who was she to tell Max what was and wasn’t realistic — it’s not like she was the one actually doing the sex work herself. It was moments like these that have stayed with me long after the movie ended.
Something that particularly struck me about Sebastian was the turn Max makes from “research” sex work to “authentically” represent his main character to actually needing it for survival. He’s a freelance journalist — I felt especially called out by this, and the fact that we are both 24 — and as a result of staying up late and meeting clients, he’s lost out on interviews and deadlines, especially a big one with his literary idol Bret Easton-Ellis. (Yes, that one.) The sex work is no longer for research now; it’s for survival. It’s these variations in what the profession looks like and means to Max that truly make this movie so mature and nuanced; it presents all of Max’s experiences as wholly authentic because they are. They happened to him, and that makes them (and his story) authentic. The script reflects this when Max begins writing in the first person after writing the entire novel in third person limited, finally accepting that this is his story, whether he likes it or not. The closing lines of “you can ask me anything,” spoken at a press conference for his newly-published novel, are the admission that he takes full agency over his recent past. In a time when sex workers are so ostracized and stigmatized, Sebastian showed that we shouldn’t be seeing their experiences (and the experiences of queer folks) as a monolith.
Thelma was a much-needed little film starring a mostly-elderly cast. Writer-director Josh Margolin was inspired by his grandmother’s experience with a scammer — even using direct dialogue from their own conversations together in a few scenes. I forgot to take notes while watching the movie simply because I was so engrossed in the storyline, but take my word for it: if you’re looking for Mission: Impossible meets the retirement home, then this is the one for you. Watching Thelma fumble with technology, dote on her grandson, and throw caution to the wind as she takes agency over her life and independence was incredibly uplifting.
This is what I value so highly about IFF: commitment to uplifting indie cinema, so often made by and for people of the communities it features.
Tuesday and Handling the Undead, smart as they were, just didn’t capture me in the same way. The former, which was stellarly acted by Julia Louise-Dreyfus, had a fascinating concept, depicting Death as a shape-shifting bird who appears to those who want to die. However, the story later became more about how Louise-Dreyfus’ character wanted to prevent Death from taking her terminally ill daughter Tuesday, and less about what Tuesday wanted for her own life — and that's when it lost me. It decentered what could have been a genuinely beautiful story about living and struggling with terminal illness, or a metaphor for disability, but it prioritized an able-bodied story of struggle instead. Despite the title telling us it was about Tuesday, it seemed more like a Julia Louise-Dreyfus movie, which maybe could’ve been fine if it didn’t treat terminally ill and disabled folks as narrative devices for overcoming grief and accepting death.
Handling the Undead didn’t do anything new or radical with its zombies, telling a rather muted story that can be summed up in one sentence: you have to heal from grief, otherwise it will consume you. I also don’t mind low/minimal dialogue films, but I fear that it didn’t work for me this time around — I didn’t know what I was watching or supposed to be feeling. Not having any answers for why these recently-deceased loved ones (a mother, wife, and son among them) came back to life while watching their still-living family members take care of their mute, decaying bodies made me feel not pity, but rather disgust.
I think the director wanted us to feel empathy, but I was left unsettled by watching the mother and her father haul her dead son around their home after he was quite literally dug up.
But I think about the way I wept in Daughters along with the whole audience of movie-goers; it was a heartstring-tugger for sure because of all those sweet little girls and eager fathers wanting to find these moments of humanity in a place and existence that takes away a lot of humanity from you. The woman I sat next to even offered me tissues! I sat behind two older gay men at Sebastian and loved hearing their whispered commentary on the film; I overheard them talking about how they’d already seen it twice at other festivals! I saw many older folks in Thelma and when the explosive moment where the titular character turned the gun rather cartoonishly on her scammer? I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many people clapping and cheering for a movie before! The triumphs at IFF Boston are going to stick with me for a long time.
If this year was any indication, IFF Boston will continue to bring great indie cinema to the city and uplift community voices. I want to make an effort next year to see more of the premieres with directors and producers so I can learn more about their visions, aspirations, and wishes. I’ll be looking forward to next May.
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