TIFF 2024: Village Keeper, 40 Acres, Flow

The end of my movie road in Toronto this year resulted in a mixed bag of three films that can’t really be connected thematically, so consider this a randomly assembled trio of films that you should watch for if they ever appear on your cinematic radar.

The best of the three is Karen Graham’s tender and empathetic “Village Keeper,” appropriately in the Discovery program of this year’s fest of fests. An alum of the TIFF Talent Lab, Graham’s approach is character-driven, her love for the people in front of her camera evident in every frame. She has crafted a story of a woman who has been asked so often to clean up after others that she’s never taken the time to deal with the mess of her own trauma. Olunike Adeliyi (“Akilla’s Escape”) gives an effective performance in a film that can sometimes edge into melodrama but recovers because of how truthfully and openly Graham captures the emotional arc of a relatable life.

Adeliyi plays Jean, who lives in the Lawrence Heights apartment complex in NW Toronto with her two children Tamika and Tristin. Flashbacks to a violent past invade Jean’s daily life, punctuated by the fact that her kids are headed out into an increasingly dangerous world. When Jean is asked to clean up after a bloody crime scene, it sparks two fires in her heart, the one that connects to violence she’s seen in her life and one that prays that she can shelter her children from something similar.  

The arc of “Village Keeper” is embedded in a line spoken to Jean by a therapist that she goes to in an effort to get her children some emotional support: “How will you help your children without having helped yourself first?” It’s about the many people in this world who ignore that question, sacrificing their own emotional health for those they care about, not realizing that it’s physically impossible to do so. It’s a drama of lovely little moments like Jean humming to herself after an event or a tender embrace between a mother and daughter that feels spontaneous. It’s at its best when we feel the love not just between the characters but from the filmmaker to all the women like Jean who have similar stories to tell.

A very different story of motherhood unfolds in R.T. Thorne’s “40 Acres,” which was one of two platforms for the phenomenally talented Danielle Deadwyler at TIFF this year (along with “The Piano Lesson,” a film that Netflix hopes will be an awards contender for the actress so totally robbed for a nomination for her work in “Till.”) While “40 Acres” really doesn’t work as a whole, Deadwyler is so captivating yet again, almost proving her range even more by now having a film that she elevates so completely even as everything around her is falling apart creatively. All the greats have a few of those in their filmography.

Deadwyler plays Hailey, the matriarch of a family on a remote farm after the end of the world. This is a post-apocalyptic world of man’s making—no zombies or alien invasions to speak of—and Hailey’s clan is introduced as a well-oiled machine when it comes to protecting their land and resources. Casting Hailey’s partner Galen with the great Michael Greyeyes gives Thorne’s film a fascinating undercurrent of racial tension in that it becomes about a Black and Indigenous family fighting for land and survival from largely white invaders who want to not just take what’s rightfully theirs but possibly even use their bodies for sustenance.

The problem is that “40 Acres” discards some of its best ideas to hinge too directly on plotting courtesy of Kataem O’Connor’s Emanuel, Hailey’s oldest son who becomes drawn to a mysterious woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) he spots in the woods, making his family vulnerable. So a film that starts with so many interesting ideas becomes another flawed study of a teenager’s mistake regarding an attractive young woman. Worse than that, it’s a film that’s structurally flawed, moving fitfully between B-movie action and its deeper themes, unable to connect the two in a way that’s consistent. And yet through all of it there’s Deadwyler’s eyes, doing more with a sharp look than any line of dialogue possibly could.

Speaking of dialogue, there’s none of it in Gints Zilbalodis’s lovely “Flow,” a fest hit that was so raved about that I think it was a bit oversold for this viewer, but that should appeal to fans of lyrical animation that’s built more around theme and mood than traditional family film plotting. While “Flow” should be 100% in my wheelhouse, I do think the visuals here are less captivating than a stronger version of this film, often looking not unlike a cut scene from a video game from a few generations ago. I think the chunky, unpolished look of “Flow” is intentional, but it kept me from falling in love with a movie that is still almost impossible to dislike.

“Flow” is an adventure film, a journey for a group of animals across the natural world, one in which the waters are rising and only teamwork will keep them all alive. It would be fair to call this the arthouse cousin of “The Secret Life of Pets,” only so much more rewarding. Its center is an adorable cat, who expresses itself only in the cutest meows—this is a film in which none of the animals talk, but they somehow find a way to say what’s needed to us and each other through their actions and vocalizations. A cat, a dog, a lemur, a bird, and a capybara become better allies than most kid movies this year with A-list voice casts.

There are extended sequences in “Flow,” such as an amazing one in which our hero has to finds its way back to a boat floating down a river, that are phenomenally conceived. There’s simple joy in watching a creative like Zilbalodis fluidly execute these moments that serve as tentpoles on the journey of “Flow.” Again, I think there’s a more painterly and less PS2 approach to the visuals that the film could have taken, but there’s enough magic in the simple storytelling here that most people won’t care.