What is Cinema?

You sense that something strange is going on in " Bacurau " (2019, Brazil) when, in one startling scene, a teacher is unable to point to his students the location of the titular fictional sun-scorched town on a map, suggesting that it might have already "disappeared" from the face of the Earth. Subsequent turn of events reinforce the fact that this is actually close to happening (already portended in the opening scene), as a group of well-off foreigners (mostly Americans) is in town for some nasty business: to hunt down and kill live people just for the kick of it. For these privileged sickos, there is no better place to serve as a hunting ground than the God-forsaken Bacurau. The third narrative feature of Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça-Filho, this time co-directing with frequent production designer Juliano Dornelles, might be their most accessible work yet, but has to be considered their best. Much like Nadav Lapid's " Synonymes ", "Bacurau...

(Note: The recently-concluded QCinema International Film Festival (Oct. 13-22) boasted a truly marvelous line-up of international films. Of those, I was able to watch 22 films in a span of 8 days. " Synonymes ", fortunately, was one of those films.) There is a scene in "Synonymes" (Synonyms, 2019, France/Israel), the third feature film of Israeli auteur Nadav Lapid, where the Israeli-born but French-wannabe Yoav, in close-up while directly looking at the camera, recites a litany of negative adjectives directed against his native country, in which he finds more than one reason to denounce it. His recently-met companion Emile, a natural-born French, chides him that it is a lot of words to describe his country, so that he only has to choose one. If the scene sounds kooky, it's because it is. In fact, we might just as well describe the entire film as such. Maddening and enlightening in equal measure, "Synonymes" is most likely unlike any other film th...