One of the festival’s stand-outs is Songs My Brothers Taught Me about a young Lakota man preparing to leave the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
Even before Western society invented the teenager in the postwar years, the movies have known that adolescence is its own special, and inherently dramatic, stage of life. A hundred teen comedies may have celebrated rites of passage and comings of age, but serious cinema is also fascinated by the transition to adulthood. From Rebel Without a Cause to Boyhood, filmmakers have proved again and again that the teenage years are ripe with social and personal dramas.
In its many depictions of young people, the Next Wave Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox follows in that cinematic tradition. Now in its fifth year, the festival is curated by a committee of 12 high-school cinephiles who simply pick films that speak to them to create a festival aimed at their peers.
There are no particular thematic criteria, but this year's lineup is heavy on social realism and diverse voices, much of it from first-time filmmakers. Don't expect American Pie from these programmers; their choices are both serious-minded and invigorating.
One of the festival's stand-outs is Songs My Brothers Taught Me, a film of almost documentary realism about a young Lakota man preparing to leave the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota to follow his girlfriend to L.A. – and the younger sister who would keep him there. Johnny Winters (John Reddy) supports his unreliable and often alcoholic single mother and his bright little sister Jashaun (Jashaun St. John) by running booze into the dry reserve; he wants out but can he really leave the unprotected Jashaun behind? Overhearing his plans, Jashaun, meanwhile, starts looking about for other possible brothers – literally, because the pair are the offspring of a philandering rodeo cowboy who has left children all over the reservation.
A debut feature from director Chloé Zhao, Songs was shot and largely cast on the reservation, and its observation of reserve life feels painfully authentic. The laconic film seems occasionally confused as to whether it should follow Johnny's story or Jashaun's, but the contrast between the scenery of the Dakota plains and badlands and the social setting of poverty and alcoholism is arresting. Finally, the hope with which the film imbues the young Jashaun is infectious.
I Am Thalente is another remarkable story about a kid abandoned by adults and trying to escape poverty – but it's an actual documentary. Thalente Biyela is a South African skateboarder who lives on the streets of Durban; he recounts in the film how he left a violent home, how he makes money giving lessons, how boys on the street are routinely sexually exploited by adults and how he became a drug addict. But his very name is pronounced "talent" and several well-wishers wonder if his skills are not so great that he can somehow be extracted from this mess and become a professional skateboarder.
Filmmaker Natalie Johns thinks so: This is one of those deeply personal docs where the documentarian is shaping the story for the camera, or filming a personal project, if you will. Ultimately, she brings Thalente to California where he begins the difficult process of going pro: Skateboard companies will pay for the equipment of promising skateboarders based on street videos they provide, and eventually offer small stipends, but the real goal is to get your name on a line of boards. It sounds potentially exploitative, but Johns is not interested in investigating practices in this apparently all-male sport, even if her film does include a lot more information about skateboarding than many viewers may be interested to know. What takes centre stage here is Thalente's inspirational tale – not to mention his nifty tricks on the board. Once again, hope carries the day.
On the other hand, Flocking stands out because its vision is so irredeemably dark. It is a highly topical Swedish film by Beata Gardeler about a teenager who is eventually ostracized by every single member of her small community after she accuses a classmate of sexual assault. With two magnificent performances from Fatime Azemi, as the traumatized girl, and John Risto, as the taciturn boy, Flocking is relentless in its depiction of the price women pay for coming forward.
The film regularly displays the insulting text messages of Jennifer's bullying peers as though the kids were typing them onto the movie screen and, yes, it's partly an examination of youth in the social-media age. But it is also a gothic melodrama about the tyranny of the right-thinking majority and it is shot accordingly. If the plot occasionally stretches credulity, the cinematography is often startlingly original: The local men all work in a meat-packing plant, which provides rich material for Gardeler's camera.
Flocking includes many instances where the painful isolation of its young subjects grabs the viewer by the throat; so, too, does Songs My Brothers Taught Me. And you can't do anything but cheer for Thalente. These are, in their notable humanity, films for all ages.
The Next Wave festival runs Feb. 12-14 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto; select screenings free for high-school students (tiff.net).
Kate Taylor