In late fall, the two of us got on the train to our hometown—New York. As arts and culture reporters, and as 18–year residents of the greatest city in the world (sorry, Philadelphia), we were hungry to sink our teeth into the best the New York Film Festival had to offer. Official press badges in hand and pencils poised for note–taking, we filtered into Lincoln Center, and found ourselves watching a series of stories about what it means to retain identity during the rise of far–right influence.
It’s not that surprising. A look inward, especially a somewhat mournful one, feels like a creative reaction to global conservative backlash against social progress. The arts love to navel–gaze, especially in times like this. Some seethe; some sob; some just sit with themselves. But across the board, filmmakers at this year’s New York Film Festival were interested in investigating what it means to be yourself in the face of pressure to be someone else.
Queer is a story about escapism. Based off of the William Burroughs novella of the same name, the film takes a ride to South America packed away in the suitcase of William Lee (Daniel Craig), shoved between heroin needles and well–pressed shirts. Also along for the ride is Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a much younger man with whom William is sleeping, and with whom he wants to have a more solid relationship.
William is interested in ayahuasca—not just to get high (though he is, as Burroughs was, a severe addict)—but because of its purported mind–control power. Part of this interest comes from the side of him that pokes out in his mannerisms, queer–odd on top of being queer–gay, but a much larger part comes from his aching desire for fulfilling love. He wants not to entrap Eugene and not to overpower him but to inextricably link them. The Mexico City cruising scene is so passé. William thinks it’s time for something real, and he’s determined to find it, even if he has to drag his boy toy miles and miles to get it.
It’s a visually stunning, deeply weird, and captivating film, one that radiates body heat and clings to the mind like a needy lover. And it speaks soundly to an interest director Luca Guadagnino has with the concept of secluded community, a study of how to be part of the in–group while in the out–group. In Queer, there is a question of how queer you can be exactly and what type of queer—William derides the more flamboyant gay man, and there’s some pretty explicit “colonial entitlement,” as Variety puts it, with how he engages not only with a cruising Omar Apollo but also with how he engages with Central and South America on the whole.
William and Burroughs and Guadagnino search for a space to be openly gay in a society that wants “that sort of behavior” to stay underground. They coax Starkey’s Eugene into the underworld as he attempts to grapple with the fact that leaning into his true desires means leaving behind the normative world of soda pop and diner dates with respectable young women in the light of day. Queer asks: How far do you have to go to find yourself as a gay person in a conservative society? And whose lives are you comfortable disrupting along the way?
Tracing a through line of the question of belonging and displacement in Central America, we turn to Pia Marais’ Transamazonia. In it, Rebecca Byrne (Helena Zengel) has become a faith healer in the Amazon after surviving a plane crash as a young child. There are two battles that Rebecca must navigate in this film: the Indigenous struggle against illegal loggers trying to exploit their lands and her father's fight to have the Indigenous Amazonians convert to Christianity. Throughout the film, she questions the world around her: Is she actually helping the Native Amazonians? Or is everything about her life—including the identity of her mother—a lie?
It’s all crystallized by a quote from the head of the logging company who tells Rebecca’s father, Lawrence (Jeremy Xido): “For me, it's about the wood and the money. But you, you want their souls.”
The film is ultimately a tale about modern colonialism and what it means to exploit others. The job of a missionary is really asking people to forget about their culture and history; we see Lawrence and Rebecca offer medical assistance, but they also try to discourage the Indigenous characters from protesting about the illegal logging on their land.
Marais' take is not particularly new. Media since the late 1800s has touched on the themes of missionaries being exploitative. However, the current setting of the film, especially through the eyes of a teenager coming of age, is particularly fascinating. It is situated within the context of an ultra far–right Brazilian government that is currently seeking to limit the land rights of Indigenous populations. We are reminded that the mission to eradicate Native culture is not something of the past.
Traveling across the globe, The Seed of the Sacred Fig follows a family as the father, Iman (Missagh Zareh), becomes a judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Iran and becomes increasingly paranoid that others are trying to harm him. At the beginning of the film, he is asked to blindly sign off on death sentences of female protestors, who opposed the hijab mandate and other morality laws. Iman’s anxiety that his family will be targeted as a result of his new position is manifested in attempting to control his wife and daughters' appearances and behavior.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig itself condemns the ultra–conservative Iranian government. Writer and director Mohammad Rasoulof was sentenced to eight years in prison for his anti–government films.
Rasoulof questions what power does to a person. It is impossible for Iman to maintain normal relationships with his wife and two daughters as he enforces morality laws and systematically strips women of their rights. What follows is a Macbeth–style descent into madness, with Iman’s guilt ultimately leading to him threatening physical violence against his daughters and wife in fits of paranoia. To rob strangers of their freedom, he must lose himself as well.
The family is a microcosm of the state here, with power structures coming from the top down. By depicting a family where the women can band together and claw autonomy from a man’s hands, Rasoulof envisions a world where this can happen too.
It’s unsurprising that the question of female freedom is something being iterated and reiterated in art recently. Femicide rates are rising globally, and women’s rights are being rolled further and further back. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl also takes the family as a representation of the broader world and investigates a family in Zambia, where following the death of a patriarch, it comes out that he has sexually abused several young women in the family and community over the course of many years.
The main character, Shula (Susan Chardy), slowly bubbles over with rage until by the end of the film, she and her fellow survivors are squawking like a guinea fowl, the “alarm–call” bird, as the film explains to us, in protest and warning. Shula is ostracized by her family for fighting back, but she finds community and solace in other women who have gone through what she has gone through. Ultimately, she speaks up and speaks out instead of contributing to a cycle with silence.
There is a drumbeat of surrealism underscoring On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. Just as Shula grapples with her reality, we, as the audience, grapple with what’s actually happening and what are nightmare sequences, drenched in murky water, ominously lit. Writer–director Rungano Nyoni forces the audience to sit with uncertainty and discomfort, doubting themselves, doubting what they’re seeing. We are put in Shula’s shoes and, in a way, made to feel a sliver of what she does. We understand just how important it is for her to find that community of women who understands her experiences—and how isolating it is to feel alone without that support.
Another film that emphasizes the importance of community and solidarity in the face of oppression is RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, based on The Nickel Boys, a novel written by Colson Whitehead. The film, which was the opening film of the festival, is based on a reform school, Nickel Academy, for “troubled” youth. In this Jim Crow–era boarding school, Black and white teenage boys are segregated. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) quickly forms a close friendship with Turner (Brandon Wilson), a fellow Black boy trapped at the school, and they resolve to look out for each other.
The film is shot through a first–person point of view, alternating between Elwood and Turner. The film begins from Elwood's perspective. The audience directly experiences Elwood growing up from the time of infancy. Through subtle moments, we watch as Elwood learns what it means to be Black in America. Ross is very intentional with his use of this POV; he wants the audience to have the same experiences as our characters. His use of cinematography examines who gets to tell stories and how.
It also allows the film to avoid becoming “trauma porn”—a category of story that essentially gets off on its own sadness, frequently exploiting its stars and displaying excessive amounts of suffering for the sake of attention—which movies surrounding tragedy and injustice, such as racism, frequently risk turning into. The first–person POV means that when the staff are abusing students, Ross can have Elwood and Turner look away and focus on the walls. The goal of Nickel Academy is to beat down the boys and strip them of their personhood, and Ross will not let his audience do the same.
The thread of self–expression in these films, of finding one’s place among those who also know how it feels to feel out of place, is undeniable. As there is a right–wing push globally towards conformity and obedience—particularly for women, many of whom are being pushed marketing for the tradwife lifestyle—and as people in power increasingly strip women and minorities of their humanity, these films emphasize how isolating, terrifying, and ultimately healing it is to be oneself.
Art has two functions: to make us feel seen and to highlight injustice. These films are primarily reactionary, responding to the terrifying realities of the global rise of the far–right and the decline of democracy. And yet, we can all still find comfort in them. As long as we have people who can recognize and fight back against injustice, there is still a glimmer of hope.
