Film festivals are about announcing new talent. Most attention here will probably focus on Nichola Bruce, whose I Could Read the Sky is composed of an old man's reminiscences of growing up in Ireland, working in England, and falling in love. I hated it. Bruce's one-note visual trick of overlapping images, which resembles no memory or dream I've ever heard of, quickly grew tiresome, and I never believed in the old man as anything more than a written creation. Her Northern Skirts is a marvelous debut, able to contain the terrors of childhood, the horrors of war, the disillusionment of love, and the fragile spontaneity of happiness.
Film festivals are about the next movie.
Jane Campion is a genius, so maybe her new movie will be stunning. Agnieszka Holland used to be a genius, so maybe she'll pull it back together with The Third Miracle .