Our Nomadic Tales
Chloé Zhao’s historic win along with the rest of the awards Nomadland picked up on movie’s biggest night made me think of a couple of the films we have coming up as part of this year’s 18th Indy Film Fest. Like Nomadland, both of these features have a fictional story that’s surrounded by and mixed with many unexpected true-life stories from non-actors mostly portraying themselves during filming.
First off we’ve got Uisenma Borchu’s film Schwarze Milch [Black Milk] which tells the story of a woman returning from Germany to visit her nomadic family in Mongolia. She struggles to connect with her sister especially after decades — most of their life — apart. While it shares the gorgeous outdoor views in a land filled (though sparsely) with true nomads, this is definitely no Nomadland. Intimate scenes within the yurts as well as the rough and occasionally graphic reality of living in isolation make this much more of an Indy Film Fest film. Inspired partially by the personal story of the writer/director, it goes in dreamlike directions as it deals with what it means to be a woman in different cultures. The director joined our World Cinema Features programmer Ana Barbir this past weekend for a great conversation about the film and her life which is included during its April 29 – May 6 run at our festival.
Our other close to authentic nomadic feature is Teddy, Out of Tune. With a piano strapped to the back of his truck, a street musician named Teddy drives 2,000 miles north to Canada on an emotional mission to spread his mother’s ashes. Along the way he encounters a peculiar mix of friends and strangers that allow him to share more about his complicated history with mental health and abuse. A nod to the film’s mix of the true and the fictional, we’ve paired this film with the short Introduction To Genre: An Introduction.
If shorts are more your speed, our Going Places Shorts Block might be right up your alley. These 8 stories include traveling to find the right place to settle down for a life or a conversation, some short car rides across unexpected routes, and an epic true journey to reunite with a dying father with a hearty crustacean as a passenger. Like almost all our shorts they’re available anywhere in the US from April 29 – May 19.
