Reviews

I think that part of the grief that we see in Jeanne isn't just learning about how her mother suffered, but knowing that she will never be able to process those injuries and injustices with her mother.

This last hour took the film down a notch and I did feel like I was watching a movie as opposed to the first hour where I felt like I was watching real people in a real place.

I don't think the Snyder-like slow motion scenes with rock music fit the film that good and the usage of chapter titles in movies is almost always bad (especially when they don't even do the obvious and clearly separate the two narratives - couple of times it took me a while to notice the film had c...

The film is based on a play of the same name, and the Lebanese civil war, where right-wing Christian militias massacre Muslims and Muslims massacre Christians right back, and it does not shy away from showing the brutality and harshness of the events, there are a chunk of war scenes that are simply ...

The premise proves solid enough as the naturally-opposed twins must deal with a side of their mother that they never knew even as the film shows in excruciating detail what kind of ordeals she had to face in the old country; the first flashback scene shows Nawal's husband being gunned down by her br...

Simon does not have much of a part in the first half of the film, mainly it is Jeanne somewhere in the middle east (I believe in Lebanon as most of the flashbacks take place during the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s) trying to find anyone who has a connection or any information about her mother...

Simon wants no part of this, but Jeanne dutifully and filled with much curiosity returns to Palestine to learn about her mother as a young woman in the 1970s, caught up in the war between Christians and Muslims in those turbulent years.

I seriously doubt anything better will come down the pike in the next couple of months (this was won Tiff's best Canadian film earlier this month) so this should be Canada's foreign film nomination for the Oscars come February, although when all is said and done, this film remains more middle easter...