While the Nashville Film Festival has its share of high-profile movies, don’t miss the gems that are screening under the radar. These movies are why we go to film festivals. Here are my top picks.
Indies: HANNAH HA HA
The indie Hannah Ha Ha is an extraordinary film about an ordinary person. Hannah (musician Hannah Lee Thompson in her first film) is content with her life in a small town – helping her dad (he would be lost without her) and giving music lessons. She touches lives, and townfolks eagerly help celebrate to her 26th birthday, But her brother Paul (Roger Mancusi) points out that she is comfortable with a path that will leave her without a career or, critically, health insurance. Paul wants what is best for Hannah, but every time he talks to her he makes her feel bad about herself, finally shaming her into finding her place in the conventional economy (which is not at the top of the pyramid). Filmed in a cinéma vérité style, Hannah Ha Ha is the first feature written and directed by Joshua Pikovsky and Jordan Tetewsky, and it’s masterfully edited by Tetewsky. Thompson, whose Hannah is smart, witty, capable and utterly ill-suited for life as a corporate pawn., is excellent. We are our choices – but who frames those choices? Hannah Ha Ha is a thought-provoking film that explores the profound question of what makes for human value and fulfillment.
International: PIGGY
In the fresh and darkly hilarious Spanish horror movie Piggy, Sara (Laura Galán) is an overweight teenager cruelly teased by her peers. She works in her family’s butcher shop, which supplies her tormentors with a surfeit of unkind pork-related nicknames. One day, at the town swimming pool, mean girls sadistically traumatize her. Sara makes a shocking decision, and Piggy becomes a kind of Carrie meets Beauty and the Beast. Piggy is the first feature for writer-director Carlota Pereda, a veteran television director. Horror films turn on whether the protagonist can survive, and, often, on whether the victims deserve their demise; Pereda has a lot of fun with both. This is a hoot.
Documentary: RELATIVE
Relative is filmmaker Tracey Arcabasso Smith’s reflective exploration of intergenerational sexual abuse in her own family. As Smith lovingly, but insistently, interviews her family members, she uncovers an epidemic of abuse in generation after generation. Relative becomes ever more powerful as Smith refuses to sensationalize, but stays centered on the strength and humanity of the women on camera. This is a brilliantly edited film – first person testimonies are inter-cut with the home movies of a lively family – a family we now understand was stained with corrosive secrets. Finally, Relative (BTW a great title) takes us to how the cycle of abuse can be broken. Relative is the first feature for director Arcabasso Smith.
Piggy screens on Saturday night, Hannah Ha Ha on Sunday, and Relative on Monday. Here’s the trailer for Hannah Ha Ha.