Cypher

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.

• Caterpillar: In this riveting documentary, we meet David, an engaging man who is consumed by changing one aspect of his appearance – the color of his eyes. He decides to seek cosmetic iris implant surgery at a shady clinic in India. Is his problem the color of his eyes, or that he is obsessed with the color of his eyes? David’s loving but unfiltered mother is very important to him, but she is damaged herself and ill-equipped to communicate with or support him emotionally. In India, David meets other patients, who seem to have more superficial rationales for the surgery than does David. They have all been enticed by commercials on YouTube, and neither David or his fellow patients have asked the question – why is this procedure not legal in the US or any developed nation? Caterpillar becomes a profound exploration of body image, swirling amid issues of race, sexuality and gender identity. David is easy to root for, right through a series of MOG moments. David’s intensely personal and harrowing journey is expertly told by director Lisa Mandelup in her second feature. NashFilm hosts what is only the second screening for Caterpillar, which premiered at SXSW.
• A Strange Path: With a trippy beginning, writer-director Guto Parente lets us know that we’re in for a bizarre, often absurd, but ultimately redemptive experience. After growing up with his mother in Portugal, the twenty-something filmmaker David (Lucas Limeira) returns to his native Brazil to premiere his first feature at a film festival. It’s the very onset of the COVID pandemic, and the festival is postponed, his flights are canceled, his hotel closes, and David finds himself marooned in the lockdown. He shows up on the doorstep of his long-estranged father, and has increasingly surreal interactions with him. It turns out that David is on a strange path to a destination that he does not, and the audience cannot, anticipate. A Strange Path, which swept the international film awards at Tribeca, is like a COVID fever dream. In a good way.
• Cypher: Filmmaker Chris Moukarbel toys with us in this ingenious narrative in the form of pseudo documentary about rapper Tierra Whack. As in any music doc, we meet Whack (smart, genuine and naturally charming) and trace her artistic emergence. Whack’s real life team and Moukarbel’s real-life crew play themselves. Fifteen minutes in, they meet a fawning fan in a diner, an interesting woman who soon veers into conspiracy talk. Whack continues with a world tour, on the road to shooting a music video. Whack and Moukarbel are unsettled when secretly-filmed video of them shows up on social media. Moukarbel is hounded by the unbalanced daughter (Biona Bradley – perfect) of the woman in the diner. The intrusions become increasingly menacing, and are tied to the same conspiracy theory. Reeling, the film crew visits the daughter, but the threats only escalate, all the way to a showdown on a video shooting set. It’s hard to tell when the story dips in and out of fiction, and this is definitely not a movie you’ve seen before.
• Dusty and Stones: For an unadulterated Feel Good movie, it’s hard to beat this little documentary that layers on the improbabilities. It’s about a Country Western duo from Swaziland (since renamed Eswatini) who get a chance to visit Nashville and compete in a Texas country music festival. Who knew there was a Country Western music scene in Swaziland, complete with line dancing and Stetsons? There are plenty of nuggets here., beginning with the guys’ unbounded joy at hearing their music recorded with the very best Nashville studio equipment and session musicians. And they explain to the denizens of an African-American barbershop that they are headed for a country music festival in a small East Texas town. And, sitting in a Nashville motel, they contemplate their first Taco Bell cuisine. It’s a little movie, but it’s a hoot. Dusty and Stone will appear in person at NashFilm.

Also see my Previewing the Nashville Film Festival and Must See at NashFilm . Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide.