This theme of this year’s True/False Film Festival was “the human paradox”, and while such complicated questions as what it means to be human and live a fulfilling life, often in a world where the odds are stacked against you, was evident across all the film’s programmed at the annual non-fiction festival, the immense variety of movies tackling these issues in myriad ways is especially demonstrated through the three works I’m reviewing below. As the Tide Comes In examines lives lived in tandem with the increasingly volatile environment surrounding them; The Other Profile looks at how online spaces twist our perceptions of others as well as how we identity ourselves; and Flying Lessons zeroes in on a specific personality clinging on to a space for herself as everything around her rapidly changes.
AS THE TIDE COMES IN
The 27 permanent residents of Mandø— a small island in the Danish Wadden Sea— face the same day-to-day struggles as anyone else. Farmer Gregers, a divorced father, longs for love, attempting every avenue from joining Tinder to trying out for a reality dating show specifically centered on farmers. As time slips by, we watch Mie celebrate her 99th, and later 100th, birthdays. Niels watches birds, and Preben passes on the island’s story to the busloads of tourists who come in from the mainland in the summertime.
These lives are largely dictated, however, by the environment surrounding them. Mandø has always been prone to extreme weather— there’s a history of deadly floods from storm surges dating back centuries— and the island (a mere 8 kilometers in diameter) can only be accessed at low tide by one road from the mainland. Niels mourns the disappearance of a rare bird from the island. Neighbors Ellen and Ingeborg suffer from the exhausting effects of moon disease (the moon, which governs the tidal cycles, provokes restlessness when it’s full). Gregers, an eighth generation farmer and the last on the island, refuses to leave even as he struggles to find a companion to join him there (one of the film’s simultaneously funniest and most somber images is of the Tinder app open on Gregers’ phone, the pulsing animated antenna declaring that it cannot locate anyone in his area).
Directors Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen quietly observe each of these residents throughout their film As the Tide Comes In, taking note of their personality quirks, their desires and their battles, but also the spaces they inhabit. Their camera takes stock of interiors and how they inform character— bachelor Greger’s home is cluttered to the point of hoarding— but its the sweeping exterior shots that are particularly breathtaking. The rush of wind through tall grass; the ebb and flow of the tide; the long shots of people going about their business (Greger working the land, Preben driving the tour bus) dwarfed by their surrounding environment. Johannesen’s anthropological background is a clear asset here; As the Tide Comes In makes powerful use of visuals to explore the give-and-take relationship between people and the place they call home.
As the Tide Comes In screened at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. Runtime: 88 minutes.
THE OTHER PROFILE
It’s when a friend tries to add him on Facebook that French filmmaker Armel Hostiou makes the discovery: there’s another social media profile for Armel Hostiou, using photos of him— but it isn’t really him. An issue that should have been quickly and easily resolved by reporting the account to Facebook takes a turn when Facebook comes back with the response that there’s no evidence that the other Armel profile is a fake. Noticing that the phony Armel has many female friends in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and that he has invited many of them to audition for a film he is making there, Hostiou decides to travel to Congo to investigate the whole affair.
The film that Hostiou makes of this incident, The Other Profile, is a quest for the truth that fast becomes wrapped up in more pressing issues, from colonialism to identity to the ways in which we use social media to engage with others. It’s funny in a way that begins to verge on the absurd— the local artists who end up aiding Hostiou in his search rib him for getting taken advantage of by a marabout demanding cow and sheep’s heads in exchange for counsel, and he soon begins bouncing off a never-ending circle of lawyers, police officers, and local mystics who can’t actually help him— and there’s something intriguing in the idea that this fake online profile— an African profiting off a European’s identity— could be viewed as an act of colonial revolt. That’s a concept that the film fails to fully reckon with, however, and the deeper Hostiou digs, the more the lack of trust among the players begins to reflect back on the movie itself. Between Hostiou’s inquisitive narration and the many staged conversations, just what exactly in The Other Profile is genuine becomes as questionable as the validity of the Facebook profiles themselves. Perhaps that’s the point: to prompt us to probe the truth in every aspect of our lives, not just online, where it’s so easy to hide behind some pictures and words on a website. But ultimately, it’s a more frustrating experience than anything else.
The Other Profile screened at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. Runtime: 82 minutes.
FLYING LESSONS
When artist Elizabeth Nichols began attending Stop Croman Coalition meetings with her fellow tenants from her rent-stabilized Lower East Side apartment building, she picked up her camera and started filming. One person in particular stood out to her: her upstairs neighbor Philly Abe. A self-described “classic stereotype,” Philly is a free spirit who has lived in the same neighborhood since the early 1980s, and whose art has included working with underground filmmakers like George Kuchar and Todd Verow, and creating multimedia paintings out of unconventional materials (Philly, who says she identifies as a bird, proudly points out the flattened baby pigeon at the center of one of her pieces, which she found stuck to the sidewalk and kept frozen for a year). According to Nichols, when she finally approached her neighbor and told her she wanted to make a film about her, Philly responded, “I think that’s a damn good idea.”
The fight to stop Steve Croman, who was buying up buildings in coveted Manhattan neighborhoods, evicting the rent-stabilized residents or making living conditions for them impossible, gutting and renovating the apartments, and listing them at the market rate, is woven throughout Flying Lessons; Philly plays an active role in the protests and galvanizing those around her with her at times abrasive personality. But a lot of that urgency fades away as the film morphs less into a call to action, and more into a portrait of what could be considered a dying breed, as younger, transient folks with more corporate-type careers take over the spaces people like Philly once inhabited. Nichols makes extensive use of Philly’s archive which was left in her care, cutting every so often to footage that illustrate shades of her public and artistic persona and, when used most effectively, comments on the current events of the film; Verow’s 2016 feature This Side of Heaven, in which Philly stars as a woman desperately trying to hold on to her rent-stabilized apartment in New York City, is an especially apt pull here. However, much of Flying Lessons is coasting on Philly’s personality alone. The presentation of information is just a little to uneven to fully hit; even though it is clear that Philly and Nichols became incredibly close over the period they lived and worked together, evident from enthusiastic voice mails left by Philly about things she wants to shoot for the film, or the movie’s final, somber stretch, in which Nichols becomes a more active participant in the film, it doesn’t really succeed as a portrait of neighborly relationships either. Still, as the final title card dropped at the end of the film, the immediate visceral reaction of the audience at my screening reverberated against the walls of the auditorium. The myriad topics that Flying Lessons dips in and out of may not be consistently and cohesively married throughout its runtime, but with that sort of response, you can’t deny that it effectively pierces at some call to action.
Flying Lessons screened at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. Runtime: 84 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 