In this dispatch from the 2024 True/False Film Festival, I’m looking at two observational films that center around people at very different points in their lives. Sylvain Cruiziat’s Boyz depicts a trio of zoomer friends coming face-to-face with their vulnerabilities at a transitional moment in their lives, while Sumira Roy’s Obsolete looks at an elderly couple in Mumbai who want to end their life. Meanwhile, Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos’ oddly intriguing Alien Island is both a rich historical document and an examination of how humans process tragedy, told from the angle of science fiction and UFOlogy. Read my reviews of those films below.
OBSOLETE
As I watched director Sumira Roy’s Obsolete, I couldn’t help but think of my grandfather, who passed away almost exactly a month before. The final few years of his life were hard, his mental and physical health declining to the point where his speech became incoherent, his memory unreliable, his mood irritable. I remember my mom saying on at least a couple occasions that he didn’t have his dignity, a statement echoed by Ira and Narayan, the subjects of Roy’s film. The couple, joined by an arranged marriage decades earlier, are 89 and 80 years old, and in good health. And yet, they are the first people in India to jointly appeal for euthanasia. As they tell anyone who will listen— friends, family, and an incredulous media who can’t imagine why they would want to die when they have so much they could still live for— they don’t want to continue living so long that they reach the point my grandfather did. They want to die with dignity.
That all sounds very heavy and upsetting, and it is. But Roy, concentrating her camera on the couple as they revolve around each other in the cramped Mumbai apartment they’ve lived in practically their whole lives, depicts a pair of people who share a sharp sense of humor and the sort of easy chemistry that comes with spending so much time together, their backstory emerging organically as they page through photo albums. It’s all observational, Roy refraining from taking an explicit stance on either side of the polarizing debate (as frankly as Ira and Narayan discuss their desire to die, there’s a sense of tiptoeing around the meat and potatoes of the subject that at times holds the film at some emotional distance) but portraying celebrations of life all the same. There are cuts to scenes of young people gathering and partying in the streets outside, a contrast to the almost stifling interior of Ira and Narayan’s home; as they await a response to their appeal, they rarely venture beyond their balcony, a spot that serves as a sort of dividing line between their desire to die and the life moving on around them, and without them. There are also occasional, more unnecessarily on-the-nose cuts to a neighbor sculpture who crafts Ganesha idols, the elephant-headed Hindu god who traditionally symbolizes cycles prosperity and wisdom. Would I have connected quite so strongly to Obsolete had I not just had a personal experience of loss? Possibly not. If anything, Obsolete— which clocks in at a mere 64 minutes— almost needed more time to flesh out its ideas. But it’s a sharply lensed slice of life all the same, one that pokes at questions left open for the audience to discuss.
Obsolete screened at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. Runtime: 64 minutes.
BOYZ
When his younger brother Maxime and his fellow British ex-pat pals moved into his apartment in Munich while attending school there, director Sylvain Cruiziat started filming them. What he was picking up on was not the typical Gen Z shallowness, or “boys being boys” behavior, although that is certainly present. Maxime, Julian, and Vilas joke around as they prod each other about relationships, parties, and sex (that Maxime is a virgin seems to be a well-known fact to all involved). That, combined with the film’s mumblecore vibe (Cruiziat’s fly-on-the-wall approach gives his subjects the space to open up, but the dialogue sans subtitles is often quite difficult to understand) can make Boyz an occasionally grating watch for the olds (aka me). This was Cruiziat’s student film, and it very much does possess the energy of someone experimenting with the camera and whatever and whoever they have around them, whether that is observing intimate conversations from a discreet distance or jumping right in among the bodies on the dance floor as they gyrate around each other to the pulsing music and neon lights.
That said, as meandering as the film’s pacing sometimes feels, Boyz is also pushing toward a finite end. Maxime is preparing to leave Germany to study in Asia, and he and his friends become more cognizant of that clock ticking down to his moment of departure (a literal, physical transition from one stage of life to the next). Cruziat takes the time to develop each boy individually, outside of their friend group, giving them all a little more depth— like Julian, whose grandmother is terribly ill. Boyz balances this shift to a more serious tone easily, namely because that seems to be what Cruiziat is primarily looking for. This boys are vulnerable, but they are openly vulnerable with each other in a way that in the past men have generally been dissuaded from being. Take, for instance, a night out with a girlfriend, where the foursome all discuss their respective sexualities with frankness and ease. Or one of the opening scenes: as Maxime, Julian, and Vilas lay on their stomachs side-by-side in bed, video-chatting a girl on their phone, Cruiziat cuts to a shot of their legs and feet all tangled up in each other, so comfortable with each other that they aren’t even conscious of it.
Boyz screened at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. Runtime: 72 minutes.
ALIEN ISLAND
Augusto Pinochet’s reign as the President of Chile was one of terror. After seizing power during a military coup in 1973, he used his status and military might to persecute and, in some cases, execute, his left-leaning critics. Some simply disappeared.
Skip ahead to 1984. A group of Chilean radio jockeys receive a garbled message stating that an alien race has taken up residency on Friendship Island, an isolated island off the Chilean coast. Director Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos opens his documentary Alien Island with this incident, and follows it with a series of talking head interviews recounting similar conversations: ship captains who experienced strange occurrences around the island, rumors that those who venture there never return, or— most tantalizing of all— that the aliens who have supposedly invaded possess advanced technology that can cure any and all ailments. Berríos’ film takes on not only the structure of a true-crime doc as his subjects attempt to piece together the potential conspiracy, but its aesthetic is indebted to the classic science fiction yarns that Alien Island— at least initially— seems to be a real-life version of. The film is shot in black-and-white, the low-key lighting imbuing the talking heads with an undeniable spookiness. There are cuts to grainy old television interviews and footage of people screaming or looking up at the sky in response to some unknown offscreen presence, the sort of iconic imagery that was rife in TV series like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, or 50s Hollywood films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Incredible Shrinking Man.
But even such popcorn fare had the political themes of the day on their mind. As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union ramped up, fear of the other, invasion, and nuclear weapons were the concerns of many, and those topics were reflected on screen, wrapped in the seemingly most outlandish premises. Alien Island similarly yanks on our fascination with the unknown; as the investigation unfurls, largely centered around Ernesto de la Fuente Gandarillas, an enigmatic figure and heavy smoker who claims his visit to Friendship Island cured his lung cancer, it all connects back to Pinochet’s dictatorship, and how UFO paranoia was harnessed to cover up real-world atrocities. There’s a fascinating history lesson here, but Berríos’ layered and difficult-to-define documentary is also a sobering glimpse at how humans frequently process tragedy and grief through fictionalized narratives. Sometimes, it’s easier to believe that a loved one has been transported to a better place with an alien race on another world as opposed to the unthinkable.
Alien Island screened at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. Runtime: 87 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 