It’s a Small World: 2015 Marrakech Int. Film Fest Snapshot Capsule Day 8

Sitting there in the middle of a residential hood is the Cinema Le Colisee. A run down, slightly dusty, old posters in the lobby that I’d easily like to rip off and filled with patrons who have no issues with answering their phones and carrying on conversations right dab in a screening, and yet I couldn’t help but be charmed by the entire experience of what it’s like to catch a matinee with curious folk. The title in question was Jean-Marc Vallée‘s C.R.A.Z.Y. which was among the several selections offered as part of the homage to Canadian cinema. What I love about cinema is the ability to transport, and what I empathically love for some goose-pimply reason is watching cinema from my surroundings in an entirely different country. It was a special place to revisit one of best films in the Quebecois canon, I enjoyed seeing how others would react to select moments of dialogue, the French subtitle translation for a film that is already in French and was curious to see what scenes might animate the crowd. Especially noteworthy in this overall trip to Marrakech and to this film watching experience was I had found out in a conversation with actor Michel Côté that the port city of Essaouira (where I’d be heading to directly after Marrakech) served as a backdrop in a film that pretty much takes place entirely in and around Montreal.

Prior to that, it was 90 or so minutes of Jonás Cuarón‘s misfire (Desierto) that preoccupied my time (I would later sit down with the filmmaker) and I had an animated (bilingual chat) with actor Niels Schneider from Xavier Dolan‘s first pair of films but who has several films  and meatier roles to watch out for in 2016.