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Talking about feminism, this is a lovely example of a story that centres around a girl making her own choices in a conservative, patriarchal culture. Aisholpan is 13 and lives with her parents and younger siblings nearly the Altai mountains in Mongolia. Her father comes from 12 generations of eagle hunters and Aisholpan has inherited his passion. Women don’t become eagle hunters though, they milk the livestock, cook food and, according to the menfolk, “argue over the gifts at a party.” Continue reading
My second VR experience was a sobering one. This time I was ushered into a room with a circle of chairs and settled in with nine other people. We are kitted up with our goggles and headphones and then all of a sudden, I am in a solitary confinement cell. Bed, toilet, shelf, door, blank painted walls, a heavy door with a clouded window. As I move my gaze around the room, objects light up and fragments of audio interviews of people talking about their experiences play. 
I love virtual reality! Wow, what an experience. The Turning Forest is a short (10 minute) animation and the virtual reality goggles insert you right into the middle of it. MIFF has a series of VR experiences this year and for this one, I was ushered into a curtained off space and seated on a stool that swivels 360 degrees. With goggles and headphones on, the blackness suddenly falls away and I am in an iridescent forest with orange trees towering above me. 
Madly is six short films, each by a different director and based in a different country. They all explore some aspect of love and are stylistically and emotionally diverse. It’s hard to choose a single rating for six such different films and I struggle with the episodic nature of anthologies of short films; no sooner have you engaged with the story than you have to leave. They are all interesting, the first three – from India, Australia and the US (though directed by a Chilean Sebastián Silva) – are my favourites. 
The trailer for this film sucked me in. It looked like a warm, quirky British biopic in the vein of Billy Elliot or Chariots of Fire. It’s based on the true story of Michael ‘Eddie’ Edwards, the irrepressible everyman who managed to represent Great Britain in ski jumping at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, despite being a relative newcomer to the sport and not on a par with other competitors. Unfortunately this film has more in common with Cool Runnings, the largely fictionalised Disney film of the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the same Olympics, than I hoped. 
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