CIFF 2024: The Knife, Okie, Bliss | Festivals & Awards

While it is always a joy and privilege to travel for film festivals, there’s nothing quite like enjoying one from the comfort of one’s home city. That’s what makes the Chicago International Film Festival so special; for almost two weeks, the city’s artists, creatives, and cinephiles gather to watch a diverse array of films from all over the world. Festival viewing is its way of cultivating a found family, and it’s thrilling to see a familiar space rendered with novelty as people form new connections and the city fully embraces its film roots. Fittingly, three dramas that played as part of this year’s CIFF deconstruct the safety and security home provides, showing how the rhythms we’ve orchestrated are brittle and the relationship between where we are and where we’re from is always shifting and being re-negotiated. 

Clocking in at 82 minutes, director Nnamdi Asomugha’s incisive debut “The Knife” is a masterclass of tension and tragedy, refusing to give audiences easy answers even as it gives them a family to empathize with and root for. In addition to directing the film himself and co-writing the script with Mark Duplass, Asomugha stars in the film as Chris, the patriarch of a black family, who investigates a mysterious noise in his house in the late hours of the evening. His daughters Kendra (Amari Alexis Price) and Ryley (Aiden Gabrielle Price) are asleep, as is his wife, Alex (Aja Naomi King). Grabbing a pocket knife, he steps into his kitchen and sees an older white woman standing there. Asomugha doesn’t show what happens next, only its ruinous aftermath: the woman’s body on the floor, Chris’ knife not too far away from her right hand. Alex, Ryley, and Kendra arrive on the scene, and perhaps prematurely, Chris calls an ambulance. When police officers come to greet the family instead, Chris and Alex quickly realize the optics of the situation could put his family more at risk. Understandably, in an attempt to seem more sympathetic to people who would rather be arrested first and ask questions later, Alex changes the presentation of the situation slightly, causing a chain reaction of suspense and apprehension as the family seeks to emerge from police interrogation unscathed. 

The lack of a consistent or boisterous score often feels like what we’re witnessing is just a documentary unfolding in real-time. Asomugha and cinematographer Alejandro Mejía love faces, their camera frequently focuses on the tortured and calculating visages of the family and officers as they respond in real-time to what’s unfolding. The film is ultimately about how a family unravels. Asomugha does a stellar job making it feel like a naturally horrific cascade of calamity, inevitable even with the verisimilitude of being able to make “better choices.” Indeed, the film asks how disenfranchised people are to live in light of a police state, where one wrong word or misread body language can mean the difference between life and death. There’s an all too relatable scene where Chris’ medicine prescription bottles are glanced at for a beat too long by the police officers as if to insinuate they may not be legal or prescription. 

Melissa Leo also stands out as a detective assigned to uncover “what really happened.” It’s evident, though, that the officers are not so much there to find the truth as they are to try and find a story that can fit neatly into their preconceived notions and narrative, and Leo does the razor-sharp balance of making her corruption and bias evident to viewers while on the surface being above reproach; she’s someone who has bought into the delusion that she’s truly there to help. Asomugha also refuses to characterize his characters in an archetypal fashion, especially in his portrayal of Chris. Chris has flaws, but the film becomes about whether, under America’s criminal legal system, people like him are allowed to have flaws and whether those flaws deserve the treatment he ultimately receives. 

Filmed for 15 days in Northern Illinois but taking in an unspecified town, “Okie” is a dark subversion of the “prodigal son” story and will surely be a perspicacious and revealing watch for those who have thought they’ve grown beyond the scope and needs of their hometowns and communities. It focuses on Louie (Scott Michael Foster), an acclaimed writer who returns home to gather his late father’s things. He only intends to stay for a few days, but he’s swiftly drawn back into the orbit of childhood friends and flames, notably Travis (Kevin Bigley) and Lainey (Kate Cobb, who also serves as the director). It’s a sobering and ultimately horrific tale of how our relationship with home changes as we move throughout the world and how chasing success causes us to wound and forget those who most love and care for us. 

From the start, Cobb expertly showcases how Louie’s return will be anything but a warm homecoming. Louie’s literary success is built upon his stories, which are based on the people in his hometown, and he often uses their real names and life histories. While the exact nature of those stories isn’t discussed, it’s evident that he’s taken a lot of creative liberties with how he writes about his community and isn’t afraid to twist the truth to make it more exciting and profitable.

Cobb has crafted a universally relatable ambiance here, even while telling a very specific story about Louie. No matter how far away we move from home, there’s always this sense that when we come back, we can’t help but revert to old habits. Additionally, it captures how when we leave, the people we leave behind are often frozen in time; there’s awkwardness as we try to connect because we’re attempting to reconcile who they are with present with who we knew them as before. As Louie goes through the motions of his old life and catches up with people in his town, it’s as if he’s asking whether the only thing that connects him is that these were people he used to know.

Cobb’s direction imbues a sense of unsettling worry and frustration in all that’s occurring; how people are nice, but their niceties reveal a deeper frustration and discontent with how they have been depicted. Foster is also a revelation here, never straying too far away from reminding viewers that he is self-obsessed and insensitive but also deeply relatable. Especially in moments where he tries to reconnect with Travis, it’s funny to witness how his “high society” politeness clashes with the warmth and informality of those in his hometown; he thinks he’s being kind, but it only comes off as more jarring, and further underscores his isolation and separation from these people he used to know. Indeed, real life is often much more complex, nuanced, and less exciting than the movies or books we read, and the film becomes a critique of how we can all too easily ignore our past and critique it for the sake of profit. The film raises important questions about how we ought to steward the stories of those who are not our own.    

I’ll fully admit that in light of Israel’s ongoing displacement and destruction of Palestine and its people, it made watching (and reviewing) “Bliss” from Israeli director Shemi Zarhin difficult to sympathize with and view. The film does not directly comment on the present violence, having been written and shot before October 7th. Tellingly, though, the film features locations, such as a community center with a swimming pool, that no longer exist as they have since been destroyed due to the conflict. Though the film itself is a drama and romance, witnessing it with this in mind feels disquieting nonetheless as it visually feels already out of date and out of touch with what’s going on at present; there’s a jarring dissonance between the tenderness and struggle it tries to depict in light of the violence that’s going on at present in these regions.

“Bliss” explores how to find moments of contentment amid familial disruption. Its characters often put their family member’s commitment to unconditional love to the test, and it movingly captures how people in a family play different roles to each other throughout as life progresses. It centers on a married couple, Sassi (Sasson Gabay) and Effi (Asi Levi), who work various part-time jobs to make due. They rarely get a moment of respite as Sassi’s son accumulated inordinate gambling debts, which they’re helping him pay off. Despite their daily grind, they find much humor and joy in their circumstances, even finding the bright side of Effi’s sexual impotence. This fragile (yet tiring) peace is tested when two young men enter back into their lives in vociferous ways: Omri (Maor Levi), Sassi’s tempestuous and free-spirited grandson, comes back to live with Sassi and Effi, and David (Adi Alon) a former student of Effi’s with whom she had a relationship with, comes to her for hydrotherapy.  

As Sassi and Effi now try to form a new normal, the film touches on how disruption is the rule when living our lives and that we should learn to embrace life’s unexpected wrinkles. Refreshingly, it portrays Sassi and Effi as people with full and rich lives; as much as I love coming-of-age films, there’s often a flattening and cinematic disinterest about those past a certain age. Sassi and Effi are honest about how they carry out their doubts, frustrations, and desires, and the arrival of Omri and David becomes a gateway for them to reflect on their regrets and life choices. The strength comes in how Zarhin frames these everyday moments, his commitment to seeing Sassi and Effi go through their daily lives underscoring the key theme of finding reverence in the ordinary. In one scene where Sassi helps Omri with hydrotherapy, Zarhin’s camera steps back to frame the two as being very small in comparison to the size of the pool they’re in; it feels like nothing less than a baptism.