FNC 2020 review roundup (First and Last Men, Night Has Come, Drowsy City)

The 49th edition of Festival du Nouveau Cinema (FNC) has moved entirely online this year due to the recent government restrictions on theatres in Quebec. On the upside, viewers can now safely check out a huge selection of features from the comfort of their homes, through October 31.

We’ve put together reviews of a trio of releases playing FNC below, including the late and great Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannson’s First and Last Men, Peter Van Goethem’s Night Has Come, a timely sci-fi tale made up entirely of B&W stock footage, and Dung Luong Dinh’s Drowsy City, a sure to be controversial Vietnamese revenge thriller.

You can find all of our coverage of the 2020 FNC festival here. Tickets for all films are available via the FNC online portal.

First and Last Men

The first and only film directed by the late and great Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannson (Arrival, Sicario), First and Last Men is a poetic look at the final days of man. Millions of years in the future, mankind has settled on a new planet and evolved into entities barely recognizable as human beings. Nearly extinct, the only reminders of their presence are the towering structures dotting the landscape.

Beautifully shot on black & white 16mm film, First and Last Men is almost entirely made up of long shots of these socialist-era Yugoslavia structures, which truly look otherworldly under Jóhannson’s gaze. Set to Tilda Swinton’s narration (based loosely on philosopher William Olaf Stapledon’s novel of the same name), the shots take on a meditative quality, which eventually turns darker as the narrative progresses to its bleak endpoint.

With only occasional bursts of light, First and Last Men is a stunning multi-sensory experience that seems tailor-made for the largest theatre screens available. While that sadly isn’t an option at this year’s festival, be prepared to dedicate the appropriate amount of time and patience to let Jóhannson’s magic slowly unfold and you will be rewarded with one of the most unforgettable viewing experiences of the year.

Night Has Come

In a perfect companion piece to First and Last Men, Peter Van Goethem’s Night Has Come is another experimental black & white film about a disease ravaging mankind. Meticulously structured from 20th-century footage from the Royal Belgian Film Archive, Goethem builds up a narrative of a mysterious illness sweeping through the population that destroys memories, cutting together countless pieces of real-life footage that seem tailor-made for this dystopian story.

Although finished well before the current pandemic, Night Has Come couldn’t be any timelier.  As the memory-wiping disease continues to spread, the government begins to intervene to harvest the population’s memories in order to keep them safe. At the same time, resistance builds amongst the public, who distrust the government’s motivations. (Sound familiar?)

A haunting story made all the more believable due to its real-life stock footage construction, Night Has Come is a wildly ambitious project, one that feels even more impactful given its eerie prescience.

Drowsy City

Tao is a local poultry butcher living in a slum in Hanoi, the crowded capital of Vietnam. His everyday routine is thrown to the wind when a trio of gangsters begin squatting in the same building as him, along with a prostitute they have abducted. After becoming involved with the young woman and suffering the constant abuse of the gangsters, Tao devises a sickening plan to exact his revenge.

Drowsy City is a difficult film to recommend. Although it begins with a confusing title card explaining that the animal deaths were created with special effects, there is no getting around the fact that animals were abused and killed for this film. Whether writer-director Dung Luong Dinh really needed those shots to delve into Tao’s work and hand-to-mouth existence is another question, but it’s sure to put off a number of viewers.

For those that can stomach its violence, Drowsy City is a striking revenge thriller about those living a hardscrabble existence in one of the most populous cities on earth. While the use of drone shots is quickly becoming an eye-rolling cliche, in this case, the overhead shots of the city and Tao’s slum provide a widescreen scope that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. It might be hard to stomach, but Drowsy City is ultimately a thrilling and disturbing feature from an exciting new voice in Vietnamese cinema.

FNC runs through October 31. Tickets for all films are available via the FNC online portal.