MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON – ★★★★

Cute combination of stop-motion film over a real world setting about Marcel, a shell, with shoes on. The shell lives in a house that was previously lived in by humans, but is now an Air BNB. One of the visitors starts filming Marcel and his innocent take on the world around him. Many inventive moments of how Marcel manages to take care of himself and his grandma (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) It’s an American film with decent budget and overall was a great feel-good start to the last day of in-person MIFF 2022.

BROKER – ★★★

I was really looking forward to this film by Hirokazu Kore-eda, as I liked Shoplifters and Still Walking at previous MIFFs. Yet again, he is exploring the definition of what makes a family, and showing that it’s not necessarily just who you are blood related to. In this case, a young new mother drops her baby off at a church. The baby ends up in the hands of human traffickers who sell babies to parents that are having a hard time adopting. Overall I didn’t enjoy this one as much – I found some of it confusing, possibly in part to being a little tired, and a little tired of the various collection of people in the cinema who were showing up 15 minutes late, looking at their phones, sniffling and sneezing, or crinkling their potato chip bag to an extraordinary degree. Decided after this to enjoy the rest of the day at home and end my in person MIFF 2022 here.