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ReelWorld Film Festival

REELWORLD FILM FESTIVAL from Wednesday (April 11) to April 15. reelworld.ca. See listings. Rating: NNN


The ReelWorld Film Festival doesn’t get started until Wednesday (April 11). So think of this as a bit of a heads-up.

Returning to the Canada Square cinemas at Yonge and Eglinton, the festival – founded by Tonya Lee Williams in 2001 to highlight talent of colour – offers a mixture of features, shorts and documentaries culled from all over the world. (The opening- and closing-night galas will be held a bit further north, at the Sheppard Grande.)

Some of this year’s programming isn’t exactly brand-spanking-new. Gereon Wetzel’s documentary El Bulli: Cooking In Progress had a theatrical run last summer, and Sherry Horman’s 2009 drama Desert Flower – a drama based on the life of Somali supermodel-turned-activist Waris Dirie – went straight to DVD in Canada last fall.

That said, if you missed Brendon Culliton’s If I Should Fall at the Canadian Film Festival last month, ReelWorld offers another opportunity to see it with an audience. While the documentary breaks no new aesthetic or narrative ground, it’s a heartfelt look at the life and death of Marc Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian soldier killed in action in Afghanistan.

The only new title available for preview at press time was High Chicago, a clunky period drama starring the English actor Colin Salmon (Prime Suspect 2) as an American poker player bent on opening a drive-in theatre in Africa.

Made by the people who brought us the awful dance competition drama Beat The World, it’s a rote melodrama notable more for its inventive use of Sudbury locations to stand in for 1975 Michigan than for its story or performances. Good soundtrack, though.

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