Next Wave Festival 2016 Spotlight: Songs my Brothers Taught Me
TIFF Next Waver STEVEN says: Watch a community struggle for dignity against the circumstances of their lives and characters fight for a sense of identity in a society which overlooks them. The greatness of ‘Songs my Brothers Taught Me’ lies in its brevity, imparting the nuanced beauty of The Pine Ridge Reservation, its characters and landscapes with the singular vision of its director, Chloe Zhao. ‘Songs my brothers taught me’ has a degree of universal importance that only the greatest films can offer: their world is so close to us that we can touch it, we can feel their pain as our pain and their joy as our collective joy and, we understand them, for a brief moment we truly empathize with these characters because, we are like them. With a film so poignant in its understanding and portrayal of characters, plot and cinematography, ‘ Songs my brothers taught me’ is a highly recommended film to watch at the Tiff Next Wave film festival. It is poetry on the screen.