11pm finish on a work night is not that fab, but thankfully it’s been a rarity this festival. 2 flicks tonight starting with an Iranian film, Wednesday May 9. This explores through three stories, different sorts of pain and loss for which there is never any easy path to relief. It was a simple movie presenting a society in which women have few rights. The film centered around someone advertising that they’re prepared to give away around US$15,000 and of course their office is mobbed. Beyond the 3 key stories, there are clearly many other stories of suffering and hardship. It’s not the sort of movie that can really have a closed ending as grief is something to endure, that needs to find its own way. It didn’t blow me away but it wasn’t bad either.

Captain Fantastic from the US closed out the evening, with a tale around a dad raising several kids in the wilderness. His wife went to hospital a few months earlier but they had home schooled the kids in all the trappings of a hippyish, anti-capitalist lifestyle with an emphasis on self sufficiency. Then the mum dies in hospital which brings them back in touch with the real world and their mother’s wealthy family. This was at times fun, with a good sense of wry amusement though some of the sentiment seems more at home in a movie made in the 1970s. While I mostly enjoyed the flow, ultimately I found the characters hackneyed and 2 dimensional and it seemed to try too hard to tack on a happy ending.