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Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh)

There are many films about the devastating effects of the AIDS crisis, but very few that grapple with the loneliness of those left behind or came of age as it began to make headlines. Through supernatural metaphor, Andrew Haigh’s latest––and best––film tackles the existential displacement of a gay man (Andrew Scott) fast approaching middle age, his isolation only underlined by the near-abandoned tower block in which he lives. His friends have long moved out of the city, he has to maneuver a generational divide with a new, younger romantic partner (Paul Mescal) whose adolescence was far different to his, and he feels a longing to return to his childhood and come out to...

Straddling the hazy line between documentary and fiction, the work of Canadian filmmaker Antoine Bourges is intensely concerned with the plights of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. In his latest and most quietly impactful effort to date, Concrete Valley, Bourges turns his gaze toward the North American immigration struggle, further examining the sense of dislocation that often defines his films’ subjects/characters.

The film is set in Thorncliffe Park, a high-immigrant, low-income neighborhood of Toronto whose titular nickname stems from its geographical position nestled up against a lush hillside forest, and it begins with Rashid (Hussam Douhna), a Syrian immigrant, taking a solitary nighttime walk through these tranquil woods. The curiously hushed environment at first suggests a dream, lending Concrete Valley a sense of magical realism that corresponds to mythical tales of strangers traversing strange lands. When Rashid’s impromptu sylvan meanderings are discussed a short time later, he’s warned...

Mad Solutions has acquired the distribution rights to “Concrete Valley” for multiple territories. The film focuses on a Syrian family living in Toronto.

The film, from Canadian-French filmmaker Antoine Bourges, premiered at Toronto Film Festival, before travelling to Berlinale, and it just screened at Jeonju.

The deal covers the following territories: UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South of Sudan and Comoro Island.

The writers are Bourges and Teyama Alkamli. The producer is Shehrezade Mian at Markhor Pictures.

“Concrete Valley,” which mixes fact and fiction, focuses on a Syrian family in an immigrant refugee neighborhood in Toronto, with people from the community cast in the film. It continues Bourges’ exploration of the intersection of fiction and documentary and his focus thematically on the many ways people fall through the gaps in society and its institutions.

John Malkovich starrer Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes and Alex Gibney’s untitled Boris Becker documentary are set to have their world premieres at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival next year. The projects are among the six titles which will play in the fest’s Berlinale Special Gala section, which also includes Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth and Cleopatra Coleman and Todd Field’s Tár.

Infinity Pool will get its European premiere at the festival while Field and Tár stars Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir will attend the festival to give a public talk as part of the Berlinale Talents section.

The festival also announced its first project from its Berlinale Series section: Zdf’s eco-thriller The Swarm (Der Schwarm), based on the eponymous bestseller by Frank Schätzing. The project follows an international group of scientists who do research...

Welcome to Antoine Bourges’ love letter to the Thorncliffe Park apartment complex, better known as “Arrival City”—the usual landing spot for new immigrants coming into Toronto. Titled Concrete Valley and starring a mix of professional and amateur actors blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction, Bourges’ film spends a lot of time with residents to help flesh out their motives and narrative in the form of Rashid (Hussam Douhna) and Farah (Amani Ibrahim), a Syrian couple who have already been living there for five years. The palpable tension in their marriage as he lies in bed while she readies for work reveals things haven’t been easy. There’s little warmth shared between them beyond their love for their young son (Abdullah Nadaf’s Ammar).

Instead it’s mostly tired exasperation as they attempt to survive what has proven an impossibly frustrating transition due to both having to give...

Concrete Valley.Hopefully you’ve been following along, but over the last decade there’s been a wonderful surge of young Canadian directors making exceptional short- and feature-length movies, all on a small, independent scale that should be invigorating to makers and audiences alike. While no one would (nor should) ascribe any kind of movement label to them, being eclectic in origins and approaches, it has been notable how many of the films hinge upon explorations of mental health, the search for well-being, and the weaknesses and strengths of community. Films as disparate as the substance abuse and social work documentary The Stairs (2016), the immersive impressionism of mental anguish of Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), and this year's Queens of the Qing Dynasty (2022), a striking story of social difference, hospitalization, and friendship filmed in Cape Breton, are among these adroit new Canadian films fueled by human inquiry and empathy.This note is...

“Concrete Valley” opens with a man wandering in the woods around Thorncliffe Park, one of Toronto’s first postwar high-rise neighborhoods and one of its most diverse areas. He’s Rashid (Hussam Douhna), a Syrian doctor who recently relocated to Canada with his family. And he’s lost. The film that follows is an oblique, deceptively placid study of the emasculation of exile.

Rashid lives in a tower block with his wife Farah (Amani Ibrahim) and son Ammar (Abdullah Nataf).

Continue reading ‘Concrete Valley’ Review: An Understated Study Of The Emasculation Of Exile [TIFF] at The Playlist.