Always a Bridesmaid

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

Noted documentary filmmakers Iana Porter and Sasha Waters direct this understated and decidedly un-exploitative look at the world of sadomasochism both as therapy and as business. The film focuses on three New York dominatrices who willingly, lovingly, flog, smack, and abuse their clients: young perky Carrie, glitzy 30-something Sonja Blaze, and Teutonic matron Eva. All argue that they are providing society with an important, if quasi-sexual, service. Their clients ardently agree.

Soon after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, a young and charismatic film student, Muthana Mohmed, stands in the rubble of the city's film school and explains to an American television audience that his dream of becoming a filmmaker has been destroyed - first by Saddam Hussein, then by American bombs. This brief, fortuitous appearance on MTV changes Muthana's life forever. Watching in the United States, actor/director Liev Schreiber stops channel surfing, utterly captivated. Feeling guilty about a war he opposed, Schreiber decides to extend to the unknown Iraqi the opportunity of a lifetime - to come to Prague to work on an American movie, Everything Is Illuminated. On set, frustrated expectations complicate the relationship between Muthana and his American benefactors in what becomes a cross-cultural endeavor gone awry. Filmmaker Nina Davenport becomes increasingly entangled in the young Iraqi's life as his visa is about to expire and the threat of returning to Baghdad looms...

Filmmaker Nina Davenport is working in California the day the World Trade Center is destroyed. Trying to understand that she won't be able to see the familiar building from her apartment in New York anymore and afraid of getting on a plane, she sets off for a road trip that is therapy and art performance in one. She has six weeks to get back to New York, and she spends them driving through a country in shock and talking to people she meets along the way. All of them share a strange sadness - not only about the attacks - and a surprising willingness to open their hearts and lives to this young woman with a camera. And by taking us on a trip through her country, she ends up leading us into the very soul of it.

With great wit and insight, New York City filmmaker Nina Davenport documents her quest to have a baby as a single mother over forty. Davenport's film taps into the zeitgeist topic of how the modern family is being re-imagined. (TIFF)