so I just got back from watching Le Passé (The Past), by Asghar Farhadi..

it was brilliant

the script was so well-written and the actors delivered amazing performances all around

even Elyes Aguis in his first acting role as 5 year old Fouad was excellent

during the Q&A, Farhadi was asked about how he cast Fouad, and he said that he auditioned over 130 children, and Aguis stood out because he refused to do anything Farhadi asked of him (when you watch the movie, you'll understand), while the other children were giving it their all trying to convey the emotions he wanted.

while it's not as good as A Separation, I felt this film was great

Farhadi also answered a great question about his use of silence during some of the key scenes, and his answer centred around how in the evolution of human speech, the vocabulary has grown tremendously, but as we develop more and more words, a lot of our communication is still lost.

(possible mild spoilers ahead, I don't think so, but tread carefully)

He felt that the film had so many moments of so much dialogue (which is true), but that often the characters were miscommunicating with each other, or not listening to each other, or talking over each other. the true communication only occurred during moments that were depicted with silence. he mentioned that 100s of years ago, even in times when vocabulary wasn't as dense, people still understood each other. and he wanted to convey that so many emotions are expressed without speech. I definitely enjoyed that answer.

anyways, this was a great start to TIFF 2013.