“No talking, no texting,” Milwaukee Film Executive Director Susan Kerns said. “But you can dance if you want to.”
Kerns was introducing a 40th-anniversary screening of Susan Seidelman’s “Desperately Seeking Susan,” a thrift-store screwball comedy starring Madonna that, for ’80s kids like me, threatens to someday, someway morph into a jukebox. (Marshall Crenshaw fans unite!) However, the contradictory nature of her twin directives—let’s get serious, let’s have fun—also felt like a value proposition for the 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival, which closed May 8 after presenting more than 200 feature and short films over 15 days.
Best of fest
If the programmers needed one film to serve as proof of concept, one that pulls the tension between tragedy and comedy so taut they become indistinguishable, they found it in Joel Potrykus’ handmade “Vulcanizadora,” a low-budget indie oddity shot on timeless 16mm. The opening joke could be an outtake from a Spinal Tap music video—a long tracking shot of two men striding to death metal arrives at a withering punchline—but there’s a grimmer strain between Derek, an overly exuberant chatterbox, and Marty, a morose silent type, as they trudge aimlessly through a Michigan forest. The hangout vibe lulls viewers into thinking Potrykus’ goal is to push cringe comedy as far as it can go. At the midway point, though, there’s a bleak turn that abruptly reconstitutes the movie as a middle-aged meditation on loneliness, guilt and the pursuit of redemption.
Potrykus takes these matters very seriously—there’s a deep sadness inside both of these defeated men—without sacrificing the movie’s peculiar comic register. Tone is a tricky thing, especially with the subject matter at hand here, and one of the most exciting things about “Vulcanizadora” is the way Potrykus shifts gears with the dexterity of a race car driver. I’ve never really seen anything like it. One minute we are invited to wonder at the poetry of black snake fireworks emitting smoke and ash, then laugh at Derek as he spills glow stick liquid on his chest in a strange campfire ritual, then witness unstoppable horror, then sense the desolation of being an estranged father or son.
There are also unexpected flourishes involving freeze frames, dissolves, zooms and monochrome that keep the movie accelerating toward the finish line. By the end, “Vulcanizadora” has used the tools of cinema to bury the rules of comedy in a shallow grave; at one point, a tripod doubles as a headstone. More importantly, it has shoveled viewers into the emotional lives of its characters and expressed, in fine detail, its contemporary concept of hell. Derek says, “Can you imagine that? Being nervous forever?”
To my eyes, that makes “Vulcanizadora” one of the great modern films about masculinity and mental health. Still, many festivalgoers received the movie as their own personal hell. Well, okay, it’s an unnerving experience that sometimes resembles a panic attack in motion—but with laughs! It’s not for everybody. But I found it so intensely moving as a story, and so wildly fascinating as cinema, that for me it was as if Derek had lit one of his M-80 firecrackers under every other festival movie.
Most of the 71 features that I saw could be described as “successful” in conventional ways, but does that make them special? What does it mean to call a movie “good”? Grading via rubric—shall we bestow three stars or four?—routinely flattens engagement into a thumbs-up/thumbs-down binary that neglects the art form’s real power. “Vulcanizadora” might not be perfect. Yet Potrykus’ unique personal vision is undeniable, and bellwether works like this one, perhaps mystifying at first, always crystallize over time.
The rest of the best
Reappraisal, I suspect, will also benefit “The Shrouds,” the festival’s other widely-loathed picture. Haven’t we learned by now that David Cronenberg has a knack for making difficult, misunderstood movies that become future classics? Like “Vulcanizadora,” Cronenberg’s cerebral sci-fi drama about Karsh, a grieving widower, mixes profound anguish with humor. The tone, though, is much more clinical and numbing, which is ironic, because I found “The Shrouds” to also be one of the festival’s most deeply felt movies. “Grief is rotting your teeth,” a doctor tells Karsh, but he’s also warning viewers to expect an unflinching look at how losing a spouse has psychological, physical and sexual dimensions that cannot be separated. As another character says, “How dark are you willing to go?”
At least when Karsh endures extreme nightmares about the surgeries that mutilated his wife’s cancer-ridden body—one particular sound effect made the audience loudly wince—those images are strictly fictional. There’s no such escape from the street violence in “WTO/99,” a galvanizing found-footage chronicle of the strong-arm tactics used against those protesting the 1999 World Trade Organization summit for several days in Seattle. Assembled entirely from existing material—there are no new interviews, no voiceovers—the documentary is a major feat of editing, creating a kinetic, immersive rhythm that reaches a crescendo of outrage. While many docs resemble souped-up Wikipedia entries, “WTO/99” feels like a political thriller, one that jackknifes the past into the present.
There’s a political backdrop to “Secret Mall Apartment,” too, but it mostly recedes so that conceptual artist Michael Townsend can hilariously explain how and why he and his friends spent four years living inside a Rhode Island shopping mall. Like “WTO/99,” the hugely entertaining documentary relies on savvy editing to build suspense—how long can they avoid detection?—and pull a satisfying structure out of a Suncoast Video’s worth of archived lo-res tapes. What’s most refreshing, however, is the way it softly introduces philosophical ideas about art, ownership and gentrification while maintaining a knowing wink; there’s a playfulness both to the project and their rationalizations that says, “Yes, this is absurd, but is it any more absurd than a towering concrete monument to consumerism?”
Getting caught is no joke for the young asylum seeker at the center of “Souleymane’s Story,” a fiercely compassionate ticking-clock drama about an African immigrant whooshing through Paris on two wheels, struggling to deliver meals with a rented account, earn some under-the-table cash and prepare a bogus story for his legalization interview. His bike and relentless desperation naturally summon the 1948 neorealist classic “Bicycle Thieves,” but an equally key precursor is “Take Out” (2004), another frantic tale of an immigrant making deliveries in the rainy city. The main influence, though, is the social realism of the Dardenne brothers (“The Kid with a Bike”). Their camera often disappears into their chosen milieu; in “Souleymane’s Story,” the camera is swallowed up by first-time actor Abou Sangaré, in what was easily the festival’s most revelatory performance.
Honorable mention
Sangaré’s only real competition was John Lennon, whose post-Beatles concert footage gains new poignancy after being weaved throughout “One to One: John & Yoko.” Kevin Macdonald’s nonfiction portrait candidly presents Lennon as all-too-human while navigating the warp and weft of early 1970s cultural tensions, and it surely would have cracked my top five had I not seen it in advance of the festival.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but “Woolly,” a fable-like documentary about a musician and her wife who return to rural Norway to take over the family sheep farm, is my dark horse (dark sheep?) candidate for best in show. “We don’t know how to run a farm,” Rakel says at the outset, and much of the story concerns their unwavering commitment to learning the ropes. Fortunately, mom and dad are still in the picture; one of the chief pleasures of “Woolly” is spending time with this down-to-earth family that is hardworking, loving and very funny. (The film’s director is Rakel’s sister, Norwegian actress Rebekka Nystabakk, and she is not too good for some sibling needling, or sibling freeze frames.) Still, behind the many smiles, quotidian details and breathtaking landscapes, there’s a resolute point of view regarding what it means to small-scale farm in the modern world.
Finally, I greatly admired “Black Dog,” a Chinese drama about an ex-convict bonding with a stray dog that uses the frame and foregrounds to hypnotic effect; “Kensuke’s Kingdom,” a survivalist adventure about a shipwrecked young boy majestically rendered in classical 2D animation; “Middletown,” a documentary about student journalists who uncovered corruption at the local landfill in the early 1990s; and “Pavements,” a sketch of the band Pavement that merrily veers into Dylanesque fabulism.
“The Shrouds” screens today at 6:45 p.m. at the Downer Theatre as part of Milwaukee Film’s Best of Fest program. “Secret Mall Apartment” is playing at the Oriental Theatre now through Sunday. “Black Dog,” “Kensuke’s Kingdom” and “One to One: John & Yoko” are on streaming services now. “Pavements” will be released in theaters on June 5, and “Souleymane’s Story” on July 31.
Five Favorite Films at the 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival
- “Vulcanizadora” / dir. Joel Potrykus, USA
- “WTO/99” / dir. Ian Bell, USA
- “Souleymane’s Story” / dir. Boris Lojkine, France
- “The Shrouds” / dir. David Cronenberg, Canada-France
- “Secret Mall Apartment” / dir. Jeremy Workman, USA