Take Me Somewhere Nice (Ena Sendijarević, 2019) (Patreon)

Promising as a debut film, but mostly a trifle, this played Rotterdam and ACID and is the sort of film that you can typically expect to round out the Contemporary World Cinema lineup at TIFF, where you yourself might use it to plug a large afternoon hole in your schedule. A co-production of the Netherlands (courtesy of the Hubert Bals Fund, of course) and Bosnia, Take Me Somewhere Nice is the story of Alma (Sara Luna Zoric), a Bosnia immigrant living in the Netherlands who returns to the home country to visit her ailing deadbeat dad.

She drops in on an unenthused cousin Emir (Ernal Prnjavorac), who ignores her, but she refuses to go away. Meanwhile, Denis (Lazar Dragojević), the young man who is doing an "internship" with the vaguely criminal Emir, takes an awkward shine to Alma, a sullen blonde bombshell who is a bit of a cross between Scarlett Johansson and Tatiana Maslany.

If the above description sounds just a bit like Stranger Than Paradise, you are absolutely right. With its deadpan humor and oblique angles and fish-out-of-water vibe, Take Me Somewhere Nice is peddling its wares on the Jim Jarmusch / Hal Hartley / Aki Kaurismäki side of the street. (The film even ends on a random, sudden lurch into tragedy, giving it that grim Aki gravitas.) Granted, these are great places for a filmmaker to start out, and there's every reason to think Sendijarević will develop into a serious filmmaker. But it seems reasonable to expect some degree of freshness or urgency in a debut film, and Take Me Somewhere Nice is International Festival Style all the way.