Wow! Such a good movie.

recommended

Really Surprised!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Experience, indeed, defies representation or articulate expression. Just as a photograph only captures one shot of a smooth manifold aggregate of lived phenomena, so language can only restrictedly encapsulate vibrancy. But one'd hope that a sequence of such photographs enables one to peer into that share of moments, brightening up memory and trajectories of thoughts, absorbing anew the cultivating spectrum of lived emotions. Breathe.The opening credits alone immediately capture the spirit of this pure coming-of-age masterpiece. Ignoring the excusable whiny music, it alone was already so great and lingering that one'd want to stop and muse. Submergence into water necessitates the synergy of the liquid water's flows with the likewise fluid and variedly current half-obscured memories of growth intertwined with decay. Stopping for an instance, retreating below the surface, divine Davina feels the impact of the past. It's her birthday, but she's not yet ready to face it. Brooding on the past can perhaps help, before lurching further into uncertain future terrains, that will eventually also continually expand the mind's horizons.Film itself captures the process. An acoustic-visual artificial succession of events, melded with and moulded by memory, fantasy, by movements of objects that defy physical laws. Stop-motion and time-lapse show the productive capabilities of the unconscious factory, and the fragmentary apprehension of spacetime. Shades of lights correspond to different intensities. One traverses heterogenous planes, exploring natural strata, and sensing the world. The hair billows through the wind, the skateboard grinds across the concrete, the clouds, the grass, crops, trees, endless telephone wires, ... they all reverberate, grafted from their respective denotations to dance within the partial subjective perspectives, poetic experimentation and flows. Stream of consciousness.Divine Davina is in a state of becoming. The creation of memories contrasts with the stagnancy and deterioration of her mother. Touching her mother instills stifling anxieties of death and decomposition, the limit of possibilities - "la forme et l'essence divine / De mes amours décomposés". She still has a life ahead, and hence must venture into those fairy tales and badlands.Becoming the nomadic voyager, wandering about. Dreaming and playing. Feeling the full spectrum of emotions. The unicorn and the dragon. Multivariate and recombining flinches of desire, sadness, happiness, loneliness, abandonment, comfort, disappointment, surprise, danger, warmth, coldness, excitement, pain, pleasure, ... transitions between various intensive states and interactions with a significant other, who's active and feeling too, differently, but reciprocally, within a changeable complex relationship.Finally one has to digest the trip, make time for thought. The past becomes another series of photographs, pages of diaries, details, conclusions, and material mementos. And then one continues on, indefinitely."There's so much I want to say. But I don't know where to start."

Looking at the titles chosen for the ICM Film Festival,this one and Ivy stood out as the ones that would be hardest to find. Getting lucky in stumbling on Ivy,I just could not find this film anywhere. Wanting to find all the movies so that a fellow IMDber could also see them,I did an extensive search over the weekend,and by pure chance,was able to finally start believing in unicorns.The plot:Taking care of her ill mum since she was a child, Davina dreams of traveling to a world of knights in shining armour, dinosaurs,and shining unicorns. Getting closer to her long-term crush Sterling,Davina starts to look towards the open world. Going on a road trip with Sterling, Davina discovers a world far from her fantasies.View on the film:Seamlessly blending earthy drama with handmade flight of fantasy,writer/director Leah Meyerhoff & cinematographer Jarin Blaschke give Sterling and Davina's road trip in incredible Mumblecore intimacy,with a light colour stylisation and fragile camera moves bringing out the raw emotion between the couple. Dipping into Davina's imagination, Meyerhoff brings her dreams to life with a sweet kooky vibe,where the colourful stop-motion animation neatly contrasts the rustic,dusty appearance of the open road.Layering their travels with Davina's narration, the screenplay by Meyerhoff drives into a Showgaze groove,with Davina and Sterling's exchanges hanging in the air with an awkward warmth, and a deep feeling of a passage of time gliding pass Davina's fantasies fading into the distance. Sitting next to Peter Vack's great, rough round the edges performance as Sterling, Natalia Dyer gives an excellent,attention-grabbing performance as Davina,whose expresses face chimes with the whimsical and the melancholy of Davina's unicorn dreams.

I Believe in Unicorns was visually stunning! Leah Meyerhoff is certainly an artist to watch, she didn't shy away from the raw sexuality that we all experience as teenage girls and how we would all bend over backwards for the guy we think is "perfect". Natalia Dyer and Peter Vack beautifully capture teen relationships at their messiest and you are draw into their world even more by the stop motion animation story that parallels their performance. I was particularly moved by her writing her mother into the script. Disabled people are wildly underrepresented in the film industry despite the fact that it effects so many peoples lives including my own. Was very moved and throughly enjoyed this film.

I like this film. It has got heart, it has good intentions for the cinematic language that I so adore. I feel like the filmmaker is earnest and thoughtful with the script and the performances are very strong and show a lot of talent on her cinematic future. However, I've been following this movie online and keep seeing photos of the filmmaker, Meyerhoff at festivals. Great right? Well, yes and no. Yes, it's great the film is getting out there, it should! No because it's more that a little embarrassing to see a 38 year old woman wearing a unicorn prop on her head, as though she's so desperate to hype her film that she'll turn into a corny advertisement. Is this what cinema has come to? I should hope not, not in the cinema I know. I get it, you're supposed to do something "striking" and "wild" to stand out, but Miss Meyerhoff, if you need to walk around with a toy horn on your head to get press on your film, or to get attention, well that's just sad and pedestrian. Have some pride in yourself and your work. You are a talented filmmaker. Please take the horn off and have some respect for yourself, your collaborators and most importantly, for cinema.Besides the corny advertising, as a critic I do recommend the film. Don't let the harsh truths discourage you. It is a VERY strong film!