WHAT DO YOU think you were put on this planet for? To hone your artistic instrument? Make babies? Save the world? Whatever the question, the answer sometimes comes rather unexpectedly and with great gusto, from the universe itself. The Bulgarian film Mother, written, directed and produced by Zornitsa […]
FILMS WARNING SOCIETY of the dangers of alcohol addiction may come and go, but Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round will stay with you for a long time. This Danish work which is unequivocally the king of this year’s European Film Festival South Africa, is available without cost and online […]
IF YOU NEED a pick-me-up story that touches on all the bases of being alive and rubbishes traditional values that don’t always have a fairy tale ending in real life, you need to imbibe Rosa’s Wedding. Directed by Icíar Bollaín, this Spanish film is unequivocally, the feisty nectar […]
YOU MAY BE forgiven for thinking you’ve keyed into a Neil Gaiman novel in the first few minutes of Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s film Never Gonna Snow Again. Featuring Alec Utgoff as a young Russian with many unusual skills, the opening scene in this mysterious but beautiful […]
LOSING A PARENT is immensely painful. Losing a parent suddenly can knock not only the wind out of you, but also a whole lot of unresolved issues into the ether. And some of them you may not want to revisit. This is how Antoinette Beumer focuses her complex, […]
HOW DO YOU tell your beautiful little six-year-old daughter that she faces a sheer cliff in terms of how the year ahead may look for her health? Little girls are supposed to be thinking about unicorns and mermaids, dragon slayers and princesses, not about whether their arms and […]
WHEN LIFE KICKS you hard in the proverbial teeth and you don’t know which way to turn, who do you become? This is an idea developed by Ruth Meehan, in The Bright Side. More than an essay on breast cancer, this is a sassy, sarky and oft sweet […]
RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE glue to life. And they’re the lubricant to most stories. The professional relationship between Aïssa (Déborah Lukumuena) and Georges (Gérard Depardieu) is central to Constance Meyer’s film Robust, which is widely punted as a tale of contrasts. It is available online and without cost, as […]
IF YOU WERE living your worst life and the sliver of an opportunity presented itself for you to change it for the better, a dangerous sliver, would you grab it? The romance of the tale of Simas Kudirka, the Lithuanian radioman at sea who saw an opportunity to […]
WHAT IF YOU knew that there was a special injunction among the dead that, like the living, they have nine months of a gestation period before they leave us forever? This is one of the premises of a curious Portuguese film entitled The Year of the Death of […]
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