WAR PRESENTS CASUALTIES on levels far wider than the conventional battle fields. There is the horror of a lack of closure, relentless vulnerability and ripples of hatred spewed in so many directions, conjoined as it often is, with ignorance. In The Old Oak, director Ken Loach takes on […]
OVER THE LAST few years, our social world has become so painstakingly aware of the possibility of offending others, that something has been lost in our ability to be candid. This sensitive nerve in contemporary society is explored excruciatingly in The Teachers’ Lounge featuring Leonie Benesch. It’s on […]
WHEN ALL THE silly bureaucracy, political correctness, humdrum and basic monotony of being in a job has ended, what happens next? Do you quietly lie down and wait for the end? Or do you let your hair down and party like there’s no tomorrow? Barbara Kulcsar’s film Golden […]
TOSS TOGETHER THE notion of undisguised good and evil, with a bit of lumpen docility in between; the forces of nature with those of easily corruptible and gullible humanity, blend it with hard-boiled yet utterly gorgeous computer-generated animation and a traditional Ukrainian and Slavic legend and you have […]
OUR LIVES ARE replete with things that happen for reasons we don’t know. Things force our plans to change. Sudden news changes what constitutes our identity. We don’t really know what causes what, and why. Even though, in our hubris, we think we do. The Romanian film Mikado, […]
VIOLENT POLITICAL CONFLICT is always the ideal setting for very complex emotional tales of love and trauma. Mohamed Kordorfani’s first foray into film direction offers a clear and convoluted path of friendship between two women. It’s called Goodbye Julia and is the opening film for this year’s European […]
THE UNCERTAINTY AND wildness of a country in a constant state of civil war comes under the loupe in José Miguel Ribeiro’s astonishing achievement of a film, Nayola. Animated with a deep and convincing understanding of hand-drawn colour and landscape and a respect for the bubbles of air […]
PICTURE THE SCENARIO: You’re on the cusp of adulthood, the eldest of many children. Contrary to your father’s wishes, you have decided to be educated. It’s the late 19th century and your mother supports this great wish of yours to make a life for yourself. And it’s all […]
LOSS. IT’S A wound that can open at any time. An absence that will change your life forever, in ways that you cannot fathom. The complexities of bereavement are under the loupe in Narcosis, an extraordinary and deep film from the pen of Martijn de Jong. One of […]
PUT TWO PASSIONATE intellectuals together in a remote chalet in the French Alps. Add an almost disabled tween and his seeing-eye Border Collie, and sprinkle more publishing success on the one than on the other, and you get some extraordinary fireworks. Toss in a sudden violent death, and […]
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