DocHouse Presents: Winter Nomads review
★★★☆☆ Like Vincent van Gogh’s 1884 practically-titled painting, Manuel von Stürler’s debut documentary Winter Nomads (Hiver nomade, 2012) is a portrait of a ‘Shepherd...
★★★☆☆ Set 45,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens were making incursions into the lands of the Neanderthals, Andrew Cumming’s horror thriller The Origin depicts a small tribe coming up against a malefic entity in unknown and inhospitable environs.
Returning for its 26th edition and with 2021’s Covid restrictions largely a thing of the past, Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) this year crowned Hilmar Oddsson’s Icelandic dark comedy Driving Mum as the 2022 Grand Prix winner, with the Best Director award going to Ahmad Bahrami for thriller The Wastetown.
The head of this year’s Venice jury Julianne Moore awarded the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, to Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, her profile of artist Nan Goldin and her campaign against the Sackler family. It’s a brilliant, committed piece of activist cinema.
★★★☆☆ Celebrated British director Joanna Hogg is back on the Venice Lido with The Eternal Daughter, a film shot in secret in lockdown and starring The Souvenir’s Tilda Swinton in dual roles as a mother and daughter heading to a hotel in the countryside for a much-needed birthday vacation.
★★★☆☆ A man sits alone in a room with a notepad and begins to scribble down his own voiceover. He only writes on one page and seems to always be starting at the top. His thoughts will be meticulous and he will show a certain expertise. When he’s finished writing he will place the pen on the table, neatly aligned with the pad.
The Sarajevo Film Festival has a history of resilience, so it was hardly surprising to see it come back stronger than ever after two years of Covid restrictions. Founded in 1995, the festival is now the leading industry event in south-east Europe, showcasing the very best films from across the Balkan peninsula.
★★★☆☆ Like Vincent van Gogh’s 1884 practically-titled painting, Manuel von Stürler’s debut documentary Winter Nomads (Hiver nomade, 2012) is a portrait of a ‘Shepherd...
★★☆☆☆ Given the eclectic and well-respected actors that make up The Big Wedding’s (2013) ensemble cast, you’d be forgiven for thinking this could one...
★★☆☆☆ Part of the way through British filmmaker Tom Shkolnik’s debut feature, the eponymous character – aspiring stand-up comic Ed (Edward Hogg) – performs...
★★★★☆ However disposable our current trends are, there’s still a desperate need to classify what digital culture means to us. Trolling, outrage on social...
★★★★★ Opening Night – John Cassavetes’ 1977 masterpiece in a canon already full of them – betrays an understanding that self-destruction does not have...
★★★★★ As General Franco lay dying during the summer of 1975, Carlos Saura was mirroring Spain’s monumental era of transition through the story of...
★★★★☆ The Unbelievable Truth (1989) is one of those débuts which arrived fully formed, with its own distinctive voice. Hal Hartley had recently graduated...
★★☆☆☆ Those that have suffered the proliferation of nationally-broadcast talent shows – an offshoot of the ongoing reality TV craze – will be wearily...
★★★☆☆ A follow-up to the acclaimed The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), Cristi Puiu’s Aurora (2010) took three years from its premiere in Cannes...
★★★★☆ Cate Shortland’s quietly powerful sophomore film, Lore (2012), is set in Germany during the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This German-Australian...