★★★★★ Fully deserving of its Oscar and Golden Globe award nominations earlier this year, Zaza Urushadze’s affecting drama Tangerines (2013) – in UK cinemas this week courtesy of Axiom Films – is a bittersweet portrait of cruelty and compassion in […]
★★☆☆☆ Bogged down by a directionless narrative and pedestrian execution, David Blair’s The Messenger (2015) benefits slightly from a committed performance from rising Irish actor Robert Sheehan. But even that isn’t enough to hold the audiences attention, meaning scope for […]
★★★☆☆ Plunging you into the mindset of a group of mountaineers tackling the highest point on Earth, Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest (2015) is a heady disaster movie based on the true-life story of a disastrous 1996 expedition that ended in the […]
★★★★☆ Sean McAllister’s award-winning film A Syrian Love Story (2015) is a searing documentary portrait of a family torn apart by dictatorship and war. Amer and Raghda met and fell in love in a Syrian prison fifteen years ago. They […]
The Un Certain Regard section was where the debut feature, A Girl at My Door (2014) from South Korean director July Jung unspooled to insidious acclaim by those who saw it. Following this auspicious beginning it played London Film Festival […]
★★★★☆ July Jung’s A Girl at My Door (2014) offers a South Korean domestic abuse psychodrama marked by its slow pace, minimalist framing and unsettling sexual overtones. The link between bigotry and victimhood is quickly established on Young-Nam’s (Doona Bae) […]
