“I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” Radu Jude’s film claimed the top prize at this year’s festival and it’s easy to understand why. It embraces the kind of boldly political stance of classic Polish cinema from the Communist era like a riff on both Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Olmo Omerzu’s follow-up to the stinging satire of 2015’s Family Film is another tale of children left to their own devices by negligent parents, but this time takes the form of an unsentimental but winning road movie caper Winter Flies. The title presumably refers to resolute dipterans that have refused Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Alice Rohrwacher returns with her remarkable third film about a rural Italian community. Happy as Lazzaro sparkles with soul, enchantment and introspection – it’s no wonder that it took the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes last year. What starts as a relatively straightforward story takes a surprising, gripping turn Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Unfolding entirely on a laptop screen, Timur Bekmambetov’s new thriller Profile seeks to explore the murky world of how social media is used to recruit vulnerable young women to ISIS. The results are as compelling as they are silly. Back when the entirely desktop-based Unfriended was released in 2014, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Lee Chang-dong’s Burning features red-hot actor Yoo Ah-in (as Jong-su), Steven Yeun (as Ben) and newcomer Jeon Jong-seo (as Hae-mi) in an intricate thriller that switches between the wealthy Gangnam neighbourhood and farmlands just outside Paju, a city south of the Demilitarised Zone. While a social commentary on class Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Following 2015’s Aferim!, Radu Jude returns to the topic of historical Romanian anti-Semitism in his furious new satire “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” which picked up the top prize at the 53rd edition of Karlovy Vary. Where Aferim! was a shaggy-dog road trip Continue Reading