★★★★★ “Daesh [ISIS] feel they have the right to use sabaya girls as personal slaves. To rape them and sell them.” The horrors of life for Yazidi women inside the refugee camp of Al-Hol are laid bare in Kurdish-Swedish filmmaker Hogir Horiri’s devastating documentary, […]
★★☆☆☆ Jakub Piątek’s Prime Time is a claustrophobic chamber piece set in Warsaw on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Bringing his narrative feature debut to Sundance in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, the Polish writer-director harks back twenty years to an age of VHS tapes, analogue television and robotic […]
★★★★☆ “This is a war room. I am here for a fight.” Under no illusion as to the scale of the task at hand, the deck is stacked against leader of the Movement for Democratic Change party and presidential candidate, Nelson Chamisa. A follow-up […]
★★★★☆ Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu charts a course between the dispassionate neo-realism of the Dardenne brothers and Gianfranco Rosi’s keen but objective documentarian eye. It is a touching parable of fathers and sons, tradition and modernity, principles versus practicality. Set in Malta, this is one […]
★★★★★ Recalling the moment she walked out on stage and looked upon the assembled crowd of thousands at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, Mavis Staples remembers being “overcome with joy.” The experience of watching Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the […]
★★★☆☆ A daredevil activity that for most would be considered the stuff of nightmares has, for diver and marine conservationist Valerie Taylor, been a lifelong passion. Dispelling myths and challenging preconceptions that humankind has of the ocean’s ancient selachian inhabitants, Sally Aitken’s Playing with […]
★★★☆☆ Try as she might to refute any suggestions of prophecy, Iuli Gerbase’s The Pink Cloud will strike very close to the bone for audiences everywhere in early 2021. The young filmmaker’s debut is a dreamy, claustrophobic vision of modern life under strict, restrictive […]
