Month: February 2021
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Glasgow 2021: In the Shadows review
★★★★☆ An isolated, run-down coal mine, enclosed by high-sided valley walls, is the forbidding, dystopian setting of Erdem Tepegöz’s impressive third feature, In the Shadows. Shackled not so much by the harshness of their physical surroundings, but unseen omnipotent forces which control their every waking hour, the oppressed workforce dare not step out of line.…
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Film Review: IWOW: I Walk on Water
★★★★☆ Khalik Allah’s IWOW: I Walk on Water is an ambitious, bewildering stream of consciousness; visual, aural, even ethereal. A film that looks past first impressions, and stops, taking the time to listen and learn about faces, places and stories too easily disregarded, it purposefully eschews any kind of generic classification or simple payoff. With…
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Glasgow 2021: Programme preview
Following successful outings for CPH:DOX and the BFI London Film Festival in 2020, and digital editions of Sundance and Rotterdam taking place since the turn of the year, the 2021 Glasgow Film Festival follows suit in going online. Keen cinephiles across the UK will be able to log in to the Glasgow Film At Home…
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Film Review: White Colour Black
★★★☆☆ More than four years after it premiered at the 2016 London Film Festival, British-Nigerian director Joseph A. Adesunloye’s feature debut finally sees the light of day. A languorous journey into social disaffection and familial rediscovery, White Colour Black’s long-awaited release is well deserved, featuring an understated central turn from the talented Dudley O’Shaughnessy. Leke…
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Film Review: Slalom
★★★★☆ French filmmaker Charlène Favier explores a sexually abusive relationship between a talented young skier and her predatory coach in Slalom. Directed with both sensitivity and brio, this gripping and haunting drama gets to the heart of the power that abusers hold over their victims. In the wake of the publication of Camille Kouchner’s (daughter…
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Film Review: PVT Chat
★★★★☆ Musician and filmmaker Ben Hozie tends to make films about New York’s more bohemian personalities. From documentary shorts about painters who use their own bed as a studio, to fiction films about philosophy-addled art terrorists, his is the demi-monde of unknown artists and free-thinking outcasts who might just be inching towards madness and getting…
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Interview: Peter Vack, PVT Chat
Perhaps better-known for his work fronting the New York art band BODEGA, Ben Hozie is also a director of stylistically-daring documentaries and independent films that centre around the unusual lives of artists and societal outcasts.
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IFFR 2021: Madalena review
★★★☆☆ In a small rural town in the middle of acres and acres of soy fields, bodies keep turning up. The latest is the body of a trans woman Madalena (Chloe Milan). The lives of three people seem obscurely affected by the event and are told as separate vignettes. Luziane (Natália Mazarim), who works as…
