Ben Nicholson

★★★★☆ Despite eschewing colour in favour of the rich textures of monochrome, Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2015) manages to be one of the most vivid depictions of the Amazon committed to celluloid. Shot on sumptuous Super 35, the black and white photography lends itself to the film’s sorrowful ode to a world devastated,…

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★★☆☆☆ The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem makes for an endlessly striking location in Yaelle Kayam’s delicately constructed Mountain (2015). The oldest active Jewish cemetery in the world, it proved fertile soil for Kayam’s imagination as she transposed the essence of a story from the Talmud – about a rabbi who no longer desired his…

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★★★☆☆ The subject of guilt is one that cinema often returns to for its potential to be expressed in inventive and thought-provoking ways. In Radu Muntean’s pared-down and naturalistic One Floor Below (2015), he and co-screenwriters Alexandru Baciu and Razvan Radulescu choose to take a similar route to Michael Haneke’s highly-regarded Hidden (2005) by giving…

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★★★☆☆ Tackling the period surrounding the British Mandate for Palestine and the subsequent formation of the State of Israeli is a very brave choice for a directorial debut. With A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015), Natalie Portman has not just taken on the challenge but also adapted Amos Oz’s autobiographical memoirs in such a…

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★★★★☆ Nitzan Giladi’s fantastic debut feature Wedding Doll (2015), premièring at Toronto this year, is the second Israeli film in as many years to focus on the difficult relationship between a young woman with a mental disability and the family member living with and caring for her. Where Asaf Korman’s Next To Her (2014) mined…

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★★☆☆☆ Deceit and callousness abound in Sebastian Ko’s psychological drama We Monsters (2015). It begins with an effective, open question which Marcus Seibert’s screenplay then continues to re-pitch and re-frame throughout its runtime; if your child murdered someone, what would you do? It’s an intriguing premise which is regrettably let down by fairly pedestrian treatment.…

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★★★☆☆ Igor Drljača’s The Waiting Room (2015) bears no little resemblance to its cowed protagonist, Jasmin (Jasmin Geljo). A sad clown of a man, both he and the film spend much of their time patiently observing the passing of a frustrated life, devoid of narrative incident but drowning in regret and preoccupations with self-worth, the…

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★★★☆☆ An elegy for both the lost world of the Jewish shtetl and the fanciful idylls of childhood, the exquisitely lensed Song of Songs (2015) is the new film from award-winning Ukrainian director Eva Neymann. With a narrative constructed of elements plucked from across the work of Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, it charts the burgeoning…

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★★★★☆ The unsettling skeleton of Paul Bowles’ short story A Distant Episode gives a narrative framework to Ben Rivers latest odyssey into the ethereal unknown. The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015) is a beguiling meditation on the nature of cinematic memory wrapped around the bones…

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★★★☆☆ Chantal Akerman’s latest film No Home Movie (2015) opens on a shot of a tree being buffeted by the wind with a barren expanse of Israeli desert stretching into the distance. The composition lasts for several minutes and is the first of five such asides dotted throughout this intimate portrait of the director’s ageing…

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