Ben Nicholson

★★★★☆ With Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), winner of this year’s Palme d’Or, also playing at the London Film Festival, it’s possible that Amir Manor’s quiet drama Epilogue (2012) may be somewhat overlooked. That would be a real shame, however, as this touching tale of an octogenarian couple struggling through their disconnect with modern life in Israel…

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★★☆☆☆ Just a few minutes into Rachid Djaidani’s fictional feature debut, two characters amble down a street and one complains to the other that in cinematic terms “We do not innovate in France – we follow.” The story that then proceeds to unfold is a well worn tale, essentially a re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet,…

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★★★☆☆ When it comes to impenetrable arthouse fare, Thai indie auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul is widely regarded as something of a master. Two years ago, he arrived in London triumphantly with his Palme d’Or for the majestic Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and has returned this year with the not-quite-feature-length oddity, Mekong Hotel…

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★★★☆☆ Belgian director Marc-Henri Wajnberg brings to London his first feature film in almost twenty years. Kinshasa Kids (2012) is a fiction film shot in a documentary style which actually seems to veer across the fiction dividing line on more than one occasion and was initially conceived of by the director as a doc. Inspired,…

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★★★☆☆ The latest offering from veteran Algerian director Merzak Allouache, The Repentant (El Taaib, 2012) plays in the ‘Debate’ strand of this year’s London Film Festival – and it’s easy to see why. In 1999, after eight years of civil war and an estimated 200,000 lost lives, the Algerian government offered an amnesty to the…

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★★★☆☆ A brief synopsis of director Miroslav Momcilovic’s satire, Death of a Man in the Balkans (2012) might not exactly bring the punters flooding into the cinema. A Serbian comedy about those arriving at the scene of a composer’s suicide, shot entirely from the point of view of a web-cam is unlikely to appeal to…

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★★★☆☆ Unsurprisingly, given its title, the past plays a major role in the debut feature film of Song Fang, best known as the nanny in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon (2007). Gentle, pleasant, and seemingly autobiographical, Memories Look at Me (2012) is an exploration of life, the passing of time, and fatality. To…

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★★★☆☆ With several awards scooped on its festival travels thus far – including a Tiger Award in Rotterdam – and having being banned in Russia, Serbian drama Clip (Klip, 2012) now arrives at the London Film Festival. The feature debut, both as writer and director, of actress Maja Milŏs, the film is a gritty and…

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★★☆☆☆ Issue movies are always problematic. It is rare that the cause that they champion is not an important and worthy one, but their very nature mean that the art of storytelling and the creation of drama can often play second fiddle to making their point. This is absolutely the case with Michael J. Rix’s…

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