Christopher Machell

★★★★☆ In 2015, German-British composer Max Richter and creative partner Yulia Mahr released his most ambitious work to date, an eight and a half hour composition designed to be listened to while sleeping. Natalie Johns’ documentary on the piece is an appropriately languorous, dreamy exploration of Richter’s music taken at its own pace and pleasurably…

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★★☆☆☆ Three figures stalk through a forest – a woman with long, raven-black hair (Katarina Jakobson), a giant, bearded brute carrying a dead dog (Morad Baloo Khatchadorian), and their leader, a grinning, white-suited gent singing a children’s song (Peter Belli). Thus opens Johannes Nyholm’s second feature, its evocative imagery promising psychological terror rendered through childhood…

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★★★★☆ The film that took the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes shook French President Emmanuel Macron so strongly that he was moved to (ostensibly, at least) begin reforming France’s inner-city ghettos. Ladj Ly’s feature debut takes its inspiration from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, but this tale of urban deprivation and revolt is as contemporary…

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★★☆☆☆ Veteran scribe William Nicholson returns to the screen in his first feature directorial credit since 1997’s Firelight. Now on directing duties too, Nicholson explores the perils and heartbreak of middle-aged divorce with Hope Gap. Nicholson has form with writing later-life relationships, so it’s a shame that the real hope gap here is that between…

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★★★★☆ In her second feature as director, American actor-producer-filmmaker Amy Seimetz explores the existential ennui of inevitable doom in this chilling, strange horror. In the age of Covid and climate change, what could possibly feel more contemporary? Having missed its premiere at the cancelled SXSW festival earlier this year, much has been made of She…

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★★★★☆ Winner of the Contrechemp award at last year’s niche Annecy animated film festival, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’ feature debut is among the most innovative and enchanting animated films released this year. Away combines Zilbalodis’ signature minimalist style with the structure of a classic survival story. Compared with the vast conglomerate resources of the Disneys,…

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★★★★☆ Following its world premiere way back in 2017 at the Toronto Film Festival, Sadaf Foroughi’s Ava finally makes its way on to UK screens. The Iranian-Canadian director’s feature debut has already been favourably compared with the films of Asghar Farhadi, but make no mistake: Ava is a singular vision marking Foroughi as a talent…

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★★☆☆☆ In 1983, a Russian space mission crash lands back on Earth. The only survivor of the team, cosmonaut Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov), is detained in a secret Soviet facility. No one knows what happened up there in the cosmos, but their vessel may well have returned with an extra passenger. It’s almost a cliché…

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★★★☆☆ Film versions of Carlo Collodi’s iconic 1883 children’s novel are almost as old as cinema itself. Disney’s 1940 version notwithstanding, the first film adaptation dates from 1911, while the fable of an artificial boy who yearns to become ‘real’ has inspired countless science fiction films and TV. Italian director Matteo Garrone is now the…

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★★★★☆ British director Claire Oakley’s feature debut is at once a brilliantly tense mystery-thriller and an impressionistic psychological portrait. Make Up taps into a rich Gothic tradition where repressed emotions find their vent in uncanny space and sexual awakening is realised through the imagination. The uncanny is vital to Oakley’s film, the latest in a…

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