Edinburgh

★★☆☆☆ Featuring in the World Perspectives strand at Edinburgh, Trivisa is a Hong Kong production that takes place in the borderlands between the island and mainland China during the 1997 British handover. There is the kernel of a very good film here that is stamped into unfathomable nothingness by a trio of directors who all…

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★★★★★ “My aim is to stay alive, I don’t want to die.” A plainly spoken objective from one subject of Juan Reina’s equally forthright, compelling and utterly breath-taking documentary Diving Into the Unknown, a stellar entry in Edinburgh’s Focus on Finland strand. Being buried alive often tops lists of most feared ways to die but…

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★★★☆☆ Ken and Kazu is a slow-to-boil Japanese crime thriller from writer-director Hiroshi Shoji that shows momentary glimpses of genuine promise without ever bubbling over or really gripping a viewer as it should. A feature length debut extension of Shoji’s 2011 short of the same name, the film makes its UK premiere under the World…

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★★★☆☆ Throughout much of The Islands and the Whales the rugged Faroe archipelago, jutting out of the sea with awe-inspiring majesty, is shrouded in low-hanging cloud and grey mist. A film that is jaw- dropping in its visual splendour, the choice to envelope the islands in this blanket of precipitation is a keen move by…

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★★☆☆☆ Just as John Henry Clayton thought he was out, they pull him back in. Directed by Jon Cassar, Forsaken is a humdrum Western which never demonstrates even the suggestion of a trick up its sleeve. Kiefer Sutherland tops the bill as a reformed gunslinger, a prodigal son returning home from the Civil War to…

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★★☆☆☆ The subject matter of Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano’s Chicago Boys is certainly worthy of documentary coverage but its narrow scope and dull presentation mean it is unlikely to appeal to many viewers other than students of financial history. Under the tutelage of Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, from the mid-1950s onwards groups of…

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★★★☆☆ A labour of love to rival that of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Brothers is a charming study of growing up, a preservation of memory and lessons learned from a mother to her own sons. Norwegian documentary filmmaker Aslaug Holm is lucky to have two such thoroughly likeable and comfortable subjects. Filmed from their infancy into…

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★★★★☆ “There’s only one story you’ll get from me,” growls Peter Mullan from behind a hedgerow of coarse woolly beard. As Tom Morris in Tommy’s Honour, the veteran Scottish actor embodies the pioneering exploits of a St. Andrews man who inaugurated the Open Championship from his humble standing as greenkeeper and caddie to the club’s…

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As cinema doors across the Scottish capital open to celebrate a very special 70th birthday the Edinburgh International Film Festival ushers in the start of its 2016 edition. With as many worthwhile stories to tell as any septuagenarian, and exuding prestige, oodles of experience and an extraordinary range of cinematic treats, this year’s festival once…

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