Edinburgh
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Letters from the South’ review
★★★★☆ Six directors presenting six separate encounters from four Southeast Asian countries, Letters from the South (2013) explores the fluid relationship between the Chinese diaspora and their homeland. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, this fascinating anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration. China has a long history of migration across…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Hellion’ review
★★★☆☆ Teenage rebellion in the sundrenched plains of Texas is the subject of Kat Candler’s Hellion (2014), an ultimately unremarkable drama starring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, with a breakout performance by 14-year-old Josh Wiggins. Wiggins plays Jacob, the rough-and-tumble adolescent seen at the beginning of the film smashing up cars outside the local sports stadium,…
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Edinburgh 2014: ’40 Days of Silence’ review
★★★☆☆ As the old proverb goes, “The best answer to anger is silence”. In Saodat Ismailova’s sensory meditation on the realities of womanhood, we become so densely enriched in layers of audible indignation that it’s hard not to feel suffocated by the silence. An ethnographical exploration of rural Tajikistan and a study of the intersections…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Sorrow and Joy’ review
★★☆☆☆ Film director Johannes (Jakob Cedergren) returns home from a trip to be told that his wife Signe (Helle Fagralid) has killed their infant daughter in director Nils Malmros’ largely autobiographical effort Sorrow and Joy (2013). Initially filled with disbelief, Johannes quickly rallies himself into supporting his wife’s case for psychiatric care, rather than psychiatric…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Manakamana’ review
★★★★☆ The latest from Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (the same team who brought us last year’s Leviathan), Manakamana (2013) is another non-narrative, observational portrait of life that eschews conventional storytelling in favour of a meditative approach to documentary filmmaking. Using a Nepalese cable car as the stage for a study of human spirituality, directors…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Koo! Kin-dza-dza’ review
★★★☆☆ In 1986, Georgiy Daneliya made Kin-dza-dza, a highly celebrated science fiction satire of the Soviet Union. A live-action, steam punk-infused parable that reflected the altering political landscape, Daneliya’s tale of an ethnically discriminative alien world highlighted the growing discourse between the USSR and Chechnya. Now, Daneliya has revived his sardonic satire of the Soviet…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Journey to the West’ review
★★★★☆ In Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, the dutiful limo driver of billionaire asset manager Eric Packer coldly describes how the traffic before them “speaks in quarter inches”. The same could be said of the stars of French-Taiwanese collaboration Journey to the West (Xi You, 2014), the experimental new film from Stray Dogs director Tsai Ming-liang, featuring…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Hide and Seek’ review
★★★☆☆ The debut feature from Joanna Coates, Hide and Seek (2014) is a sensual attempt to examine the psychological mindset of a generation in stasis. Things become complicated when a quartet of Londoners choose to reject society’s preordained laws and build a new model for living, with the true meaning of Coates’ film hidden beneath…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Greyhawk’ review
★★☆☆☆ Greyhawk (2014), the debut feature from Guy Pitt, takes a simple premise and unravels it slowly under the ominous shadow of a dilapidated London council estate. The modest tale of a blind man who loses his guide dog, Pitt’s drama attempts to confront our preconceptions towards disability but in doing so completely misrepresents an…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Falling Star’ review
★★★☆☆ The brief three-year reign of King Amadeo of Savoy is the unlikely focus of Luís Miñarro’s Falling Star (2014). Miñarro’s mischievous period piece is a wryly offbeat drama that explores the opaque crevasse of loneliness and despair in a hallucinatory and unhurried fashion. Amid the violent social upheavals of 1870 Amadeo of Savoy (Àlex…