Festivals
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Toronto 2019: Maria’s Paradise review
★★★☆☆ Zaida Bergroth’s fifth feature is based on the real-life exploits of Maria Åkerblom’s Finnish cult. Although its analysis of the nature of devotion and the intense narcissism that drives cult-like leaders is mostly pretty lightweight, Maria’s Paradise is a well-mounted, effective thriller-drama. Opening as the group, led by the charismatic and elegant Maria (Pihla Viitala), are…
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Toronto 2019: The Lost Okoroshi review
★★★★☆ Following his 2016 debut Green White Green, Nigerian director Abba Makama returns to the festival circuit with this exploration of heritage, culture and folk memory, seasoned with endearing, offbeat humour and a touch of body horror. The Lost Okoroshi follows the travails of carefree security guard Raymond (Seun Ajayi) as he awakes one morning to find himself transformed…
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Toronto 2019: #ShareHerJourney, folk memory and belief
As the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) gears up for its 44th year, festival programmers continue to #shareherjourney with 35% of films at the festival made by women. Spirits, folklore and memory are the order of the day in the Contemporary World Cinema and Midnight Madness programmes. Meanwhile, the indigenous experience is given greater…
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Venice 2019: The King review
★★★☆☆ “All hail the king,” proclaim the posters dotted around the Venice Lido. The story of Henry V gets a revisionist, Netflix-backed interpretation from Animal Kingdom director David Michôd as a floppy-haired Timothée Chalamet goes boldly into the breach once more in Venice out-of-competition offering The King.
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Venice 2019: The Laundromat review
★★★☆☆ Do you remember when Steven Soderbergh retired from filmmaking? That was approximately five films and two television series ago. There’s a looseness to his new Netflix-bound Panama Papers takedown The Laundromat that, for both better or worse, smacks of an OAP not giving a tinker’s cuss.
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Venice 2019: Ema review
★★★☆☆ Ema (Mariana Di Girólamo) is a young dancer with a Daenerys Targaryen bleach job and a love of Reggaeton. She’s also a bit of a pyromaniac. The first shot we see in Pablo Larraín’s new film Ema is of a stoplight burning, set on fire by Ema with her flamethrower.
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Venice 2019: An Officer and a Spy review
★★★☆☆ The Dreyfus Affair is chronicled as a turn of the century espionage thriller worthy of le Carré in Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy. There was a good chance that his film could have been withdrawn after the jury head Lucrecia Martel shared her dissatisfaction at the film being included in the competition.
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Venice 2019: Jokers, Kings and everyone in-between
As the 76th edition of Venice commenced this week, the oldest film festival in the world has entered some choppy waters. First of all, there was a Hollywood Reporter article that slammed Venice as the “Fuck you” festival, essentially ignoring the #MeToo movement and the calls for gender representation which even Cannes has been slowly…
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Locarno 2019: Instinct review
★★★☆☆ Fans of Game of Thrones will be used to seeing Carice van Houten as a sexually powerful witch whose actions frequently cross moral lines, but her new film in which she stars with Marwan Kenzari, last seen in Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, is an altogether different affair. Written by Esther Gerritsen and Reijn, Instinct tells…
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Locarno 2019: The Girl with a Bracelet review
★★★☆☆ A young girl is accused of a terrible crime and her family must come to terms with how much they really know about her in Stéphane Demoustier’s sober courtroom drama The Girl with a Bracelet, which premiered at Locarno. A family day at the beach can end in any number of unpleasant ways, but…