Festivals
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Cannes 2022: Ruben Östlund wins second Palme d’Or
Cannes’ 75th edition came to a close with a Palme d’Or for Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. It was a fittingly ironic moment for the wealthy, star-studded audience to applaud a satire that eviscerates the wealthy and celebrity-obsessed upper-classes. It was Östlund’s second Palme d’Or and, although well-deserved, felt symptomatic of a festival which was…
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Cannes 2022: Showing Up review
★★★★☆ If there has been a characteristic that sums up this 75th edition of Cannes, it has been that the festival has been small. Partly because of Covid still affecting the way films are produced – yachts seem to be half-staffed and worlds depopulated: cinema downsized. So it is fitting that one of the last…
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Cannes 2022: When You Finish Saving the World review
★★★☆☆ A gauche young man plays guitar and sings a song he wrote to the devoted pleasure of his parents. That was The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach’s 2005 acerbic comedy of family disintegration. Jesse Eisenberg played the young man, while the song was actually by Pink Floyd which the boy was trying to…
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Cannes 2022: Final Cut review
★★★☆☆ There’s something fitting about a zombie movie remake. To paraphrase Vic Reeves, “You wouldn’t let it die”. And if you’re going to remake a zombie film, why not pick one of the best of recent years. That seems to be the thinking behind Michel Hazanavicius’ Final Cut, a zom-com that faithfully replays Shinichiro Ueda’s…
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Cannes 2022: Our picks of the festival
The Croisette is teeming, the red carpet has been unrolled, and the ticket system is up the spout. In other words, Cannes is back. After the Covid-inflected – if not infected – July 2021 version, there is a sense of renewal as the film industry bounces back with the blockbuster delights of Top Gun: Maverick…
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Lonely Wolf Film Festival 2022: Programme announced
The 7th edition of the Lonely Wolf International Film Festival exhibits sophistication, growth and maturity on both a logistical and thematic front. Behind the scenes, this year the festival has received a record amount of submissions for any one single trimestral virtual event so far, with 737 total audiovisual projects in competition.
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CPH:DOX 2022: Karaoke Paradise review
★★★★☆ In his third feature, filmmaker Einari Paakkanen turns his attention to the phenomenon of Finnish karaoke and its capacity to bring disparate people together. Karaoke Paradise is a charming, insightful and often moving study of normal people’s lives through the medium of belting out great tunes.
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CPH:DOX 2022: Into the Ice review
★★★☆☆ Seasoned science and nature documentary director Lars Ostenfeld makes the jump into film with Into the Ice, a beautiful, gripping and ultimately terrifying journey into the impacts of climate change on the Greenland ice sheet.
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CPH:DOX 2022: The Fall review
★★★★☆ Impressing last year with art mystery The Lost Leonardo, director Andreas Koefoed returns with altogether different piece of work. Far from the globe-trotting scope of his previous film, The Fall is an intimate and sensitive portrait of adolescence.
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SXSW 2022: The Mojo Manifesto: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon review
★★★☆☆ When the legend becomes truth, print the legend. So goes Matt Eskey’s directorial debut, The Mojo Manifesto, a documentary in thrall to its subject. Luckily for us, its subject is Mojo Nixon (née Neill Kirby McMillan), the cartoonishly raucous musician and one of cow-punk’s leading proponents.