Festivals
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#LFF 2016: Neruda review
★★★★★ Chile, 1948. The poet, communist and senator Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) has become a thorn in the side of the government and President Gabriel Gonzalez Vidala (Alfredo Castro), a man he helped elect. Clampdowns on subversives, trade unionists and strikers make Neruda’s continued parliamentary role untenable and the choice is either to flee or…
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#LFF 2016: Park review
★★☆☆☆ Sofia Exarchou’s debut feature Park tackles the hopelessness of austerity-ravaged Greece through the lives of a ragtag bunch of children and teenagers that call Athens’ abandoned Olympic village their home. Some appear to be homeless, while others only visit during the day, but for all of them the decaying village is the hub of…
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#LFF 2016: Chasing Asylum review
★★★★☆ At the time Chasing Asylum was filmed 2,175 men, women and children, seeking refuge in Australia, were being detained indefinitely in centres on Manus Island – in northern Papua New Guinea – and on Nauru, a remote Pacific Ocean island nation. A further 10,000 were stranded in the Philippines due to an escalation in…
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#LFF 2016: Chameleon review
★★★★☆ “Treat people the way they should be treated.” Worthy sentiment is turned ambiguous in Jorge Riquelme Serrano’s unsettling class conflict drama. As a member of the jet-setting bourgeoisie and somebody who comes across as a total snob, Paulina (Paulina Urrutia) thinks everybody should know their place. For Paula (Paula Zúñiga), Paulina’s lover, it means…
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#LFF 2016: Wild review
★★★☆☆ At its primeval heart, Nicolette Krebitz’s Wild is the story of a lonely girl, Ania (Lilith Stangenberg), and a wolf whom she happens upon while making her daily walk to a dead-end job. A cautious, frightened distance initially held between beauty and beast will be slowly eroded by a magnetic, inexorable fascination, obsession even,…
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#LFF 2016: Pyromaniac review
★★★☆☆ Playing in the Thrill section of the 2016 London Film Festival, Pyromaniac is a moody, elemental psychodrama set in an isolated Norwegian village sometime in the late 1960s-early 70s. An increasingly paranoid rural community falls prey to the titular firestarter but this stirring Erik Skjoldbjærg-directed feature, full of teenage angst, yearning and fury, is…
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#LFF 2016: King Cobra review
★★★★☆ Justin Kelly’s King Cobra bravely re-tells the true story of gay porn icon Brent Corrigan (real name Sean Lockhart) and is by no means one for the faint-hearted. The mere mention of the word ‘pornography’ incites, more often than not, a knee-jerk reaction of sneering judgement and condescension but to dismiss this brash, ballsy,…
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#LFF 2016: A Date for Mad Mary review
★★★★☆ What are the things you need to know about Mary? She’s impatient, a bit gobby, angry, confused, passionate and loyal but has a history of rubbing people the wrong way. She’s a firecracker who always speaks her mind. Playing in the First Feature Competition at this year’s London Film Festival, it’s a stellar turn…
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#LFF 2016: A United Kingdom review
★★★☆☆ Sweeping period melodrama and socially conscious political storytelling are intertwined to satisfying effect in A United Kingdom, the new film from Belle director Amma Asante. Once again turning her hand to a real life tale about an interracial romance, she builds the story of Prince Seretse Khama of Bechuanaland (modern day Botswana) and London…
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#LFF 2016: Our picks of the festival
The BFI London Film Festival returns to the nation’s capital for its momentous 60th edition from today (5-16 October), once again offering a host of filmic delights for casual cinemagoers and militant cinephiles alike. Kicking off this year’s programme is London-born Belle director Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom, starring Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo as…