Festivals
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Sundance 2021: Playing with Sharks review
★★★☆☆ A daredevil activity that for most would be considered the stuff of nightmares has, for diver and marine conservationist Valerie Taylor, been a lifelong passion. Dispelling myths and challenging preconceptions that humankind has of the ocean’s ancient selachian inhabitants, Sally Aitken’s Playing with Sharks is a loving biography of an indomitable, fearless pioneer and…
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Sundance 2021: The Pink Cloud review
★★★☆☆ Try as she might to refute any suggestions of prophecy, Iuli Gerbase’s The Pink Cloud will strike very close to the bone for audiences everywhere in early 2021. The young filmmaker’s debut is a dreamy, claustrophobic vision of modern life under strict, restrictive circumstances beyond its characters’ control. Sound familiar? Premiering at Sundance in…
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Sundance 2021: Human Factors review
★★★☆☆ When is a house not a home? And how thinly stretched are the ties that bind together the people within their walls? Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors, a patient, brooding drama, peers through cracks in the brickwork of a family unit whose growing divisions may be beyond repair. “It was a good idea to come…
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Sundance 2021: Programme preview
If the past year has taught cultural institutions the world over anything, it’s that the show can and must go on. The continuing Covid-19 pandemic means that the 2021 Sundance Film Festival will be – predominantly – a digital experience. Save for a select few satellite screenings set up across the US within strict health…
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#LFF 2020: Gold for Dogs review
★★☆☆☆ “Your cock and your words fill me with joy.” Crass to the point of being offensive, these lyrics – from one song of the soundtrack to Gold for Dogs – effectively sum up this deplorable coming-of-age debut feature. Nonsensical and tonally misguided, we travel from France’s Atlantic coast to Paris and back, but go…
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#LFF 2020: Shadow Country review
★★★★☆ Set in a small village on the Czech-Austrian border, and spanning fifteen years pre, during and post-Second World War, Bohdan Sláma’s Shadow Country is a monumental piece of filmmaking. Simultaneously an historical allegory of tremendous scope and a claustrophobic, cautionary tale of collaboration and bloody revenge, it is both epic in scale and intimate…
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#LFF 2020: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets review
★★★★☆ Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’ vérité style belies a quasi-staged reality that challenges the distinction between fiction and documentary, studying the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. Shot over the course of a single night, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets depicts the final night of ‘The Roaring 20s’, a Las Vegas bar…
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#LFF 2020: Time review
★★★★☆ Positing the question of whether the principal objective of incarceration is punishment, rehabilitation or undue persecution, Garrett Bradley’s Time is another vital addition to a growing canon of films to pointedly critique the US legal and prison systems’ unjust treatment of people of colour. If Ava DuVernay’s ground-breaking 2016 film, 13th, provided the macro,…
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#LFF 2020: Programme preview
Neither shaken nor stirred by the current climate, and rolling with this year’s seemingly unending string of punches with remarkable aplomb, the 2020 edition of the BFI London Film Festival will be unlike any that have preceded it. The big news is that this year’s terrific selection of the world’s best new films will be made available…
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FrightFest 2020: Av: The Hunt review
★★★★☆ Emre Akay’s powerful social thriller pits a woman against not only her immediate family, but an entire country’s cultural attitudes, its conservative values, and misogynistic impulses. Av (The Hunt) is a depiction of modern Turkey likely to rile those who adore the nation’s incumbent dictator. ‘This is honour! There is no escape!’ a relative tells Ayse (Billur Melis…