★★★★☆ A fusion of storytelling, dance, song and mythology, Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings forms a rich, beguiling narrative web. Channelling the gifts of a traditional West African griot, the Ivory Coast filmmaker uses oral histories passed down by the generations to draw […]
★★★☆☆ Schoharie County, the upstate New York setting of Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, takes its name from a Mohawk word meaning ‘floating driftwood’. It’s an apt starting point from which to view the Norwegian director’s sophomore feature, the term keys into the […]
★★★★☆ At key moments in Hive, windows, mason jars and a picture frame are all broken. Marking significant flashpoints in a simmering narrative, these incidents propel the film towards its smashing of an overbearing glass ceiling. First-time writer-director Blerta Basholli’s feature is an expertly […]
★★★☆☆ The past cannot and will not stay buried in Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s Wild Indian. A tale of generational violence passed down from fathers to sons, it features two young men who share a despicable secret, scarring them for life in ways both […]
★★★★☆ There are no easy answers in Fran Kranz’s Mass; and perhaps no answers at all. One of the strongest debut features to have premiered at Sundance, it exhibits all of the signs of a very promising career behind the camera lie ahead for […]
★★★★★ In the Same Breath, Nanfu Wang’s searing expose of the origins of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and its pursuant handling by the Chinese and U.S. governments, is a film of contradictions, conflict and cover-ups. A galling, distressing but enthralling documentary, it opens and […]
★★★★★ “Who do I save first if the boat goes down?” On a clandestine trawler taking on water as it traverses the Baltic Sea between Estonia and Sweden, a young man asks himself an impossible question under desperate circumstances. Not acknowledging the fact that […]
★★★★☆ Tell any football fan that ‘It’s just a game’ and they are likely to give you very short shrift. But for close friends Mahmoud Dagher and Fawzi Qatleesh the stakes are considerably higher. For in Ali El Arabi’s stirring documentary Captains of Zaatari […]
★★★★☆ The directorial debut of Rebecca Hall, Passing is an intoxicating, dreamlike adaptation of Nella Larsen’s novella of the same name. A deeply personal endeavour for the first-time writer-filmmaker, this tale of race, gender and social mobility in late 1920s New York is told […]
★★★★☆ Building bridges between the past, present and future of three Latinx teens in El Paso, Texas, Maisie Crow’s At the Ready investigates one of the US’s most contentious domestic issues – immigration across its southern border – from an unorthodox angle. Cristina, César […]
★★★★★ “Daesh [ISIS] feel they have the right to use sabaya girls as personal slaves. To rape them and sell them.” The horrors of life for Yazidi women inside the refugee camp of Al-Hol are laid bare in Kurdish-Swedish filmmaker Hogir Horiri’s devastating documentary, […]
★★☆☆☆ Jakub Piątek’s Prime Time is a claustrophobic chamber piece set in Warsaw on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Bringing his narrative feature debut to Sundance in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, the Polish writer-director harks back twenty years to an age of VHS tapes, analogue television and robotic […]
★★★★☆ “This is a war room. I am here for a fight.” Under no illusion as to the scale of the task at hand, the deck is stacked against leader of the Movement for Democratic Change party and presidential candidate, Nelson Chamisa. A follow-up […]
★★★★☆ Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu charts a course between the dispassionate neo-realism of the Dardenne brothers and Gianfranco Rosi’s keen but objective documentarian eye. It is a touching parable of fathers and sons, tradition and modernity, principles versus practicality. Set in Malta, this is one […]
★★★★★ Recalling the moment she walked out on stage and looked upon the assembled crowd of thousands at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, Mavis Staples remembers being “overcome with joy.” The experience of watching Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
