Always hotly anticipated by London’s LGBTIQ+ communities, BFI Flare went fully online this year, 26 features and even more shorts finding new audiences for a glorious programme full of soul, provocation, warmth, wit and sex. Continuing a trend, the festival […]
★★★★☆ ‘The most famous person you’ve never heard of.’ So read the tagline for Gracie Otto’s acclaimed 2013 documentary The Last Impresario, an exploration of the life and times of renowned producer Michael White. The Australian director moves from theatre and […]
★★★★☆ Scheduled for launch at the end of October 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope will set the distant red star Trappist 1 – and its potentially habitable exoplanets – in its sights. Its objective? Peering into deepest space to […]
★★☆☆☆ Actor, playwright, novelist and now screenwriter-director, Leah Purcell is a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from rural Queensland. Her debut film, The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, is the latest representation of a story which places a fearless, pioneering Aboriginal character […]
★★★☆☆ Escaping Paris for a week’s rest and relaxation in the Dominican Republic, Emma (Clarisse Albrecht) says goodbye to pet parrot Coco in the opening moments of Bantú Mama. As the title card appears, the camera focuses on the revolving top of […]
★★☆☆☆ In spite of two very game central performances by newcomers Baize Busan and Allison Torem, Bradley Grant Smith’s Our Father is the flattest of family drama-comedies. Learning of their father’s death, estranged sisters Beta (Busan) and Zelda (Torem) are […]
★★☆☆☆ Though the twists and turns of an extraordinary story – a baby stolen at birth, mistaken identities, genealogical discoveries, a fifty-year quest for the truth – are unquestionably compelling, Ursula Macfarlane’s The Lost Sons has the feel of a […]
★★★☆☆ Bound by a self-imposed obligation to send money to family back home in Haiti, caregiver Ludi works all the hours God sends in Floridian filmmaker Edson Jean’s debut. Modest but clear-sighted in its focus and ambitions, this first feature […]
★★★★☆ In the opening moments of Paola Calvo and Patrick Jasim’s Luchadoras, female workers take a bumpy bus ride to factories situated on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez. Looking out of windows, lost in thought, there’s no conversation, but a […]
★★★★☆ As spousal encouragement goes, “Just don’t be an asshole,” is about as frank as it comes. But if you’re running for city council for the first time, it’s not a bad place to start. Jasmine Stodel’s Kid Candidate follows […]
★★★☆☆ Finding Ben Whishaw at his most electric and engrossing best, Surge sees an airport security official a long way past the end of his rope and on a collision course with disaster. Aneil Karia’s debut feature is (intentionally) uncomfortable […]
★★★★★ There’s a joyous moment just after the hour mark of Gunda where two piglets experience rain for the first time. Sneaking to the threshold of their warm abode, full of curiosity, they look to the sky, and instinctively, playfully […]
★★★★☆ “Football, bloody hell!” Taciturn, but never a man to mince his words, only occasionally did the inscrutable exterior of Sir Alex Ferguson – one of football’s most fearsome managers – ever crack a smile. Directed by his son Jason, […]
★★★★★ “The concept of resilience is a powerful one.” Channelling the fortitude and resolve with which his beloved city of Boston recovered from the 2013 marathon bombing, Mayor Marty Walsh’s words echo a key tenet of Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall. […]
★★★★☆ “It’s the end of the line,” says a bus driver as he wakes a man who has fallen asleep on his route. Where was his stop? Does he not remember his name? Opening with an end, a journey unfinished, […]
★★★☆☆ Ostensibly a remake of David Michôd’s outstanding 2010 film Animal Kingdom, Jeanette Nordahl’s Wildland transposes the action of a Melbourne crime family’s nefarious enterprise to leafy Danish suburbia. Bringing both her experience as assistant director on the popular political […]
★★★☆☆ Whether you’re completely lost or simply taking the scenic route, coming-of-age stories tend to be just as much about the journey as their destination. Though it may not stray too far off a well-beaten track, Marley Morrison’s feature debut […]
★★★★☆ In the opening moments of Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s Gagarine, news footage from the early 1960s shows Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin opening an Ivry-sur-Seine housing estate, dedicated in his honour. Wide-eyed boys, chasing the stars, excitedly declare that […]
