Patrick Gamble
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IndieLisboa 2017: Arábia
★★★★☆ Screening at this year’s IndieLisboa, Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Arábia is a beautifully observed and intensely lyrical road movie about how difficult it is to just get by in Brazilian society. The film opens with a gorgeous tracking shot of a young man riding his bike downhill accompanied by the melancholic melody of…
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Interview: Katell Quillévéré, dir. Heal the Living
Is death really the end? Katell Quillévéré’s Heal the Living argues that death is merely the start of a much larger process. Adapted from Maylis de Kerangal’s International Booker Prize-nominated novel Mend the Living, Quillévéré’s latest is a medical procedural set over 24 hours. We chart the transmigration of a heart after its donor Simon…
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Film Review: Heal the Living
★★★★☆ For a movie concerned with death, French director Katell Quillévéré’s Heal the Living begins with a shot that manages to capture just what it means to be alive. The film opens on 17-year-old Simon (Gabin Verdet), lying in bed with his girlfriend Juliette (Galatéa Bellugi).It’s the early hours of the morning and Juliette is…
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Film Review: Casting JonBenet
★★★★☆ The unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a six-year-old American pageant queen who was killed in her family home in Boulder, Colorado in 1996, is an ideal story for the Making a Murderer model of investigatory non-fiction filmmaking.Blending and bending genres to highlight the elusiveness of the truth, Kitty Green’s experimental docu-drama Casting JonBenet presents the audience…
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Film Review: The Lost City of Z
★★★★☆ There aren’t many directors working today with the same ambition and exquisite craftsmanship of James Gray. Despite being renowned for his complex, emotional storytelling, he continues to work within the fringes of the industry. His latest offering The Lost City of Z, a revisionist epic about colonial exploration in the Amazon, is hopefully the…
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Berlin 2017: On Body and Soul review
★★★☆☆ Opening on a woodland as two deer search through the snow for food, it’s clear from the start On Body and Soul isn’t a conventional love story. Their eyes meet and the stag wanders over to the doe, laying his head on her neck, an act of warmth and compassion in an otherwise cold,…
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Berlin 2017: Ana, Mon Amour review
★★★☆☆ Child’s Pose director and Golden Bear-winner Cãlin Peter Netzer returns to the Berlinale with Ana, Mon Amour, a tale of love, addiction and the memories of failed romances that linger and won’t be chased away. When we first meet, Ana (Diana Cavallioti) and Toma (Mircea Postelnicu) they’re at the preliminary stage of their relationship,…
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Berlin 2017: Adriana’s Pact review
★★★★☆ “Every family has their secrets,” claims Chilean director Lissette Orozco whilst introducing her debut film Adriana’s Pact – but what happens when these secrets get out? A deeply personal documentary about guilt and culpability, we see what happens when the personal and the political become inextricably entwined. Do the wounds of the past heal? And…
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Interview: Barry Jenkins, dir. Moonlight
In light of last year’s Oscars So White controversy, the eight Academy Award nominations bestowed on Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight could have felt like a reactionary attempt to rectify the ceremony’s lack of diversity. However, unlike other films that attempt to juggle big issues with commercial success, the hype surrounding Moonlight is entirely justified. Not only…
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Berlin 2017: When the Day Had No Name review
★★★☆☆ In 2012, the bodies of four teenage boys were discovered on the outskirts of the Macedonian capital of Skopje. They had left home the previous morning to go on a fishing trip, but were found lying on the bank of the lake with bullet holes in their heads. Teona Strugar Mitevska’s When the Day…