Patrick Gamble

★★☆☆☆ Portugal’s economic crisis is explored through the strained dynamic of a family slowing falling apart in Teresa Villaverde’s austerity drama Colo. You wouldn’t know it by the clothes she wears or the furniture in their well-appointed apartment but the financial crisis has hit Marta’s (Alice Albergaria Borges) family hard. She lives with her mother…

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★★★★☆ Most of us at some point have experienced a moment in a dream where you realise you are asleep but are utterly powerless to affect any change to the narrative your brain has spun. This sensation continues to fascinate and infuriate scientists. The dreamworld is a place we’ve all visited, yet one few of…

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★★☆☆☆ Laura Schroeder’s Barrage, the intriguing tale of three generations of women navigating the roles of mother and daughter, has gained a lot of attention due to the casting of Isabelle Huppert opposite her real-life daughter Lolita Chammah. Sadly, Huppert’s role as Elizabeth, the film’s domineering matriarch, is resigned to fringes for much of the…

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★★★☆☆ Daniela Thomas’ Vazante is a minor Greek tragedy transposed to colonial Brazil. A slow-burning drama about slavery in all its forms, this austere, visually striking film combines a harrowing period of Brazilian history with devastating accuracy of emotion. Vazante lacks much in the way of exposition, choosing to eschew the comforts of historical context…

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★★★★☆ Is it mythology or tradition that holds societies together? That’s the question posed by Aktan Arym Kubat’s Centaur, a profoundly moving tale about life in rural Kyrgyzstan that’s defined by its simple, heartbreaking approach. Ancient tales and folklore about the relationship between men and horses, and the customs forged over decades of social change…

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★★★★☆ An exquisitely rendered study of entitlement and millennial dissatisfaction, Alex Ross Perry returns to the Berlinale with his fifth feature, Golden Exits. Starring Jason Schwartzman, Mary-Louise Parker, Chloë Sevigny and Emily Browning, Perry’s latest is a sprawling ensemble piece full of pungent observation of human frailty. This Brooklyn tale of fractured identifies and duplicitous…

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★★★★☆ With their debut feature In Bloom, directing duo Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross showed how even after Georgia gained its independence in the 1990s, its women remained constrained by a staunchly patriarchal society. Their follow-up turns the clocks forward to the present day to show how little has changed. Switching the focus from youth…

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★★★☆☆ To 13-year-old Dayveon (Devin Blackmon), who we first encounter cycling down a deserted Arkansas street, “everything is stupid”. The concrete, the houses, the trees, even the sky above him; “everything is stupid”. A stream of consciousness made spatial, Amman Abbasi’s debut feature Dayveon is an experiential coming of age tale very much anchored to…

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The 67th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival kicks off this Thursday with Etienne Comar’s Django, a biopic about the late jazz guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt. Born into a gypsy family, Reinhardt’s nomadic roots beautifully bookend the themes and issue that dominated last year’s Berlinale: namely migration and the power of art to…

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