★★★★☆ “Everyone says: ‘Less emotion, less emotion.’ How can anyone act without emotion?” So complains the eponymous veteran actress in Slovakian drama Eva Nová. She’s lamenting her plight; unemployed and at the mercy of modern, young directors and contemporary conventions […]
★★★☆☆ There’s a distinct whiff of Mike Leigh running through Waves, the fiction feature debut of Polish director Grzegorz Zariczny. A social realist drama about the difficulties facing working families, it is constructed with autobiographical details proffered by its non-professional […]
★★★☆☆ Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture used clay figurines to represent the non-existent images of the Khmer Rouge’s reign in Cambodia to startling effect and wide acclaim. Having survived the regime’s genocide in the late seventies, Panh has spent much […]
★★★★☆ When Bob Dylan released his thirtieth studio album in 1997, critics claimed that the ominous atmosphere created by producer Daniel Lanois was palpable, but also almost drowned the singer’s vocals. It’s interesting then that New York-based director Oren Moverman […]
★★★☆☆ German director Dietrich Brüggemann took the arthouse world by storm last year with his fourth feature, Stations of the Cross (2014) – a restrained, rigorously formalist study of religious fanaticism in present-day Germany realised in fourteen still frames. Brüggemann’s […]
Karlovy Vary is the festival scene’s best kept secret. The Czech festival may not enjoy the same cachet as Berlin, Locarno or even non-competitive festivals like London, but the consistently adventurous programming it’s celebrated for in addition to its rich […]
