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Berlin 2018: Daughter of Mine review
★★★★☆ While it can be frustrating to see female characters defined by their reproductive capabilities and adherence to societal norms, some of cinema’s most complex and memorable women have been mothers. That’s certainly the case in Laura Bispuri’s Daughter of Mine, a deeply felt study of motherhood focused on a young Sardinian girl torn between the…
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Berlin 2018: The Prayer review
★★★☆☆ A film about faith in all its various forms, Cédric Kahn’s The Prayer is a sobering drama about the fragility of the human spirit, interwoven with a dollop of biblical abstinence. Thomas (Anthony Bajon) is a junkie. That’s about as much as we know about him when he arrives at a remote community in…
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Baftas 2018: Our predictions
With the UK’s most prestigious film and television awards taking place later today (18 February), it’s time to enter into a round of foolproof – or is that foolhardy? – predictions on who will win at the 71st British Academy Film Awards. To add an extra level of frisson, the Baftas are historically seen as…
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Film Review: Transit
★★☆☆☆ In Phoenix, Christian Petzold’s haunting tribute to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the German director offered a fresh twist on the mistaken identity sub-genre and explored how war changes personal and national identities. In his Berlinale-premiering follow-up, Transit, identity is once again key. Based on Anna Seghers’ eponymous novel – an existential thriller about the experiences…
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Berlin 2018: Stateless review
★★★☆☆ “Only the sun can cross borders without soldiers firing at it.” This quote, from Hénia (El Ghalia Ben Zaouia), the protagonist of Narjiss Nejjar’s eminently political film Stateless, only really resonates after we learn that she is one of the 45,000 families – about 500,000 people – who were ruthlessly expelled in December 1975…
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Berlin 2018: Dovlatov review
★★★☆☆ If a novel is written but there’s no one there to read it does it even exist? What it means to exist in a world without creative freedom is central to Alexey German Jr’s Dovlatov, a film that circles around and threads through the life of Russian-Jewish writer Sergei Dovlatov. Dovlatov once said “There’s…
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How would modern technology have ruined classic movies?
Since Auguste and Louis Lumière first started dabbling in the moving image at the turn of the twentieth century, the merciless advance of technology has always moved in tandem with cinema. From synchronised sound and music to CGI, allowing us not only to hear the figures we see on screen but also to bring prehistoric…
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Berlin 2018: Damsel review
★★☆☆☆ Following on from the critical admiration he received for his starring turn in The Safdie brothers’ Good Time, Robert Pattinson finds himself in front of another sibling duo’s camera in David and Nathan Zellner’s Damsel, an off-kilter western about misplaced love that whilst not without its pleasures, ultimately struggles to overcome its abundance of…
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Berlin 2018: The Heiresses review
★★★★☆ In opposition to other typically comical stories of later-life affirmation, Marcelo Martinessi’s The Heiresses is a film brooding with melancholy and a sense of loss. A story about losing and finding romance but choosing independence instead, this deeply felt Paraguayan drama shines a light on the nation’s fractured identity by crossing numerous generational and class…
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Film Review: Isle of Dogs
★★★★☆ Whatever happened to the humble canine being ‘man’s best friend’? This is exactly the question Wes Anderson poses in his sci-fi dystopian adventure Isle of Dogs. It’s a film that serves as a passionate reminder to us all that dogs rule, while also being a typically endearing, eccentric and inventive tale from the American filmmaker.…
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