★★☆☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ Shades of Hitchcock blend with paranoia, self-doubt and deception in Lili Horvát’s Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time. Returning home to Budapest after many years at the cutting edge of the neurological field in New […]
★★☆☆☆ 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 […]
Lotteries are commonplace across the US, with 45 states offering their own take on this traditional collective gambling scheme, generating tens of billions of dollars each year. While most players will simply think of the potential benefits that they will […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
Online slot games are a popular way to pass the time. Easy to play, they allow players to experience potentially big payouts. Plus, they’re great fun. In an attempt to try and attract new audiences, games developers are always trying […]
★★★★★ Since his first short, La impresión de una guerra, debuted in 2015 Colombian director Camilo Restrepo quickly drew notice on the festival circuit, following up with 2016’s Cilaos and La bouche in 2017. Now, the imaginative canvas on which […]
★★☆☆☆ Femke Boot (Katja Herbers), an outspoken and successful writer a popular Dutch newspaper, is coming under increasing attack from a legion of online, exclusively male trolls. When she discovers that one of them is her inconsiderate neighbour, Femke snaps […]
★★★☆☆ 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, […]
★★★★☆ Celeste Bell reassembles her mother’s life, reclaims her image and recalls their own troubled relationship in Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché. Co-directed with Paul Sng, it is an affecting, delicately balanced documentary of conflictual opposites, mental trauma and […]
