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Baftas 2019: Our predictions
With the UK’s most prestigious film awards taking place later today (10 February), it’s time to enter into a round of foolproof – or is that foolhardy? – predictions on who will win at the 72nd Baftas. To add an extra level of frisson, the Baftas are historically seen as an indicator of Oscar winners,…
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Berlin 2019: Öndög review
★★★★☆ A beguiling drama laced with dry humour and lashings of spiritualism, Wang Quan’an’s Competition entry Öndög possesses a mysterious grandeur that should ensure it doesn’t leave the Berlinale empty-handed. Concerned with the mysteries surrounding life and death, Öndög opens with the discovery of a dead body and ends in coitus, with what initially feels…
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Berlin 2019: Monsters review
★★★☆☆ Following in the footsteps of Adina Pintilie’s controversial Golden Bear winner Touch Me Not, Marius Olteanu’s Monsters is a tragic saga that explores the social taboos surrounding sexual identity and female emancipation in modern-day Romania. It’s been over a decade since Tudor Giurgiu released the lesbian romance Love Sick. Since then, Romanian directors have…
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Berlin 2019: Fourteen review
★★★★☆ Fourteen, the follow-up to former Los Angeles Reader film critic Dan Sallitt’s incest drama The Unspeakable Act, is a subdued drama about a friendship ageing over time. A nuanced portrait of female camaraderie presented in all its messy complexity. Mara (Tallie Medel) and Jo (Norma Kuhling) have been best friends since they were 14.…
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IFFR 2019: Sheena667 review
★★★☆☆ Actor-director Grigory Dobrygin’s debut feature and IFFR Tiger Competitor Sheena667 tells the story of a Russian couple whose plans to travel to Europe and marriage both get derailed when the man meets a girl on the internet. While humour exposes the absurdity of the situation, the frozen landscape the film is set in underscores…
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IFFR 2019: Sofia review
★★★☆☆ In Sofia, a young, unmarried Moroccan woman has a child out-of-wedlock. In a film deemed as a ‘social thriller’ where the ultimate revelation holds less power than the reasons for keeping it a secret, Meryem Benm’Barek-Aloïsi explores how issues of gender, class and power interact in a society that exercises rigid control over personal…
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Film Review: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
★★★★☆ Against all odds, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s The Lego Movie reaped massive successes when it was released five years ago. While Mike Mitchell’s The Lego Movie 2 doesn’t quite come close to the unexpected surprises of its predecessor, it does succeed on being the darker, more serious (and therefore more adult) follow-up. The action picks…
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IFFR 2019: The Best of Dorien B. review
★★★☆☆ In Belgian director Anke Blondé’s The Best of Dorien B., a thirtysomething married mother of two with a flourishing veterinary practice sees her hitherto settled life start to crumble all at once. An unsentimental treatment and lots of wry humour balance out the chaos in a film where a woman must find herself again…
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Berlin 2019: Our picks of the programme
The 69th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival kicks off this week (7-17 February) with Lone Scherfig’s The Kindness of Strangers, a “modern-day fairytale about hope, forgiveness and love” starring Andrea Riseborough, Bill Nighy, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel, Tahar Rahim and Zoe Kazan. Given the announcement in late 2017 that this year’s edition…
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IFFR 2019: Transnistra review
★★★★☆ Swedish director Anna Eborn’s documentary follows six teenagers as they go about their lives in Transnistria, an unrecognised state which broke off from Moldova and attempted to assert its independence after the fall of the USSR. Intimately shot on 16mm film, Eborn explores the dynamics of the group, commenting discreetly on youth, love and…
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