Shirley – Review Josefine Algieri October 29, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in February 2020 as part of our Berlinale coverage. The incandescent Madeline’s Madeline still fresh in our memories, Josephine Decker returns to the screen with Shirley....
The Roads Not Taken – Review Josefine Algieri September 10, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in February 2020 as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage. The gradual loss of a person to dementia is an incredibly painful process to witness; Sally Potter draws...
Who You Think I Am – Review Josefine Algieri April 10, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in February 2019 as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage. Who You Think I Am has a plot we have all seen or heard before: Claire (Juliette Binoche) is a woman in...
Spotlight: Catherine Deneuve Josefine Algieri March 19, 2020 Analysis, Features, Spotlight There may be no name so immediately synonymous with French cinema as Catherine Deneuve. With a career spanning more than half a century and more than 130 screen credits to her name, Deneuve is a steady fixture...
Bacurau – Review Josefine Algieri March 12, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed as part of our Munich Film Festival coverage in July 2019. Bacurau is a sprawling genre hybrid, a semi-futuristic Western with a strong political undercurrent. The...
Charlatan – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri March 6, 2020 Reviews After last year’s Mr Jones, prolific Polish director Agnieszka Holland returns to the screen with another biographic film; for as outlandish as it may seem, the story of the ‘Oracle of Urine’ is very...
Welcome to Chechnya – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri March 2, 2020 Reviews In 2017 a raid on drugs became the starting point of persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Chechnya. Since then, countless people have suffered torture, disappeared, and died – penalised not only by a government...
Delete History – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri March 1, 2020 Reviews Modern life can certainly be a challenge to navigate; particularly for those generations which did not grow up with the internet. With Delete History (Effacer l’historique), writer-director duo Benoit...
Never Rarely Sometimes Always – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri February 28, 2020 Reviews Sometimes film projects are years in the making until the right time comes around: the wait is certainly worth it with Eliza Hittmann's Never Rarely Sometimes Always. In 2020, under the Trump administration,...
The Intruder – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri February 26, 2020 Reviews The voice is an instrument, susceptible to changes in a person's mood, or her mental constitution. Natalia Meta's The Intruder (El prófugo) introduces its protagonist's voice as a carefully honed tool for her...
Dry Wind – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri February 26, 2020 Reviews Desire runs through this film as the titular Dry Wind (Vento Seco) does through its setting: rural mid-western Brazil, where Sandro (Leandro Faria Lelo) follows his monotonous daily routine. Working at the big...
The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste García – Filmfest München 2019 Review Josefine Algieri July 5, 2019 Reviews Unfortunately, it’s still a rare thing to see female-centered science fiction films today. Rarer still to see one with an older female protagonist – and rarest of all, a sci-fi film from Cuba. It’s a...
Defiant Souls – Filmfest München 2019 Review Josefine Algieri July 5, 2019 Reviews Waves crash violently against the cliffside in the opening shot of Defiant Souls (Insumisas): nature dwarfs the woman who faces the weather nonetheless – defiant, as the title suggests. This is the true...
Vita & Virginia – Review Josefine Algieri July 4, 2019 Reviews Based on a stage play by co-writer Eileen Atkins, Chanya Button’s sophomore feature Vita & Virginia is supposed to be a long overdue film about the great love affair between Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth...
This is Not Berlin – Filmfest München 2019 Review Josefine Algieri July 4, 2019 Reviews Mexico City, 1986: the country is swept up in FIFA World Cup fever, and tensions are running high. Teenage schoolboys fight each other, and the violence of it makes Carlos (Xabiani Ponce De Leon) faint....