Behind The Curtain

There is a common misconception in filmmaking which presumes the director to have total and divine confidence in both their subject matter, and the various processes by which they tell the story. Ben Reed’s...

In Isla Badenoch’s The Elvermen, fish are the size of men and men are of mythical proportions. The film (which premiered on June 5, 2021 at Sheffield DocFest), was shot in a narrow window of time, between...

In the realm of great storylines, “A formerly flamboyant hairdresser takes a long walk across a small town to style a dead woman's hair” certainly hits the jackpot. Throw in two contrasting legends in the...

Screening at this year's Glasgow Film Festival, Heather Young's first feature Murmur is a bleak portrait of loneliness. The director sat down with us to discuss her creative process, touring digital festivals...

What immediate associations pass through your mind when you hear the name Frankenstein? Or Dracula? Is it an image of a flat-headed, neck-bolted green giant? Does Dracula swish around in a cloak and white tie,...

In 1994, Disney seemed like it could do no wrong. The release of The Little Mermaid in '89 had kick-started the "Disney Renaissance" and the studio was riding high on the success of a string of musical films...

Writer/Director Sean Durkin's first feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), gave Elizabeth Olsen her breakthrough role. Nine years on, his second feature might just do the same for Arcade Fire's Richard...

Revisiting films from Disney’s Golden Age can feel like slipping into a pair of well-worn pyjamas. Cosy, soft and, crucially, familiar. Familiarity is the currency Disney exchanges to win over audiences....

In 1995 members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (now named Aleph) deposited bags of sarin gas along Tokyo’s subway line during rush hour. It was an act of domestic terrorism that killed 13 people and has...

The opening lyrics of Janet Jackson’s ‘Control’ are the first words we hear in Lorene Scafaria's 2019 crime caper Hustlers. “This is a story about control,” Jackson declares as the camera rests on...

In 1967, The Beatles were the most famous band in the world. Maybe they were even the most famous people in the world. Just a year earlier John Lennon had claimed they were “bigger than Jesus”, and it was...

The legendary American composer, conductor, and music educator Leonard Bernstein would have been 100 on 25th August 2018. His career was marked by its mercurial beginning – at the age of 25, he took on a...

Based on French actress Anne Wiazemsky's autobiography, Redoubtable is an intimate biopic of a very specific period in Jean-Luc Godard's life. Following his overwhelming success as the leader of French New...

Being long-time fans of Sergio Leone's work, and with a new remaster hitting cinemas, we at ORWAV thought it would be timely to look at how the director made A Fistful of Dollars. His first Western is widely...

This weekend sees the release of Darren Aronofsky’s latest movie, Mother!, a film in which the New York auteur torments his collaborative (and, to those of us not above the gossip columns, romantic) partner...