Reviews

A three-and-a-half-hour documentary could feel like a school assignment, but director Maria Speth and subject Dieter Bachmann make spending time with one teacher and his diverse class a leisurely joy. Mr...

The subject of a teenage girl glued to her smartphone is nothing new, but in Souad, director Ayten Amin shows her protagonist in a setting rarely seen on screen. In semi-rural Zagazig, located outside of Cairo...

Polina (Alina Korol) works at her father’s fish shop. She sleeps poorly worrying about her family, and when an eccentric woman claims to be selling a tea to cure insomnia she buys some, half curious and half...

“Do you want to hear about the other kid we lost? We had a little girl named Angela, she was quite the character…”, says Angelo’s dad as his son sits in front of him, camera in hand, as he attempts to...

There are a couple of 2021 releases titled Limbo, and Soi Cheang’s gritty serial killer drama distinguishes itself with its relentless nastiness. Its cops and criminals use anything they can find as...

Nelly (Matilda Gross) is different, that much is clear from the opening scenes of Amanda Adolfsson’s Nelly Rapp: Monster Agent. In front of an audience of fellow school children, she stages an elaborate...

Rakel (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Ingrid (Tora Christine Dietrichson) are at a locker room getting ready for an aikido class, one of the many spontaneous activities the roommates take part in together when the...

This film was previously reviewed in October 2020 as part of our London Film Festival coverage. In one of the first scenes of Notturno we see a distraught mother mourning her lost son. She is stood wailing...

Who We Were (Wir wer waren) switches the question of ecological destruction to one of identity, calling on experts including astronauts, marine biologists, economists, feminist scholars, social scientists, and...

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love, and they set up a date before knowing the other’s name. Viewers know them as Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) and Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze). Lisa walks home alone, and...

The English title of Henrika Kull’s film Glück limits the meaning to a single implication: bliss, after all, is the extreme, when the German word ‘Glück’ can mean anything from the more ordinary...

Comparisons to Before Sunrise are inevitable when two protagonists spend an evening wandering a city contemplating life. While Linklater’s trilogy is a more polished piece of work, Our Midnight doesn’t...

This film was previously reviewed in October 2020 as part of our coverage for Nightstream Film Festival. “You’re very lucky,” is the belittling phrase used throughout Natasha Kermani’s film, Lucky,...

Sometimes, a story is less about whether someone is guilty or innocent than it is about the pressures and perceptions surrounding and following an ambiguous action. The local police chief, Laurent (Jérémie...

Céline Sciamma has always excelled at bringing magic to the screen – even more so in her latest feature Petite Maman than her previous work. The film is a delicate and gentle exploration of childhood...