Reviews

Berlin, 1979. Jürgen Baldiga moves from a rural mining province to Berlin, quickly becoming one of the city’s foremost queer artists. After contracting HIV in 1984, as the AIDS crisis sweeps Berlin’s...

In this new series of articles, our writers are watching classic films for the first time. Here, Sophie catches up on 1940's His Girl Friday. His Girl Friday begins with the phrase “once upon a...

In her feature film directorial debut, Kelly Walker frames the opening scene so that viewers realise that Jane’s (Jeanette Maus) life is about to be horrifically and irrevocably turned upside down before...

In this new series of articles, our writers are watching classic films for the first time. Here we have Robert catching up on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Earlier this year, bizarro director and ex-Monty...

The story behind Xiang Ji’s feature film debut – involving lies to Chinese governmental censors, an eighteen-day shoot, and time in the editing suite days after giving birth – is almost as fascinating as...

In this new series of articles, our writers are watching classic films for the first time. We begin with Carmen catching up on Mary Harron's American Psycho. Mary Harron’s brutal satire of corporate...

This film was previously reviewed as part of our Glasgow Film Festival coverage in March 2020. As the truth becomes a more and more contentious issue in contemporary media, The Truth feels a throwback to a...

The intersection of identities, oppressions, and politics run through Romas Zabarauskas’ latest feature, which follows a Lithuanian corporate lawyer as he finds himself at personal and professional limits...

Radioactive should have been a slam dunk. The life of Marie Curie is ripe for cinematic adaptation, and this one is directed by Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian filmmaker behind the autobiographical...

Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ film Swallow stars Haley Bennett as Hunter, a housewife distraught by her recent pregnancy who develops pica, an eating disorder that makes her crave objects that could potentially...

Philippa Lowthorpe’s latest feature immediately roots itself in its historical moment: before its opening title Misbehaviour has cut between divorced London mother interviewing for a spot at university, a...

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...

This film was previously reviewed as part of our London Film Festival coverage in October 2019. Nick Rowland’s feature debut, based on a short story, starts with explosive, explicit violence that...

It’s easy to see why The Hunt was shelved last year following a spate of mass shootings in the US. Not because it’s violent – it is, but not emphatically more so than many other films released since –...

There’s a curious paradox at the heart of And Then We Danced. The traditional dancing practised at the Georgian National Ensemble in Tbilisi is built on discipline and hyper-masculinity. “There is no room...