Reviews

In times of a global pandemic, the film industry necessarily has to adapt. Productions face greater hurdles than before, and while these surely seem insurmountable to some, they inspire others to find...

As its title suggests, Avi Mograbi’s documentary presents like a textbook: with the director as narrator and guide, speaking directly into camera like a lecturer, the film interpolates talking heads from...

Memory requires active cultivation to exist: what we remember depends on the narratives we tell ourselves and others. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s Memory Box is a beautifully textured ode to the...

Rhayne Vermette’s feature is deeply embedded in family and place. The director plays Renée, a woman returning to her rural family home in the Métis Nation, and the community welcomes her back with lively...

In 1990, a land dispute between the Mohawk people and the Canadian government caused an armed stand-off between the two parties. Writer-director Tracey Deer witnessed the so-called Oka Crisis and weaves her...

The first feature documentary entirely in Gaelic, Iorram (Boat Song) is a visually poetic documentation of Outer Hebridean fishing community culture. Rediscovered and restored audio recordings dating back to...

There’s a little too much going on in Victim(s), a drama based on the true events surrounding a teenage boy stabbing three classmates, killing one in the process, supposedly over a new girl at school....

What happened is never as interesting as why it mattered. Some biopics, such as the recent Schemers, are like Wikipedia pages when they should be novels. Creation Stories goes some way to rectifying this. A...

In 2017,  director Mohammad Rasoulof had his passport seized by the Iranian government after screening his award-winning film A Man of Integrity in Cannes. Accused of “spreading propaganda” against the...

Tae-il (Hong Isaac) reconnects with Ji-won (Jang Haeun), former bandmate and now teacher at a music school. Her devotion is to her teenage pupils, four of whom have started a metal band, hoping to win a local...

After causing a drunk driving accident, Donna (Shan MacDonald) is sentenced to community service and ends up working as a cleaner at an animal shelter. The middle-aged woman, who suffers from a heart murmur,...

Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) wants everyone – sworn on God before the court – to know her heart is gold. Polished, honeyed phrases say all the right things: she is worried about her elderly charges, she...

This film was previously reviewed in October 2020 as part of our coverage for London Film Festival. Through several sinister vignettes, Bad Tales (originally titled Favolacce) covers the usual traumas of...

This film was previously reviewed in February 2021 as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage. Brazil, 1899. Slavery has been abolished for 11 years. The women of the Soares family find their old...

This film was previously reviewed in February 2020 as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage. Hybrid documentaries often use their newly-filmed footage to advance narrative drama in the absence of its...