Everyday Greyness – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell July 11, 2020 Reviews Everyday Greyness is the story of Magda, a young Polish woman in recovery from drug addiction. Magda has been living at a treatment centre where, along with a small group of others, she has given up her life...
On A Clear Day You Can See the Revolution From Here – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Rob Salusbury July 11, 2020 Reviews As the ninth largest country in the world, Kazakhstan stretches far across the border between Asia and Europe, bringing together a huge range of ethnicities and cultures into a remarkably diverse society. It...
The Kiosk – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Nick Davie July 9, 2020 Reviews An overarching theme of this film may be the media publishing industry as a whole, but it is essentially an intimate observation of the press trade at its roots: the newspaper kiosk. In a wealthy area of...
The Washing Society – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Fatima Sheriff July 5, 2020 Reviews There is no such thing as unskilled labour—only unseen, or unappreciated. Inspired by the Atlanta Washing Society of 1881, where African American laundresses united for better pay and agency, The Washing...
Your Day is My Night – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Fatima Sheriff July 4, 2020 Reviews From the cramped quarters of New York’s Chinatown where individual beds are rented, Your Day is My Night artfully brings hidden immigrants into the light. The film follows a handful of people from this close...
Spaceship Earth – Review Anna McKibbin July 4, 2020 Reviews In 1991, eight intrepid volunteers ventured into the infamous "Biosphere 2". Spaceship Earth opens with footage from this moment: a cacophony of noise, cheers and waves are freely exchanged. These people are...
Space Journey – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Rob Salusbury July 3, 2020 Reviews To most of us, a bus stop is a place of boredom and time-killing, a border between actions, a glass and concrete shelter that provides minimal reprieve from the blazing sun or pouring rain. In Carlos Araya...
Influence – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Rob Salusbury July 3, 2020 Reviews Influence, the story of Lord Timothy Bell and his hugely powerful, extremely controversial PR company Bell Pottinger, often feels more like the origin story for a Bond villain than an investigative...
The Garden Left Behind – Review Joseph Bullock July 1, 2020 Reviews The issues that The Garden Left Behind explores are pertinent and vital. We cannot achieve a moral or a just society without addressing them. That they are explored so heavy-handedly and with such a cruel...
The Booksellers – Review Anahit Behrooz July 1, 2020 Reviews Jeff Bezos’ sinister, late-capitalist empire has long cast a shadow over the book industry, yet in a year when independent bookshops and trade fairs have been forced to shut, its shadow looms larger than...
Aswang – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Nick Davie June 30, 2020 Reviews Alyx Ayn Arumpac assesses the Filipino government’s war on drugs, in this pivotal and terrifying examination of the impact on life in the region. When Rodrigo Duterte is voted in as the president of the...
Southern Journey (Revisited) – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Nick Davie June 28, 2020 Reviews British filmmakers Tim Plester and Rob Currie retrace the steps made in 1959 by Alan Lomax, the American ethnomusicologist who charted folk music in the South of the United States. This road movie and music...
The Metamorphosis of Birds – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Nick Davie June 28, 2020 Reviews The transcendent debut from Portuguese director Catarina Vasconcelos partly looks back at how Beatriz meets Henrique, and subsequently marry on Beatriz’s 21st birthday. Henrique is often away, serving as a...
The Dead and the Others – Review Tom Bond June 28, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in May 2018 as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage. The Dead and the Others is a complex creation from directors Joao Salaviza and Renee Nader Messora, which can’t...
Corporate Accountability – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Nick Davie June 27, 2020 Reviews Jonathan Perel’s audiovisual quandary is a film essay dissecting the relationship between industry and the last military dictatorship in Argentina. Perel documents a present haunting absence of humanity in...