The Assistant – Review Carmen Paddock April 30, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage in February 2020. It is still dark when Jane (Julia Garner) gets in a taxi outside her modest flat. She dozes when she can...
Who You Think I Am – Review Josefine Algieri April 10, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in February 2019 as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage. Who You Think I Am has a plot we have all seen or heard before: Claire (Juliette Binoche) is a woman in...
Charlatan – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri March 6, 2020 Reviews After last year’s Mr Jones, prolific Polish director Agnieszka Holland returns to the screen with another biographic film; for as outlandish as it may seem, the story of the ‘Oracle of Urine’ is very...
Welcome to Chechnya – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri March 2, 2020 Reviews In 2017 a raid on drugs became the starting point of persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Chechnya. Since then, countless people have suffered torture, disappeared, and died – penalised not only by a government...
Delete History – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri March 1, 2020 Reviews Modern life can certainly be a challenge to navigate; particularly for those generations which did not grow up with the internet. With Delete History (Effacer l’historique), writer-director duo Benoit...
Never Rarely Sometimes Always – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri February 28, 2020 Reviews Sometimes film projects are years in the making until the right time comes around: the wait is certainly worth it with Eliza Hittmann's Never Rarely Sometimes Always. In 2020, under the Trump administration,...
The Intruder – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri February 26, 2020 Reviews The voice is an instrument, susceptible to changes in a person's mood, or her mental constitution. Natalia Meta's The Intruder (El prófugo) introduces its protagonist's voice as a carefully honed tool for her...
Dry Wind – Berlinale 2020 Review Josefine Algieri February 26, 2020 Reviews Desire runs through this film as the titular Dry Wind (Vento Seco) does through its setting: rural mid-western Brazil, where Sandro (Leandro Faria Lelo) follows his monotonous daily routine. Working at the big...
Eeb Allay Ooo! – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews Monkey bites can be fatal for humans. Do not indulge them. Do not feed them. This sign greets Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj) at his new job as a professional monkey repeller. Having newly relocated from the...
Siberia – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews Abel Ferrara’s latest film blends a quintessential man vs. nature struggle and the age-old search for life’s meaning with a heavy dose of metaphysics. Siberia, however, does nothing narratively or...
Exile – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews The most effective horror comes from the unknown. In Visar Morina’s dramatic thriller, Xhafer is a Serbian pharmaceutical engineer who now lives in Germany with his wife and three children. One day, he finds...
Suk Suk – Berlinale 2020 Review Rhys Handley February 24, 2020 Reviews Pak (Tai Bo) is a taxi driver entering his twilight years yet still providing for his family. A long-closeted gay man, he spends his lunch breaks cruising in parks and public bathrooms. When he meets retiree...
The Salt of Tears – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 23, 2020 Reviews The least believable part of Philippe Garrel’s latest film is that anyone involved has ever been in a relationship. The Salt of Tears follows Luc, a young carpentry student moving from the countryside to...
Time to Hunt – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 23, 2020 Reviews There is a scene just before the halfway point in Time To Hunt, Yoon Sung-hyun’s latest heist horror, that signals a seismic shift in the film’s rulebook. While not necessarily a twist by virtue of the...
Hidden Away – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 23, 2020 Reviews Biopics are tricky; there is a balance to strike between comprehensively covering the subject's entire life and picking a dramatically satisfying theme and tone. Hidden Away reaches for the former but brings...