Ultraviolence – LFF 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell October 14, 2020 Reviews In 2001, director Ken Fero released Injustice, a documentary examining the killings of Black people in police custody in the UK. Ten years in the making, Ultraviolence is Fero’s emphatic and essential...
Sound for the Future – LFF 2020 Review Alex Goldstein October 12, 2020 Reviews They say history repeats itself. For Matt Hulse, it's more like a replay - or five. Over and over again he assembles trios of kids from a Glasgow youth theatre group to represent his younger self, his sister...
Time – LFF 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell October 11, 2020 Reviews In Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time, Sibil "Fox" Richardson is working to have her husband Robert released from prison. She believes his sentence—60 years for armed bank robbery—is oppressively and...
I Am Samuel – LFF 2020 Review Rob Salusbury October 10, 2020 Reviews “Alex is the love of my life… we belong together.” What appears to be a sweet and earnest declaration of love from Samuel, the subject of Peter Murimi’s vital documentary, swiftly becomes a defiant...
The Cost of Living – Review Carmen Paddock September 4, 2020 Reviews How much does a person need to live? And how much does it cost – materially and psychologically, in terms of the immediate present and future possibilities – to be poor? The Cost of Living makes no delay...
Me and the Cult Leader – An Interview with Director Atsushi Sakahara Sophie Maxwell August 13, 2020 Behind The Curtain, Features, Interview In 1995 members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (now named Aleph) deposited bags of sarin gas along Tokyo’s subway line during rush hour. It was an act of domestic terrorism that killed 13 people and has...
The Fight – Review Calum Baker July 30, 2020 Reviews The Fight is a film of great baseline competence and only scant insight. As a document of four emblematic battles brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration—respectively...
Bitter Bread – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Rob Salusbury July 11, 2020 Reviews Abbas Fahdel's documentaries often center around humanitarian crises and the immense human suffering that warfare causes, most notably with his epic two-parter Homeland that explored life in Iraq before and...
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...
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...