Jawline – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019 Review Stephanie Watts June 9, 2019 Reviews The opening of Jawline is not dissimilar to a scene from Ingrid Goes West. 16 year-old Austyn Tester is on an impromptu, increasingly long photoshoot, posing and giving pointers to his friend who’s in the...
Dead Good – Review Carmen Paddock May 10, 2019 Reviews While there seem to be no taboo subjects left in 2019, the tranquil opening shot of Rehana Rose’s documentary immediately teases out UK society’s collective discomfort around the business of death....
Amazing Grace – Berlinale 2019 Review Josefine Algieri February 16, 2019 Reviews It’s a rare thing to see footage from times long past resurface in a feature length film, but Amazing Grace is one such case: filmed in 1971 by none other than Sydney Pollack, it was meant to be a...
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael – Berlinale 2019 Review Josefine Algieri February 16, 2019 Reviews “I was lucky enough to be able to write about movies in a way that people were willing to pay for,” Pauline Kael says in the opening of What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael when asked why she decided to...
Delphine and Carole – Berlinale 2019 Review Josefine Algieri February 16, 2019 Reviews Les insoumuses – the disobedient muses: actress Delphine Seyrig and filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos. Coming together in the early 1970s, they formed a collective focusing on feminist issues and film. They...
Ringside – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 16, 2019 Reviews Sports documentaries have been done to death, but when a compelling, relatable tale of athletic redemption meets an expert storytelling team, the result is a surefire hit. Ringside – following two teenage...
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 14, 2019 Reviews This Canadian documentary stems from work that began in 2009, when world environment experts began investigating whether the Earth had left the Holocene epoch and entered the Anthropocene, where humans shaped...
Kameni Govornici – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 12, 2019 Reviews Documentaries are meant to show facts objectively, but when the narrative style loses personal accounts in its passivity viewer engagement is tested, if not abandoned entirely. Kameni Govornici (The Stone...
The Blue Flower of Novalis – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 11, 2019 Reviews A film which opens with a closeup on its subject’s privates will not be to everyone’s taste. It is hard to separate the pornography throughout The Blue Flower of Novalis (A rosa azul de Novalis) from its...
La Arrancada – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 9, 2019 Reviews Were it not for the closing credits, it would be easy to mistake La Arrancada for fiction instead of fact. Set in modern day Cuba, it follows Jenniffer – an aspiring professional athlete – as an injury...
Système K – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 9, 2019 Reviews Early in Renaud Barret’s documentary, one of his profiled artists observes that the act of living in Kinshasa is creating art in itself. Système K provides a fearless platform through which the street...
They Shall Not Grow Old – Review Liz Gorny November 11, 2018 Reviews The jaw-dropping moment of digital wizardry in They Shall Not Grow Old as 100-year-old footage is flooded with colour is reason enough to crown it one of this year’s most exciting films. The shock of this...
They Shall Not Grow Old – LFF 2018 Review Liz Gorny October 24, 2018 Reviews The jaw-dropping moment of digital wizardry in They Shall Not Grow Old as 100-year-old footage is flooded with colour is reason enough to crown it one of this year’s most exciting films. The shock of this...
Fahrenheit 11/9 – LFF 2018 review Rhys Handley October 15, 2018 Reviews “How the fuck did we get here?” asks Michael Moore at the start of his new documentary-cum-raging leftist polemic Fahrenheit 11/9, reflecting on the night Donald Trump was named 45th President of the...
Irene’s Ghost – LFF 2018 review Rhys Handley October 13, 2018 Reviews Most of us have relatives we hardly remember – an aunt, cousin or grandparent dead before we were born or when we were too young to form lasting memories. And although an impression is made, their memory...