International Oscar contenders: Under the Volcano (2024) (Pod Wulkanem) / La Luna (2024)
★★★★☆
International Oscars shortlist
Poland
EO (2022)
span style=”color:#D1A316″>★★★★☆
EO, veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski’s compelling, beautifully shot homage to Bresson’s classic, takes a donkey’s eye view of the vagaries of life.
Apples (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
Apples, Christos Nikou’s assured debut as a director, is a disturbing, opaque fable about the relationship between memory, identity, grief and the selfie culture, set in Athens during an allegorical pandemic.
The Roads Not Taken (2020)
★★★☆☆
The Roads Not Taken has the best of motives – it’s acclaimed director Sally Potter’s way of conveying how her brother’s dementia fractured his personality. It’s very personal, maybe too personal.
Cannes Film Festival 2018: Day 11
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2018
Cannes Film Festival 2018: Day 9
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2018
Cannes Film Festival 2018: Day 4
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2018.
Berlinale: Dovlatov (2018)
★★★☆☆
Alexey German Jr’s character study of a great Russian writer in Dovlatovencapsulates its time period superbly, but fails to go beyond that.
Berlinale: Tower. A Bright Day. (2017)
★★★☆☆
As mystifying as it is transfixing, Jagoda Szlec’s feature-length debut Tower. A Bright Day is an astute blend of dread and mundanity.
BFI LFF: Spoor (2017)
★★☆☆☆
A clarion call against the mistreatment of animals and the hunting confederacy of men, against Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor loses its way in the snowy mountains.
BFI LFF: Birds Are Singing in Kigali (2017)
★★★☆☆
In Birds Are Singing in Kigali two women return to Rwanda to find out if healing is possible after the genocide.
Spoor (2017)
★★☆☆☆
A clarion call against the mistreatment of animals and the hunting confederacy of men, against Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor loses its way in the snowy mountains.
Festival Review: United States Of Love (2016)
★★★☆☆
A portrait of four pained women on the cusp of freedom, Tomasz Wasilewski’s United States Of Love takes its passion removed, rejected and unrequited.
Festival Review: Body / Cialo (2015)
★★★☆☆
Anorexia, ghosts and the broken bond between father and daughter, Malgorzata Szumowska’s Body is a finely acted black comedy about laying grief to rest.