First Love (Hatsukoi) (2019)
★★★★☆
Deceptively titled First Love is Takeshi Miike’s irresistibly anarchic yakuza noir, stuffed with gratuitous violence, comedy, romance and severed heads.
Cannes Film Festival 2019
The Lighthouse (2019)
So Long, My Son (2019)
★★★★☆
So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang) by Wang Xiaoshuai is a deeply moving, generations-spanning drama exploring the long-term effect of China’s one-child policy on a small circle of friends.
Atlantics (2019)
★★★★☆
Atlantic (Atlantique) is Mati Diop’s dreamlike feature debut focusing on the women left behind when Senegalese migrant workers take to the seas.
La Belle Époque (2019)
★★★★☆
La Belle Époque by Nicolas Bedos has sublime performances from its central characters that combine with a clever, witty, seamless screenplay to create an unashamedly super-enjoyable film.
I Lost My Body (2019)
★★★★★
I Lost My Body by Jérémy Clapin is a dreamlike, beautiful, unbearably sad and tender animation.
London Palestine Film Festival: It Must Be Heaven (2019)
★★★★☆
It Must Be Heaven continues Elia Suleiman’s deadpan global quest for recognition of Palestinian identity and homeland.
Sorry We Missed You (2019)
★★★★☆
Sorry We Missed you is a coruscating anti-capitalist manifesto from veteran politically engaged filmmaker Ken Loach and his longtime collaborator and screenwriter Paul Laverty.
BFI LFF 2019: The Lighthouse (2019)
BFI LFF 2019: It Must Be Heaven (2019)
★★★★☆
It Must Be Heaven continues Elia Suleiman’s deadpan global quest for recognition of Palestinian identity and homeland.
BFI LFF 2019: Bacurau (2019)
★★★★☆
Bacurau by Kleber Mendonça Filho is an exhilarating mixture of genres – political satire, western, science fiction – underpinned by savage political and social comment. It’s a blast.
BFI LFF 2019: The Climb (2019)
★★★★☆
In original, smart buddy comedy movie The Climb co-writer/directors Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino play two losers also called Kyle and Mike.
BFI LFF 2019: Atlantics (2019)
★★★★☆
Atlantics (Atlantiques) is Mati Diop’s dreamlike feature debut focusing on the women left behind when Senegalese migrant workers take to the seas.
BFI LFF 2019: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
★★★★★
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a sumptuously sensual lesbian love story set in 1770 that comments fiercely on the role of women in society – then and now.