BFI LFF: Breathe (2017)
★★★☆☆
Opening the BFI London Film Festival, Andy Serkis’s debut as a director is the inspiring drama Breathe, a very moving true story.
festivals
BFI LFF: Filmworker (2017)
★★★★☆
Tony Zierra’s Filmworker approaches Stanley Kubrick from the perspective of his assistant and close friend, Leon Vitali, in a well-informed and satisfyingly impartial talking-heads doc.
BFI LFF: The Guardians (Les Guardiennes) (2017)
★★★★☆
Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians Les Guardiennes is a beautiful period recreation of a time of change for women and society in rural France during the First World War.
BFI LFF: Ava (2017)
★★★★☆
In Ava, the increasing darkness of Léa Mysius’ direction echoes the encroaching blindness of its young heroine in a strikingly original coming-of-age story.
BFI LFF: Lean on Pete (2017)
★★★☆☆
Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete is an appealing coming-of-age road movie grounded in the all-American setting of quarter-horse racing.
BFI LFF: Wonderstruck (2017)
★★★★☆
In Wonderstruck Todd Haynes opens a cabinet of cinematic wonders as two deaf children’s stories interlink 50 years apart in the magic of New York.
BFI LFF: The Racer and the Jailbird (Le Fidèle) (2017)
★★★★☆
Xavier Beauvois’ The Racer and the Jailbird stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts in an intense, high-speed love affair.
BFI LFF: The Summit (La Cordillera) (2017)
★★★★☆
Santiago Mitre’s political thriller The Summit is a prescient tale of high-level corruption.
ZOOLOGY (2016)
★★★★☆
Russian director Ivan Tverdovsky’s black comedy Zoology is a dark satire on the invisibility of older women with a stunning central performance by Natalia Pavlenkova.
Brimstone (2016)
★★★★☆
Brimstone is an almost unbearably violent take on the Western with a strong female character at its centre.
On Body and Soul (2017)
★★★☆☆
Intersplicing oneiric images of deer in the snow with slaughterhouse romance, Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body And Soul is an unexpectedly romantic vision of star-cross’d loving.
In Between (2016)
★★★★☆
Mayasaloun Hamoud debut feature In Between is a vibrant, pacey Sex and the City look for the first time at the contemporary pressures on three young Arab women when the ‘city’ is Tel Aviv.
Kills on Wheels (2016)
★★★★☆
Kills on Wheels is director Attila Till’s surprising and touching comedy-drama take on disability in the character of a freewheeling wheelchair hitman.
My Pure Land (2017)
★★★★☆
My Pure Land, director Sarmad Masud’s first feature, is a Pakistan-set, female, Western-style gun battle based on an extraordinary true story.