Berlinale 2023 Review: El Castillo (2023) (The Castle)
★★★☆☆
Berlinale presents San Sebastián award winner El Castillo (The Castle) a strangely moving mixture of documentary and fiction by Martin Benchimol.
film review
Decision to Leave (2022)
★★★★☆
Cannes-award-winning unforgettable Decision to Leave directed with pyrotechnical flair by Park Chan-wook is a haunting Korean neo-noir and yet so much more.
Saint Omer (2022)
★★★★☆
Saint Omer by Alice Diop is a harrowing and haunting political drama about the complexities of being a Black woman and the pressures of motherhood, inspired by real events.
Holy Spider (Ankabut-e moqaddas) (2022)
★★★★☆
Holy Spider, angrily written and directed by Ali Abbasi (Border), is a grisly, reality-based story of violence against women in a patriarchal, theocratic society.
A Love Song (2022)
★★★★☆
Dale Dickey plays a widow reflecting on life and love and the possibility of connection with an old friend in writer/director Max Walker-Silverman’s tender character study A Love Song.
Neptune Frost (2021)
★★★☆☆
Neptune Frost, a visionary collaboration between poet/artist Saul Williams and actress and playwright Anisia Uzeyman, is a unique Afro-futurist political musical filmed in Rwanda.
BFI LFF 2022: Decision to Leave
★★★★☆
Cannes-award-winning unforgettable Decision to Leave directed with pyrotechnical flair by Park Chan-wook, which screens at the BFI London Film Festival, is a haunting Korean neo-noir and yet so much more.
Emily (2022)
★★★★☆
Emily Brontë’s creative inspiration is explored through an imagined version of the author’s short life in Frances O’Connor’s stirring directorial debut Emily.
BFI LFF 2022: Triangle of Sadness
★★★★☆
Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Ôstland’s second Palme d’or winner screening at the BFI LFF 2022 on 11 and 12 October 2022 , is an uncompromising blackly contemporary satire.
All is Vanity (2021)
★★☆☆☆
All is Vanity directed by Marcos Mereles is a ‘Marmite’ feature debut.
BFI LFF 2022: Pacifiction
★★★★☆
BFI LFF 2022: Pacifiction, a hypnotically paced, dark political thriller set in French Tahiti, directed by Catalan Albert Serra, enjoys the Polynesian island’s beauty, but also its inherent vulnerability to outside geo-political threats.
BFI LFF 2022: Holy Spider
★★★★☆
Holy Spider, angrily written and directed by Ali Abbasi (Border), and screening at the BFI London Film Festival, is a grisly, reality-based story of violence against women in a patriarchal, theocratic society.
BFI LFF 2022: Godland
★★★★☆
Godland, directed by Hlynur Pálmason, is an incredibly visually beautiful and involving unfolding story of the consequences of a Danish Lutheran priest’s loss of faith in 19th-century Iceland.
BFI LFF 2022: 1976
★★★★☆
Chilean political thriller 1976 screening at the BFI London Film Festival is an unbearably tense and involving debut from actor turned director Manuela Martelli, starring award-winning Aline Kuppenheim.