It’s worth lauding this film simply because of its collaborative creation with Hollywood heavyweight Riley Keough adding weight to what is essentially an authentic indigenous story.
Continue readingWar Pony (2022)
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You Won’t Be Alone (2022)
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It’s going to be hard to forget this dark fable by Australian Goran Stolevski (his very different Of An Age is also screening at MIFF). He’s not afraid to be daring, setting the story in 19th century Macedonia and centring it on a largely non-verbal girl.
Continue readingEverybody’s Oma (2022)
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I cried right through the end of this touching documentary that shines a light on the experience of hidden carers.
Continue readingWe Might As Well Be Dead (2022)
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A well-dressed couple and their child trek through a forest and enter a compound where a white tower block rises amidst verdant lawns and a manicured golf course. They are desperate for their residence application to be accepted in this dystopian world where everything outside the fence is, seemingly, dangerous.
Continue readingClara Sola (2021)
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A remarkable first feature (and Costa Rica’s Oscar submission), Nathalie Álvarez Mesén spins a lush and dark tale of the internal rage of a woman kept confined.
Continue readingThe Pawnshop (Lombard) (2022)
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Clips from the US ‘reality’ TV show Hard Core Pawn occasionally appear in my socials and its depiction of pawnshops is firmly rooted in the capitalist myth that those without somehow deserve their lot. The owners unapologetically buy low and sell high and aggressively eject the many grifters trying to con them with worthless or stolen junk. In Lukasz Kowalski’s empathetic observational documentary Lombard, we see poverty in all its forms in Poland’s largest pawnshop.
Continue readingKāinga (2022)
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The third in a trilogy of films raising the voices of women (after Waru (2017) and Vai (2019)), Kāinga (or home) gives us eight short films each focusing on a girl or woman from an Asian country trying to find her place in Aotearoa New Zealand. The connection between them, as the stories span decades, is the same house on 11 Rua Road where they all live or visit.
Continue readingThe Macaluso Sisters (Le Sorelle Macaluso) (2020)
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Emma Dante has created a beautiful and affecting film version of her play about five Sicilian sisters, forever changed by a tragedy.
Continue readingWife of a Spy (2020)
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Refreshing in its portrayal of the good and evil of Japan’s part in WWII, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s mystery has some decent twists and turns amidst the melodrama.
Continue readingLittle Tornadoes (2021)
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Despite the authentic feel of rural Australia in the 1970s, Aaron Wilson’s exploration of masculinity and Australian identity is a rather flat and depressing journey.
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