It’s hard to believe that this compelling drama is the first feature directed by Fernanda Valadez. It is a beautifully constructed film that pulls you in by various threads into a story of mothers and sons, broken by a cruel society.
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We begin in true Kelly Reichardt style with a long slow shot that lets us take in the slow movement of a river and the sounds of a forest. We are in present day and watch as a woman (Alia Shawkat) unearths a bone, then uncovers two skeletons lying side by side.
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What at first seems a bright and cheesy opportunity to poke fun at the ignorance and excess of wealthy, white America becomes an insightful and somewhat bleak exploration of ageing.
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Following on from Starless Dreams (2016), Mehrdad Oskouei returns to the same Iranian juvenile detention centre to interview young woman convicted of killing their fathers, along with their mothers and sisters, some who are on death row.
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At first, this look at the inherent bias of algorithms in our daily lives made me uneasy and tempted to ditch all my technology. I stuck with it, though it nearly had me nodding off with its ambling pace, and was rewarded with some third act gems,
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Mixing just the right notes of folklore, social realism, tragedy and horror, Jayro Bustamante deftly weaves a compelling and emotional story about the genocide of the indigenous Mayan-Ixil people in 1980s Guatemala.
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I couldn’t look away from this gripping documentary about the awful abuse and murder of LGBT+ people in Chechnya. What at first seems a story about gay people, becomes something much more universal where we can see the awful ripple effects of persecution, the terrible cost and how easy it is to become a refugee.
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On the surface, this may seem like a standard arthouse movie about 1950s Soviet life. As it is, this small but intense story of two canteen workers in a secret Soviet research institute is hard to look away from but, when you learn more about the DAU project, it becomes remarkable.
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Flashing coloured lights, an ominous score and an intense and tear-stained performance by a small ensemble cast make Amy Seimetz’s second feature a frustrating and memorable experience. Its seemingly prescient exploration of a pandemic of belief has many nuances that reflect current social crises.
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There is nothing epic about this film; it tells a small story of a teenage girl struggling to survive abandonment but it feels real and universal.
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