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.
Continue readingSome Kind of Heaven (2020)
StandardSunless Shadows (2019)
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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.
Continue readingCoded Bias (2020)
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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,
Continue readingLa Llorona (2019)
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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.
Continue readingWelcome to Chechnya (2020)
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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.
Continue readingDAU. Natasha (2020)
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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.
Continue readingShe Dies Tomorrow (2020)
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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.
Continue readingPerfect 10 (2019)
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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.
Continue readingExile (Exil) (2020)
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Director Visar Morina perfectly captures the uneasy dislocation of being a foreigner in a structured and comfortable society, using every frame to push us into a growing paranoia.
Continue readingLooky Looky Here Comes Cooky (2020)
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You know if Steven Oliver is narrating, this is going to be a warm and fabulous ride through a serious subject. Taking the 250th anniversary of the landing of Captain Cook in Australia as a jumping off point, Indigenous artists create modern-day songlines that voice an Indigenous view of colonisation.
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