Natalie Morales transcends the all-too-familiar (thanks COVID-19) movie-made-on-screens gimmick to bring us an intensely moving story of human connection.
Continue readingLanguage Lessons (2021)
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Ninjababy (2021)
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Yngvild Sve Flikke’s gorgeous, feminist drama snuck up on me like a ninja, baby.
Continue readingCome Back Anytime (また いらっしゃい) (2021)
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You will leave this exquisite documentary about Tokyo ramen master Masamoto Ueda with a full heart and a hankering for chashu ramen.
Continue readingCaptains of Za’atari (2021)
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A lushly-beautiful documentary with a story that perfectly encapsulates the plight and humanity of refugees.
Continue readingLa Verónica (2020)
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Mariana Di Girolamo is in the centre of every frame in Leonardo Medel’s stylish, unsettling and completely absorbing look at artifice and narcissism.
Continue readingLast and First Men (2017)
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This was the first time at MIFF 68.5 that I really missed being in a cinema. Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson directs his only feature, bringing together three distinct and disparate components to create an emotional experience that cries out for sensory immersion.
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 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.
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