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 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 readingThe Worst Person in the World (Verdens Verste Menneske) (2021)
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Told in 12 chapters (with a prologue and an epilogue), Joachim Trier immerses us in a contemplative story of a woman who seems to be failing at being an adult.
Continue readingPromising Young Woman (2020)
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I have been waiting for the release of this one for many months. The trailer is a cracker with a drunk Cassie (Carey Mulligan) being picked up a series of ‘nice guys’ who then sexually assault her in her comatose state.
Continue readingBabyteeth (2019)
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It’s refreshing to watch a ‘sick teen drama’ that avoids easy sentimentality and instead builds complex characters.
Continue readingMothering Sunday (2021)
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“How lucky, to be comprehensively bereaved at birth. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Continue readingThe Kitchen Brigade (La Brigade) (2022)
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If you’re feeling a bit down about your life, watch this film.
Continue readingThe Justice of Bunny King (2021)
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Damn you, Gaysorn Thavat, you made me cry. I thought this might be a run-of-the-mill feel-good drama about a feisty woman fighting the system but it was so much more.
Continue readingRadiograph of a Family (2020)
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Firouzeh Khosrovani constructs a surprisingly tender collage of her parents’ lives that shows the fractures caused by the Iranian Revolution.
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