

This artful satire by writer/director/star Amalia Ulman almost works but I couldn’t help feeling I was missing the point.
Continue readingThis artful satire by writer/director/star Amalia Ulman almost works but I couldn’t help feeling I was missing the point.
Continue readingThis beautiful and decidedly enigmatic mood piece from Malgorzata Szumowska (Mug (2018), Body (2015)) and Michal Englert confounds as much as it satisfies.
Continue readingNote to self – if they liken a film to the work of Michael Haneke, you are probably not going to love it. Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s first feature borrows heavily from Haneke’s handbook, with extended scenes of our protagonist lying on the ground pretending to be dead or sitting in a chair.
Continue readingDamn 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 readingFirouzeh Khosrovani constructs a surprisingly tender collage of her parents’ lives that shows the fractures caused by the Iranian Revolution.
Continue readingBlerta Basholli’s quiet and forceful drama about the awfulness of war and its effect on women in patriarchal small-town society is a welcome companion-piece to Strong Female Lead (2021) where we saw how hard it was to maintain respect and autonomy, even when you are the elected leader of a country.
Continue readingWhat are the chances that two of the four films I have watched so far as part of the Sydney Film Festival have been Greek films about people with amnesia? Where Christos Nikou’s Apples (2020) used it as a metaphor, Angeliki Antoniou has a more prosaic approach.
Continue readingI was unprepared for the visceral emotion of watching Tosca Looby’s deft collage of media representation of Australia’s first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s time in office.
Continue readingSo much more than a sport documentary, Justine Moyle has managed to show the exquisite pain and beauty that is the coming of age of Australian park skateboarding star and all-round decent human being, Poppy Starr Olsen.
Continue readingEmma Dante has created a beautiful and affecting film version of her play about five Sicilian sisters, forever changed by a tragedy.
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