This artful satire by writer/director/star Amalia Ulman almost works but I couldn’t help feeling I was missing the point.
Continue readingEl Planeta (2021)
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Never Gonna Snow Again (Sniegu juz nigdy nie bedzie) (2020)
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This beautiful and decidedly enigmatic mood piece from Malgorzata Szumowska (Mug (2018), Body (2015)) and Michal Englert confounds as much as it satisfies.
Continue readingBeginning (დასაწყისი) (2020)
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Note 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 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.
Continue readingThere is No Evil (شیطان وجود ندارد) (2020)
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I couldn’t look away for the 150 minutes of Mohammad Rasoulof’s intense meditation on the death penalty, told through four stories of individuals who are part of the system of capital punishment in Iran.
Continue readingThe First 54 Years – An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation (2021)
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It is hard not to despair of the world and the depravities that humans will perpetrate as you watch this measured dissection of the mechanics of a military occupation. Avi Mograbi balances the message by having former Israeli soldiers dispassionately recount their part in the occupation of Palestine, illustrating a system that seeks to colonise, dehumanise and deconstruct a nation.
Continue readingHive (Zgjoi) (2021)
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Blerta 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 readingGreen Sea (Πράσινη θάλασσα) (2021)
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What 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 readingGaia (2021)
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Jaco Bouwer’s first feature starts with great visuals and effective suspense but gets lost in a a hallucinogenic mess that promises more than it delivers.
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