Sebastián Lelio’s Oscar-nominated film A Fantastic Woman is a sublime study in the exalted ordeal of grief. It is also as gripping as any procedural crime thriller, and cops and police doctors do play a role. I went into a kind of alert trance watching this – in tandem with the heroine’s own weightless alienation…Continue readingA Fantastic Woman
Category: Foreign Language
Deep in the heart of New York’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community, Menashe–a kind, hapless grocery store clerk–struggles to make ends meet and responsibly parent his young son, Rieven, following his wife Leah’s death. Tradition prohibits Menashe from raising his son alone, so Rieven’s strict uncle adopts him, leaving Menashe heartbroken. Meanwhile, though Menashe seems to…Continue readingMenashe
In LOVELESS, Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their…Continue readingLoveless
Franco-Senegalese film-maker Alain Gomis has created a film portrait in an ambient social-realist style, showing us a woman called Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu): a single mum of a tearaway teen boy Samo (Gaetan Claudia), for whom she must stay strong. She is scratching a living with her music, evidently bruised and humbled by the…Continue readingFélicité
In this stellar documentary, Gianfranco Rosi contrasts the lives of the desperate thousands landing on the shores of a Sicilian island with the everyday existence of the locals. An Academy Award® nominee for Best Documentary Feature and the first nonfiction film to ever win the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, Fire at…Continue readingFire at Sea
Forced to leave their apartment due to a dangerous construction project in a neighboring building, a young Iranian couple moves to the center of Tehran where they become embroiled in a life-altering situation involving the previous tenant. The director Asghar Farhadi won his second Oscar in a row for this film ( the first was…Continue readingThe Salesman
“Bicycle Thieves” is so well-entrenched as an official masterpiece that it is a little startling to visit it again after many years and realize that it is still alive and has strength and freshness. Given an honorary Oscar in 1949, routinely voted one of the greatest films of all time, revered as one of…Continue readingBicycle Thieves Friday
“Focusing on a mother and daughter besieged by forces both worldly and otherwise in a Tehran apartment block, Under the Shadow presents a gripping portrait of an independently spirited woman shackled by sharia law who becomes more scared of the demonic forces tormenting her daughter than of the lashes threatened by her rulers or of fire falling…Continue readingUnder The Shadow (15)
This month’s film is Son of Saul. Rotten Tomatoes summed it up like this – Grimly intense yet thoroughly rewarding, Son of Saul offers an unforgettable viewing experience and establishes director László Nemes as a talent to watch. You can watch the trailer here. Son of Saul (15) Hungary, 105 mins, Subtitles Friday 25th August at Hallhill…Continue readingSon of Saul
A union to cherish between a writer-director and star working at peak power, Things to Come offers quietly profound observations on life, love, and the irrevocable passage of time. You can watch the trailer here. Things To Come (12) France 2015, 100mins (Subtitles) Friday 26th May @ Hallhill Doors and Bar 7.30 Film Starts at 8.00…Continue readingThings to Come