REVIEW: Rose – A Love Story (LFF 2020)
Vampires have long been a staple of the horror genre, harking back to the 1922 silent classic Nosferatu. However on screen portrayals of the mythical creature have ranged widely throughout the decades. Initially characterised as mere bloodsucking monsters, vampires are increasingly represented as misunderstood outsiders –…
REVIEW: Ammonite (LFF 2020)
Moving away from the green Yorkshire pastures of God’s Own Country where two young farmers fell in love, Francis Lee takes us back in time and to the seaside in his second film Ammonite – a quiet, intimate tale of a 19th-century lesbian romance. In…
REVIEW: Siberia (LFF 2020)
For those who like their festival films as bonkers and experimental as possible; well this one’s definitely for you. World premiering in competition at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, Siberia marks Abel Ferrara’s sixth collaboration with Willem Dafoe, following last year’s addiction drama Tommaso. Billed as a search…
REVIEW: One Man and his Shoes (LFF 2020)
There will be numerous conversations as to whether Yemi Bamiro’s investigative look into the legacy of the Air Jordan sneakers serves as the perfect companion piece to this year’s outstanding documentary The Last Dance. The Netflix series was an examination into Michael Jordan – the man,…
REVIEW: American Utopia (LFF 2020)
Of all the films to speak most into the apocalyptic hellscape that is the year 2020, I did not expect it to be the concert film of the Broadway show David Byrne’s American Utopia. A unique collaboration between the Talking Heads’ founding member David Byrne,…
REVIEW: Stray (LFF 2020)
What an odd but quaint little documentary this is. Stray offers a dog’s eye view of Istanbul as filmmaker Elizabeth Lo follows Zeytin and her fellow stray dogs for two years, capturing the mundane and monotony of life on the streets. A title card at…
REVIEW: Six Stand-Out Shorts (LFF 2020)
LFF may have been done things a bit differently this year thanks to the pandemic, but the quality of the festival’s output is as strong as ever, and the short film programme is no exception to that. Out of the 37 short films (excluding Pedro…
REVIEW: Time (LFF 2020)
It takes a truly special documentary to be able to feel so intimate, and so entwined with one family’s experiences, and yet also to be something which speaks to the experiences of so many people; Time is one such documentary. With footage spanning two decades,…
REVIEW: Farewell Amor (LFF 2020)
After seventeen years alone in New York, Angolan immigrant Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) is joined in the US by his wife Esther (Zainab Jan) and teenage daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson). Now cramped in a one-bedroom apartment, the family tries to reconnect. Farewell Amor is…
REVIEW: Wolfwalkers (LFF 2020)
Kilkenny based animation studio, Cartoon Saloon, have quietly been making some of the best animated films over the last 10 years or so, and whilst this hasn’t gone unnoticed – with all three feature films they’ve released so far receiving Oscar nominations – they are…
REVIEW: Supernova (LFF 2020)
Undoubtedly one of the most anticipated films in this year’s London film festival programme (alongside Francis Lee’s Ammonite) is the sophomore outing from British writer-director Harry Macqueen. World-premiering in competition at San Sebastián earlier this year, the drama is the second movie in the lineup to…
REVIEW: I Am Samuel (LFF 2020)
There’s something quite beautiful about a documentary that doesn’t focus on a public figure or somebody deemed ‘extraordinary’, but instead follows a regular guy as filmed by one of his closest friends. In his moving documentary I Am Samuel, Kenyan writer/director Peter Murimi captures moments…
REVIEW: Cicada (LFF 2020)
Set during a particularly lush New York summer, Cicada follows the blooming romance between two twenty-somethings, both of whom are searching for themselves as much as they’re searching for love. Ben (played by writer-director Matthew Fifer) is a quietly confident but introspective soul who by…
