JOKER
2019
Director: Todd Phillips
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen
Words – Natalie Mills
How do you review Joker in the midst of such divided opinion?
I’ll be honest; I still don’t know what to think about it.
From director Todd Phillips, who previously brought us The Hangover, who has spoken about feeling unable to do comedy films anymore because of ‘woke culture’, I wasn’t expecting funny high jinks from the clown, but there is something so purposefully GRIM about this film.
Rats rummage in Gotham bins, notebooks are filled with spiky ‘he’s going mad’ scribbles, and Phoenix cries at himself in the mirror.
Joker is a tragic retelling of a character with many incarnations, but we are still fascinated by. I love The Joker as much as the next fan, but this depiction feels almost uncomfortably real.
Arthur Fleck is a wretched human being. He works as a not-so-funny clown, gets beaten up by cruel residents, and takes a chemists’ worth of medication for a non-specified mental illness. I liked the idea that Joker’s laugh is a condition he can’t control – it’s probably the most realistic portrayal of the character we’re ever going to get.
We see a downward spiral of events, which take him from unstable outcast to the murderer we’re all familiar with. Everything is told from his viewpoint; although you get the idea he is a somewhat unreliable narrator. Building the wall between him and society is his equally troubled mother, a trio of rich thugs in suits, Robert De Niro as his idol (for a while), and a certain Thomas Wayne.
Joaquin Phoenix is, undeniably, fantastic in the titular role. Arthur Fleck is the last person who should have their mental health support cut, and in the beginning, you’re rooting for him. Inevitably, you see him snap in the biggest non-spoiler of all time. Which is why, for me, Joker doesn’t hold up to the likes of Taxi Driver. There’s the shadow of Batman hanging over everything.
The film does serious drama so well that adding Batman into the mix feels out of place. Not that comics can’t do gritty (it’s high time I watched The Dark Knight again), but I’m not sure this works. There is something so sad and damaged about Phoenix’s portrayal that the notion of him eventually becoming a criminal mastermind feels out-of-place.
You spend time getting to know this complex and tragic character, in a climate where mental health cuts really are a problem, only to feel like someone is jumping in, winking at you and going, “LOOK, it’s Bruce Wayne!”.
I spent a while wondering whether the alt-right and incel comparisons are justified. Joker isn’t either – he is stuck in a genuinely unfair situation and deserves better treatment. He’s not interested in politics, just getting help and not being beaten up by assholes. But it’s tough watching his angry, self-absorbed rants against a system that failed him. He is not spouting alt-right incel rhetoric, but he is still justifying killing people.
He feels pleasure, of sorts, in giving himself over to being a villain. It’s his way out of being miserable. He has “nothing to lose” after all.
The cinematography is lush, Phoenix’s performance is brilliant, but something about Joker feels a bit cynical. It’s a bleak, emotionally-draining wilderness of a film. A mix of Scorsese-esque psychodrama (was it all in his head?) and cameos from the DC franchise.
Joker does a good job of fleshing out the backstory of an iconic fictional character, while still leaving enough to draw your own conclusions. I’m hoping to pick up more depth on a second watch.
Whether or not it’s your thing, Joker is worth watching, if only as encouragement to ask the sad clown down the hall if he’s okay.
Leeds Film Festival 2019 selection
Now in its 33rd year, the Leeds International Film Festival is one of the UK’s premiere platforms for new and world cinema.
Taking place November 6th – 21st at various venues around the city, with festival strands including all-day and all-night horror marathons, animation and short films.
See our selection of 6 films to see at this year’s festival.
From Robert Eggers, the filmmaker behind the standout modern horror The Witch, comes this hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious island in the 1890s.
As he arrives to work under lighthouse keeper Tom Wake (Willem Dafoe), Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) quickly finds his time ahead will be tending to the more demeaning and punishing tasks of the building.
As the dynamic between the two becomes increasingly tense, Ephraim learns of the mysterious events which lead to him taking the place of Tom’s former assistant, as paranoia begins to creep in.
With extraordinary performances from Dafoe and Pattinson, The Lighthouse is a hypnotic and truly original piece of cinema.
Marriage Story is a film about breaking up, while trying to keep it together.
A reflection of something we already know and recognise, perhaps have even felt and experienced personally, but seldom have the capacity to express or represent in a genuine or meaningful way.
See our review from the 2019 BFI Film Festival >here<.
The latest feature from renowned documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog, explores the ‘rent-a-relative’ service, in this Tokyo-set meditation on contemporary alienation.
With the real-life CEO of Family Romance, LLC – a company that rents out human surrogates for their clients’ every need – Herzog’s film questions the nature of social conventions, how we deal with our own existence and our relationships with others in this fascinating film.
From director Taika Watiti, who has been steadily amassing fans with What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok, comes an anti-hate satire.
Jojo is a young German boy living through the final days of World War II, whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic.
Aided only by his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (played by Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism and go to war with his own conscience.
14-year-old Eun-hee roams the neighbourhood searching for meaning in life – in friendships, in shoplifting, in karaoke bars and romances with both girls and boys alike.
With her parents always working late or fighting, it feel like she’s invisible. But as Eun-hee navigates adolescence, she begins to develop her own philosophy towards life.
Director Bora Kim captures the intimate growing pains of youth, in an absorbing coming-of-age drama about a dysfunctional Seoul family circa 1994.
After a personal tragedy, Elin and Tobias’s marriage isn’t what it used to be, so they try to fix things by spending time together outdoors in the hope of salvaging their fractured relationship. But when they discover they are not alone in the forest, soon Elin and Tobias find themselves trapped in a nightmarish cycle of horrific events from which there appears to be no escape.
Combining live action and animation, director Johannes Nyholm’s dark tale enters an unimaginable world that, quite simply, has to be seen to be believed.
See the full 2019 programme here:
https://www.leedsfilm.com/film-festivals/leeds-international-film-festival/liff-2019-programme/
You can also see a selection of films back on the big screen under different strands of the festival…
2019 marks the 80th Anniversary of a film widely regarded as one of the greatest of the 20th Century – The Wizard of Oz (1939).
When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog Toto are swept away in their house to the magical land of Oz.
They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and on their journey they meet a Scarecrow that needs a brain, a Tin Man missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who wants courage.
See our feature review >here<.
My Friend Fela
2019
Director: Joel Zito Araújo
Featuring: Carlos Moore, Sandra Izsadore, Seun Kuti, Fela Kuti
Words – Nathan Scatcherd
My Friend Fela, the new documentary from Brazilian filmmaker Joel Zito Araújo, is an admirable look at the hugely influential and celebrated human rights activist and musical pioneer Fela Kuti.
Kuti was instrumental in challenging the colonialism prevalent in Africa in the 70s, becoming a highly respected figure in revolutionary anti-fascism and anti-racism politics. He was also creator of a whole new musical genre and movement known as Afrobeat, using his music to decry systemic racism, becoming a high-value target for those he spoke out against.
As far as the music goes, some of the live footage here is amazing. Kinetic and exciting, it shows Kuti and his band, the Africa ‘70, at their crowd-charming and socially conscious prime, delivering stark messages about disparity and cruelty with infectious grooves that hammer them home, moving from the brain to the heart to the hips. Kuti as a musician was an incredible force, and though the documentary prefers to focus more on the activism and political strife Kuti was always involved in, it does offer a small peek at the impact he had as an artist as much as a revolutionary figurehead.
The film has some very intimate and revealing moments; we are guided onscreen by Carlos Moore, a friend of Kuti’s and a social scientist who – far from being a passive documentarian – occasionally gives quite pointed or poignant insight into how it was to simply know Kuti, to have him as a friend and ally. The fact that Kuti could be as cruel as he was gifted – showing an occasional violent streak even towards his wives – is mostly glossed over in what feels like an effort not to look too deeply at the personal life of a man who is presented throughout as more of an icon than a human being.
It is only truly during a fascinating interview with Sandra Izsadore (Kuti’s lover and by all accounts the woman who opened his eyes to a new way of thinking about Africa and blackness), that we get a sense of Kuti the man rather than Kuti the icon. She speaks movingly of meeting him and schooling him on black history, shaping his political mind and entering into a relationship she still cherishes in her heart. Izsadore is a funny and intelligent interviewee, and the time spent with her more or less primarily does the work in painting a fuller picture of the many aspects of Kuti’s life.
Although My Friend Fela does a fine job of acting as an introduction to the complex, multi-faceted man Kuti was, it feels somewhat unfocused and ultimately constrained due to the limits of the ninety minute feature film format. There’s so much to delve into here that it feels as though a three or four hour miniseries would be better to delve into such an eventful, strange and frequently volatile life.
Big fans of Kuti will perhaps find nothing new here, but if you’ve never heard of him before, it’s a good primer on who the man was and why he was important, and once it’s over it may inspire you to go off and look more deeply into his politics, his excellent musical career and his overall legacy.
Marriage Story
2019
Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta
Words – Rhiannon Topham
Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story opens with a couple of sickly sweet voiceovers from a couple listing everything they love and admire about their significant other. One leaves cupboard doors open and personal belongings strewn around the home, the other is self-sufficient and knows how to darn a sock.
Sound nice? It was, once.
The picture of marital bliss is quickly pulled apart once we meet Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) as they sit stiffly apart in a marriage counselor’s office, the former so visibly irked by the presence of the latter that she refuses to read her list in front of him.
It’s a bittersweet tale which dissects the tristesse of getting divorced — with whip-smart repostes and acerbic delivery, of course. The longer the saga goes on, the more the exes realise the difficulty in maintaining the impression of froideur at a time fraught with tension.
Nicole moves out of the family home in New York to take an acting job in her hometown LA, initially only temporarily but then abruptly permanently, and as she becomes more confident in articulating her stultifying routine, the physical and emotional chasm between she and Charlie (and their young son, ignorantly caught in the crossfire) both deepens and becomes clearer. Theatre director Charlie is constantly back and forth between New York and LA, his desperate attempts to gain joint custody of his son unjustly damaging his case for stability.
Learning to detach yourself from a long-term relationship is painful. Agonising, even. This is what makes divorce movies so watchable when done right, as a reflection of something we already know and recognise, perhaps have even felt and experienced personally, but seldom have the capacity to express or represent in a genuine or meaningful way.
Baumbach’s writing allows both leads to show off their acting mettle; Johansson performs the many emotional stages of breaking up with grace and, when necessary, outright nastiness, whereas Driver, in giving as good as he gets but falling apart slowly and then all at once, is a triumph.
The superb supporting cast of lawyers, namely no-nonsense Laura Dern and garrulous Alan Alda, toil to unpack the story behind what drew the two together then apart in the first place and twist even the minutiae of details to make the narrative favour their client. It’s ruthless and ugly, yet somehow delightfully droll. And, testament to the sheer quality of the writing, acting and directing, the eventual ceasefire is just as enjoyable as the conflict. Ignore all comparisons with Kramer vs. Kramer and other divorce dramas — just bask in this bastion of bitterness and all its virulent glory.
Babyteeth
Director: Shannon Murphy
Starring: Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Ben Mendelsohn, Essie Davis
Words – Rhiannon Topham
Our first flame is usually a clumsy affair, defined more by how awkward everything is than any real or lasting affection. The majority of these ‘relationships’ end swiftly with the heartbreaking realisation that things seldom last forever; but for Babyteeth’s 16-year-old Milla (Eliza Scanlen), this has particular poignancy as she knows that her first love is probably going to be her last.
Milla has an unnamed form of terminal cancer, for which her doting parents, the gifted pianist Anna (Essie Davis) and psychiatrist Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), bestow a great deal of anguish that Milla does not share. When 23-year-old Moses (Toby Wallace) charges into Milla on a train platform, nearly tossing her onto the tracks, a tempestuous and often dangerous romance ensues. In addition to the age gap, and rather predictably, these two darlings are completely different in almost every possible way; Moses is a drug taker and dealer who has been exiled from the family home, whereas Milla lives in a leafy middle class suburb, attends a girls only school and plays the violin.
Scanlen strikes a subtle balance in negotiating Milla’s amorphous emotions, moving from fury to acceptance to vulnerability and back again. Mendelsohn and Davis are also on fine form, each bringing a different quality of helplessness to their parenting responsibilities as well as nuances in how they distract themselves from the reality that their baby will probably never get better and the kindest thing to do would be to let her savour what life she has left, no matter how questionable those choices may be.
Despite Milla’s displays of defiance, the good days are woven in with the bad and we are reminded of her frailty at several key stages of the film, marked out by chapter titles such as “It didn’t feel like a love story that day” and “What the dead said to Milla”, an especially delicate scene of introspection where Milla is allowed some space to breath outside of Moses’ raucous nature and the deafening clamour of her parents walking on eggshells.
As a debut, Babyteeth is a compelling tragicomedy of family, love and acceptance. It is by no means the first teenage cancer indie film, yet this consummate cast keep this one from crossing into cliche on the well-trodden ground of coming of age romcoms, interjected by overtly concerned and covertly struggling parents.
★★★★
Saint Maud
Director: Rose Glass
Starring: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle
Words – Rhiannon Topham.
It takes a very rare beast of a directorial debut to make you wince, laugh and question the capacity of the human mind in less than 90 minutes.
Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, a sinuous saga of madness and torment respects the many religion-inspired films in the horror genre, but suggests a surprising range of stylistic and narrative inspirations, from Lynn Ramsay’s grit to Edward Hopper’s loners in diners.
Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a palliative nurse in a dilapidated seaside town who we first see crouched in a corner covered in blood. As far as first impressions go, it’s about as menacing as it can get. When she’s drafted to care for Amanda Köhl (Jennifer Ehle), a former dancer and choreographer now rendered housebound by illness and disability, the initial apprehension between the two eases into admiration and intrigue before regressing to outright repulsion; Maud for Amanda’s decadent lifestyle and coterie of hedonistic creatives, Amanda for Maud’s myopic opinion of how life should be lived.
Maud is a character of extremes; self-destructive in one ‘life’ and ascetic in another. Her obsequious quest to strive in her newfound piousness is juxtaposed with Amanda’s lucid, albeit anaesthetized, compos mentis. Maud’s religious conversion has granted her a moxie seemingly absent in her past, when, it transpires, she wasn’t a Maud at all. The fresh Maud persona is one she has crafted to support her search for the ‘greater purpose’ God has planned for her, an unassailable transcendental goal which swallows her whole and greedily possesses her in mind, body and spirit.
Maud’s nascent life of righteousness comes to an abrupt end when she is removed from her post as Amanda’s carer. Where to go when you are stripped of your purpose in life? All of her feelings of jealousy, confusion, virulence and an almost psychedelic bodily experience of spirituality reach fever pitch as she succumbs to the darker forces chipping away at her sanity and she becomes mimetic of the hellish creatures depicted by William Blake in a book gifted to her by Amanda.
As an addition to the horror-Renaissance of recent years, Saint Maud is an alarmingly accomplished debut by a talented and — dare I say it — innovative director to get excited about. Glass has clearly wasted no time on narrative trumpery with this, and at a tidy 84 minutes, all the key proponents harmonise perfectly to create an unnerving atmosphere in which neither Maud nor the audience are sure what our Saint will do next.
This is no average God-fearing horror; it is the fragility of the human mind that is the most frightening.
★★★★★
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Hope Gap
2019
Director: William Nicholson
Starring: Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Josh O’Connor
Words – Rhiannon Topham
Everybody loves some onscreen familial imbroglio — especially when that involves Bill Nighy as a reticent history savant who likes correcting Wikipedia pages in his spare time.
There’s something quite sadistic in garnering entertainment from a tale of marital unhappiness, and yet films portraying domestic spoliation never cease to have a certain magnetism, no matter how many times the subject is redressed for the cinema.
Hope Gap is a cove under the cliff in the seaside town of Seaford, where poetry editor Grace (Annette Bening) and her history teacher husband Edward (Nighy) live a contented existence of long walks and large quantities of tea. When Edward invites their son Jamie (Josh O’Connor) to come home for a weekend, the comfortable veneer of their nearly 29-year marriage starts to shatter before them, as Edward decides he’s had enough of Grace’s bellicose ways and decides to leave her for another woman.
This happens remarkably early in the film, following what is perhaps the standout scene when Edward confesses to Grace how joyless the marriage is for him as well as his intentions to move on with his life, albeit in his own reserved but matter-of-fact way. His approach appears detached and callous on the surface, but actually shows a great deal of compassion and empathy as he never deviates from his consideration for Grace’s past, present and future wellbeing.
What ensues is an understandable muddle of emotions, yet how this tangled up in semantic knots becomes alienating rather than compelling.
Divorce is agonising and Hope Gap makes some attempt to articulate how wives often fare far worse than their husbands, but the ‘woman scorned’ trope is tired enough without Bening’s unconvincing British accent straining to consistently convey any discernible vehemence. Grace’s short monologue about how “you can’t invent a private reality” momentarily delves into the profound before it is quickly submerged by its own bloviation.
If this sounds like common territory, that’s because it is.
Tensions brewing: check.
Pent up feelings of inadequacy: check.
History and life experience used as an excuse to cloak years of silent misery: check.
There are other ways to write a narrative about elderly couples and love that don’t involve one leaving the other or being unfaithful or both, and sadly not even two stalwart actors like Bening and Nighy could keep Hope Gap on the right side of cliche.
BFI Film Festival 2019
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK’s premiere platform for welcoming international artists and storytellers, among them some of the world’s greatest names in cinema, alongside those at the very beginning of their careers.
With some truly standout films in 2019, see our look at some of the films from this year’s festival
– click on the film title to see our review.
A reflection of something we already know and recognise, but seldom have the capacity to express in a genuine or meaningful way.
It is the fragility of the human mind that is the most frightening.
An accomplished debut by a talented and innovative director to get excited about.
A look at a political and musical pioneer who inspired a generation, and his enduring legacy.
A compelling tragicomedy of family, love and acceptance, exploring the glorious chaos of being alive.
An emotional portrait of marriage, regrets, and decisions made late in life.
BFI Film Festival 2019 trailer:
Must See Movies: October
At Reel Steel we want to make sure you’re getting the most of your cinematic enthusiasm, so each month we put together our short list of some of the best new releases, from popcorn munching explosion fests to the often weird and wonderful.
Take a look at the trailers below and see this month’s recommendations…
Joker
released Friday October 4th, 2019
Arthur Fleck, is a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society.
A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night… but finds the joke always seems to be on him.
Caught in a cyclical existence between reality and madness, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix (You Were Never Really Here, Walk The Line, Her) in the titular role, alongside Oscar winner Robert De Niro (Taxi Driver, Heat) as TV host Murray Franklin, in this original, standalone fictional story around the iconic arch nemesis.
The Last Black Man In San Francisco
released Friday October 25th, 2019
Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco.
Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.
As he struggles to reconnect with his family and reconstruct the community he longs for, his hopes blind him to the reality of his situation.
A wistful odyssey populated by skaters, squatters, street preachers, playwrights, and other locals on the margins, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a poignant and sweeping story of hometowns and how they’re made – and kept alive – by the people who love them.
MONOS
released Friday October 25th, 2019
In the remote mountains of South America, a group of child soldiers watch over a hostage and wait for instruction.
They pass time with training exercises, games and tribal rituals.
But after events drive the group into the jungle, both their task and the bonds between them begin to fall apart.
With a visceral score by Mica Levi (Jackie, Under The Skin), and having gained comparisons to Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies for its surreal environment and unforgiving wilderness, MONOS is a vivid, breathtaking film from director Alejandro Landes, delivering one of the most talked about films of the year.
– SPECIAL EVENT –
Audiences around the UK can book for special preview screenings of Martin Scorsese’s latest film – The Irishman.
Broadcast live to cinemas on Sunday October 13th, featuring red carpet footage and interviews from the BFI Film Festival Closing Night Gala.
The Irishman is Martin Scorsese’s ninth collaboration with Robert De Niro, with the master filmmaker returning to the genre he has helped define, with a mystery that has never been solved.
Who killed Jimmy Hoffa?
A labour leader and the infamous head of the Teamsters union, whose connections with organised crime were wide ranging, his career ended with a conviction for jury tampering, attempted bribery and fraud, but he was pardoned by President Nixon in 1971. Not long after, he disappeared.
Declared legally dead in 1982, various theories have circulated as to what happened to him. Few are as convincing as that told by Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran.
Presented through Sheeran’s (Robert De Niro) memories of his criminal past, the film brings together a favoured megawatt cast, all on exceptional form: the former Goodfellas pairing of De Niro and Joe Pesci (out of retirement here for Scorsese), with Al Pacino appearing for the first time in a Scorsese film as Jimmy Hoffa, alongside Harvey Keitel, Stephen Graham and Anna Paquin.
Details here:
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/irishmanukwidescreenings
Set in November 2019, Blade Runner (1982) comes to Sheffield’s historic Abbeydale Picture House.
Featured in a double-bill screening with another sci-fi classic set in 2019 – The Running Man (1987).
Details here: bit.ly/344pHWk
BFI Film Festival 2019 selection
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK’s premiere platform for welcoming international artists and storytellers, among them some of the world’s greatest names in cinema, alongside those at the very beginning of their careers.
With some truly standout films coming in 2019, see our pick of 5 films to look out for at the festival and beyond…
MONOS
(Official Competition Best Film nominee)
In the remote mountains of South America, a group of child soldiers watch over a hostage and wait for instruction.
They pass time with training exercises, games and tribal rituals.
But after events drive the group into the jungle, both their task and the bonds between them begin to fall apart.
With a visceral score by Mica Levi (Under The Skin, Jackie), and having gained comparisons to Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies for its surreal environment and unforgiving wilderness, MONOS is a vivid, breathtaking film from director Alejandro Landes, delivering one of the most talked about films of the year.
From Robert Eggers, the filmmaker behind the standout modern horror The Witch, comes this hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious island in the 1890s.
As he arrives to work under lighthouse keeper Tom Wake (Willem Dafoe), Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) quickly finds his time ahead will be tending to the more demeaning and punishing tasks of the building.
As the dynamic between the two becomes increasingly tense, Ephraim learns of the mysterious events which lead to him taking the place of Tom’s former assistant, as paranoia begins to creep in.
With extraordinary performances from Dafoe and Pattinson, The Lighthouse is a hypnotic and truly original piece of cinema.
From renowned Japanese director Takashi Miike (Blade of the Immortal, Yakuza Apocalypse, 13 Assassins), comes First Love – a story of a young boxer who falls in love with a woman caught in the crossfire between yakuza and triad gangs in a fight over stolen drugs.
Set over one night in Tokyo – we follow Leo, a young boxer down on his luck as he meets his ‘first love’ Monica, a young woman forced into prostitution.
However, when Leo learns that Monica has been unwittingly caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme, the two take off and are pursued through the night by a corrupt cop, a yakuza, his nemesis, and a female assassin sent by the Chinese triads.
All of their fates intertwine in a spectacular and anarchic style that could only be from director Takashi Miike.
Babyteeth
(First Feature Competition)
When seriously ill teenager Milla falls head over heels in love with smalltime drug dealer Moses, it’s her protective parents’ worst nightmare.
Things get messy and morals go out the window, as the family and the lives of those around them become intertwined, Milla shows those in her orbit how to live like you have nothing to lose.
A warm-hearted and bittersweet comedy about life, loss and family, Babyteeth explores the glorious chaos of being alive.
Starring Eliza Scanlen (Sharp Objects, and the upcoming Little Women) Toby Wallace (Romper Stomper), Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Animal Kingdom, The Place Beyond The Pines) and Essie Davis (Game of Thrones, The Babadook).
Overseas
(Best Documentary nominee)
Each year, thousands of Filipino women train to become domestic workers abroad.
Through director Sung-A Yoon’s observational and empathetic gaze, this film reveals the personal stories, dreams and heartaches of a group of trainees at one of the many centres dedicated to domestic workers across the Philippines, while the role-playing training exercises prepare the women for the potentially tough times ahead.
Filmed in beautiful static shots, this gripping documentary exposes the economic pressures pushing Filipino women to accept jobs abroad, raising the question of servitude in the modern world, while emphasizing these women’s determination.
Taking place October 2nd – 13th 2019 at multiple venues in the capital, see details on all up-coming screenings at the BFI Film Festival and how to get ticketes on their website here:
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/
– SPECIAL EVENT –
Audiences around the UK can book for special preview screenings of Martin Scorsese’s latest feature – The Irishman.
Broadcast live to cinemas on Sunday October 13th, featuring red carpet footage and interviews from the BFI Film Festival Closing Night Gala.
Details here:
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/irishmanukwidescreenings
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