2019 Director: Peter Strickland Starring: Marianne Jean–Baptiste, Fatma Mohamed, Leo Bill, Hayley Squires, Gwendoline Christie, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram Words – Nathan Scatcherd The latest film from Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy), In Fabric is a wonderful oddity – bizarre, horny, blackly hilarious in tone and one of my favourite cinema…
Tag: review
Searching Eva
2019 Director: Pia Hellenthal Words – Rhiannon Topham Social media sensation Eva Collé pronounced privacy a defunct concept when she was 14. By 17, she’d left her small Italian town and troubled family life behind in search of something more liberating. Now 25 and living in Berlin, she’s challenging expectations and dismantling the box our…
Seahorse
2019 Director: Jeanie Finlay Words – Rhiannon Topham Storytelling is at its most powerful when it contextualises macro societal topics in small but intimate ways. Making public the personal and private brings nuance and sensitivity to lived experiences that are otherwise only accessible via the not-always-sympathetic news media or – an even more terrifying space…
Let It Burn
2019 Director: Maíra Bühler Words – Christian Abbott “Everything around me is saved, but few can save me.” This is a line that comes from one of the residents of an apartment building in Downtown São Paulo, a building that is inhabited by people with a shared addiction – Crack Cocaine. The residents of this…
Nomad: In The Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
2019 Director: Werner Herzog Words – Christian Abbott For half a century now, Werner Herzog has been captivating audiences with his unique, humorous and acerbic perspective. He, like so few other filmmakers, draws you into the worlds he creates, the stories he shares and the lands he explores with a masterful eye and solemn tone….
MOTHER
MOTHER 2019 Director: Kristof Bilsen Words – Rhiannon Topham We often talk about documentaries being ‘personal’ and ‘intimate’, about their power and capacity to move us in unexpected ways. They are, after all, often based in the lived experiences of people across all walks of life – whether or not we are familiar with their…
Selfie
Selfie Director: Agostino Ferrente Words – Rhiannon Topham The ‘film within a film’ method of movie making, where the story is portrayed through the lens of a mobile phone camera as an eyewitness account, is at risk of becoming hackneyed. It does however, lend itself well (and make a lot of sense) to documentaries, especially…
A Bigger Splash
1974 Director: Jack Hazan Words – Rhiannon Topham I can imagine the wave of disinterestedness when A Bigger Splash originally came out. A semi-fictionalised docu-drama about the story behind David Hockney’s famous painting of the same name, it is essentially an hour plus of ‘beautiful’ people doing ‘interesting’ things as they go about their charmed…
Once Aurora
Once Aurora Directors: Stian Servoss, Benjamin Langeland Words – Rhiannon Topham I’d never heard of Aurora Aksnes, or AURORA as she’s known to her fans, prior to this documentary. But having spent just over an hour with her (sort of), I now feel like I know her quite well. We’re roughly the same age, but…
Dark Suns
Dark Suns Director: Julien Elie Words – Rhiannon Topham Sometimes you watch a documentary and it leaves such a profound imprint on your mind, you kick yourself for having been so ignorant to the subject matter before viewing. Dark Suns, director Julien Elie’s first film in 15 years, is one of those documentaries. A haunting…
