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All That Breathes
After a successful world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Festival, Shaunak Sen’s documentary on two brothers who tend injured Black Kites in New Delhi went on to pick up major awards at Cannes and the London Film Festival, and was nominated for both the Oscars and BAFTAs. Focusing on a particular ecological crisis in the…
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Nostalgia
Nostalgia is based on a 2016 novel by Ermanno Rea, brought to the screen by the distinguished and prolific Italian auteur Mario Martone, who was born in Naples in 1959 and has since directed more than 30 films. Now a Rome resident, he was during the 1990s associated with the new wave of Neapolitan cinema…
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Pamfir
A family man returned from working abroad is dragged back into crime for one last job. Thrilling and compelling Ukrainian drama set deep in the Carpathians during carnival season, drawing on local folklore to great visual and dramatic effect. "Savagely cinematic, charged with feral energy" (Guardian)."Bold and brave, like its protagonist, PAMFIR gorges on its…
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The Banshees of Inisherin
The setting of the film is obviously meant to represent a larger canvas. Inisherin literally translates as Island of Ireland. But this may be just one of many misdirections by Martin McDonagh who gleefully toys with the tropes of Irish history. Far from being a parable about the distantly-heard Civil War, this is a more…
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The Doo Dah Man
The film features some of the classic tropes of American cinema, most obviously from the road-trip movie and the ill-assorted buddy movie, but this familiarity belies a more substantial story about fathers and sons, as well as a deeper literary tradition that goes back to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. A young man, Jake (Brittain), leaves…
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Blind Ambition
An audience favourite at festivals, Blind Ambition ticks all the boxes for a feelgood underdog documentary, but the film’s popularity rests on more than dramatic clichés and familiar tropes about competitive spirit. It reflects a multi-faceted tale of refugees, urban violence and the eurocentrism of tasting (e.g. requiring a familiarity with strawberries), as much as…
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Riders of Justice
A revenge thriller that combines deadpan humour and violence will inevitably evoke the Coen brothers, while the dynamic of a scarred older man and a young girl on a revenge mission has its precursors in films such as Kiss-Ass and Léon (that the young girl is also called Mathilde is surely no coincidence in a…