Genre: Drama – Page 20 – Wimbledon Film Club

Transit

Transit is based on a 1944 novel by German-Jewish writer Anna Seghers, who draws on her own experience as a refugee. Petzold situates the drama in an historically indeterminate moment, superimposing past and present. There are no period trappings; the opening sirens could be sounding today, and the soldiers storming Paris look like contemporary French…

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

This classical yet radical romantic period drama set shortly before the French Revolution is the fourth feature from 40 year old French auteur Celine Sciamma, who has described it as a “manifesto on the female gaze”. Sciamma has described the film’s title as deliberately evoking the work of a writer she loves, Henry James, “who…

So Long, My Son

China’s recent history – from the lingering sting of the Cultural Revolution and the draconian one-child policy (in effect 1979-2013) to the dramatic shifts in social structures as the country careened toward a market economy – is explored through an intimate focus on two families, exposing the human cost and personal hurt tempered by compassion,…

Get Carter

A low-budget, British crime thriller that has become a cult classic.

Philadelphia

For a decade after it was identified, victims of HIV faced early death, treated like pariahs while the virus ravaged the gay community. Philadelphia was the first major film to address the related issues of HIV, homophobia and discrimination and is widely credited with changing the national discourse. Tri-Star Pictures banked on celebrity director Demme,…

I Vitelloni

With his third film, 33-year old Fellini made his name and found his voice: evolving from Italian Neo-Realism into a freer, more poetic and episodic style.The narrative is sprinkled with many of his recurrent motifs: variété and carneval; storms and windswept beaches, the Catholic Church; the happy fool and the wise child – all bound…

Woman at War

Filmed, like the director’s debut Of Horses and Men, by cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, Woman at War sets highland landscapes against home comforts, no-holds-barred environmentalist activism against inner peace, the ethos of earth mother versus the joys and responsibilities of mother-and-child. Erlingsson challenges us to juggle multiple realities at once, as his heroine Halla attempts to…

Love Affair

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and then… Often cited, most famously in Sleepless in Seattle, this instant hit was twice remade: in 1957 with Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Cathleen Nesbitt; and in 1994 with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katherine Hepburn. McCarey, who directed the first two, was a key figure in 1930’s Hollywood, mainly…

The Farewell

In 2013, Chinese-American director Lulu Wang was told that her grandmother (‘Nai Nai’ in Chinese) had Stage 4 lung cancer with three months to live. The family decided not to tell Nai Nai of the diagnosis and devised a ruse — a fast-tracked wedding in her hometown Changchun —for everyone to see her one last…

Queen & Slim

A Tinder date gone wrong is the springboard for a tense yet romantic road-trip evoking Bonnie & Clyde, set against the backdrop of contemporary racial injustices in the USA. It stars two Brits: Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya, born in London of Ugandan parents, who won the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2018; and Jodie…