Category Archives: Edinburgh International Film Festival

EIFF 2026 – First Zone

Posted on by
Reply

EIFF 2026 – First Zone (De Eerste Zone),
Directed by Thom Lunshof,
Starring Hadewych Minis, Violet Braeckman, Oona De Kok, Aus Greidanus Jr.

Fenna (Hadewych Minis) is living alone, in what looks like an industrial cathedral, which actually turns out to be an enormous offshore wind turbine, one of the few structures still above the waters in this post-climate change world. The Netherlands has always had a precarious relationship with the sea – historically a powerful maritime nation through much of European history, the sea has brought this small nation riches and trading links and influence across the globe. But with so much of the Netherlands lying below sea level, it is also enormously vulnerable to rising sea levels, with even the ingenious systems of dykes, damns, land reclaimed from the seas and more in a constant battle against nature.

In Lunshof’s First Zone, that battle has finally been lost – climate change and higher sea levels have finally overwhelmed the country, leaving a number of “zones” in various stages of flooding, where the small remaining population tries to survive.

Fenna is in Zone 1, entirely alone in her wind turbine castle – there’s an early scene during a storm where we hear someone banging on the steel door to the turbine and begging for help, but she just stand warily on the inside, doing nothing. It’s never entirely clear if there really was someone outside, or if the noises and voices were all in her head, , hallucinations from PTSD and survivor’s guilt (outside there is nothing except more sea and the odd other turbine, so perhaps the voices were imaginary?). Even if not real, it does serve to demonstrate how isolated from humanity Fenna has become. Silent for the most part, she’s simply in survival mode at any cost, no-one else counts.

Of course, she wasn’t always this way. We see her periodically open a hatch and descend into a flooded part of the turbine structure, just floating there, like an isolation tank, sometimes stroking a small box she wears on a chain around her neck, and there are flashbacks to the pre-flood world, a normal home, children, happiness. When something goes wrong with the hatch during a storm, she is forced out of the underwater exit, directly into the raging sea, and taken far from her isolated home, waking up to find she has been fished from the sea by a family group with numerous children, living on a large boat.

This is the start of Fenna’s travels, as she tries to traverse the various zones to head back to her home. She is still quiet, rarely speaking, and very wary and distrustful of any person she meets (she has been alone a long time), no matter how much they try to help her or how friendly they seem to be. On this journey she encounters numerous people, some kind, some hostile, but the one she spends the most time with is Ive (Violet Braeckman), who is the opposite of the stoic, suspicious Fenna, being open, cheerful and friendly, and, as you might imagine in this kind of story, the unusual partnership starts to have an affect of Fenna (although this is no sugar-coated, sweet tale, this is still a fierce, hard fight for survival for all of them in a world changed forever).

While the story may become slightly repetitive as Fenna encounters one group, leaves, heads to the next zone and meets more, repeat, I think that’s actually part of the point: there is no big scene or sudden action or revelation here, it is a slow-paced hard battle to remain alive in this world. Cinematographer Sami El Hassani fills the screen with some amazing visuals, from the industrial Gothic of the part submerged turbine to wide landscape/seascape vistas, all shot using real-world Dutch locations, which adds some verisimilitude to the scenario.

EIFF 2026 - First Zone 02
(director Thom Lunshof (right), with actors Hadewych Minis (left) and Violet Braeckman (centre) at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival, talking with the Filmhouse audience. Images from my Flickr, click on the pics for the larger versions)

EIFF 2026 - First Zone 03

It isn’t all just seascapes either, there are little plots of low-lying land still just above the water, where some eke out a living, and then shallows, barely waist-deep, filled with water-based foliage, traversed by wooden walkways (reminiscent of the Fens in the UK). Nico Maas’s superb, low-fi soundtrack – slightly reminiscent of slide-guitar king Ry Cooder, especially his Paris, Texas music – fits El Hassani’s visuals perfectly. Combining these visuals and soundscape with solid performances from Minis and Braeckman, and you have a slow-burn but compelling tale, in a setting that’s dangerously close to being real and not just fantasy. A tale not just of survival, but of what we can easily lose – our shared humanity – if survival becomes our only goal, because survival is not the same as living.

First Zone was a World Premiere at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest At Every Instant of its Flight

Posted on by

EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight,
Directed by Theodore Schaefer,
Starring Constance Shulman, Daniel Zolghadri, Gus Birney, Jack Haven, John Early, Roberta Colindrez

The 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival – the oldest, continually running film festival on the planet – kicked off late this week, as Edinburgh embraces its traditional August festival frenzy (the International Festival and Fringe are already going, the Book Festival opens this weekend, it’s insane how many shows and events there are in our compact city in August). Late last night was my first screening for the 2026 edition of the EIFF, and it was a world premiere, no less! Theodore Schaefer brought us a hugely enjoyable Indie flick, with a very long title: The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight.

That mouthful of a title likely refers to one of Zeno’s paradoxes (recorded by Aristotle), which considered the flight of an arrow, something seemingly swift, but, he argued, at any given instant that arrow occupies a fixed space and therefore, within that instant it is not really moving. Given Arrow’s Raymond Carver-style series of individual short narratives, which then start to overlap, this seems appropriate, as, through the various characters and their individual narratives we are seeing individual slices of time, moments offered up for observation, but also, of course, able by the end to see an entire tale, like stepping back from a close look at a detail on a tapestry to take in the entire thing.

EIFF 2026 - The Arrow At Rest 08
(director Theodore Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler, and actor Jack Haven, talking with the film fest crowd after the screening, pic from my Flickr, click for the larger versions on my Flick stream)

There are three main stories here, at first seemingly not connected, although eventually we will see the threads pulling them together. The woman with a suitcase (Constance Schulman), is possibly the closest to the philosophical arrow of Zeno, in that we glimpse her repeatedly throughout the film, starting with confusing glimpses of her in various spots around the city. Sitting on a bench, by the river, passing a building. Each time, to her shock she sees someone else – passing in a car, leaning out of an apartment window – who looks exactly like her. These form the opening, intercut with rapid scene changes, interspersed with fast-moving glimpses of New York, set to a jazz score, mirroring the Suitcase Woman’s own confusion at what is going on, and reinforcing the central idea that what we interpret as a grander narrative is really made up of frozen moments of time (not unlike analogue film itself, single frames, each capturing a split second of time, then run at speed to create what we see as a moving image).

In the main strands we see a pair of younger people, including Violet (Gus Birney), bored with their lack of prospects, working in an arcade, dreaming of some way out, even if it involves committing a crime, while in another, we see a woman, Sinopia (Gus Birney again), a professor, in the middle of an affair, but questioning her life and her choices, especially of her committing to her fiancée for a possible wedding. The final main strand sees Jade (Birney again, really earning her pay here!), this time a hustler, a gambler and a pickpocket, but one with a conscience – after picking some wallets in a busy bar she finds one with a suicide note in it, and follows the person she lifted it from, in an attempt to help.

EIFF 2026 - The Arrow At Rest 03

Arrow is one of those films where summarising some of the plot really doesn’t do it justice, however. This is one of those little jewels that Indie cinema sometimes offers up to movie lovers, it’s a film to experience. Not that the overlapping structure of the stories isn’t important, but it’s more about experiencing it and the way the different angles of the different stories keep changing our expectations and our notion of what is happening, which I found very satisfying (I’m sure some might find it annoying, but it worked beautifully for me).

Director Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler and actor Jack Haven (who you may recall from the excellent I Saw the TV Glow, which I reviewed here previously), were on hand to chat to the audience after the premiere, and their talk reinforced the impression I had from the film itself, that this was a labour of love. Shot on 16mm film stock, giving it a grainy edge with its black and white film, and the jazz score, the fast-moving intercut scenes of the city between events, it reminded me very much of a lot of avant-garde films from the 1960s and 70s, when film-makers were playing with what you could do with the medium.

EIFF 2026 - The Arrow At Rest 05

EIFF 2026 - The Arrow At Rest 06

EIFF 2026 - The Arrow At Rest 07

And indeed at the after-film talk, Schaefer confirmed that they were very much inspired by those older films from the 60s and 70s US indie scene, French New Wave and especially some from Eastern Europe, such as the Czech New Wave, while the choice of analogue 16mm, black and white film with the jazz score just suits the New York location perfectly. An absolute delight for Indie film fans.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Timestalker

Posted on by

EIFF 2024 – Timestalker,
Directed by Alice Lowe
Starring Alice Lowe, Aneurin Barnard, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost, Kate Dickie, Tanya Reynolds

Written, directed by and starring Alice Lowe (no mean achievement in itself), Timestalker turned out to be a total delight of a film, mixing science fiction, romance and a lot of humour (often very dark), as you may expect from the woman who brought us the brilliant comedy-horror-slasher Prevenge, which featured a pregnant woman sure her unborn child is telling her to deal violently with the people in her life, and her co-writing credit and role in the brilliant dark comedy-horror Sightseers.

We meet Agnes (Lowe) spinning yarn in a small croft, the spinning reel of thread perhaps a nod to the Fates of Classical myth, and if it is such a metaphor, it probably doesn’t bode well when the dog grabs the ball of yarn and runs off with it. It’s the late 1600s in Scotland, near Edinburgh, a time of great religious strife and upheaval. Agnes attends a secret religious meeting by an enigmatic young preacher, given as they often were in that period, in the countryside, because the crown had branded such preachers heretics.

Unfortunately they have been betrayed, and the preacher is captured by a local militia, and scheduled to be executed in public. Joining some woman friends at the town cross, there to see the execution (the others are delighted – this is entertainment!), she is horrified, not least because on gazing into the eyes of the preacher, Alex (Aneurin Barnard) she is besotted, and on trying to intervene Agnes accidentally falls against the scaffold, directly onto the sharp pike of one of the militia, killing her, while Alex, seeing his chance, makes off while the crowd is distracted.

This starts a pattern through the film – Agnes is reincarnated again and again in different periods. Each time , even if she has a comfortable position in her new existence, she has an ache, a longing for something, something missing from her life, but she doesn’t know what… Until she spies Alex again, also reincarnated, and suddenly it comes back to her, the memories of the previous lives, and the gruesome ends she comes to each time (“it hurts” she comments at one point on describing dying repeatedly).

We skip through historical periods, including a particularly memorable segment set in the more recent past – the 1980s – which allows for a lot of fun. Princess Di hairstyles, big shoulder pads, aerobics, people talking about “therapy”. In this era Alex is now a vacuous rock star, shining in the new MTV age (which allows for some delightful parodies of the music video styles of that period).

As she goes from life to life, and death to death, Agnes is convinced that her destiny is to be with Alex, why else would Fate keep bringing them back together each lifetime? But how does she get to be with him without, you know, having her head removed or otherwise brutally killed each and every time? The character of Scipio (Jacob Anderson, underplaying brilliantly (and almost stealing the show when he does so) also recurs repeatedly (as do her female friends from the 1600s), and offers advice; it seems as if he has some knowledge of what is going on, but can he help her? Will he, even if he can? And will love-blinded Agnes listen to him anyway? Imagine Aronofsky’s The Fountain, but with much more dark humour and a tongue often firmly in its cheek.

To say anymore would be to spoil it, but suffice to say while this has elements of a time-hopping Romeo and Juliet with reincarnation, it isn’t just as it appears (as Agnes herself will need to learn), and while it has great fun playing with the periods and the ideas of pursuing unrequited love across the centuries, the film is also taking a cheeky, humorous look at life and love, how we think it is (or should be), how it often actually is, about being blinded sometimes to what we should see because we’re too busy seeing what we think we want.

Given the very stringent budget limitations on this Indy film, it does amazingly well with the period pieces (we all know how expensive those are to create), wisely giving us glimpses of some periods to give us the idea quickly, and then concentrating mostly on a couple of periods, a good use of limited film-making resources which also, I think, helps the structure of the narrative (necessity really is the mother of invention, especially for Indy creators in any medium).

It’s funny, sometimes bawdy, sometimes swooningly romantic, but throughout each lifetime it is always dancing around the issues we all think about – why are we here, who is my soulmate, do I even need a soulmate, how do I live a good life without getting my head cut off every time? Timestalker is an absolute delight that left me leaving the festival screening with a huge smile. It is hopefully getting a general release in the autumn, so I hope more of you get a chance to enjoy it.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – The Radleys

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – The Radleys,
Directed by Euros Lyn,
Starring Kelly MacDonald, Damian Lewis, Harry Baxendale, Jay Lycurgo, Bo Bragason, Shaun Parkes

I was keen to see the Radleys, partly because it is based on a novel by the excellent Matt Haig, partly because I do love a good vampire flick (I am, dare I say it, a sucker for a vampire film. Yes, he went there), and partly because I was in the film festival audience some years ago when its director Euros Lyn (well known, especially to genre fans, for directing numerous Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes) brought us his first feature film, the Welsh-language Y Llyfrgell (titled The Library Suicides for the English-language market, filmed in the National Library of Wales), and I had really enjoyed that.

The premise is a fairly straightforward one – a local, everyday suburban family are actually vampires – but it allows for a lot of room to explore family dynamics and tensions, not to mention, in the case of the younger Radleys Rowan (Harry Baxendale) and his older sister Clara (Bo Bragason), also take on the issues of teenhood and coming of age, but with the added wrinkle of the family “condition”. This latter is a particular problem for the siblings, and it will essentially drive the events of the film.

Their parents Helen (Kelly MacDonald) and Peter (Damian Lewis) are abstinent vampires – it’s not just that they don’t hunt, harm or kill humans, they simply don’t drink blood, and haven’t for years. Following a vampiric version of the famous Twelve Step programme for addicts because years before they decided they wanted to have a regular life, not the nomadic, erratic, roaming, outside life of the predatory vampire, they wanted a home, they wanted to have and raise children and be part of the local neighbourhood. To this end, they have not only abstained, and implanted themselves into this lifestyle (Helen has her book group, her baking and other pastimes, all scheduled into her timetable, Peter is a local doctor), they have never told their children, now in their teens, about their unusual heritage.

Rowan especially feels like an outsider and a freak – hardly speaking to anyone at school, seen as weird, keeping his camera between him and the world (he goes old-school, working in film and developing his own work), but it is his sister who will be the catalyst for events, when a cocksure, older boy at a party tries to push himself on her repeatedly as they walk through the woods. As he gets more physical, essentially trying to assault the younger woman, she grows panicked and angry, and her bloodline kicks into gear by instinct. Suddenly Freddie (Stuart Harper) is sent flying through the air; as he lies stunned and injured, Clara feels her fangs descend, and like a cat on the hunt, pure instinct drives her, leaping onto Freddie, biting and biting.

When Helen and Peter find their daughter, they not only find themselves trying to conceal the evidence of the murder to protect her, they realise they are going to have to explain to both of their children just what happened, and why. As you can imagine, this does not go down too well with either child, Clara especially yelling back at them that they have lied to her for her entire life, while they selfishly decided to play normal family household, and that they no longer get to tell her what to do. It’s that teen rebellion thing, but here driven with some justification (just when, if ever, were they going to tell the kids about what was lurking in their nature? How far would they go to maintain their charade of normality?).

Needing help to cover everything up, Peter reluctantly reaches out to his twin brother, Will. Will (also played by Lewis) is the opposite of Peter (or at least of how Peter has become now) – he is still full vampire, indulging himself, roaming the country in an old RV, taking what and who he wants, when he wants, savouring any pleasures with little or no thought about consequences for anyone else. But, still being a blood-drinker, he has abilities they need, such as being able to mesmerise someone to convince them nothing is happening (handy when the police call), and he has practical experience in disposing of bodies, so they need him, even though you can see they know bringing him back into their lives is not the best idea, but what else can they do?

I don’t want to go much further into it for fear of spoilers, but this pretty much sets up everything that will come out later: the children now have to learn what they are and what this means for themselves and for their relationships with anyone else (their parents included), and the arrival of free-booting Will doesn’t help (the cool Uncle who is happy to let the nephew and niece sneak booze or anything else, unlike boring mum and dad, for instance). And Will’s arrival also stirs up Helen and Peter – reminding them of their past, before they tried to give up blood-drinking, and hints at a much darker history between all three.

It’s nicely played – it largely sticks to many of the vampire genre tropes and pokes a little fun at others (Peter has the father-son talk at one point, explaining that the no reflections in mirrors thing is just in the films and books, but yes, the garlic thing is true, and so are some of the powers gained when drinking blood, Peter also has to invite his brother Will into their home when he first arrives). This is more about the nature of families than fangs, however – everything that happens, other than the biting and killing, is the material we all know, the love-hate, the desperate desire to understand who you are, why you are that way, how you can be different for the younger Radleys, about trying to fit into what society expects the suburban parents to be for the older Radleys, and the fact that reality is rarely the same as what all our societal norms tell us we are meant to be. There are also nods to the genre in there too for vamp fans – coastal shots of Yorkshire (Whitby being the heart of British vamp-fandom, of course), even a scene with Rowan desperately licking spilled blood from the floor echoes a scene from Del Toro’s Cronos.

The script was adapted from Haig’s novel by Tabitha Stevenson and comedian Jo Brand, and they bring a lot of humour into this. Yes, there is some genuinely heartfelt musing about being the outsider (especially for Rowan, developing feelings for another boy – Jay Lycurgo’s Evan) and with no idea how he should proceed, even before finding out about his vampiric heritage), there is a lot of drama in the tensions simmering between Peter, Will and Helen as we see the “normal” patterns of behaviour they have forced themselves to inhabit start to break down in the face of events, while having Lewis play both (attempting to be) straight-arrow dad Peter and the debauched Uncle Will allows him to explore the different paths those siblings chose. And while that is well-handled and compelling, driving a lot of the narrative, the humour runs through the film, lightening it. A genuinely enjoyable entry in the vampire genre.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – The Substance

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – The Substance
Directed by Coralie Fargeat,
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

This was another of the revived Midnight Madness strand of late night flicks a the Edinburgh Film Festival this August, arriving with quite a reputation ahead of it, partly from the reputation director Coralie Fargeat garnered with her previous film (Revenge) and the win at Cannes (The Substance won Best Screenplay), partly from having such a major Hollywood star as Demi Moore tackling this kind of film. And yes, it is a doozy! Loud and very much not subtle about some of the points it is hammering in, and yes, Fargeat’s love for the likes of Carpenter and Cronenberg is very, very much on show here.

The premise is fairly simple at first, and deals with a subject that is all-too-real (in contrast with the film’s more fantastical elements): the way the media, especially in Tinsel Town, chews up talent, especially women, creating stars, but only as long as they remain beautiful, young – perfect. When that idealised version on the screen can’t quite be achieved anymore (wrinkles, grey hairs, how dare a star – especially a female star – dare to grow old, grow imperfect). Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has been at the top of her game for years, her morning workout show a huge hit. But now she’s getting older, and this is a kind of show that doesn’t really sell exercise and healthy living, it sells a sanitised, idealised, and unattainable version of perfection. They don’t call it the Dream Factory for nothing…

Let go from her previously huge show, Elisabeth is furious, and her treatment by Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the incredibly sleazy, amoral boss just increases the sting. On a downward spiral, she gets involved in an accident, and it is at the ER for treatment that an incredibly handsome young doctor tells her she is a “good candidate”, slipping something into her pocket. This turns out to be a USB drive with a phone number and a hand-written note saying “it changed my life”. When she finally feels driven to try this, she has to follow mysterious instructions which take her to an unusual location, where a package is waiting for her, and the promise of a better, more perfect version of her being attainable.

I don’t want to go too much further into the narrative here, because this is a film that is best experienced knowing only the bare bones of the desire that pushes this story. That’s how I went into it, knowing it was something to do with a big star hitting her 50s, finding she’s no longer seen as desirable, and that there was some mysterious method to recapture or recreate her more youthful glory (Moore herself said this was one of the reasons she agreed to the film, because she’s had first-hand experience of this very common, not to mention sexist and ageist, problem). But there were so many ways I could imagine that idea being developed – is it a serum? The kind with a price? Is is illegal cloning of some sort? Genetic manipulation? Magical elixir like Death Becomes Her? Go down the Portrait of Dorian Gray route?

Well, again, I’m not saying, except to note that it unfolded in a manner I really wasn’t expecting. A method that was visceral and disgusting and gruesome (oh, the things we do for youth and beauty and fame!), far more so than I had anticipated. In fact I’d say some scenes in The Substance are up there with the disturbing yet compelling body horror of earlier Cronenberg, or The Thing-era Carpenter.

This is not a subtle film – right from the start it really makes its points in a heavy manner, from the time-lapse of Sparkle’s star being created on the iconic Walk of Fame, photographed, admired, slowly forgotten as years pass, to those giant L.A. Billboards (including one right outside the window of Sparkle’s apartment), or flashing up the heavy, block lettering of the instructions on each stage of her package being thrown up massively on the screen, all to pounding, thumping music (the soundscape is as relentless as the visuals). It doesn’t just make a point, it hammers the viewer over the head with it, repeatedly, aurally and visually.

I’m really in two minds about that approach – one part of me really admires and enjoyed it, and loved Fargeat for such an all-out, no-holds-barred, fearless approach, while at the same time there were moments where I found myself too much, too often. Which is it, ultimately? Both, I think! Yes, sorry, that is a bit of a cop-out, but it really did leave me impressed and taken aback but at the same time feeling battered and bruised by its relentless, OTT approach too. Although set in the present (judging by the tech, like the phones), the visual flair and style really put me far more in mind of that pumped-up 1980s vibe (think Jane Fonda’s workout era), and as with the intense, almost breathless approach, I suspect that too was deliberate, being a decade remarkable for excess and that “be all you can be” ethos taken to the max, not to mention when Moore herself was first starting her rise to fame.

Moore and Qualley give their all, even when it comes to scenes involving a lot of practical effects and make-up (all credit to them, I mean they really go the distance and then some with this -you’ll see what I mean if you watch it!), while Quaid seems to be revelling in playing an absolute sleaze bag of a Hollywood suit, cocksure, leering at the female talent (as long as they are still young and perfect), seeing them just as something to use, consume, mould, discard and onto the Next Big Star when the first crow’s feet appear, disgusting in his habits, uncaring. Everything here isn’t just dialled up to 11, it goes far beyond.

As I said, it both wore me out with this relentless visual and aural assault, and at the same time it impressed the hell out of me, the way it took a real-world problem and blew it into all sorts of new shapes (often disgusting shapes!), with some incredible and frequently stomach-churning visuals and effects (and I say this as someone who loves The Thing and Society and the Cronenberg oeuvre). A remarkable, highly unusual, full-throttle, OTT but in the best way; horror that has to be experienced.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Short Film Competition

Posted on by

I always find the live action and the animated short film section of the festival to be a fascinating one. The short work is often where you find new or different talent, starting to spread their wings, and that’s something any art form needs to encourage (I also find it heartening that that film festival has a number of these mostly-new film-makers present to talk about their works, which are often very personal). All of the works in this strand were in competition for The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence, named for the acclaimed, Oscar and BATA winning editor, renown for her collaborations with Martin Scorsese. As with any collection of short works, it’s a varied mixture. Some will connect more with one viewer, others with a different viewer, but regardless of who wins, hopefully exposure at this sort of festival event helps boost the creator’s signal and get them noticed in the wider media sphere (and perhaps even help in opening other doors further down the line, always a constant struggle for any artist in any artform).

There was a pleasing diversity on offer here – one audience member who stood at the end of the Q&A with the creators summed it up nicely when he thanked them for making us cry and laugh. We moved from friends creating music and celebrating a birthday (Argentinian entry Shoal) to a special anniversary for an elderly couple, the wife in the grips of dementia, her erratic memories bursting forth in the form of animation created using napkins (Wilma Smith’s The Jubilee), to a monochrome homage to the golden age of silver screen monster movies in a world where werewolves are real (Manny Wolfe), to exploring family memories and exploding houses (Liberty Smith’s My Exploding House) , father and son relationships (My Dad and the Volcano by Scottish creator Gavin Reid, who, it turned out, once worked in the Cameo Cinema where the films were being shown, and Lisa Clarkson’s Paternal Advice, adapted from a story by noted Scots author Janice Galloway), mother and daughter relationships and living on the breadline (Jamie Di Spirito’s Homework), and gender identity (Max Olson’s Nico). It really was a satisfying and diverse selection, from home and abroad. There isn’t time or space to cover each entry – I thought they were all strong in their own ways, but I can’t cover everything, so here are just a few thoughts on some that particularly touched me:

Trevor Neuhof’s Manny Wolfe tickled me in all the right ways – as you may guess from the title, this was the werewolf short film. Lovingly shot in black and white, with that silvery sheen characteristic of those 1940s and 50s horror films, it is also poking gentle fun at Tinsel Town (Manny works as a waiter, but explains he is an actor – a director dining in his restaurant just nods wearily, you and every other waiter in this town, kid). In this world werewolves are real, but they are just people, not bloodthirsty monsters, and while the horror flicks may seem made for him, Manny keeps losing out at auditions because he wants to be a serious actor, not just a howling wolfman. It’s funny and touching, both to fans of classic horror, and also to the struggle everyone who has worked in Hollywood has gone through to make it, that anyone who loves the film medium will be aware of.

Manny Wolfe Teaser from Trevor Neuhoff on Vimeo.

Max Olson’s Nico was a beautifully crafted piece, following a young trans man (Rene Leech); we see them shaving off their longer hair to a buzz cut, breasts bound, a gentleman’s overcoat, but the disappointment on their face when a nightclub doorman refers to them as a woman, and realising that these changes haven’t altered the way many others see them. The actor plays this with such vulnerability and quietness, head always down, not making eye contact, usually on their own in a dark city, alone even in the crowd of the dance floor of the club.

There’s such a fragile beauty to it and vulnerability of someone trying to be who they want to be that you almost want to hug them and tell them if will be alright. The elderly widow in the next apartment sees them in the man’s coat and tells them they look like her late husband, leading to an incredibly touching shared moment between two souls struggling with where life has taken them; ultimately this beautiful short film is about the fact each of us has our own pains and needs, and it is only those precious connections to one another than can really anchor us.

Wilma Smith’s The Jubilee was a mix of live-action and animation, most of the latter created, hand-drawn on table napkins and tissues (the objects themselves, rather cleverly, can become animated too, moving, rolling up to evoke emotions of loss, grief, anger and fear). On those napkins we see a woman, then a dashing man in a suit, who she at first thinks is her father, before realising it is her beloved husband. A cacophony of voices can be heard in the background, commenting about her condition, about her not having one of her good days, and to any of us (far too damned many of us) who have had loved ones slowly consumed by it, we will recognise this quickly as someone with dementia.

The Jubilee (2024) Trailer from Wilma Smith – Film Director on Vimeo.

Smith uses this simple animation medium (all done in her garden shed, cold in winter, roasting in summer) to great emotional effect; the feelings of disorientation, of knowing something is wrong, something is missing, but not knowing what or why, and the panic it brings, then the sudden bursts of memories that do remain, suddenly vivid for a brief spell. The final moments are live action, a family gathering for a special wedding anniversary, the live footage the real world we see, the animation the interior life of a mind and memory failing itself and trying to find the thread through an impossible labyrinth.

I think the thing that struck me with all of the works here isn’t just how well-crafted they were, it is also how wonderfully personal they clearly are to the filmmakers. Yes, of course, you can have a lot of personal elements in a feature film as a writer, director, actor, but I think perhaps with the short form it is more concentrated, you can feel the emotion in it, and that always enriches your viewing experience. From the short Q&A with the creators after the screening in the Cameo Cinema, it seemed even clearer that each of them had indeed brought a project that was very dear to them emotionally, and for my money that’s a good thing – any artistic endeavour that doesn’t elicit an empathic or sympathetic emotional response isn’t working for me, and these all touched me in different ways.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Mongrel

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – Mongrel
Directed by Wei Liang Chiang and You Qiao Yin,
Starring Atchara Suwan, Hong Yu-hong, Kuo Shu-wei, Lu Yi-ching, Wanlop Rungkumjad

This Taiwanese film arrives at the Edinburgh festival hot from the prestigious Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. Mongrel explores a subject which may be set in Taiwan, but sadly covers a subject which is all too common all around the globe: the trafficking and exploitation of undocumented migrant workers. In this case the gangmasters are in the mountain areas of the country, and using their workers (more like serfs) as care-givers for families who need them, but perhaps can’t afford the official care services, so this black market operation steps in to fill a need (for a price).

As we first meet the group, they are angry at their boss, justifiably so, because they have been working hard for him for two months and seen not a single penny of the money they desperately need to earn to send back home to their families abroad. When not working illegally (and mostly unpaid) they are kept in a secure compound, the euphemistically titled “dormitory”. Being undocumented workers, they have nobody to appeal to for help – employment or safety legislation simply doesn’t cover them, and regardless, even if it did, they dare not go to anyone in authority, because they would be arrested and deported.

It’s a wretched, desperate situation of exploitation, and yet Oom (Wanlop Rungkumjad), although obviously not happy at his situation, retains his sense of compassion – he gets to know the people he has to take care of, especially and older lady and her seriously disabled son. He’s not just going through the motions, he does actually care, despite being forced into this servitude, he’s a good soul and does his best by them, while also trying to mediate between his fellow workers and the boss (who as we see is in turn under a higher boss in the gangs, all running people’s lives like a business).

The film itself is very unusual – there’s not a huge amount of dialogue, particularly not from leading man Oom. Oom keeps most of his thoughts and feelings within, only small changes in expression and body language giving us a clue to what he is feeling; it is telling, perhaps, that the most I heard him speak was to the body of a deceased member of his group. The style too is unusual – some scenes go on for what feels like far too long (right from the start – the first scene is Oom having to clean mess from a bed-ridden client, and the camera stays fixed on the scene for quite some time), until it starts to feel very uncomfortable. The shots are often very static, not moving with the characters but the camera remaining in place as a scene acts out around it, or at other times leaves a character looking directly into the lens, normally a no-no for most film-makers.

And yes, this does create quite a strange feeling – as I said it is uncomfortable, but the more I watched, the more I thought that was exactly the idea, because we should be uncomfortable at these scenes, while the often static choices of camera work make us feel like we are watching someone’s life, more like a documentary than a fictional tale, but where we have a fixed viewpoint that we cannot look away from. Having characters occasionally look directly at the lens reinforces this, especially one scene where the disabled man seems to be looking right at the viewers.

This really will not be for everyone – it is slow, it does not build up the traditional narrative (backstory, main story, character arcs), and deliberately uses camera techniques that also give the viewer a strange and not always pleasant feeling. And yet, if you stick with it, this is a slowly effective and powerful way of highlighting this modern story of international exploitation, more effectively than a more heavy handed drama might.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Oddity

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – Oddity,
Directed by Damian McCarthy,
Starring Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Lee, Tadhg Murphy, Steve Wall, Jonathan French

My first screening of this year’s 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and it was a welcome return to the very late night strand, which we used to enjoy in previous, pre-Covid years at the Filmhouse, when films which suit that late-night atmosphere (usually horrors) would be screened. This year, the Filmhouse still being closed (but with the fundraiser successful, currently renovating for its return, hurrah!), the equally wonderful old Art-Deco Cameo Cinema, long a part of the film fest, welcomed us into its comfy seats. The show may not have been starting until midnight, but the place was bustling, the crowd in excited, enthusiastic mood despite the lateness of the hour, and the excitement mounted as we had some of the cast and crew present for a brief talk before the showing.

Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is alone in an old, rural set of buildings she and her husband are slowly renovating, well outside of the city. Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee) is a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, and forced to work nights, meaning his wife is entirely alone in her isolated, large house. Dani is delighted to find that despite the remoteness, she has managed to find one spot, upstairs, in a far corner, where she can get a phone signal, and chats to her husband as she finishes some repairs, before retiring to the small tent she has set up in the ground floor area to stay in for the night (both the phone signal and the renovations will be referenced again as the film unfolds).

Despite nothing having happened yet, the film’s opening moments are adept at starting to build an atmosphere of unease and menace; the isolation of the location and Dani, the bare, unfinished old stone building interior, and most especially the soundscape all contribute hugely to his. The sounds throughout are vitally important in building that atmosphere in Oddity, from unsettling music to simple but incredibly effective sound effects, like the creaking of old wooden beams and floors. Sure, that could just be the sounds of an old building on a windy night, couldn’t it? I mean, surely that’s all it is…

Dani is startled on finding there is someone in the courtyard when she goes to retrieve something from her car, despite the remoteness of the building, and flees back into the building as the person knocks on the door and demands entry. She slowly slides a viewing panel back to reveal an unkempt man with wild hair, and one glass eye, who turns out to be one of her husband’s former patients. She is understandably terrified by this, but he begs her to let him in, insisting he is no threat to her – on the contrary, he believes she is in danger and that he saw someone sneak into the building when she was at her car, that person now being in there with her. Poor Dani is now double terrified – she thinks the man at the door is the threat, but what if there is really someone inside, as he is warning? The creaks and groans of the old building build this suspense to an unbearable pitch.

I’ll give out a spoiler warning here in case you don’t want to know anymore, then don’t go past this point. That said this is a mild spoiler, as most of the promotional blurb I have seen for the film all give this away in their descriptions: Dani is indeed killed, by a creepy, masked figure inside the house. We move forward a year and her bereaved husband is visiting Dani’s twin sister (also Bracken), Darcy, a blind woman who claims to have certain psychic powers, who runs the old curiosity shop their mother left to her, a place filled with disturbing items, most of which have a story attached to them.

Darcy can pick up the truth of someone from handling a personal item, like a watch, or a ring – or a glass eye. She has asked Ted to bring this item from her sister’s killer, Olin (Tadhg Murphy), who was blamed for the murder, and who himself was subsequently murdered. Through it she intends to learn the truth of her twin’s brutal death, and after a vague promise to invite her over for dinner around the anniversary of the death, Ted leaves, having unsettled Darcy by revealing that he is already living with a new girlfriend, still in the same house where Dani was murdered (the girlfriend, Yana – Caroline Menton – is, as you can imagine, less than happy about staying there, especially as Ted still works nights, leaving her alone there, and she’s sure she has glimpsed Dani’s ghost in the shadows).

I don’t want to get too much deeper into the second half as I don’t want to spoil it; suffice to say events are not all as they have been previously been explained, which is, of course, not really a surprise (I mean it wouldn’t be much of a film if it were all as they said!). Darcy makes an unexpected visit, bringing a large trunk which contains a life-sized wooden male figure that is incredibly disturbing (you’re just waiting for it to move), and sets in motion a plan to reveal what really happened on the night of Dani’s murder.

A lot of the set-up will be quite familiar to any regular horror fan, especially those of us who loved works like the old EC comics, with those killing and revenge from beyond type tales. You can often see what is coming, and while in most films that is a failing, here it isn’t – McCarthy clearly loves those old stories too, and in fact I think was revelling in them. You know roughly where it is going, and it doesn’t matter because it is so well done it’s still immensely satisfying. Even some of the scares are well-telegraphed – you can see the set-up, you know full well any moment that jump scare is coming, as McCarthy and his crew ratchet it up, and up, and up, and suddenly there’s that release. And despite knowing it was coming, I still jumped like the rest of the audience (when you’re a seasoned horror hound, plus you know it is coming, yet it still get you? That’s some good, creepy horror film making!)

Yes, you will recognise many of the beats and tropes here, and I think that is partly the point – this is made for those of us who love our horror films, books and comics, and appreciate seeing work from someone who obviously loves them too (one of us). And as I said, despite the fact that so many set-ups here are familiar, they are so damned well-done that they are very satisfying to watch play out. Making the most of its few locations (the remote, creaking old, isolated mansion, the decaying, depressing psychiatric hospital) and small cast, and with just a few well-deployed props (the life-sized wooden figure is just superbly creepy), used well, Oddity is a horror fan’s delight of murder, revenge and the supernatural, dripping creepy, unsettling atmosphere throughout. One to watch late at night.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Raging Grace

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Raging Grace,
Directed by Paris Zarcilla,
Starring Max Eigenmann, Jaden Paige Boadilla, Leanne Best, David Hayman

Joy (Max Eigenmann), is an undocumented Filipino immigrant in the UK, part of the all-but-invisible army of people who often do the most laborious, low-paying, manual work that is so necessary to keep everything in our society running, but with none of the legal safeguards others workers have the right to, ripe for easy exploitation, unable to ask anyone in authority for help. With her young daughter, the eponymous Grace (Jaden Paige Boadilla), she goes from one gig to the next, usually cleaning homes, cooking and tidying for wealthy families.

The pair appear to be living in a storage room in an apartment block, secretly, their domestic life as hidden as their work life, although when some of her rich clients are away on nice trips abroad, they sleep over in their homes, carefully tidying everything before the family returns (leading to some tense “will they get caught” moments early on), while Grace amuses herself by playing practical jokes, like swapping gravy granules for the coffee powder, one of the child’s few outlets for fun.

Behind on her payments to the fixer who arranges for the immigrants to get into the UK for a large fee, she is feeling desperate, when she is offered what seems like the perfect opportunity – housekeeping duties at a large, isolated mansion, while also looking after its terminally ill owner, an elderly gentleman, Mister Garret (the always-excellent David Hayman). Garrett is dying of cancer and is largely comatose – his niece, Katherine (Leanne Best) is taking care of his affairs meantime, and offers Joy not only a large wage, but paid in cash, no questions asked, and free lodgings in the large country house.

Best does an amazing job of showcasing the casual condescension of the very wealthy, upper parts of society towards immigrants like Joy, giving her Katherine that arrogance that clearly thinks “I am a nice, inclusive person” while being anything but (yes, phrases like “you people” will be deployed). Joy, of course, simply has to nod, smile and say “yes, miss” to all of this because Katherine has all the power. Joy is also dismayed to see how Katherine treats her comatose uncle, forcing his daily pills prescription into his mouth, holding his nose to make him swallow while still asleep. This is all further complicated by Katherine not knowing about Grace, who has to hide her presence.

What starts as an interesting drama about vulnerability, exploitation, race, class and privilege starts to morph into more of a thriller and horror, drawing on the Gothic tradition and also the classic Old Dark House, very effectively using both the grand house location, and the small but excellent group of actors. Snooping around secretly, young Grace finds some disturbing, hidden facts about the house and those who have lived in it, and there are hints that perhaps the medicine Katherine is giving to her uncle may not be what she claims. Hayman, when he does waken from his coma, essays an especially fine performance, managing to take us from twinkling-eyed, gentle, loving older uncle figure to radiating menace (a simple scene where he tells Joy not to call him “mister” but “master” is powerful and chilling).

Edinburgh International Film Festival - Raging Grace 04
(Director Paris Zircalla with some of his cast, on stage after the EIFF screening, pic from my Flickr)

This was one of the EIFF screenings I really wanted to catch, and it did not disappoint, with some amazing performances from the small cast (young Jaden stealing many scenes as Grace), and beautifully shot, making the best use of that large, creaking old country home location, mixing horror and drama. The subtexts about past colonialism and echoes in modern day exploitation of immigrants is well done and powerful, and as the director remarked at a Q&A after the screening, much of what was seen on screen is drawn from what many experience in their day to day lives, and it is something that applies not just to the immigrant experience but across society, where those in the poorer-paid jobs are often badly treated and seen as disposable. A brilliant, Gothic-tinged horror-drama with some serious social commentary woven into its structure.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Animated Shorts Review

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Animated Shorts

The Edinburgh International Film Festival was much shorter than usual this year – given last autumn we thought we had lost it along with the Edinburgh Filmhouse when the charity running both went into administration (see our report here) though, I was just grateful the world’s longest, continually running film festival was still going. We didn’t have the annual McLaren Animation Awards this year, but I was relieved to see that the EIFF programmers still made space for the animated short films, with a mix of familiar faces and new talent, with a dozen films, taking in a diverse array of subjects and styles, from hand-drawn to using found objects, stop-motion, even fragments of vinyl album sleeves to create their worlds.

I will hold my hand up here and admit my bias – as readers of our previous years of EIFF coverage will have gathered, the short animation strand is pretty much my favourite art of the film festival. In one screening it encapsulates – at least for me – what these festival should do: expose the viewer to a mixture of established and emerging talent, give them that important showcase, and take in a variety of styles and subjects. Isn’t that part of what we want at a film festival? That chance to explore works we might not otherwise see?

Jenny Jokela’s Sweet Like Lemons, a play on the old “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” phrase, used a colourful, hand-drawn style to explore issues of toxic relationships, and trying to extricate yourself from them. We see hands trying to write an email, constantly starting the message, then deleting it, starting again, and again, because she’s trying to find the determination to break free from a cycle of behaviour and find herself. The artwork veers from colourful and beautiful to the suddenly threatening, mirroring such controlling relationships, and felt very from the heart.

Sweet Like Lemons (2023) – Trailer from Jenny Jokela on Vimeo.

Some of the other works were also clearly drawing (sometimes literally) on personal experiences, using the animation medium to explore their own emotional history and experiences, articulate them, perhaps learn and grow beyond them, or at least have some closure and ownership over those issues, instead of letting those issues own them (not to mention sharing with others, some of whom may have experienced similar, and may gain recognition and strength from the sharing, never a bad thing).

On that score, I thought Holly Summerson’s Living With It, and The Perpetrators by Richard Squires both used animation as a way to explore their own lives and struggles. In Living With It, another traditionally, hand-drawn animated work, Summerson takes the reality TV show idea of the home makeover, except in her case her home and world are run down and in need of an uplift because she lives with a chronic illness, manifested as the character Bug. It’s a brief but emotionally effective glimpse into a life too many have to cope with.

Living With It – Trailer [CC] from Holly Summerson on Vimeo.

Perpetrators mixed live action footage with animation, exploring how it was to grow up as a gay man in the hostile environment of the 1980s. The framing device is using changing medical and psychological definitions of homosexuality (still on the books as a mental illness until just a few decades ago). The pain and shame of having to be hidden, not to be able to declare who you are to friends or even close family, is palpable, the institutional nature of the bigotry shameful to modern eyes (consider how similar tropes are deployed today in the debate around trans rights). But Squires also deploys a lot of humour here, using tropes from the much-loved Scooby Doo cartoons to inform his animation. I suspect that streak of humour was, for him, as for many of us, part of how he coped (what would we do without that sense of humour? How much darker would our lives be?).

Tanya J Scott’s The Wolf of Custer was a beautiful piece, exploring the power of folklore and myth, as a hunter, reminiscent of Quint in Jaws, listens to the people of a small town tell tales of a giant wolf that can devour entire bisons (the smoke and flame of a fire and the shadows in the room all morph into flowing, dream-like images of the magical wolf as they tell their tales). Arrogantly he declares where would we be if we believed such native folklore nonsense, and that he will set out to kill their wolf. As you may imagine, as his journey through the vast wilderness progresses, and he catches glimpses of the wolf, then images of it carved and painted into the rocks of the very land, he slowly comes to realise and respect why we have such creatures in our stories, why they are important to us.

Jordan Antonowicz-Behnan’s A Taste For Music dealt with living with a seriously ill loved one, in this case his father. It captures that frustration at seeing them being weakened and unable to do things they want, and is also quite honest about the anger and resentment that comes along with this as it grinds on (many of us will have been there, with the best will in the world there’s a moment where you just become so angry at the situation, the disease, even the person). Through it though is a shared love of music, drawing – quite literally here, the animator drew on record sleeves – on his father’s extensive vinyl collection as a way of connecting, something the illness could still allow him to do, while the use of record sleeves gives the visuals a distinctive flair.

A Taste For Music (Trailer) from Jordan Antonowicz-Behnan on Vimeo.

I was also delighted to see BAFTA-winning Ainslie Henderson return. I’ve seen Henderson several times at the McLaren Animation strand at the EIFF over the years – his film A Cat Named Dom won last year’s McLaren gong at the festival (see our report from the 2022 EIFF here on LFF), and am always looking forward to any new work. Shackle is a stop-motion piece (I love all animation, but have an especially soft spot for stop-motion work), with a couple of small woodland creatures, taking everyday forest objects such as apples and pine cones, then making art and music with them, while a more frightening version of these endearing creatures lurks in the dark version of the forest, looking on greedily and coveting what they have.

I don’t really have time to dive into every film screened during the Animated Shorts, but these are some of the ones that especially caught my eye. Again I am grateful the animators get a chance to show these in a cinema setting, with an audience, and talk about their works – we used to have the excellent Four Mations on Channel 4, and BBC2 used to do late night animation strands, years ago, something that seems to have vanished from media schedules these days, despite the phttps://www.liveforfilm.com/roliferation of more channels and the fact we’re still seeing new and established talents creating new, interesting works, but the main broadcasters seem to ignore them, which, I think, makes the film festivals all the more important as a chance to wave the flag for this time-consuming and inventive form of film-making.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Art College 1994

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 – Art School 1994
Directed by Liu Jian,
Starring the voices of Jia Zhangke, Zheng Dasheng, Xu Lei, Wang Hongwei, Peng Lei, Ren Ke, Xu Zhiyuan, Shen Lihui

This animated film from China took around five years to complete, so one of the film festival programmers told us before the screening, drawn in the more traditional 2D animation style, which is, of course, very labour-intensive, yet often worth it for the distinctive aesthetic and feel it can give. In the case of this Chinese, animated slacker film (there’s a phrase I have never used before!), it also suits the tone of the film and the characters very well.

Set, as you may infer from the title, in the mid-90s, the film follows the lives of a group of students at a small, but well-regarded art college in China,  Zang Xiojun (Dong Zijian) and Rabbit (Chizi) are the main focus of the film, Zang with his floppy hair and the permanently attached earphones for his music (a cassette Walkman) is more the unfocused dreamer of the group, listening to bootleg Nirvana cassettes, stifled by the insistence of his tutors that he adhere to classical styles instead of exploring new ideas (which you’d expect to be encouraged in an art college, but not here, in China of 1994, where modern Western art movements are especially reviled).

Rabbit is more pragmatic – at least when not pondering out loud on second hand philosophy he’s picked up from bits of books and hasn’t actually thought out. A bit lazier, when he does focus he is more likely to be thinking about how his degree will get him a decent paying job, how he’d like to be famous (because then “he wouldn’t have to actually paint much”, thinking about a girlfriend. It’s not that Zang doesn’t consider these things, he even joins the odd philosophic musing over beer and cigarettes, but he is far more into considering what is art, and how he can do something that is new and interesting to him in a world where it feels like so many earlier artists have done all the innovation already (at one point he even burns a pile of his art, which a more pretentious artist takes as an actual artistic piece in itself).

The film moves at a gentle pace, and the remaining cast of friends and classmates, each dealing with their studies, their hopes for the future, dreams of what they could be and want to be, versus what the world of the time will likely actually let them be, is one many of us will find very familiar. Small-town Chinese art college in the 90s, perhaps, but there is so much that is just universal there that, despite the language, it feels very familiar, and had me thinking back to my own college days and blushing to think there would be nights in our student gaffe where I or my friends would be those characters, drinking cheap booze, holding forth on what we thought were well-considered, mature, informed Great Insights, which in retrospect were hopelessly naive, because, despite thinking we were mature, we really hadn’t experienced much life yet, not really, and understood even less of it, but we were still filled with that longing for an imagined future we thought we’d make where others failed.

The 2D animation was worth those years of effort and labour; this just wouldn’t feel the same in CG animation (although there is a small use of CG for some backgrounds). Aside from the longing to shape some perfect life that will fulfil us after graduation, the film also muses on art and the nature of what art actually is, and who decides it is art or not, with one character declaring anything can be art. Jian seems to incorporate this into the animation itself, with frequent small asides that focus on something away from the characters, be it shimmering water below a bridge, a beetle trying to climb a wall, the way paint slowly peels from the wall.

This is a film that, despite being another country and culture, fits in perfectly with the likes of some Western slacker films (such as Linklater), because the youthful fears and dreams are pretty universal to most people, in any country, in any time.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh Film Festival – Superposition

Posted on by

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 – Superposition
Directed by Karoline Lyngbye,
Starring Marie Bach Hansen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Mihlo Olsen
(Danish language, with English subtitles)

Stine (Marie Bach Hansen), a frustrated writer, and her partner Teit (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), a broadcaster and podcaster, have decided to quit the rat race of life in urban Copenhagen, and are moving with their young boy, Nemo (Mihlo Olsen), to try living for a year completely isolated in a designer cabin, near a lake in the Swedish forest, with Stine planning to use the peace and space to get back to her novel, while Teit is recording regular podcasts on their experiences, although since they are too remote for any web access, he has to put his shows on a USB drive then mail them to his radio station and the people bankrolling their lifestyle change. It will not surprise anyone to learn that their plans to not go quite as expected, and they start to learn more about one another than they anticipated – in a rather unusual way.

Right from the beginning there’s a lovely visual style to Superposition by cinematographer Sine Vadstrup Brooker, with a view of the calm lake waters, the line of the opposite shore bisecting the middle of the screen, the water reflecting the trees and the clouds above, but tilted ninety degrees to the side, slowly rotating back to the more normal viewpoint; a beautiful image, but also one that whispers of something not right, something being out of kilter, in this remote location.

At first they settle in quite happily, exploring the very cool, designer cabin and surrounding woods and lake, their wee boy and dog, Tarzan, happily running around while they settle in. As Tein sets up the microphones for his first recording, however, the cracks start to appear, as an at-first genial discussion between him and Stine about why they came here and what they hope to get out of it, produces answers Tein isn’t too happy with. Stine points out that they agreed to be honest in these recorded discussions, something he likes to pride himself on, but we can already see that actually he’s quite sensitive to honesty when it concerns him.

This is all handled in a nice, quiet, intimate manner between the two characters, no histrionics, no shouting. It’s also a nice bit of storytelling economy – we get the gist of their relationship and troubles (he had an affair, cheating on her, she resents giving up her plans to be the Great Young Novelist she was earmarked by the writing establishment to become in favour of raising a family) in one short scene, along with the obvious fact that both are also creatives and seem a bit competitive on that front as well as on their personal relationship. It’s deftly done, no flashbacks or long expositions, we get it all in this quiet, neat way, letting us into the characters and their lives.

So far you could be mistaken for thinking this is going to be one of those films where people with troubles escape into nature and find the struggle to live in it helps them put their personal problems in perspective, and overcome them. But this is more “glamping” than really back to nature, whatever the pair of them think (fancy cabin, electricity, computers, music, wine, hardly roughing it). And there is something else going on – they glimpse another family of three, on the far shore of the lake.

This surprises them as the location was sold as being totally remote, with no-one else near them. Stine in particular seems very put out by this (given the vast spaces around them, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for her here, she seems more petulant than anything else). They try to avoid these others, which should be easy as they are away on the other side of the water, but of course, we know sooner or later something will bring them in contact with one another. And when they find these others are, well, them, they are understandably confused. Why are dopplegangers of them here in this remote forest? Where did they come from, what do they do?

Edinburgh International Film Festival - Karoline Lyngbye 02
(Director Karoline Lyngbye, on the right, talking to the film festival audience, pic from my Flickr)

Although you can see little hints of the likes of Peele’s Us, this is a different beast, and uses this encounter to further explore the damaged relationships between the main couple in a rather novel way. Starting as a drama, Superposition mixes in elements of science fiction, thriller and horror into its DNA, and combines it with some lovely cinematography (riffing cleverly on reflections and duos), while scenes with the characters interacting with their duplicates are very well done (the director explained they had some of the visual effects team on hand during the actual filming to make sure it was done right, a laborious task involving multiple takes of scenes).

An intriguing, clever and beautifully shot piece of cinema from Denmark.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films