Tag Archives: 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 – Hungry

Posted on by
Reply

EIFF 2026 – Hungry
Directed by James Nunn,
Starring Madison Davenport, Tracey Bonner, Joaquim de Almeida, Michel Curiel, Samantha Coughlan, Olivia Bernstone, Jim Meskimen, River Codack

This was part of the Midnight Madness where, as the film festival organisers put it, we watch “f**ked up movies”, and the “Hungry” is, as some of you will have guessed, is as in the old family game “Hungry Hungry Hippos”, but of course they can’t use that title for their movie (which does indeed feature ravenous hippos!), so hence “Hungry”. We’ve had sharks, giant snakes, crocs and gators and piranhas, but this time, down in the deepest bayou country, there are feral hippopotami!!

Yes, angry, feral hippos – local legend in the swamplands around New Orleans holds that in the early twentieth century, there was a problem with cattle, so someone had the bright idea to import hippopotami from Africa, with an idea they’d be better suited to the conditions in the state, then breed them for slaughter. But that’s just a legend, right? Right?

Sistine (Madison Davenport) is trying to have a break with her bestie, Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) in New Orleans. Struggling to look after her ill mother, pay the mounting medical bills and hold down a job with a jerk employer (who phones her for work during her holiday, yes, he is that big a swine). Hannah meets Rodrigo (Michel Curiel) and his boss Walker (veteran actor Joaquim de Almeda), who runs swamp tours, with guaranteed views of the state’s alligators, and she decides to book the pair of them on the tour to distract Sistine (who isn’t keen on it, but is talked into it).

Next morning, hungover, they join the tour, alongside a family group and a lone businesswoman, Dionne (Tracey Bonner). Unknown to all aboard, Dionne has promised her kids a photo of the biggest alligator in the swamps, but this means going off the usual routes for tour boats, so she covertly bribes Rodrigo, who is in charge of the boat, to take them to a likely site. Luckily for them the biggest alligator is geo-tagged, so they can focus in easily on his location… Except he isn’t there. What they don’t know, but we do because it was in the opening sequence, was we saw a giant gator hunting in the swamps, only to be ambushed by something bigger and more powerful…

They soon find their gator – well, bits of it. And they are understandably worried about what the hell could take down such an enormous apex predator in its own environment? And, well, I’m pretty sure that those of you who, like me, enjoy a fun creature feature will guess what happens next – there’s an attack by a largely unseen something, they are stranded, the fact they are well off the normal tour boat route so not likely to be spotted easily comes out among recriminations, and people start being picked off…

Like I said, I think most of us know how this is going to go, the numbers are going to be reduced, one by one, there will be sudden threats and the equally sudden relief of that tension when they survive, at least until the next incident. Plans to help themselves if no rescue turn up are formulated, ideas exchanged, and meanwhile they know they are in constant mortal danger. The game now becomes who will make it through and who is going to be chomped??

There’s the usual roster of characters, the ones you like and root for to survive, the ones you suspect will die in some sort of heroic attempt to save them all, and of course there are ones you think deserve to be chomped up. Walker a hunter as well as tour guide, is an obvious stand-in for Quint from Jaws, and delights in telling them that hippos are mostly vegetarian, and they’re not trying to eat you for food, like most predators, they are doing it for fun!

So no, other than being hippos, there isn’t a lot new in this creature feature, but it’s not trying to pretend it is rewriting the sub-genre, it’s rolling with it, and it is inviting us to roll with it too. This is made by people who clearly love a good monster movie, know the rules, know what we expect, and are happy to serve it up. It may not break any moulds, but it knows what it is doing, and who its audience is – this is one to watch, late evening, with your friends and some pizza and food and just laugh and shriek, and enjoy it. I think my only surprise here was, that despite a number of kills, the gore level is fairly low, but then it does feel like they’re going for an uncomplicated, fun beast feature.

Hungry will appear on Sky Cinema in September

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2026 – The Peril at Pincer Point

Posted on by
Reply

EIFF 2026 – The Peril at Pincer Point,
Directed by Jake Kuhn, Noah Stratton-Twine,
Starring Alyth Ross, Dashiell Upton, Isobel Laidler, Jack Redmayne, Jason Hogan, Mat Wright, Mike Mackenzie, Oliver Woolf, Os Leanse

Now here we a delightful wee oddity – and I use the word “oddity” as a positive one. Peril is one of that small but hugely fun trend of really independent movies, the type made by a bunch of friends working together, using whatever money they can scrape together and whatever resources and locations they can get a hold of. Jim Baitte (Jack Redmayne) is a sound designer with problems – he’s a bit shallow but desperate to make his mark in “the industry” (he loves telling everyone he meets he’s “in the industry”), but his colleagues are giving him a rough time over his work so far, which falls short of what the legendary director PW (Os Leanse), is looking for.

Oh, and despite living in the upper levels of a multi-storey flat in London, he finds a crab lurking under his sofa. Which gives him a nasty nip.

After a stormy meeting with Jim’s colleagues, PW sees him and declares he’s the man he need – to the surprise of the same colleagues who had been telling him how bad his earlier efforts were. But PW thinks he sees a kindred soul, someone who will go that extra mile to help him realise his vision. And what’s his vision? Well he wants some sort of sound that’s never been heard before. Oh sure, that’s easy to find and record…

PW also wants the voice of the “sandwich girl” from a previous production, and so Jim is dispatched with his recording equipment to the tiny island of Pincer Point, to find this vague sound PW craves and to find the girl and persuade her to be recorded too. Easy, right?? Except the girl has vanished, and the island is populated by a range of bizarre, oddball characters – imagine some of the odder background characters from Spaced or the village in Hot Fuzz, and the girl, Marina (Alyth Ross) has vanished. And the man, Hollis (co-director Stratton-Twine), who is renting him a place to stay on the island turns out to be the brother of the missing girl.

Not that many seem that bothered about her being missing – in fact Hollis, the town drunk, seems more put out that Jim came to record his sister and not him (“I can do a woman” he complains). In time-honoured tradition he finds out bits and pieces from local characters, such as an old sea dog in the pub, or from Hollis. They all point to an old legend, of Sye Telson, who selects certain people to join his crew for ten thousand years, taking their very souls. And apparently Jim is just the type the captain likes…

 

This was such a good-natured hoot – funny and warm, making the most from its tiny budget, indeed often making something inventive and great out of the lack of big resources. In many ways it reminded me of other Indie flicks I have really enjoyed in recent years, like the fabulous Hundreds of Beavers. And like that film, on hearing the cast and crew talking about it after the screening, you get the impression they had as much fun making this as we had watching it, and that permeates this tiny budget, British indie flick. This is one to watch with a bunch of friends.

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

EIFF – Mortician

Posted on by

EIFF 2025 – Mortician,
Directed by Abdolreza Kahani,
Starring Nima Sadr, Rahim Bahrami, Erfan Bokaei, Gola, Srwa Hassani, Hamidreza Hosseini, Kimia Motevalli

 

Mojtaba (Nima Sadr, who previously worked with Kahani on A Shrine), is the titular Mortician – an Iranian living and working in Canada to send money back home to his struggling family in Iran. He specialises in the important ritual of the washing of the body before an Islamic funeral, Mojtaba is a quiet, self-contained man, who criss-crosses Canada from city to snowbound city (most of the film is shot in a wintery palette) to carry out his duties.

Distanced from his family, he’s alone other than a few loose friends, fellow Iranians, who have gotten to know him through his work to the Islamic community in Canada, and he lives out of a single suitcase, couch-surfing courtesy of these friends as he goes from job to job in different cities. He stops at the required times of day to observe his prayers, removing his shoes and kneeling on a small, special prayer rug created for travelling. He takes his work seriously and observes the religious rules, leaving those few who know him to be somewhat bemused (asking him why not relax, have a drink, live a little, you’re not in Iran now), but he considers his observances to be a part of his work.

We follow this distanced life of Mojtaba, respected for his work by the community, but alone, no place to settle down in Canada, and far from his real home and family in Iran, going to some of his fellow Iranians with businesses in Canada to arrange to send most of his wages back home, keeping little for himself. When the boss of his company tells him they are closing down, he needs more work – he can’t earn the same money back home. And this is what eventually brings him into the orbit of Jana.

Jana is a famous singer and activist, played by real-life singer Gola, who somewhat scandalises Mojtaba by telling him she wants him to wash her corpse after she is dead. For starters, he protests, it should be a woman who does this, second she is young, how can she be about to die? And why did she contact him so many times before meeting, using a variety of different phone numbers, then meet in the middle of nowhere?

So cut off from the wider popular culture, he has no idea who she is, but his friends tell him, and that with a loud voice and many social media followers, Jana doesn’t just make art, she makes art criticising the repression of the people by the authoritarian regime in Iran, and this, of course, means she has to be careful who she meets, because she is a large, visible thorn in their side, even here in a distant land. She has decided that she will kill herself – not because she is suicidal, but as a protest against that brutal regime, to draw attention to her message and the plight of regular Iranians under the regime’s steel claws, and she wants him to help her film a series of videos to be released post-mortem, as well as performing the rites on her corpse.

Of course Jana’s creation of art to draw attention to the brutal repression of the regime mirrors the work of the director himself, as Kahani’s work here is, as he told the festival audience, fictional, but drawn on real events. He, Gola and Sadr are all too sadly familiar with the methods of this regime, how they can still reach out to threaten dissidents and protestors even in distant lands using agents, or to control them by threatening family members still in Iran. It was clear this wasn’t just making a statement, this is heartfelt, born from desperate experience, and all involved almost certainly help draw a target on their own backs with their work, and yet they do it then take it to the world audience.

EIFF - The Mortician 04

EIFF - The Mortician 06
(Kahani and his main actors, talking with the film festival audience in the Filmhouse. Pics from my Flickr)
EIFF - The Mortician 07

It’s a quietly powerful piece of work, for its message, for its slow but fascinating two-hander between Jana and Mojtaba, two very different people, but also interesting to anyone who loves the film medium for its approach. Kahani told the audience how he worked with a tiny crew, shooting on phones, often using quite static talking head scenes, and how this frees him up as a film-maker. While not the only film by an means to be shot on a phone, his methods feel more measured than some others who have tried similar approaches, there’s a feeling of pushing the envelope of how to make a film. This even extends to the credits – Kahani told us he doesn’t like the regular credits on movies, so his are more like an epilogue, talking about some of the making of the film.

As the 78th Edinburgh International Film Festival drew to a close, the winners of the films in competition were announced: the Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, funded by the Connery Foundation, with a significant prize of £50, 000 towards future work, was announced, and went to Kahani for Mortician. Rather nicely this award is decided by votes from the film festival’s audiences, not a panel of judges – it is the film lovers who paid for tickets and came out to the cinemas to see these films (some ten, feature-length movies in competition this year), the people who are supporting the festival and the artists, who cast the votes, and I rather like that.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2025 – Redux Redux

Posted on by

Redux Redux,
Directed by Kevin and Matthew McManus,
Starring Michaela McManus, Stella Marcus, Jeremy Holm, Jim Cummings, Taylor Misiak, Dendrie Taylor

Redux Redux begins as it intends to mostly go on – powerfully. A woman dispatching a man tied to a fallen chair in the desert, by burning him alive. The same woman in a desperate, hand to hand struggle with the same man in a wretched looking shack of a home, until she finally gets the upper hand and dispatches him again, violently, shooting him through a mattress. In between we see her searching a small box the man has hidden, finding a lock of hair with the number “12” on it. These are the trophies of a serial killer.

We soon realise the woman, Irene (Michaela McManus) is not only hunting this serial killer, Neville (Jeremy Holm) to take brutal revenge, she is killing multiple Nevilles across parallel dimensions. Neville abducted, tortured and killed her daughter, and she has never even managed to have the tiny bit of closure that at least finding a body would do. “Where is she?!” she screams at one Neville, before blowing his brains out all over a wall. This is a woman on a missions, powered by raw grief and rage.

Between each killing and the subsequent escape to the steel coffin-like box that transports her to the next dimension, we slowly get more of Irene’s history. She’s been doing this for quite a while, and each universe is very similar, so certain points bring her back time and again. Not just the obvious target of her rage, Neville – and after so many times, she now knows his patterns, making him much easier to track and kill – but her former family home, abandoned in most realities, nobody wanting to buy a home steeped in such tragedy (not only the loss of her daughter, but other versions of Irene later ended their own lives). In some ways the anger and retribution, along with a diminishing desire to find a reality where she and her child are safe and happy (after so many trips, she has never yet found one), are what keeps this Irene going, while the others ended their lives.

Up till now you might be thinking nice idea, little bit Terminator / Sarah Connor, perhaps, but then she finds something new when hunting another Neville: Mia (Stella Marcus). Another victim of Neville, she finds her in his lair and rescues her while taking care of this Neville. A kid who has been in and out of care homes – sadly with little actual care – and was caught by Neville while running away from her latest place, she is distrustful, wary, and combative with Irene, but you already know there’s going to be something developing there.

And yes, you can feel that coming, but here that’s no bad thing, because you want to see these two grow closer together. When Mia goes from disbelief to seeing proof of Irene’s dimensional travelling, she decides she too wants revenge on Neville for nearly killing her (and all the other hers across different worlds), but an almost broken Irene tells her no, how even though this hunt keeps her going, it has taken all her humanity from her. The loving parent has disappeared under a vengeful woman with no mercy, committing brutal death after death after death, with no end in sight.

EIFF - Redux Redux 01

(actor Stella Marcus, who played Mia, talking to the audience in the Filmhouse after the film festival screening of Redux Redux, pics from my Flickr)

EIFF - Redux Redux 02

Mia’s arrival signals the start of a disruption to this seemingly endless pattern Irene has trapped herself in, unable to stop or walk away, but hating herself for it. It also ups the emotional level – the smaller glimpses into the magnitude of what was done to make her this way are replaced by a much deeper emotional awareness growing. Along the way we also get some exceptionally fine and tense action scenes – sneaking at night into the decrepit hovel Neville lives in is reminiscent of Clarice in Buffalo Bill’s basement, while other sequences are straight-out action, with multiple cops chasing Irene.

Yes, there are a few moments where you can guess which direction this is taking, but when it does it is actually normally satisfying, the growing emotional aspect draws you in (McManus and Marcus, in her first feature role, really sell the damaged souls slowly finding something more), while the tense and action filled scenes give you some serious spectacle too. An absolutely excellent slice of action-SF, with an emotional core.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2025 – Sorry, Baby

Posted on by

More from the 78th annual Edinburgh International Film Festival

Sorry, Baby,
Directed by Eva Victor,
Starring Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, Louis Cancelmi, Kelly McCormack, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch

A UK premiere for Eva Victor’s debut (writing, directing and starring) at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, and I have to say a film I absolutely loved. Told out of sequence, with each part getting its own chapter heading to keep things straight, we open with Victor’s Agnes greeting her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie) to her house in rural New England for a weekend together. Best friends throughout grad school, Lydie is now living and working in New York, her career moving, and her personal life (she’s realised she preferred girls and has found the one she wants).

It’s winter in the countryside, and the bare trees and dark nights stand in contrast to the warmth both of Agnes’s home, and her friendship with Lydie, as the two catch up, talk, relax. Both actors do a wonderful job here, you get a real feeling of a deep, years-old friendship from both of them, not just in the dialogue and emotions, but the body language, the domestic set-up they so easily fall into. Beneath it all, though, Lydie is worried about Agnes – she’s gone from student to being a professor but in the same department of the same small college, and still lives in the same house she shared with Lydie as students, almost like her life is moving forward, but with the sluggishness of an iced-over river in winter.

Agnes deflects her concerns, and mostly shows an upbeat view of things, except when she quietly bemoans Lydie being too far away from her now and wanting her to visit more often. They are both going to a meal with some other former student friends, including Natasha (Kelly McCormack), a flighty, twitchy, needy personality who is clearly jealous that Agnes was the best in their group, and the first one to get a full-time teaching post from it. When Natasha makes a barbed comment about their former tutor, in a quiet, but telling moment we see Lydie take her hand under the dinner table.

As we find out in another chapter, which takes us back in time to the Year of the Bad Thing, her incredibly supportive and nice tutor, Preston (Louis Cancelmi), who had encouraged her work, used his position to force himself on her, sexually. The act is, thankfully, not depicted; instead Victor uses the passing of the short, winter day to denote something has happened over the course of that time, a time too long for a simply talk about her graduation thesis, showing us the outside of the house, night falling, lights coming on, still nothing but the house, until the door opens and Agnes walks out, pausing only to put her boots on (not even lacing them up) before stomping in an unusual gait back through the dark to her car, Preston glimpsed standing behind the door, watching.

Of course this is a tremendously sensitive subject to handle, and I found Victor’s approach to be interesting, and different from other narratives dealing with trauma (especially of the non-consensual sexual variety). We do see her, still in shock at what has happened, clearly not quite grasping it all yet, trying to explain to Lydie back home, then subsequent scenes with an incredibly lacking in empathy doctor to examine her, and HR people at the college who wear obvious “we really care and take this seriously” masks, but who will do nothing really (apart from tell Agnes “they understand” because “we are women too”, when clearly they don’t and would rather the problem just went quietly away).

The story could easily have followed the trope of shattered confidence and broken life, and trying to overcome the trauma, but instead Victor gives us Agnes moving on, at least a little. She gets a full time teaching post, but in a thoughtless move the admin staff give her the same office of her former tutor and abuser (who resigned before any action could be taken against him). So she has her dream job, her students love her, her fellow staff admire her work, but there is a strong feeling under the surface that she has much to process (little clues like feeling constantly there is someone outside on the porch at night, but there never is, leading her to cover a window up with pages of her own thesis), and is in a place that is a constant reminder of her former tutor (but at least she now has a rescue kitten).

Instead of the long, dark, night of the soul and then some sort of sudden catharsis, we get something more naturalistic, as the rest of the film follows Agnes, often getting on with her life, not thinking about what happened, but then some days it hits her like a brick. There’s a beautiful little scene with veteran actor John Carroll Lynch, as a seemingly grumpy older guy, who is about to tell her off for bad parking, but recognises the pain she is in, and his demeanour changes and softens, and she finds herself able to talk to him about it, how some days she is fine, doesn’t think about it, then she feels bad for not thinking about it, then she does think about it… The kindness of strangers comes through here in a small but emotionally touching scene, and anyone who has been through any kind of emotional trauma will likely recognise much of her behaviour.

Sorry, Baby is a beautifully-made debut film, played very naturally, not overly dramatising the events, which makes them feel all the more human and real. The humour Agnes often uses means that, despite dealing with some very sensitive and difficult material, the film often remains feeling light and engaging, as do both Lydie and Agnes. Despite that core trauma, there’s a real feeling of human warmth running through Sorry, Baby, and I am hopeful this marks out Victor as a new talent to watch for.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2025 – Ben Wheatley returns with Bulk

Posted on by

Bulk,
Directed by Ben Wheatley,
Starring Sam Riley, Alexandra Maria Lara, Noah Taylor, Mark Monero

The Midnight Madness strand returns to the the 78th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and as with last year’s strand, it is where you will find some of the more unusual works at this year’s festival (or as one festival staffer put it in the introduction to the midnight audience, “are you ready to watch some f**ked up movies?” The very first one this year was Ben Wheatley with Bulk, and I have to say I had that very unusual thing of going into a film knowing next to nothing about it in advance, a deliberate move on the part of the film-makers and the festival. How often does that happen today? Most of us have seen clips, interviews, articles etc so we have some context going in.

Not so here, not for me anyway, and I found that quite refreshing (yes I am aware of the irony of talking about not knowing much about a film beforehand, while giving you a review of it!). And, truth be told, no review is really going to give you that much of an idea of quite what to expect here. This is Wheatley back in his more experimental, playful, low-budget mode – having fun on a shoestring, but that tiny budget giving him and his cast and crew a free hand to indulge themselves and explore and play, and, oh boy, do they.

Central to Bulk is the Multiverse – before you groan that this idea those of us who love SF have known about for decades, but which is now everywhere thanks to the Marvel Universe and Everything Everywhere, All At Once has been over-used in the last few years, let me reassure you, no not like this. This is Wheatley playing with the idea and minimalist budget, sets and effects, relying on some clever lighting and framing to make an otherwise normal house and rooms feel slightly otherworldly, as Sam Riley’s journalist wakes from a seemingly drugged sleep to find himself in the back of a car, driven at night by Noah Taylor, to the house.

Is it a kidnapping? An unusual job? Partial pieces of memory come back to him as he is taken inside and introduced to Alexandra Maria Lara’s character, who talks about Mark Monero famous tech-genius and a peculiar accident when trying to tap into other dimensions for energy. Woozy from some sort of drug or poison, Riley’s character is lead through events, often clueless, but slowly starting to pick up bits and pieces, except, the pieces being scattered across dimensions, they don’t all fit together, or even work together, while the same is true of the small cast (who appear as multiple versions of themselves).

Ben Wheatley At The Edinburgh International Film Festival 01

(above, Ben Wheatley and his cast, talking in the Cameo Cinema to the film festival audience after the midnight premiere of his film, Bulk; below, director Ben Wheatley talking after the first screening of Bulk, pics from my Flickr)

Ben Wheatley At The Edinburgh International Film Festival 06

The effects in the other worlds are delightfully low-fi, almost like a graduation project film by a particularly gifted student – yes, those are old Airfix model kits bashed together to make very (deliberately) obvious warplanes, or a model Land Rover on an also-obvious model terrain. There’s a sheer delight to much of this, the basic but fun visual effects, even to the confusion the narrative sows in its wake, and the midnight audience were laughing along in many places, enjoying the heck out of it.

Ben Wheatley At The Edinburgh International Film Festival 05
(some of the cast and crew of Ben Wheatley’s film, Bulk, talking to the audience after the premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, pic from my Flickr)

This isn’t the sort of film you can sum up easily in a review, not in narrative terms – this is a classic head-trip piece of film-making, and a total blast to boot. It won’t be for everyone, but those of us who loved Ben’s more out-there work like A Field in England will be on board for this, they will get and happily go along for the ride. The film, for all its tiny budget and lean running time, is packed with references to so many inspirations, from odd SF like Alphaville to the venerable 2000 AD comic, and the hand-written closing credits pay tribute to many of these inspirations.

As I left the cinema at two o’clock in the morning, I heard two people behind me discussing the film, and one saying how glad they were we still had Film4, and that they were up for helping get wonderfully weird, experimental films like this made, and that chap was absolutely right.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Cielo

Posted on by

Cielo,
Directed by Alberto Sciamma,
Starring Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda, Carla Arana, Juan Carlos Aduviri, Luis Bredow, Sasha Salaverry, Fernando Arze Echalar

Sciamma’s Cielo is a wonderfully unusual piece of film-making, and one which does not fit easily into any particular category (which is no bad thing, in my book). Young Santa (a remarkable performance from young Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda), lives on a remote farm with her warm, loving mother, Paz(Carla Arana), and her violent, thuggish father (Juan Carlos Aduviri), on the high Altiplano of Bolivia. Maltreated by the father, the young daughter and her mother secretly plan to escape, but this is no ordinary escape from a bad domestic situation, they intend to follow the stars to Heaven (literally). It’s a long journey across some truly remarkable landscapes, and young Santa will meet – and change – a number of people on her voyage.

However, this simple synopsis really doesn’t do Cielo justice – this isn’t a film you follow in the normal, narrative manner (although there is a narrative there), this is more a film to be experienced. That story is there, but it is also filled with some fable-like, fantastical elements – in many ways it reminded me of some of the great literature that has come out of Central and South America in the last century, where the everyday and a sort of magical realism often intertwine. Unusual imagery is conjured – in a very early scene we see our young girl scooping a fish from the nearby lake, then carefully swallowing it whole, and the fish symbol will recur throughout the film, as will other seemingly magical or miraculous events (a dead condor being brought back to life, for instance, or a wound healing).

But if some of Cielo is indeed a fable, it also has much in common with the older versions of fairy tales, before they were tidied up and sanitised for children, in that these magical moments are also interspersed with moment of sudden violence and even death, all the more shocking after the more magical moments, and the absolutely beautiful cinematography. On that latter note, props must be given to Alex Metcalfe’s gorgeous cinematography – his camera takes in those amazing landscapes, filmed in some beautiful compositions that fill the screen and the eye, while smaller, more personal scenes, such as Santa and her Mother together are composed with equal care and an eye for strong visuals (even simple elements like the colours of the clothes on the girl and woman in that bright, Bolivian light, were quite lovely, this really is ravishing filmic visuals to drink in).

This is a journey that takes in a fish in a bucket of water (which Santa talks to on her travels), a local police chief who is troubled and emotional behind his macho moustache, and even a group of travelling Cholita female wrestlers, all of whom end up helping Santa, and being changed by her, while flashbacks show her birth and first few years, and again some possible miracles and little bits of magic around her, which she and her mother share (the father scoffs and then returns to his drink and his violence, his eyes closed to everything else). Is Santa actually creating little (and sometimes not so little) miracles, or are people seeing what they want to (a village priest, Father Jaime (Luis Bredow) tells her mother at one point how many times someone tells him of a person in a nearby village who can work supposed miracles (but can’t).

The film offers up the scenes, but leaves it open to the audience to interpret; it is perhaps not really a film about religion per se, but more about the nature of faith itself. Santa has a faith that carries her on a long journey, so sure she will find her way to Heaven, drawing people along in her orbit. Cielo is a visually rich, beautiful-looking film, with a stunning performance from its very young lead. This is a film you could easily lose yourself in.

Cielo has its UK Premiere at the SXSW London festival, with screenings on June 6th and 7th.

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 – 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