Tucked up in their dorm beds, sandwiched between lumpy mattresses and itchy blankets, South African soldiers are swapping stories. One of them starts to tell the story of two soldiers found kissing in a bathroom stall – ‘Moffies’ they’re derogatorily named. After being caught the pair are dragged out and thrown in front of their…
Category: London Film Festival
63rd BFI London Film Festival: The Last Black Man in San Francisco Review
Balancing together on the same beat-up skateboard, Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) and his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) fly through the streets of San Francisco. A symphony of soaring strings and thunderous, belting horns explodes behind them – over the top of which, a soapbox preacher urges that ‘We are these homes! We built them!… This…
63rd BFI London Film Festival: The Dude in Me Review
Body swap comedies are beloved for their bold and ludicrous takes on what happens when opposites switch. Defined by the occurrence of two characters swapping physical states but maintaining their prior personalities, body swap films offer up absurd and fanciful interpretations of what can happen when you take characters and place them in an extreme…
In Conversation with Steven Yeun of ‘Burning’
Steven Yeun greets me with a big smile and a warm handshake as we meet at the Mayfair hotel in London on a cold October morning. We sit down and chat about what it means to be a Korean-American, his latest production Burning, and working with Lee Chang-dong. Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised…
Lee Chang-dong’s Burning
The attempts to translate Haruki Murakami‘s prose into the cinematic language have so far mostly ended in spectacular disasters, or – in the best case – garnered mixed reviews, probably due to the specific style of the writer. But the fates have changed when Lee Chang-dong, the director of Poetry and Peppermint Candy, returned after 6 years of…
Roma Review
Roma follows the story of Cleo (Yalitza Aparico), a young indigenous housekeeper working for a middle-class family in Mexico City during the early ‘70s. Partly based off Alfonso Cuarón’s own childhood, Roma is an ode to the woman who helped raise him. Reflecting on a perspective of his upbringing that is different to his own,…
In Conversation with Teo Yoo – Viktor Tsoy in Kirill Serebrennikov’s ‘Leto’
It has been almost three years since we last spoke to Teo Yoo, and looking at his fast-growing list of projects, he has kept himself very busy. Among his most recent projects that the audience was able to enjoy was his phenomenal portrayal of Viktor Tsoy (one of the Soviet rock pioneers) in Leto (Summer) by…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: Namdev Bhau in Search of Silence Review
By 2020, Mumbai’s population is expected to grow to 28 million, making it the most populated city on Earth. With a population this size, it’s no wonder that Mumbai is one of the noisiest cities in the world; its noise pollution being three times worse than that of New York and London. Noise pollution is…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: Leto Review
In the Soviet Union, like in many other communist countries, a free growth of specific music genres was quite limited. The story of Kirill Serebrennikov’s new work, Leto (Summer), begins in the 1981 Leningrad, at a concert of an underground rock band. But unlike what a person would expect when there is a rock concert…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: Colette Review
When Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette wrote her debut novel under her libertine husband’s name Willy, she had no idea that the book ‘Claudine at School’ would be the first step towards her liberation, freedom and an ‘escape’ from the traditional heteronormative social values of the early 20th century Paris. Raised in the south of France, Colette (Keira…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: Birds of Passage Review
Guajira peninsula, northern Colombia. It’s the late 60’s; while the western world is amidst its social and cultural revolutions, a young woman, dressed in a bright red ceremonial robe, is engaged in a frenetic courtship dance with her soon-to-be husband. Set at the backdrop of a wide and windy desert, this visually striking scene introduces…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: United Skates Review
“If this world don’t change its ways, we’ll all perish”. Roller-skating rinks in the U.S were once a booming hub of hip-hop and disco culture, a form of cathartic expression and freedom for many African-Americans. However, due to increased land taxes and gentrification forcing many rinks to close, they are now a rare find. Dyana…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: The Spy Gone North Review
The historical drama is a tale that is constantly over-shadowed by its real-life counterpart’s undoing. No matter which way the film may elude to direct itself, the foreboding presence of certain real-life individuals makes clear to an audience which way the film will steer. This is especially the case when dealing with the infamous Kim…
62nd BFI London Film Festival: Arctic Review
The bleak mid-winter in the frozen wilderness; a man clears the snow and stones away, the camera moves back, slowly revealing a huge SOS sign, dug into the snow. Without using any words and only with the sounds of nature, Joe Penna perfectly depicts the situation of the protagonist, Overgård (Mads Mikkelsen: Hannibal, Doctor Strange), in…
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