The year is 2025 – just one year after a war has ended between Ukraine and Russia. A war that has left eastern Ukraine collapsing into a state of disrepair. Hundreds of flooded mines have left local wells and rivers poisoned beyond repair, in a few years this region will be void of any drinking…
Category: Film
76th Venice International Film Festival: Just 6.5 Metri Shisho Nim Review
For over a decade, Iran has been witnessing a rise in the number of drug addicts; drug abuse, which is often concentrated on the use of opium and its derivative substances, has risen double in the country since 2017 and even with strict laws and punishments, it seems like there is still no successful solution…
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite Review
Seeing Bong Joon-ho’s work makes one believe time and again that the art of film excellence has not yet disappeared. South Korean director, known for The Host, Okja and Snowpiercer, gifted the film goers with yet another sublime production of his this year: Parasite; a perverse, comical, contemporary yet daunting film that won the Palme…
Aniara Review
Tsunamis, wildfires, and hurricane winds all ripping across the Earth’s surface while a pod races up from the Earth’s atmosphere towards a looming spaceship. This is how Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja’s Aniara starts. Based on the existential Harry Martinson poem of the same name, Aniara follows the cruiser ship Aniara – think Virgin Trains…
Midsommar Review
Midsommar is Ari Aster’s (Hereditary) latest slow-burn horror that witnesses a group of American grad students get caught up in a Swedish folk cult during the festival of Midsummer. Dani (Florence Pugh) is heavily grieving after hearing some disastrous news – to try and take her mind off things she tags along with her boyfriend,…
Swing Kids Review
Musicals are a rarity in South Korean cinema, even if there are South Korean productions out there with traces of music themes, thrown into the middle of the film or found close to the end credits – but that does not qualify those movies as musicals. Swing Kids, directed by Kang Hyeong-cheol (Tazza: The Hidden Card),…
In Conversation with Lee Min-jae and Uhm Ji-won of ‘The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale’
Uhm Ji-won is a South Korean actress whose career started in the late 1990’s. Her talent’s were first recognized with her performance of a subdued wife in the erotic thriller The Scarlet Letter (2004). She later played the leading role in Hong Sang-soo’s Tale of Cinema (2005), and worked with Hong again on his 2008…
The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale Review
Train to Busan (2016) established that there is both room and potential for zombie flicks in Korean cinema, and there has been a flood of undead-themed films and TV series in the past few years, with their makers hell-bent on achieving the same success as Yeon Sang-ho‘s action thriller. Some of the K-zombie projects, surprisingly,…
Juris Kursietis’ Oleg Review
The decision to leave one’s home country is never easy and no one really knows what awaits them out there. Oleg by Juris Kursietis weaves its way along this line, painting a relatable immigrant story of Oleg (Valentin Novopolskij), a Latvian butcher who moves to Belgium in search of a better life. He gets a job…
High Life Review
Up amongst the stars, hurtling through space, a group of death-row inmates are stuck together on a spaceship on an almost-suicide mission to extract energy from a black hole. Dr Dibs (Juliette Binoche) is the reproduction-obsessed, semen-harbouring doctor in charge of the inmates. She’s fixated with the notion of creating an artificial baby and uses…
72nd Cannes Film Festival: Sick, Sick, Sick Review
They say you never forget your first love. In this case, teenager Silvia (Luiza Kosovski) is so adamant to get back her Romeo that she turns to bloody sacrifice and revival voodoo. Brazilian filmmaker Alice Furtado’s feature-length debut is a swirling fever dream of obsession, mourning, and a cold apathy towards the world. Taking a…
72nd Cannes Film Festival: Nuestras Madres Review
Nuestras Madres – ‘Our Mothers’ in English – is a heart-rending and stirring uncovering of the trauma and anguish left behind by the Guatemalan civil war. César Díaz’s fiction-directorial debut focuses particularly on the stories of the many women survivors of the war. Everyone knows the effects of wars and the destruction they rage, but…
Fonotune: An Electric Fairytale Review
Going into Fonotune: An Electric Fairytale it’s fair to say that the deliciously vague trailer and intriguing synopsis built up a certain level of expectation to any discerning cinema-goer. The idea of a long, wonderfully soundtracked pilgrimage to a rock-and-roll gig at the end of the world would spark excitement into the heart of anyone…
21st Udine Far East Film Festival: Extreme Job Review
A fried chicken restaurant and a highly incompetent narcotic squad – what could possibly go wrong? Extreme Job is Lee Byeong-heon’s newest production that has unexpectedly become the second highest grossing film in the history of Korean cinema, with over $120 million box-office profit against a $5.8 million budget – it is no wonder that a Hollywood…
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