In 2019, director Lee Han (Thread of Lies, Punch) made a return with a courtroom drama with elements of comedy and thriller that revolves around a defense lawyer (Jung Woo-sung) who is trying to get his client acquitted by getting the only witness to murder, an autistic girl (Kim Hyang-gi), to testify. Innocent Witness got screened during the…
Category: Film
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: Little Forest Review
Reflection, a slow pace of life… and life, dictated by the four seasons, are themes, rarely depicted in Korean cinema; instead, more viewers are attracted to the adrenaline-packed productions, full of well-known actors. But 2018 marked a change of tide – the leading female “auteur of Korean New Wave cinema” Yim Soon-rye adopted Little Forest, the two-volume…
Love, Simon Review
The first thing that comes to mind when gay romance is thrown on the table is… tragedy. It strikes right of the bat to set the story up, or comes whirling out of a corner in the middle, or waits there at the end – or just soaks the entire story – because hey, gay…
Udine Far East Film Festival Reveals Its 20th Anniversary Edition Lineup
Today, a mere 9 days before the European audience finds its way to the little town in the Northeast Italy to explore the new and old jewels of Asian Cinema, Udine Far East Film Festival revealed its 2018 lineup. It was to be expected that the 20th anniversary edition of the festival would provide the…
Steel Rain Review
Netflix seems to have become every film goer’s Elysium; it has grown into a wholesome VOD platform, with country-specific contents, and has successfully moved even further as a global producer of TV shows and films. Even with some hit-and-miss productions, Netflix provides an easy access to a good selection of films from around the globe….
In Conversation with Hakeem Kae-Kazim
Hakeem Kae-Kazim is a Nigerian-British, classically trained actor, who (after graduating Bristol Old Vic Theatre School) was given a place at the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company. According to Hakeem, his voyage into acting was a gradual thing. “First, I did the National Youth Theatre; I attended their summer programs when I was still in school….
Hold Me Down – Short Film Review
Statistics show that around 49 million Americans live in poverty, which includes over 16 million children. Without much support from their own government, people get pushed to the margin and are forced to take on jobs that are not necessarily legal. Single mothers, predominantly African-Americans, are among the victims of this penury; some turn to…
I Can Speak Review
We often associate Kim Hyun-seok, a South Korean film director and screenwriter, with the 2000 Park Chan-wook feature Joint Security Area, for which Kim co-wrote the script. The audience might also recognize the filmmaker for his feel-good films such as When Romance Meets Destiny (2005), Cyrano Agency (2010) or C’est si bon (2015). The newest Hyun-seok’s production, which received Best…
The Third Murder Review
Following the success of his family dramas Like Father, Like Son, which won the Jury Prize at 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Our Little Sister, which competed for Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and the critically acclaimed After the Storm (2016), Japanese film director, producer and screenwriter Hirokazu Kore-eda surprised his faithful audience by veering…
68th Berlin International Film Festival: Dressage Review
The growing divide within social classes is a global problem, and the contemporary Iranian society is no exception. With his feature debut Dressage, director Pooya Badkoobeh brings attention to this divide from a fresh angle – through the eyes of a stubborn teen girl whose story serves to shed a light not only on the…
68th Berlin International Film Festival: Marilyn Review
It takes courage to follow your heart, and the pain of self-discovery is at times hard to endure. This is the journey that awaits Marco (a superb performance by the emerging actor Walter Rodriguez), the young protagonist of Marilyn. Marilyn – a directorial feature debut from Martín Rodríguez Redondo, an Argentinian filmmaker – is based on…
68th Berlin International Film Festival: Horizon Review
After her feature debut Brides, which won the Panorama Audience award at the 64th Berlinale, Georgian filmmaker Tinatin Kajrishvili returns with another drama that delves into intimate human relationships – Horizon (Horizonti), which had its world premiere last week in the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival. Giorgi (George Bochorishvili), known to…
68th Berlin International Film Festival: Ceres Review
“I would rather talk to animals than to people,” exclaims Koen – pigs, piglets, chickens, roosters… in the eyes of the boy, they are all his true friends. Koen, Sven, Daan and Jeanin live on different farms somewhere in The Netherlands, they go about their lives while helping their families with basic chores on the land…
In Conversation with the Oscar Nominee Dorota Kobiela, Director of ‘Loving Vincent’
How much passion does it take for a person to take on a task of making a movie such as Loving Vincent? Probably a lot, since it took almost a decade to bring the sublime production – the world’s first full-length painted animation, consisting of about 65,000 paintings, painted with oil paint on canvas –…
