Herman Yau’s filmmaking in We’re Nothing at All is driven by curiosity about how stories move between truth and structure. Fragments of a real case, a few mentions of a policeman and a gay couple found online, became, in his hands, a loose framework to build the story. Instead of making a film strictly based…
Category: Foreign Films
28th Far East Film Festival: “Ghost in the Cell” Review
In a prison in Indonesia, a mysterious ghost begins brutally killing inmates, arranging their mutilated bodies into elaborate art installations. Who is responsible, and who will be next? As fear spreads through the cell block, prisoners must now band together to stop the murders while trying to keep their heads on their shoulders. Such is…
28th Far East Film Festival: “Road to Vendetta” Review
Hong Kong action cinema gets a heavy dose of adrenaline with Road to Vendetta, a Hong Kong–Japan co-production that serves as the feature directorial debut of Njo Kui-ying. Stepping behind the camera at 50, the former pop idol delivers a film that clearly understands the appeal of the genre: fast, stylish, and driven by energy,…
28th Far East Film Festival: “All Green” Review
In All Greens, director Takashi Koyama considers what life is like for underprivileged Japanese youth and their quest to get out of their small town. How might they go about that? By selling those titular greens… aka weed. Set in Ibaraki prefecture, where Koyama grew up, teen Boku Hidemi (Sara Minami) has an abusive father,…
28th Far East Film Festival: “Blades of the Guardians” Review
In Blades of the Guardians, director Yuen Woo-ping returns to the wuxia tradition with a film that emphasises the physical and moral foundations of the genre. Known internationally for influencing the style of cinematic combat – just look at The Matrix trilogy and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Yuen treats the film as a way…
Far East Film Festival 28 Unveils 76-Film Programme, Opening with Anthony Chen’s “We Are All Strangers”
What began in the spring of 1998 as a bold and somewhat puzzling experiment has grown into one of Europe’s most important showcases of Asian cinema. When the Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche (CEC) in Udine shifted its focus from Italian retrospectives to a programme dedicated to Hong Kong films, few could have predicted the outcome. Yet…
Yuen Woo-ping’s “Blades of the Guardians” Review
In Blades of the Guardians, director Yuen Woo-ping returns to the wuxia tradition with a film that emphasises the physical and moral foundations of the genre. Known internationally for influencing the style of cinematic combat – just look at The Matrix trilogy and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Yuen treats the film as a way…
The 40th Edition of the BFI Flare Will Run from 18-29 March 2026 at BFI Southbank
Now in its 40th year, the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival returns to BFI Southbank with one of its most expansive and internationally minded editions to date. Long considered a key fixture of the global queer film calendar, the festival continues to balance discovery with legacy, pairing brave new voices with restorations, talks and…
76th Berlin International Film Festival: In Conversation with Priscilla Kelle, Director of “Papaya”
Papaya is an animation that offers an optimistic portrayal of the natural ecological chain. Through the film, audiences gain insight into the complex and interdependent processes within the soil, where plants, fungi, and animals each play their roles, nourishing and sustaining one another in remarkable ways. While the film does acknowledge the negative impact of…
76th Berlin International Film Festival: “Papaya” Review
A compact and light-hearted Brazilian animation, Papaya, screening at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, feels exceptionally sincere and heartening as director Priscilla Kelle’s feature debut. Without dialogue, the constant adventure of the papaya seed reflects a teeming Amazonian forest landscape blazing with colours through its vitality and the complex interactions of plants coexisting within…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 