Some filmmakers tell stories, and some preserve entire histories through their work. Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir belongs to the latter. Across her extraordinary career, from Salt of This Sea to When I Saw You and Wajib, Jacir’s work comes from a place of honesty, an understanding of her people’s struggle, and a refusal to let their…
Tag: BFI LFF
69th BFI London Film Festival: In Conversation with Calif Chong, Isabella Wei and Matthew P. Scott of “High Wire”
Hong Kong director Calif Chong’s debut feature, High Wire, makes a striking entrance, a film that is at once humorous, compelling, and real. Best known for her acclaimed 2019 short Underneath, Chong ventures into feature territory with a story that examines the delicate balance of duty and desire, the weight of parental expectation, and the…
69th BFI London Film Festival: “Hair, Paper, Water” Review
Vietnamese cinema has long existed in the margins of Southeast Asian film culture, overshadowed by the global recognition of its regional neighbours. Yet, in recent years, a resurgence has begun to take shape, led by filmmakers whose work values poetic observation over plot. Among them, Trương Minh Quý. His latest collaboration with Belgian filmmaker Nicolas…
69th BFI London Film Festival: “Island of the Winds” Review
Hsu Ya-Ting’s Island of the Winds is a heart-rending documentary that immerses the viewer in the often-overlooked lives of the elderly residents of Lesheng Sanatorium, a former leper colony on the outskirts of Taipei. From the very first moments, the film builds an intimate closeness to its subjects, allowing their memories and struggles to surface…
69th BFI London Film Festival: “With Hasan in Gaza” Review
Few films feel as urgent as With Hasan in Gaza. Especially now, when Palestinian voices are so often drowned out, this documentary resurrects what has been erased: streets, faces, and laughter that once existed in Gaza before repeated cycles of war and occupation. While Palestine continues to endure military occupation and the horrors of genocide,…
69th BFI London Film Festival: “Human Resource” Review
Abortion remains one of the most polarising debates in the world: a subject weighed down by politics, religion, and morality, but rarely centred on the lived experiences of the women forced to make impossible choices. Too often, the men who play a part in unplanned pregnancies can walk away, while women are left carrying the…
66th BFI London Film Festival: “Decision to Leave” Review
It may not seem like it at first glance, but Park Chan-wook’s films are those of a distinctly romantic disposition. His narratives typically explore the tension that arises when erotic and emotional idealism meets cold, hard reality; in his films, the only happy romances can be found in either the dispassionate confines of a mental…
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