64th BFI London Film Festival: ‘Relic’ Review

When Kay (Emily Mortimer), along with her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote), visits her mother Edna (Robyn Nevin), a wave of bizarre incidents begins to occur. Upon arrival in Edna’s house, the woman is nowhere to be seen and she is reported as a missing person. Three days later, Edna comes home, dirty, disoriented, without shoes…

64th BFI London Film Festival: ‘Shirley’ Review

Not to be confused with a faithful statement of reality, Josephine Decker’s Shirley is based on the semi-biographical novel of the same title by Susan Scarf Merrell. Blending fact and fiction, Shirley draws from the real-life accounts of famed American Gothic writer, Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) writing her sophomore novel Hangsaman in the early fifties…

64th BFI London Film Festival – ‘Supernova’ Review

The term ‘supernova’ is used to describe the powerful and monumental explosion that occurs at the end of a star’s life cycle; accompanying a supernova is often a large and shrouding black hole encapsulating everything in its perimeter. In more earthly terms, Harry Macqueen uses the phrase in his latest venture Supernova to liken the…

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,…

The 61st BFI London Film Festival: Loving Vincent Review

Who was Vincent van Gogh? To some, he was a madman; to others, an artist; but most people simply saw him as a genius. Vincent was a man with a unique personality and a great gift, whose life wasn’t filled with roses, but with the difficult reality of being rejected by many. What can be…

The 61st BFI London Film Festival: Devil’s Freedom Review

What makes us humane? What are the characteristics that we value and aspire to, the qualities that make us human rather than brutish? These are the questions that one might ask oneself after watching Devil’s Freedom by Everardo González, a Mexican writer, cinematographer and filmmaker, known for his extraordinary documentaries, including Monsenor: The Last Journey of Oscar Romero (2011)…

The 59th BFI London Film Festival: 11 Minutes

After a 5 year hiatus, Jerzy Skolimowski has finally released his new film entitled 11 Minutes. The apocalyptic thriller has already received positive reviews at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, where it was nominated to Golden Lion in the main competition section. It was also screened in the Masters section of the 2015 Toronto…