The bleak mid-winter in the frozen wilderness; a man clears the snow and stones away, the camera moves back, slowly revealing a huge SOS sign, dug into the snow. Without using any words and only with the sounds of nature, Joe Penna perfectly depicts the situation of the protagonist, Overgård (Mads Mikkelsen: Hannibal, Doctor Strange), in…
Tag: London Film Festival
62nd BFI London Film Festival: Styx Review
Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic atoll, located 7°56′ south of the Equator in the Atlantic Ocean. Charles Darwin visited this lonely archipelago in 1836 aboard HMS Beagle as a part of his second survey expedition of the world, during which he gathered data that aided him in the development of the theory of evolution…
The 61st BFI London Film Festival: In Conversation with Hugh Welchman, Director of ‘Loving Vincent’
Hugh Welchman, an Oxford University graduate in Philosophy, Politics and Economy, has always had his eyes on film-making. Subsequently, he worked hard by doing almost everything, from teaching history to selling fish, just to support himself while working on film corporates in London. After a few calamitous encounters, Hugh came to a decision that training at…
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 60th BFI London Film Festival: Creepy Review
Kiyoshi Kurosawa – a Japanese horror maestro – attracted critics’ attention with his 1997 Cure, a horror film in the purest sense of the word, with an ability to unsettle the audience that was a second to none; Cure also got recognition from various international film festivals and has become one of the most haunting Japanese motion…
The 59th London Film Festival: In Conversation with Choi Dong-hoon, director of ‘Assassination’
Choi Dong-hoon, a South Korean director, began his voyage into filmmaking in 2004 when he released The Big Swing, a crime thriller, which brought him instantaneous praise from domestic and foreign critics. A couple of years later, Choi Dong-hoon repeated his previous success with another interesting production, Tazza: The High Rollers, an adaptation of Huh Young-man and…
The 59th London Film Festival: In Conversation with Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski, born in 1938, is a Polish film director, screenwriter and actor, who is also a painter and a poet. He spent his childhood and teenage years in Prague, where he befriended future filmmaker Milos Forman and Vaclav Havel, a writer, philosopher and politician. He returned to Poland to study Polish Literature and…
The 59th BFI London Film Festival: He Named Me Malala
He Named Me Malala is a documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim, an American filmmaker whose films, An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loud and Waiting for ‘Superman’, have been in the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries since 2009. Guggenheim’s film tells the story of Malala Yousafazai, a young Pakistani girl who advocates for girls’ education and human rights….
The 58th BFI London Film Festival: Rosewater Review
The 2009 Iranian elections saw a controversial win by leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over public favourite Mir-Hossein Mousavi which sparked protests in the streets of Iran. Working on behalf of Newsweek, Maziar Bahari travelled to Iran to report on the elections and was soon swept up in the turmoil. After filming and showing the horrors of…
The 58th BFI London Film Festival: Hill of Freedom Review
For a film that was selected for the laugh category at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, the least you’d expect is Hill of Freedom to be funny. Instead Hong Sang-soo’s film is poorly paced with little acting or directorial merit to speak of. The film follows Mori, a Japanese man searching for his…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 