Women do not experience oppression in exactly the same way and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Where we are born, the laws we live under, religion, family, money and social expectations can make the differences enormous, but across countries and cultures women still find themselves being told what is appropriate for them: how to dress, how…
Tag: Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): “Salvation” Review
Scotland is one of the most wonderful places in Europe, and one I always appreciate seeing on screen. Like anywhere else, people there struggle with money, work, family problems and the uncertainty of what comes next, but art remains very much alive, and Scottish cinema has produced filmmakers who have always understood that ordinary lives…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): “Children Untold” Review
We are taught when wars began and when they ended, who surrendered and who won, but rarely what happened to ordinary people the day after peace was declared. What happened to the children who had no parents to return to, no home, no money and, in many cases, nobody interested in whether they survived? Set…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Sim Su-bin of “The World Before”
Sim Su-bin is still at the beginning of her acting career. So far, she has appeared in supporting roles in Korean dramas, alongside her film work, but Yoon Dan-bi’s The World Before gives her the space to show much more of what she can do. As seventeen-year-old Jin, a girl who has never left the…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Yoon Dan-bi, Director of “The World Before”
There is nothing overstated about Yoon Dan-bi’s films; her stories take shape through families sharing a home, young people spending time together, conversations that seem ordinary and feelings that are not always easy to explain. Her feature debut, Moving On (2019), follows teenage Okju and her younger brother as they move with their father into…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): “The World Before” Review
I have always said to myself that not every film needs an extraordinary story. Korean independent cinema has repeatedly shown how much can be found in everyday lives, familiar places and experiences that might, at first, seem too small for the big screen. And, in all honesty, these films do not always have an easy…
Ryoo Seung-wan’s “Smugglers” Review
Ryoo Seung-wan has done it again with his twelfth feature – albeit in terms of commercial, rather than critical, success. His latest film Smugglers has earned nearly £30 million since its July 26 premiere in South Korea, making it the fourth-highest grossing film of the year in the country and the summer box office champion….
“Ali & Ava” Review (TIFF 2021)
The term “social realism” usually seems like a euphemism for gritty miserabilism in cinema, any feel good films about working class lives usually introducing an aspect of fantasy to proceedings to make them palatable. This might be the reason why any romantic dramas set in Britain revolve around the comfortable middle classes, whose lives are…
“Ahed’s Knee” Review (TIFF 2021)
One of the worst habits many film critics partake in at film festivals is firing off a tweet declaring that they need to let a film “marinate” after initially seeing it, so desperate to voice an immediate reaction even if they haven’t found the words to adequately describe their feelings. And yet, while watching Nadav…
Gets Good Light Review
Coming out of the growing ‘Abolish ICE’ movement – Gets Good Light is a compassionate and powerful protest against the growing powers of the Immigrant and Customs Enforcement Agency in the United States. Since the start of Trump’s administration, the number of individuals apprehended by ICE has only grown – approximately 4,143 undocumented immigrants without…
Silver Linings Playbook Review
Silver Linings Playbook written and directed by David O Russell is based on an incredible novel by Matthew Quick. The film had its world premiere at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival and it is a story of former teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper: The Hangover, Limitless), who has a bipolar disorder and is admitted…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 