A Starry Sky Above The Roman Ghetto is a teen drama following Sofia, who decides to track down a mysterious girl whose photo she finds in a suitcase. This leads her to make a play based on the story she uncovers, uniting the Christian and Jewish kids of Rome in its production. She finds a…
Playground is a film about a brother and sister surviving primary school. The opening scene is of Nora’s first day, being reassured by her big brother Abel, and torn away from her father. I just watched this and was like, yup, that’s what it’s like. The synopsis of this film will say it’s about bullying,…
Re-cycle is a Polish short animated film about a man in a post-apocalyptic world of darkness and howling wind, who cycles relentlessly on his bike to charge up what little power he can to run the radio playing his dead wife’s voice singing. Grim as fuck. With no dialogue, it manages to tell a full…
I have no faith, but I was greeting within the first 5 minutes of this film. With all the films I’ve watched lately, where difference is a divide, difference is a source of conflict, it moved me to tears to watch a film where difference is neighbourhood, difference is valued, difference makes us all richer.…
God, this made me wanna learn how to play the piano. My dad used to say, when you see someone play an instrument, it’s like they can make magic in their hands. It’s very true, and it never seems to get old. Tuning is the kind of documentary I love, one that invites you sit,…
This is a wonderful and warm film about Irene, a 16-year-old girl, bursting with life, who is practicing for her audition to get into drama college. A Radiant Girl follows her as she annoys her brother, has her first crush, shares her secrets with her grandma, and embarks on the journey into the bright world…
This is such a Sunday afternoon movie. Lying on your granny’s carpet listening to her tell you what everyone on screen died of. Summer Light reminds me of nothing so much as an episode of Frasier. There’s everyone chasing each other, a ludicrous and precarious party, and disaster always looming. While ostensibly a romantic drama,…
Thou Shalt Not Hate is about an Italian doctor, son of a Holocaust survivor, whose path crosses with a family of neo-Nazis. It is a film about how we deal with the inheritance of hate, and what we might be willing to sacrifice to see the cycle end. Simone is a dashing, middle-aged doctor, who…
Overlong and tedious film. It focuses on France de Meurs, a tv personality who starts taking crying jags. France is a rich, privileged, white woman who has everything, but is still somehow sad. It’s the Anna Karenina conundrum. And I give zero fucks. There is barely the wisp of a plot to this. Whole scenes…
Set almost entirely within an A&E on a night of Yellow Vest protests, The Divide follows the collision of a number of characters as tensions run high. Reminiscent of something like Clash, the political situation in France is boiled down to this one place. There are four main characters, a lesbian couple on the verge…