Surge is about a guy having a total mental breakdown. Ben Wishaw is outstanding in this nerve-searing, idiosyncratic, spontaneous feeling performance. He looks like every interaction he has with someone in this film is using the last thread of his patience. In November, I got a wisdom tooth out, and the pain was white electric,…
Dreams on Fire follows a young girl as she leaves her strict and sheltered home in the countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer in the big city. Her journey takes her through the various dance subcultures of Tokyo, from contemporary and tap, to headbanging to heavy metal, to R&B and urban freestyle,…
A guy gets a white girlfriend and everything turns to shit. A Brixton Tale is about Leah and Benji, teenagers from opposite sides of the city, who meet and begin a relationship. But the pressures of racism and class are present from the very beginning and threaten doom. I spent the whole of this film…
Cowboys is about Joe riding off into the Montana wilderness with his dad to escape his transphobic mother who is determined to raise Joe as a girl. Steve Zahn radiates warmth as the kind of dad we all want, a man who has his kid’s back. Sasha Knight is excellent as Joe, giving a mature…
A seventeen year old girl loses her mum in a car crash and is sent to live with her aunt’s family, a bunch of gangsters. The main character Ida has to decide whether she will chose her newfound family over the right and wrongs of their nefarious dealings. You get the feeling that Ida’s previous…
In 1963 the Gagarine housing estate was opened in Ivry, France. Named after the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, who attended its opening. It was a building of the future, in an era of optimism where the possibilities seemed endless. Now in the 21st century, the estate has been subject to…
What a fucking great movie! I laughed until my vision greyed. My favourite film of the festival so far. I highly recommend you take the chance to see this. Just perfect. The dry, dead-pan comedy is just dead on, combining the asylum process’s Kafkaesque absurdity with the dark Scottish sense of humour. At one point…
Sweetheart is a coming-of-age first love story set in a crap British caravan resort. Reminded me of holidays at Southerness, enjoying it so much I’d hide in my bedroom wardrobe reading pick-you-own-adventure books. In some ways Sweetheart is like a 21st century British John Hughes film, about one life-changing summer. There’s something so timelessly naive…
In the style of classic love stories, a woman stands on the Liberty Bridge in Budapest waiting for the lover to show at the pre-arranged time and place to show that their love is true. And he does not show. And when she tracks him down, he does not recognise her and says he has…
BIG vs SMALL follows Joana Andrade, a professional surfer, and the first Portuguese woman to surf the waves at Nazare, where the waves can reach up to 80ft tall. Andrade at 5ft 1″ cuts a small silhouette by comparison against these monstrous waves. Andrade is frank about the fear she feels regarding tackling these giants.…