Category: GFF strand – Pioneer

Fugue is about a woman struggling to rediscover what happened to her 2 years after she loses her memory. At the same time, her family struggle to adjust to her new personality, which is a permanent state of Cannot. Be. Fucked. With. This.

Arctic is a tense, gruelling survival film. Mads Mikkelsen has to trek across the Arctic tundra with an injured friend, facing down polar bears and all sorts. The visuals on this are just amazing. Even the scale. It goes to wide shots and you’re like, “Which black dot is Mads?” Even though it’s shot in…

Chained For Life is a movie about an able-bodied actress playing a blind woman opposite a disabled and deformed man in a schlock horror film. The film is obviously about disability, representation and cripface casting. You’d think with such an explicit message as its main thrust, it would be heavy-handed and obvious. Instead, it’s actually…

Permission is about a female football captain who is denied the right to leave the country for the cup final at the last minute by her husband. He is a slick looking Nice Guy TM who has been waiting for her to fall on her face and, since that hasn’t happened, has decided now is…

Thunder Road is amazing! Funniest movie of the festival so far. Really, bleakly dark humour. It follows Jim, a buttoned-down, dorky, Texan, beat cop as he has the worst week of his life. If you ever wondered what it’d be like if a stereotypical, yes-sir, thank ya-ma’am, policeman took a total nervous breakdown, the answer…

The Man Who Surprised Everyone is a queer film out of Russian. A well-respected family man at the centre of his rural community is diagnosed with untreatable terminal cancer. He makes preparations for his family once he’s gone but his wife begs him to go for last-ditch efforts, even seeking out a traditional healer. This…

Werewolf is set in the absolute chaos following the liberation of the concentration camps. The prisoners, the Nazis and their brutal attack dogs flee into the surrounding countryside. A group of children are set up in an abandoned mansion, and told to waited for supplies once Allied lines are solidified. But the food never comes,…

Magical realism from Sweden, Border is based on a short story by John Ajvide Linquist, author of Let The Right One In. Tina is half sniffer dog, half woman, capable of smelling deception. She works at border control where she uses her talent to stop ne’erdowells. From there the story forks into her helping track…

Family politics in 19th century Vietnam as a wealthy silk producer gets himself a 14-year-old for his third wife. The Third Wife is everything you’d expect in historical drama set in East Asia – sumptuous gowns, sensuous filming, candlelit sex scenes.

A movie that could not be more relevant to the current newscycle, Dear Son is about a father searching for answers after his son up and runs off to Syria. A vividly drawn picture of an ordinary family undergoing the ordinary issue of a teenager making a bad decision, painting the ecstatics of betrayal and…