Jonathan Hacker’s documentary, Path of Blood, goes behind the curtain to reveal the inner machinations of Saudi Arabia’s Al-Qaeda factions circa the mid-2000s. An opening title sets the stage, re-illuminating anyone who may have forgotten to the fact that in the wake of 9/11 the world has seen the emergence...
Isabel Coixet adapts The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel of the same name, in her latest Goya award-winning film. Coixet crafts an interesting film, one that curiously marshals satisfaction and frustration. Despite its predictability, it remains ambitious in its scope, and touches on subjects that feel both timely and important. It’s...
One can’t help but feel that Sara Driver has missed an opportunity for a truly exciting and insightful documentary about one of the 20th century’s most interesting and revolutionary artists with her first film since her feature, When Pigs Fly. Although the title suggests an exploration of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s later...
On April 26, 1977, Studio 54 opened its doors for the first time to crowds desperate to get the other side of the velvet ropes and past the blacked out doors that kept them out. For many, the name undoubtedly conjures up images of whirring disco balls, celebrities and the...
Sophie Brooks’ debut feature is a plucky heart-warmer that’s tender and beautifully observed. When Diana (Zosia Mamet) moves back to New York after a prolonged stay in London, she moves into her new apartment only to discover her ex-boyfriend lives in the flat below. With a premise like that, Sophie...
Andrew Kötting’s previous film, released this time last year, Edith Walks, paid homage to and told the story of Edith Swan Neck, the wife of King Harold. Shot as an absurdist, quasi-experimental documentary, it followed Kötting and a band of merry travellers as they walked the 108 miles between Waltham...
French director Michel Hazanavicius, whose previous film The Artist took home the Palme d’Or and wowed critics and audiences alike, this time focuses his camera on Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) in his tragicomedy biopic, Redoubtable. Set after the release of Godard’s 1967 flop, La Chinoise, and the directors subsequent rejection...
A solitary figure dressed in fatigues hunches over a dusty patch of ground. He scratches away at the earth and pulls from it a pot flecked with gritty, dried soil. As he adjusts to stand straight, there is a marked stiffness in his right leg and a curious crease in...
The nuanced ambition of Kathleen Hepburn’s 2017 TIFF entry and debut feature, Never Steady, Never Still, based on her short film of the same name, is soaked in the melancholy of quiet suffering. The film takes inspiration from Hepburn’s close personal experience with Parkinson’s disease, the director’s mother having suffered...