Film

Not all heroes wear capes. Take Anna (Zsófia Szamosi), for example. From the outside looking in, she lives a simple and secure existence. Mother of three adorable children, living together in a spacious apartment with her husband, and working a job that’s both stable & rewarding. On the page, it sounds perfect. The reality, however, is a little more complicated. Dropping us into the middle of Anna’s life for roughly a 36-hour period – the title is something of a...

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 of the films that cemented him as a visionary and revolutionary filmmaker, Redoubtable centres on the relationship, and its eventual unravelling, between the famed director and his actress, writer and...

There’s a particularly telling scene early on in Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego’s riveting Columbian crime saga, Birds of Passage. Two friends are celebrating in a local shanty bar, reaping the rewards of their latest “business deal” – selling dope to members of the American Peace Corps. They raise their drinks, saluting the role capitalism has played in their newfound wealth. Though not directly related, Birds of Passage is something of a companion piece to Guerra’s previous film (which Gallego...

Though unlikely to be particularly indicative of a wider critical response, it’s impossible to ignore the snorts of incredulity that echoed throughout the Debussy theatre in the Cannes Palais, following a key narrative revelation halfway through Asghar Farhadi’s occasionally compelling but frustratingly contrived festival opener, Everybody Knows. Up until that moment of weakness, Farhadi’s quasi-thriller had displayed plenty of muscle. A modest opening act sets the scene well. Laura (Penélope Cruz) – accompanied by her two children, including her teenage...

About 25 minutes into Revenge, a close up of an ant heralds one of my favourite sequences in a 2018 film to date. For a second it’s just there, large and still in the middle of the screen. Then, in slow motion, with a sound effect like a crashing wave, a drop of blood falls on it. One, two, three, and more drops fall until the film returns to normal speed and the blood becomes a small lake, swallowing the...

Fans of Andrew Niccol will be all too than familiar with the director’s particular brand of Philip K Dick inspired output. From the timeless cult classic Gattaca which is set in a future where people are judged on the strength of their genetic make-up rather than on merit, to the slightly less well received In Time, in which time has replaced money as currency, creating a two-tier society in which only the rich can hope to live beyond the age...

The poster for the 71st Cannes Film Festival features a shot of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina locking lips in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film, Pierrot le Fou. Inspired by the work of French stills photographer Georges Pierre, it’s a handsomely mounted image of idyllic romance, emblazoned against a backdrop of sandy yellow and sun-kissed sea blue. It’s also, in the eyes of this somewhat seasoned Cannes attendee – this year marks my third consecutive year visiting the Croisette – strikingly...

Time is strange. To me, 1993 doesn’t feel like it was that long ago. The films I’m watching for this series are often clearly from an era that has passed, but they don’t feel old to me. Until today. In many ways, Dave is the quaintest film I’ve seen for this project, the one most redolent of a bygone era, specifically because of how precisely certain details of it mirror what is happening in the world as I type this....

The Young Karl Marx is directed by Haitian film-maker, Raoul Peck, whose previous work, I Am Not Your Negro - a documentary focusing on James Baldwin - earned him an Oscar nomination. His latest effort is an intense period drama of the early life and work of Karl Marx. The film does not make any concessions to the audience in presenting the subject matter from an intellectual point of view rather than an emotional one. This does not mean the film...