2011-2020

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The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie from the Turkish film-maker and former Palme winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan: garrulous, humorous and lugubrious in his unmistakable and very engaging style. It’s an unhurried, elegiac address to the idea of childhood and your home town – and how returning to both has a bittersweet savour. As in his previous film, Winter Sleep, he draws on the spirit of Chekhov. But his style is all his own: not Chekhovian, but Ceylanian. There are scenes in which people placidly watch TV: largely histrionic soaps whose contrast to the film itself is a type of comedy the director playfully allows us to notice. In fact, The Wild Pear Tree is not unlike a telenovela of family life, taken at a very high-minded, andante pace.Read More »

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Early on in “We the Animals,” a film adaptation of Justin Torres’ celebrated semi-autobiographical novel, there’s a devastating break in the poor-but-happy family mood set up thus far: The father, known as Paps (Raúl Castillo), beats up Ma (Sheila Vand) and disappears. Ma takes to her bed and neglects her children. The three brothers, Manny (Isaiah Kristian), Jonah (Evan Rosado) and Joel (Josiah Gabriel) run wild, stealing food from nearby gardens and stores, rattling around the town completely unmonitored. When Paps suddenly returns (it’s hard to tell how long he was gone), and he and Ma have a passionate reunion, it’s suddenly clear that the violence wasn’t a break. Instead, it was part of an ongoing cycle of abuse and reconciliation. The brothers ride the wave of their parents’ volatile relationship. This is all seen from the perspective of 10-year-old Jonah, and director Jeremiah Zagar uses a mixture of documentary reality and high-flung poetry in his approach, giving us a visceral sense of being there, in that house with those people.Read More »

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A film inspired by the life and work of Nelly Arcan. The portrait of a fragmented woman, lost between irreconcilable identities: writer, lover, call girl and star.Read More »

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Grant and Christine are still struggling with a storm of grief following the death of their baby. They visit an old friend, Dean, with his new girlfriend, Freya, in an isolated house by the sea. Dean tries but fails to control his drinking. Freya worries about the age difference between her and Dean. Christine confesses her secrets to Dean, upsetting his comfortable world of escapist fantasy and children’s books. Over a long weekend, old loves, losses and resentments are revisited and the life of the dead child is lived out in a series of strange dreams.Read More »

A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.Read More »

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Scouring 100 years of archive footage, BAFTA-winner Paul Wright constructs an exhilarating study of the British people’s shifting — and contradictory — relationship to the land. The film goes on a sensory, visceral journey through the contrasting seasons, taking in folk carnivals and fetes, masked parades, water divining and harvesting. Set to a grand, expressive new score from Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) alongside folk music from the likes of Anne Briggs, Wright’s captivating film essay captures the beauty and brutality, and the magic and madness of rural Britain.Read More »

Talal Derki returns to his homeland where he gains the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses on Osama and his younger brother Ayman, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up in an Islamic Caliphate.Read More »

From Toronto International Film Festival website :

Anne Émond’s dazzling debut feature is a bold and intimate study of a one-night stand. Clara and Nikolai meet at a sweat-soaked rave and end their night at his apartment. The first part of the film is an erotic and candid portrait of their lovemaking, When Clara tries to sneak out without saying goodbye, this typical hookup takes an unexpected turn.Read More »

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Homo homini lupus” – man is a wolf unto man – could be the motto of this film. In this triptych of associatively connected parts, man and nature become intertwined, with legends, rural beauty and romance as the main ingredients in the mix. In the first part, which probably takes place shortly after World War II in the Aosta Valley in Northern Italy, Tomasso and Arturo roam the woods. They hunt, collect mushrooms and steal food and clothing from abandoned huts. Until fate intervenes in the form of an encounter with armed villagers. Tomasso reappears in the second and third parts. More than half a century later, the woods where he hid are teeming with wolves. Visitors to the taverns tell one another stories about a legendary wolf that stalked beautiful girls. This doesn’t stop local beauty Ariane from going into the woods to investigate.Read More »