film directors
Jasper Rees
Local Hero, released in 1983, has been adapted into a musical, with a book by playwright David Greig and more songs from the soundtrack's original composer Mark Knopfler. After its premiere at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, it will arrive at the Old Vic in 2020. No British film from the Eighties can lay claim to quite such lasting and deep-seated affection as Bill Forsyth’s modest masterpiece – not even Chariots of Fire, which was David Puttnam’s previous triumph as a producer. Though not a great commercial success at first – it had a limited release in America – it went on to bloom on VHS Read more ...
Tom Baily
Benjamin is the debut feature of Simon Amstell, a young director who has thought cleverly about the torments (and hilarities) of artistic creation in an information-soaked world. The protagonist Benjamin (Colin Morgan) lives in a contemporary London swimming with creative abundance and social disconnection, in which everyone suffers their own brand of affliction. Benjamin broods with a unique kind of vim, as though self-doubt were an addictive substance, crippling him in fitful questioning and social mishaps. Amstell brings enough ingenuity and bawdy whimsy to his story to keep it feeling Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The story behind this first – and final – feature from the young Chinese film-maker Hu Bo is as sad as anything in recent cinema history. Stretching to nearly four hours, An Elephant Sitting Still is a film of almost unremitting bleakness, following the overlapping paths of a group of characters and their existence – “life” hardly seems the right word for it – in a run-down city in regional China. Set over the course of one day, it is also a hugely skilled piece of filmmaking, with a script from Hu (also an acclaimed novelist) that manages the rare achievement of bringing separate strands of Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot uses irony and visual poetry to condemn his nation’s militarism. Twenty months after the movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice, it opens in the UK trailing a divisive history. When it first emerged in 2017, it was condemned as un-Israeli by then culture minister Miri Regev. She was subsequently barred from the ceremony for the Ophir awards (the Israeli Oscars), at which Foxtrot won eight prizes, including Best Picture.The film was designed as a triptych. The first section focuses on the grief of a well-to-do Tel Aviv couple, Michael and Daphna (Lior Read more ...
mark.kidel
Derek Jarman has always been described as irreverent, but, paradoxically, he is treated today with unreserved and probably excessive reverence. In the church of the avant-garde, and it’s perhaps not completely out of order to suggest that such an institution exists, he has been well and truly sanctified.Volume Two of the BFI’s monumental and impressive edition of Jarman’s video and film work will add to his status as genius and martyr. This lovingly assembled collection completes a remarkable account of the director’s work with the moving image, an extraordinary oeuvre as he was also writing Read more ...
Owen Richards
A British boys boarding school in the 1980s. Not the most obvious setting for a romantic comedy, especially one based on the most famous romcom of all, Cyrano de Bergerac. But for director Toby Macdonald, it was the ideal challenge for his debut feature following the BAFTA-nominated short Heavy Metal Drummer.Old Boys stars Alex Lawther as Amberson, an unpopular squirt of a boy struggling to wade through the school’s various allegiances and sports. Life takes an upturn on the arrival of Agnes (Pauline Etienne), the daughter of the new French teacher. She’s interesting, arty, and quite honestly Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
As journalists and critics were enjoying the unseasonably balmy weather in Berlin at the 69th Film Festival, all were wondering – where are all the good films? Surely outgoing festival director Dieter Kosslick would want to conclude his 18-year tenure by going out on a bang? Apparently not.Berlin has never had the glitzy attraction of Cannes or the Oscar-hungry titles of Venice and Toronto. Still, journalists and critics have flocked to the German capital each year. This is because Berlin is a festival where you expect to find challenging, demanding, and revitalising cinema. Cinema that gets Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Tides tells of fortysomething angst and camaraderie, though “tells” might be an exaggeration. In a concerted attempt to make a film with minimal incidents and structure, first-time feature director Tupac Felber made a likeable observational piece, based mostly on improvisation, rather than a compelling “watch”.Over a long summer weekend, Jon (Jon Foster), matey but highly-strung, and his quiet and equable friend Zooby (Jamie Zubairi) travel on a barge along some lovely Surrey waterways. They are joined by their cheerful, mouthy woman pal Red (Robyn Isaac), and the self-contained Simon (Simon Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Films that show a young couple’s love deepening are rare because without personal conflict there’s no narrative progression. They're especially rare in the current mainstream American cinema since romantic dramas are commercially risky, though LGBTQ entries like Carol and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, following Brokeback Mountain, have found strong critical favor. Set in Harlem, mostly in the early 1970s, Jenkins’ latest, If Beale Street Could Talk, forcefully bucks the anti-romantic trend with its story of passionate soulmates Tish Rivers and Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt (KiKi Layne and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Burning, which is the first film directed by the Korean master Lee Chang-dong since 2010’s Poetry, begins as the desultory story of a hook-up between a pair of poor, unmotivated millennials – the girl already a lost soul, the boy a wannabe writer saddled with a criminally angry father. The addition of a Porsche-driving third millennial with a swanky apartment in Seoul’s Gangnam District not only ramps up the tension between the two instantaneously but creates one of the most infernal romantic triangles in modern Asian cinema. Entering its third act, the movie morphs into a noir-steeped Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Sitting somewhere between Ruben Östlund’s The Square and Final Destination, Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw is a satirical supernatural thriller that goes for the jugular of the LA art scene.We open at the Art Basel Miami Beach, where art snobs with fat wallets glide from room to room with glazed eyes as they gaze at the objet d'art. There's a talking robot exhibit Hobo Man, and a giant polished silver orb pocked with holes you can stick your arm into - what it does it mean? No one cares much, it’s about how much it’s worth. It’s all incredibly pointed and fun, with Gilroy showing up the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Nadia Murad caught the world’s attention when she spoke at the United Nations Security Council. She spoke of living under ISIS, daily assaults, escaping, and the current plight of the Yazidi people, in refugee camps and still under ISIS control. It was a heart-breaking plea for support to the world’s silent nations. But in a rapidly changing news landscape, it’s easy to stay silent and wait for the next story come to come along.On Her Shoulders is a new documentary about Nadia’s plight, and specifically the amount of travelling, planning and interviewing she subjects herself to just to keep Read more ...