Month: September 2016

Ma’ Rosa

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Forget City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002), Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000) and Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981) – Ma’ Rosa isn’t just another movie about drugs. It is an urgent and minute register of the several layers of Filipino society, with ingredients such as family devotion, drug trafficking, prostitution, homosexuality, police corruption and much more.

Cinematographer Odyssey Flores takes you into a wild and frenetic trip through the streets of Manila, where Ma’ Rosa (Jaclyn Jose) has set up her small drug business. She is at the bottom of the chain of the drug business in town, but most of all she represents the strength of a matriarchal society. Nothing is glamorous in this picture. What cameras show are the real colours of a very subversive life choice. The raw cinema vérité feel will blow you away.

Ma’ Rosa lives in a shanty town and sells crystal meth – nicknamed ice – to locals. The drug is highly addictive and users feel agitated, paranoid, confused, aggressive and sometimes even psychotic. All her family is involved with the business, including her husband and her three kids. One day, she is tipped off by a neighbour and arrested along with her husband by the police. The offence is non-bailable, due to the high quantity of drug under her possession. They do not charge the couple; instead they try to torture and extort money and information from them. Ma’ soon grasses on other dealers, but the police dismisses them as minnows. They want to catch the big fish.

The only solution to free Ma’ Rosa and her husband is if her kids raise the money police wants. Then, the real trip into the Filipino society turns edgy. The children will resort to some very unorthodox measures in order to free their parents.

Jaclyn Jose’s portrayal of Ma’ Rosa won her Best Actress prize in Cannes. She is capable of communicating deep emotional states with very few words. Her acting is a constrictive and yet very energetic, just like small fish caught up in a large net. The acting is supporting by a very harrowing soundtrack. Films like Ma’ Rosa are a cold look into an topic our eyes tend to neglect. Ma’ Rosa’s predicament is part of a game that perpetuates poverty in countries like the Philippines. Drugs and corruption are part of this game, and as we see in the end of the movie, it is impossible to break away from the cycle.

Ma’ Rosa is showing as part of the 60th BFI London Film Festival starting next week – just click here for more information.

Watch the film trailer here:

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Creepy

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Storing food with vaccum packaging may never be same after you’ve watch this 130-minute long Japanese horror flick. After dabbling with other genres (including thrillers and drama, such Tokyo Sonata from 2008), Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to what he does best and cataculped him to fame in the 1980s: nail-biting horror.

The film is an adaptation of the eponymous mystery novel by Yutaka Maekawa’s. Senior detective Koichi Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) quits his job after failing to use his psychopath theory to stop a hostage situation, which instead ended up in a carnage. He becomes a lecturer and moves to a large house in the suburbs with his young and beautiful wife Yasuko (Yuko Takeuchi).

Yasuko insistently attempts to befriend her eccentric neighbour Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa, pictured above, and also in Tokyo Sonata), who rapidly swings from a friendly and obsequious mood to a frantic and erratic one. Most of the time, he is secluded at home with his equally creepy and ambiguous teenage daughter Mio (Ryoko Fujino) and a very mysterious never-to-be-seen wife, who apparently suffers from profound depression.

Fears of conviviliaty prevail in the movie. Japanese etiquette when dealing neighbours and strangers is so tense and prescriptive that it may come across as wooden acting to those less familiar with the culture. Kurosawa creates an equally taut setting: bleak and sterile landscapes, claustrophobic houses with narrow entranceways, gardens cluttered with junk and weed, surrounded by tall glass and metal buildings. The lighting is consistently dim. Everything looks soulless and dull, inhabited by human beings uncapable or establishing a relationship with each other.

Nishino is a very unusual psychopath. Instead of killing his own victims, he persuades others to do it for him, thereby keeping his hands and perhaps his consciousness clean. He has a long terrifying history to be unveiled, and his family is not quite what it seems. It is unclear, however, how he manipulates people to commit crimes on his behalf: is it pure psychology, is it a drug or does he ultimately have other powers? Paranormality here is replaced by some sort of mysteriously infectious insanity, raising the questions: is psychotic behaviour contagious, and are we all latent serial killers?

The house where Nishino lives is some sort of Bates Motel with some very Japanese perversions: somber, full of corridors and with a cellar teeming with secrets. Most people who go in there end up dead, just like the detective Arbogast in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). In fact, Kurosawa is such a big fan of the British director that he appears in the 2015 documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut (directed by Kent Jones).

Ultimately, Creepy is a film about the ephemerality of trust in the ones you love. How can you kill a parent, a spouse or a friend? Can the evil powers and twisted seduction skills of a stranger supersede such loving relationships? How do you fend off servility when confronted by a very powerful, borderline inhuman force? The answers could be in Nishino’s basement. Cellars and sadistic psychokillers are creepy by default, but what’s really disturbing is how near they could be. Perhaps the psychokiller is even inside you.

Creepy premiered at the BFI London Film Festival 2016, when this piece was originally written. It’s on Mubi in November 2020.

In Between (Bar Bahar)

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What happens when an independent female filmmaker with no connection to Hollywood decides to make a movie about three Palestinian women in Tel Aviv? The result of In Between is a compelling register of women fighting for their individuality and independence from relatives and boyfriends.

Laila is a liberal party-girl attorney. She smokes, she takes drugs and she has a handsome boyfriend who is attracted to her but is too embarrassed to introduce her to his family. She might not be the right girl “to marry with”. Salma is a Christian communist lesbian DJ who tells her family her sexual preferences. When she comes back to her hometown with her lover, it turns to be an awkward situation. Her parents had arranged her marriage to a young man. Nur is the last one to join the “Arabic Girls club”. She is shy and a virgin, with a strong Islamic tradition background. Throughout the movie, she finds out her fiancée is not the charming prince for which she was hoping.

In Between is the first feature by Maysaloun Hamoud, who was born in Budapest but returned to her family’s native village of Dir Hana in Israel when she was two years old. Her natural concern about the condition of Palestinian women led to a conscious shout for equality in the conflict zone. There is no reference to war in the movie; instead the film is centered on the cultural and religious differences of three young girls who share the same flat.

Although the girls do not share the same lifestyle, their friendship functions well. They are learning that it is painful to face the hypocrisy of the society to which they belong. In her speech during the Award celebration at San Sebastian Film Festival, director Maysaloun repeatedly sustained “we need to change”. The film won two awards at the acclaimed film festival.

Finding a balance between tradition and modern culture might be the most challenging achievement for Palestinian women. In Between suggests exactly what the film title means: they are in the middle of the road, obviously unprotected. Tradition does not have the same appeal, and modern culture has not totally welcomed them yet.

The film is an example of the gender equality issues that have been raised in the cinema industry lately. It is not a feminist story such as The Suffragette (Sarah Gavron, 2015) and because it doesn’t purport to be a political and historical movie, it is even more efficient. Here the women’s voices come loud and clear. They are staging their own present dramas in a poetic and respectful way. Their stories is full of compassion and solidarity, and should be seen with an open-minded attitude. It is liberating not only for Palestinians, but for mankind too.

The film showed in San Sebastian last year, when this piece was originally written. We are delighted that the movie now has a distributor and is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 22nd. Due to exceptional demand, it was re-released on December 19th in selected cinemas. It’s out on DVD and VoD on January 29th.

The Graduation (Le Concours)

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Do you want to be a filmmaker? Is going to a prestigious film school in France the most certain and legitimate way of achieving success in the movie industry? The documentary The Graduation explores the entry exams for La Fémis, a French state film college under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture.

The desire to make cinema prevails throughout the film, as do fears and anxieties. Candidates explain in detail why they want to become a film director, and they answer the questions posed by an examining board composed of established film professionals, such the filmmaker Olivier Ducastel (who directed Paris 5:59 earlier this year). The film also captures the comments and jokes that the examiners make when they are on their own, away from the attentive eyes of the keen young men and women. A candidate from Ivory Coast explains that cinema is a weapon against disinformation because people “listen to images”, but she never wanted to be a politician. Menawhile, the examiners tell anecdotes about passion, relationships and masturbation.

The Graduation is not a rivetting movie unless you are in a very specific moment of your life – your film college entry exams – or are very nostalgic of when you took those in the past. In other words, if you are a diehard filmmaking enthusiast with a taste for college doctrine. The camera in non-intrusive and manipulative, but it is also a little slow and manneristic, and at times it feels like watching CCTV inside the emblematic French school.

Other documentary movies about filmmaking succeeded at captivating audiences much more effectively than this one. For example, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Hello Cinema (1995) is an energetic and visceral register of auditions to become a film actor, and a masterpiece per se. The Graduation is less ambitious, more distant and elitist. It surfs through the lives and ambitions of the young people, without going into much depth. It gives the impression that filmmaking in France is more formulaic and less liberating than in country with a less established and austere industry, such as Iran.

The Graduation won the ultra-specific prize for Best Documentary On Cinema this year at the Venice Film Festival. It showed as part of the BFI London Film Festival in October 2016, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in selected cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 15th.

Moonlight

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Until the 19th century many people used to think that moonlight could drive you insane, and many mentally-ill people were locked inside without a view of the earth’s only natural satellite. Hence the expression “lunatic” and “moonstruck”. But the moonlight can also provide brightness and save lives, particularly if you are lost in a dark forest in the middle of the night. This American drama is full of hope for the marginalised gay and black Americans, so that they don’t succumb to the old-fashioned powers of the moon.

Moonlight tells the story of Chiron at three stages of his life: childhood, adolescence and adulthood (played by a different actor at each stage). He is constantly seeking maternal love and affection, but his mother constantly shuns him in favour of her drug addiction. He ironically finds solace with a local drug dealer, who becomes a provisional father figure to the young black boy. He learns from him that his mother is his client and also, more significantly, the meaning of the word “faggot”. “It is a word to make gay people feel bad about themselves”, the unexpectedly gentle and caring man explains.

The community in which Chiron live is highly insular. White people are conspicuous in the absence, they are to be seen nowhere – not even in the background. Chiron proudly identifies himself as black, so race is indeed a main focus of the movie. This community is very violent, and Chiron is often a victim of beating in his teenage years, as his bullies suspect that he is a homosexual.

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Trevante Rhodes play an adult Chiron

Despite not being a drug addict and a perpetrator of violence, Chiron also has problems with the police. A crime record is not unusual in a revolving-doors culture as this. Chiron’s challenge is to break the cycle, and prevent homophobia and violence to prevail in his life. The director Barry Jenkins deftly plays with music and silence in order to convey a sense of nervousness and uncertainty. The writing is on the wall: it’s difficult to be black in the US, but it’s far more challenging to be openly gay, particularly if you live in a drug-ridden and insular community of Florida. Intersectionality is also a key issue, as being black and gay poses further challenges to the character.

Moonlight has it shortcomings, such as the two actors playing Chiron’s lover at different ages looking nothing like each other. The soundtrack – a mixture of opera, classic music, R&B and even the classic Caetano Veloso’s ‘Cucurrucucu Paloma’ – is mostly effective, but at times slips into a melodramatic tone, not in line with the rest of the movie. Still a powerful human experience whether or not you are black and gay.

Moonlight was screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival, and it also showed as part of the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It was released in UK cinemas in February 2017, the same month as it won the Best Picture Oscar after a wrong announcement erroniously crowned La La Land (Damien Chazelle). The actor Mahershala Ali, who plays the drug dealer Chiron meets as a child (pictured above), deservingly won the Best Supporting Actor statuette.

And also don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:

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Memory Exercises (Ejercicios de Memoria)

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The Paraguayan politician Agustín Goiburú disappeared without a trace while living in exile in the Argentinian province of Entre Ríos. He was the most prominent and vocal opponent of Alfredo Stroessner, the military dictator that ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. The documentarist Paz Encina found a very inventive way to recreate the Paraguayan political context through the memories of three children. These young desaparecidos (missing) reveal intimate memories of a country for the past 35 years without ever appearing on-screen.

The rhythm of the film is very slow. The camera brings to sight an old house in the countryside, its objects and its surroundings. Most of the time, the film portrays children from the Guarani tribe, playing in the river or riding horses. Encina relates Goiburú’s opposition and death to the killings of native indigenous people. The strength is that the feature is profoundly critical of a very violent political regime without ever displaying graphic violence.

One of Agustín Goiburú’s son, Rolando, was just a kid when he and his father were kidnapped by the guards of the president. His memories are of a stolen childhood. He was fishing with his father when the men arrived and asked for their documents. Still on the boat, the guards obliged them and another man to row until they reached a Marine post. The guards carried weapons that were used 30 years before during Chaco War, a conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay over a territory.

The other son and daughter explain how they learnt to use weapons and always to be suspicious of strangers. Goiburú was a doctor who publicly denounced the torture and violence carried out by Stroessner’s regime. He was also a founder member of Mopoco (Movimiento Popular Colorado) in 1958, a resistance movement that infuriated the dictator.

Stroessner unsuccessfully tried to capture Goiburú for many years. In 1976, Argentine suffered a coup d’etat, and as a consequence Stroessner had the enthusiastic support of the neighbouring country’s new leader. The United States provided technical support and supplied military aid to members of governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, in the intelligence operation known as Operation Condor. The dissident doctor was quickly located and murdered.

The most aggressive way to portray history is by comparing the young Guarani kids living in freedom with the the official photos and documents taken by the intelligence service. Goiburú’s family never found the body and were never able to bury him. There is no closure, and so they are still mourning. There is an illusion, an incomplete memory, that consists of a terrifying aspect of life.

Memory Exercises is Encina’s second feature film. It was presented in San Sebastian International Film Festival in 2016, when this piece was originally written. It’s showing in September 2017 at the Open City Docs Film Festival in London.

You can watch it right here with DMovies and Eyelet:

American Pastoral

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An Anglo-Saxon hybrid of Almodovar’s Julieta (2016) and Nanni Moretti’s The Son’s Room (2001), that’s the best way of describing American Pastoral. Likewise the other two films, it depicts the story of parents who are struggling to survive after the disappearance of their children. Instead of having a Spanish melodramatic flavour, or an operatic Italian trauma, McGregor’s feature is based on Philip Roth’s novel, which sets the familiar tragedy using the Newark riots of 1967 as a background.

It is the first feature directed by actor Ewan McGregor, who described the task as “an incredible responsibility”. He also plays the main role Seymour “Swede” Levov, a once legendary high school athlete, whose beloved daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning) disappears after being accused of bombing a post office. Swede is a character that is broken by the loss of his daughter. The film explores guilt and taboos, such as incest, in a very touching way. McGregor confesses: “I was so attached to this role because I experienced other kinds of loss as a parent”. He has four daughters.

Apart from bringing to surface parenting issues, American Pastoral revisits some important social fights that occurred in the ‘60s. The anti-war movement during the Vietnam war is one of them and probably the most famous one. The Newark riots is another: Newark was one of the cities across the country where social convulsion broke out in the late 1960s. Years of poverty and discrimination had created frustration in many black communities. A black cab driver was pulled over and badly beaten by the police. When the riot ended, the area had been devastated. More than 45 years has passed, and it now seems Newark tried to overcome the historical wounds in favour of a message of renaissance. The event is still the spark of smoldering resentment.

The tension that arises between the couple after the disappearance of the daughter is a symbol of the complexity of family roles. How to be lovers again if your child is not around? How to search for something authentic for yourself if you are not sure your daughter is a criminal or not? Mother Dawn (played by Jennifer Connelly) has to deal with the challenge of reinventing her role as a wife. She literally goes mad. She was too beautiful and young when she got married. She adopted her husband’s faith and now it seems that her past choices were wrong. Her identity crisis is compelling.

The film reveals an aspect of the American dream that was rudely interrupted after World War II. It deconstructs our ideals and exposes our vulnerabilities. We are left with the same feeling of the daughter Merry: having to face the reality and being the child who is stuttering in fright.

American Pastoral is out in cinemas on November 10th.

You can watch the film trailer right here:

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Sieranevada

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Family: either you love or you hate them. There are many things to consider when you think of family: rivalries, treason, political and religious differences, background, birth order, manipulation, envy and much more. But when the world outside is a threat, everyone wants to come back into the womb. Lary, a doctor in his forties, travels to a family gathering in Romania commemorating the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, just three days after the tragedy. But the occasion is not as simple as one can imagine.

The most disturbing aspect of the movie is the camerawork. Once Lary arrives at his mother’s house with his wife, all sorts of characters suddenly come together. The camera never follows the same character for more than roughly one minute. It is very uncomfortable for the audience to be in a house where you cannot figure out the size of the kitchen or other rooms. The complex camerawork frequently changes the point of view, and follows family members as they enter rooms and close doors. As a result, audience is unable to identify with one single character. You just don’t know who to believe.

Once you get used to the rhythm – the film is 172 minutes long, and it is almost entirely shot in a flat -, there are other aspects to consider. Family members discuss politics – the heritage of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime, the World Trade Center attack, the more recent tragedies in Europe. There never seems to be a consensus, arguments are mostly flawed, and their knowledge often scarse. The path to the truth is craggy and rough.

The film is packed with awkward moments. There is a drunk Serbian friend, who needs to be hidden and locked in a room. There is also a visiting priest, and no one can eat before he says his rites. People struggle to engage in the ritual, and anxiety and hunger are rife. These are situations people have to put up with for the sake of the family harmony.

Cristi Puiu (The Bridges of Sarajevo, 2014) creates a film that is both claustrophobic and hypnotic. Visiting your family can culminate in an explosion of emotions. Still, in a way, we all have the duty to do it. The prodigal son must return home.

Sieranevada is part of the BFI London Film Festival. Previously the feature competed for the Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival and was part of the Pearl Section at San Sebastian International Film Festival

Don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:

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The Cambridge Squatter (Era o Hotel Cambridge)

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The Cambridge Squatter is a very unconventional film blending fiction and documentary. It is not a docu-fiction, though, as it doesn’t attempt to reenact a fact that belongs to the past. It is a movie about what is going on right now in Brazil. And what it tells is very urgent.

The movie is a collaboration between actors and activists – and it is not by chance that those two words have the same Latin root. The film surfaces in a historical moment in Brazil which mandates pressing and critical action.

Filmmaker Eliane Caffé told DMovies: “We came to San Sebastian International Film Festival to protest. Brazil is going backwards. There was a coup and some people built a story that what happened was an impeachment”. Caffé has joined other Brazilian filmmakers in the defense of former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, such as Kleber Mendonca Filho (Aquarius, 2016), Anna Muylaert (The Second Mother, 2015) and Aly Muritiba (To My Beloved, 2015). She has just produced the video for Lula’s statement at the opening of the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, which happened last Tuesday, September 20th.

The Hotel Cambridge is a building in the centre of São Paulo for homeless and refugees, who only recently arrived from the Congo, Palestine and Syria. Together they occupy a building that turns into a stage for their struggles and tragicomic events. Despite mutual prejudices, their leaders work together and implement unusual strategies to surmount the problems brought about by collective cohabitation. The actors are the real refugees, the leader of the Front for Housing Organisation (FLM, in the Portuguese acronym), Carmen Silva, as well as well known Brazilian actors José Dumont and Suely Franco.

In order to create a harmonious atmosphere between actors and refugees, there was a series of workshops with them for more than a year. It was important that actors did not prevail over non-actors. The coexistence of actors and activists is the richness of this feature. As Carmen Silva states “we are all refugees from the lack of public politics”.

The Cambridge Squatter is a very subversive movie in many ways, not just in its unusual blend of fiction and documentary. It denounces a state of war in a country known for never being at war. Many refugees from Africa, Palestine and Europe chose to come to Brazil precisely because of the country’s tradition of pacifism. Lula’s government opened the borders for them, but there was no inclusion strategy. After three months – usually the time spent to give them papers -, they are left on the streets. That is why they search for associations such as FLM, which supports them in their squatting activities. The problem is that refugees don’t have the right to protest in public.

The film narrative is a poem about the disorder of the system. The Palestinian man agrees: “All my life I lived in an occupied country. Now for the first time I am occupying somewhere”.

The Brazilian sense of humour, even under high-pressure situations, pervades the screen. The memories of the characters, their dreams and their scars are all part of a complex urban mosaic. The reality endows the film with an epic quality and what is evident is that there is still room for art and resistance.

The Cambridge Squatter showed at the 60th San Sebastian Film Festival in 2016, when this piece was originally written. The film is showing in London on Sunday October 1st (2017), as part of an event organised by Alborada. Just click here for your tickets.

Nocturama

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A film as controversial, inventive and shocking as the subject it depicts: the recent terrorist attacks on French soil. As part of the Official Selection in San Sebastian International Film Festival, Nocturama caused a wild frisson this Sunday.

The first quarter of the film has no narrative. The camera simply follows different characters, all of them young, on the streets and in the tube of Paris. They take pictures of strange things in order to register their journey, and they are always worried about time. Some throw away their mobile in a rubbish bin, just like criminals or secret agents would do. Audience still do not know whether these characters are connected and how.

The lack of rationale in the narrative, as well as the absence of logical explanations make the film very intriguing to watch. The thriller gradually morphs into a suspense movie, until finally the characters meet and dance together. They are all united into one single purpose: a strange dance to terrify Paris.

Bonello uses the history of France ir order to construct new revolutionaries. This bunch of sans culotte are radical and militant partisans. Their rhetoric is not coherent, but they are ready to sacrifice their lives for a new order. They are able to infiltrate the security of French companies because they do not look like Arabs. They are clever enough to rehearse their terrorist attacks in a natural way.

Once their purpose is complete, they decide they will meet again for a whole night in a shopping mall – the most ironic place to be. Malls shouldn’t be a place to be happy, have fun and celebrate the success of a terrorist attack. Indeed Bonello’s criticism of the establishment is very acid. For him, terrorists want the same things as the bourgeoisie.

Some of the scenes are beautifully emblematic of a generation: the emptiness of existence comes in the form of masks, plastic curtains and mannequins. After all extremists are merely string puppets, easy to manipulate. Music in the film is powerful and hypnotic. The sounds of rap, house and pop explain the behaviour of a French generation who inherited the clash as a way of living. Even ‘My Way’, delivered by Shirley Bassey, acquires a new meaning in Nocturama.

The camerawork is also remarkable and somehow resonates with Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003): it follows both killers and victims in a disciplined and homogenous.

There is a lot of anger in France now, this is very clear in the movie. People simply cannot understand how a lorry could drive freely around Nice on the night of a French national holiday. The film reflects the serious dysfunctional facets of a society and the failures of social integration. Watching it is a disturbing catharsis.

Nocturama is showing right now as part of the Official Competition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, which DMovies is covering in loco.

This is the film trailer:

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Norfolk

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Can a man with a dysfunctional character and the violent past have a good relationship with his son? Martin Radich’s second feature is a breathtaking thriller set in a remote location in the countryside of Norfolk. The intimate relationship of the father, who works as a mercenary, with his teenager son is suddenly disrupted by the arrival of the boy’s maternal grandparents. A huge revelation about the father’s past will shake the tranquil family to the core.

Norfolk offers a distinctive exploration of the relationship within a family, between a father and son. The director investigates not just the close bond between father and son but also the relationship and dynamic between two male characters. The very first scenes we see the unnamed boy (Barry Keoghan) trying trying to emulate his older man (Denis Ménochet), by following him around or engaging in absurd tasks, such putting a whole egg is his mouth. Being isolated from the rest of the world, the father is the only source of inspiration and influence for the adolescent. The communication with the outer world comes mostly through the various channels on the television.

The virtuosic camera work portrays highghlight well the intense and dramatic moments between father and son. Close-ups and medium close-ups reveal the frustration, anger and intensity of the characters, while a few wide shots emphasise the loneliness and isolation of the British countryside. The background is so minimalistic, that we lose sense of space and time, and the dreamlike soundscore adds to a sense of reverie. There are times when we wonder if what we see is part of the reality or part of a fantasy or dream. There are often blurred scenes and voices heard through tape recorder.

The director achieves to create an incredibly violent atmosphere, without showing a lot of graphic violence.

Radich reduces the dialogue to a very minimal level. We barely hear the protagonists talking; the facial expressions and looks convey all the messages and the state of the characters. The protagonists are outstanding: their taut and yet dynamic looks captivate the audience, and expose the frenetic state of the characters. The ritual dance of the father while he prepares for his next job (killing people as a mercenary) reveals his disillusion and madness.

Although the film is a dark drama of violence and brutality, there is a spark of hope. In contrast with the dull and cruel personality of the man, the revolutionary nature of the young adolescent is a source of inspiration and hope for a humane life.

Norfolk is out in cinemas on September 21st, and you can find out more information about it here.

Also, don’t forget to view the film trailer:

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