Tag: 2019

Amanda

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

When Isis surpassed Al-Qaeda as the leading jihadist group in 2014, the following three years would see a wave of terrorism sweep across the Continent, killing dozens in France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the UK. Of these countries, France was hit hardest, with over 200 people dying between 2015 and 2017. This spectre of tragedy looms over Amanda, Mikhaël Hers’s quiet, unassuming drama.

The title refers to 7-year-old Amanda (Isaure Multrier), who lives with her mother Sandrine (Ophélia Kolb), an English teacher at the local école. Amanda and her mother have an authentic chemistry that’s established in flowing, naturalistic sequences in their light and airy Parisian apartment. Particularly endearing is a scene in which Sandrine explains to her curious daughter the meaning of ‘Elvis has left the building’, which, I must add, educated me as well as young Amanda.

All of this is tinged with dread, for Sandrine, we know, will be killed in a terrorist attack. When this moment comes there is no punch to the gut, but there is no cheap sentimentalism, either. The real pain comes after the event when David (Vincent Lacoste), Sandrine’s twenty-something brother, has to explain to Amanda what happened to her poor mum.

It is David who carries the bulk of the emotional weight in this tragedy. His occupation is that of factotum; when he’s not greeting tourists at Gare du Nord for a vaguely dubious landlord, he’s pruning trees and shrubs at local parks. He’s a good guy though; he may lack ambition and direction but he has a shaggy-haired affability that suggests he’ll get his sh*t together at some point.

David’s prospects are spiced up when he meets Lena (Stacy Martin), a Gallic beauty who moves into one of his employer’s properties. You feel the butterflies in their stomach as they hit it off, such is the understated power of Hers’s direction and the actors’ performances. Lena, however, is also caught up in the attack, suffering wounds to her arm and, most perniciously, her mind.

This is what Amanda is about – the fallout of tragedy. A moment’s violence can cause a lifetime of suffering, but it can also heal old wounds, too. For David and Amanda, Sandrine’s tragic death becomes an olive branch to Alison (Greta Scaachi), David’s estranged mother who moved to London long before her granddaughter was born. It is unclear whether amends will be made in the long run, but the situation rings true for those who have experienced such familial shock.

Ultimately, despite its context, Amanda proves to be a warm, subtle film with an effortless naturalism, yet it lacks a visceral quality that could have made it a more absorbing, affecting piece of work.

Amanda is in cinemas Friday, January 3rd.

The top 10 dirtiest films of 2019

Posted on by victorfraga

Another year has gone by and DMovies is now nearly four years old. Since we started in February 2016, we have published 1,400 exclusive articles and reviews. We have attended both big and small film festivals and industry events of Europe, always digging the dirty gems of cinema firsthand and exclusively for you.

This year alone, we have published 400 articles and reviews and renewed our partnership with organisations such as Native Spirit, the Tallinn Film Festival, the Cambridge Film Festival, plus VoD providers such as Walk This Way and ArteKino. What’s more, our weekly newsletter has highlighted the best films out in cinemas, festivals, VoD and DVD every Friday to our 20,000 subscribers! We have up to 100,000 monthly visitors on average.

So we decided to pull together a little list of the 10 dirtiest films of 2019. And what better way to do it than asking our most prolific writers and also our audience for their dirty pick of the year? This is a truly diverse and international list, containing very different films from every corner of the planet, some big, some small, some you can still catch in cinemas, some on VoD and some you will just have to keep an eye for, at least for now!

Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to the our dirty review of the movie (not necessarily written by the same person who picked it as their dirty film of the year). The movies are listed alphabetically. And scroll all the way to the bottom of the article for the turkey of the year (a film so squeaky clean that you shouldn’t be sad if you missed it)…

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1. Animals (Sophie Hyde):

Selected by Eoghan Lyng

The glorification of male companionship has been celebrated in tragicomedies such as Withnail & I (Bruce Ronbinson, 1987) and Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996). Animals, on the other hand, showcases the triumphant revelry between two young women, decadent in their communal taste for fermented depravity. Effortlessly translating Emma Jane Unsworth’s book from Manchester’s streets to the Irish capital, Animals zips with inspired zest, an energised exposition of elastic wit and inspirited storytelling.

Laura (the British born Holliday Grainger, complete with killer Dublin accent) fancies herself a writer, fancifully fantasising through voluminous bottles with the coquettish Tyler (Alia Shawkat). Their thirties fast approaching, the women see little reason to halt their precocious abilities to party, until love threatens to put these halcyon days to pasture. Minesweeping to Alphaville, Laura walks into the enigmatic Jim (Fra Fee), a precocious Ulster pianist whose scale painting conjures composites of satiated sexual desires. Between these silhouettes, a solitary fox walks, echoing the lonely poetry the film displays.

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2. Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler):

Selected by Jack Hawkins

Dragged Across Concrete may not be the best film of the year, but it’s certainly the dirtiest. With it, S. Craig Zahler cements his status as a leading genre auteur, which is no mean feat. Few other filmmakers could get away with a 160-minute crime film of such deliberate pace and odious content.

For example, half-way into the narrative we are introduced to a young mother named Kelly, who is returning to work after three months’ maternity leave. Performed with heartfelt angst by Jennifer Carpenter, Kelly has clearly dreaded this day, tearfully lamenting how she ‘sells chunks of her life for a pay cheque so rich people I’ve never even met can put money places I’ve never even seen. With some degree of tough love, her partner persuades her to leave for the bus; what happens when she makes it to the bank will have you shaking your head in disgust. It becomes clear that the sole purpose of the character is to make you feel terrible, and it is this – along with the film’s pervasively bleak vision – that makes Dragged Across Concrete the dirtiest film of the year.

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3. Echo (Rúnar Rúnnarsson):

Selected by Redmond Bacon

This film is basically Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003) directed by Roy Andersson. Comprised of only 56 static takes, Rúnar Rúnarsson calmly takes Iceland’s pulse during the Christmas season; delivering a panorama that is equal parts funny, sad, ironic and loving. Displaying a supreme confidence in direction and writing, this is a major step up in form and content.

It spans through the Advent season to the New Year, that time of year when families are reunited, stress levels are high, and wallets are strained. Everyone is in the mood to either try and enjoy themselves, or simply get through the darkest days in the year. Spanning from rich to poor, old to young, alone or surrounded with family, it feels like all of Icelandic life is contained within this film.

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4. Joker (Todd Phillips):

Selected by Michael McClure

The Joker looks on its poster as yet another quirky, all-American urban mythology film, that appeals to that predictable audience base – it is anything but. With its extraordinarily talented performance by Joaquin Phoenix, it is up there with the greats of the Weimar cinema such as The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) and Nosferatu (FW Murnau, 1922) as an exploration of the human psyche, that is both prophetic and insightful. It is about that phenomenon that Nietzsche called “ressentiment” in which the weak, talentless and envious take out their anger on the talented and intelligent and turn it into an internalised ritual of cruelty.

It the creed of the “people” versus the “elite”, the Nazi against the Jew, the herd against the thoughtful and intelligent. The Joker is a useless, bitter clown who in his resentments takes on the right to kill those who show him up for what he is. As such, in this age of social media, trolling and glib public opinion, this film is very modern and very prophetic. Joaquin Phoenix is up there with Emil Jannings in the complexity and depth of his performance.

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5. Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck):

Selected by Jeremy Clarke

What is art? Why do artists make art? These questions lie behind Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest film, like his earlier The Lives Of Others (2006) a German story exploring that country’s history and identity. It clocks in at over three hours, but don’t let that put you off because it needs that time to cover the considerable ground it does. Never Look Away spans the bombing of Dresden by the Allies in WW2, the liquidation of people considered by the Nazis inferior and therefore unfit to live and the very different worlds of post-war art schools in first East and later West Germany. This means it also spans two generations: those who were adults during the war, and those who were children at that time and became adults in post-war Germany.

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6. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho):

Selected by DMovies’ audience and Lucas Pistilli

Our audience’s pick is our most read review of 2019, and the film isn’t even out in UK cinemas yet!

The latest Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, and the first Korean film to win the prestigious prize, follows a small family of four They live in a shoddy basement flat in an impoverished district of Korea. They face unemployment, and the future does not looks bright. They steal wi-fi from their neighbours. They panic when the password is changed, leaving them disconnected from the rest of the world. But that isn’t their one “parasitic” action. All four are con artists. One by one, they take up highly qualified jobs with a super-rich family, which also consists of four memebers. They are very well-spoken and manipulative. Their bosses never suspect that there’s something wrong with their highly “diligent” workers. These impostors are also extremely charming. Your allegiance is guaranteed to lie with them.

Furthermore, Lucas wrote: “A home invasion-social critique hybrid that exposes the malaise of late-stage capitalism with a Hitchcockian flair, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite is a film that rewards multiple viewings and is very deserving of every acclaim sent its way. The thriller establishes a sense of barely-contained mayhem early on and doesn’t let the audience go until the only way out is sheer chaos. A killer picture is every level”

Parasite is also pictured at the top of this article.

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7. So Long, My Son (Wang Xiaoshuai):

Selected by Patricia Cook

Across four decades of turbulent Chinese society, Wang studies a married couple, using the death of their son as a focal point around which to subtly explore the single-child policy and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.

The unconventional structure zips back and forth through different time frames, gradually moving along a central timeline. The story occurs in episodes which each have the feel of their own short story, but which fill in the details of the other things we have seen. Wang leans heavily on dramatic irony, raising the tension as we wait for truths to emerge. One wonders if he couldn’t have found a way to cut 15 minutes or so from the run time, so languid are the first two hours. It isn’t until the final 50 minutes that So Long My Son really pays off every beat he’s set up. Like a Koreeda film, revelation is piled upon revelation, disarming you with one bombshell and then slapping you with another. Wang even uses the flashbacks to abet this by undercutting the outcome of one scene with the reality of the past or present.

In addition, Patricia wrote: “A thoroughly engrossing film, beautiful to look at and outstanding in interweaving the personal and the political. It is an epic story covering the impact a tragic event has on a group of friends. Although long, it never fails to engage”.

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8. Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach):

Selected by Victor Fraga, editor of DMovies

Ricky (Kris Hitchen) is a building worker with an impeccable CV, living with his family somewhere in suburban Newcastle. He persuades his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) to sell off her car in order to raise £1,000 so that he can buy a van and move into the delivery industry. A franchise owner promises Ricky that he’ll be independent and “own his own business”, and earn up to £1,200 a week.

The reality couldn’t be more different. Ricky ends up working up to 14 hours a day six days a week. He literally has no time to pee, and instead urinates in a bottle inside him own vehicle. His draconian delivery targets and inflexible ETAs (estimated time of arrival) turn him into a delivery robot. A small handheld delivery device containing delivery instructions virtually controls his life. Ricky has been conned. His “independence” is but an illusion. He might own his car, his company and his insurance, yet he’s entirely at the mercy of his franchiser.

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9. Uncut Gems (Sadfie Brothers):

Selected by Daniel Luis Ennab

Everything about Uncut Gems excites. A mythological sprawl that feels timeless, and tragic in its overall emptiness by the time Howard Ratner supposedly wins. I’m reminded of Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant with an ugly, repulsive enforcer addicted to chaos. Ratner is a study of desperation. An addict with nothing beyond his own stakes. Nothing to offer, nothing to redeem, a man always running even when he never actually has to. Everything that happens in Uncut Gems could’ve simply been avoided, and yet — the vile beauty of such a fact is that it wasn’t. It’s the story of a dreamer, a chaser, one for fool’s gold.

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10. The Vast of Night (Andrew Pattinson):

Selected by Paul Risker

Effusing the nostalgia of 1950s small town America, director Andrew Pattinson’s debut feature is a near-perfect film, a quintessential addition to genre cinema. Set during one night in a small town in New Mexico, young radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) set out to discover the origins of a mysterious frequency they hear over the radio. In those moments when strange incidents that may explain the mysterious frequency are recounted to Everett and Fay, Pattinson incorporates the oral storytelling and the literary traditions. He asks us to imagine for ourselves rather than to show us, and this makes The Vast of Night striking for its anti-cinematic shades. The stillness of these moments is effectively offset with the urgency of the pair to unravel the mystery before its too late, and an ending that effectively compromises on revealing versus preserving the mystery.

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and the turkey of the year is…

Vita and Virginia (Chanya Button):

Virginia Woolf has never been this dull and joyless before! And love has rarely seemed more anodyne than in this awful biopic, which has a miscast Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki playing the two lovers. Here one of the most important women to have ever put pen to paper is reduced to a wholly passive, sickly, and sad woman, devoid of any true emotion, inspiration or true internalisation. Her lesbian lover, Vita Sackville-West fares no better, Gemma Arterton more focused on her aristocratic mannerisms than her transgressive personality or desire to shake the system. Together they seem like they’re still reading through the script.

Shooting the Mafia

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Letizia Battaglia followed a most dangerous career path – capturing the life and crimes of the Mafia in Palermo, Sicily’s capital. John Gotti may have loved celebrity, but none of the Mafiosi from the old country appreciated a young, brazen woman confronting them with a Pentax. ‘If he could, he would have killed me’, Letizia remarked of Luciano Leggio, a leading figure of the Sicilian Mob.

Her work, presented in stark monochrome, depicts death and suffering in the arresting style of Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths. Thematically, however, Letizia’s work may share more with that of Alexander Gardener, who used photography – then in its infancy – to confront the public with the horrors of the American Civil War.

This is what compelled Letizia to take some 600,000 photographs for the L’Ora newspaper – to shatter any romantic notions of the Cosa Nostra by depicting the rank brutality of their war on civil society. And it worked, her catalogue of dead men, women and children made a powerful impression on the people of Sicily, driving support for the heroic anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

Shooting the Mafia isn’t just an organised crime documentary, though. It is the story of a girl and woman making her way in Sicily’s patriarchal society. Longinotto presents her subject in an intimate, engaging way, placing Letizia’s narration against a combination of stock and archival footage to tell her story.

However, this look into her personal life can overstay its welcome. Letizia’s early life is given a quaint, romantic quality, yet the continued emphasis placed on her later relationships can be of dubious interest. After all, it is her association with organised crime that makes her interesting, not her love life. Yet, despite this, there is a resonant tenderness about how she and her lovers talk about what their relationships meant. There is no acrimony, just an open discussion of why things transpired the way they did. It’s a reflection of the contentedness that can come with age.

Her work in public life makes for the most interesting viewing, though. Letizia states the importance of having a clean political system and she is absolutely right. Corruption is the harbinger of dysfunction, destitution and death. And the man who took the fight to the Mafia – Giovanni Falcone – was a hero. When asked about his life-risking commitment to the state, he answered, ‘it’s not about state, it’s about society’.

And the island society he was trying to save was wracked with terrible violence. ‘We’d never known violence like it, there were 1000 murders one year’, Letizia recounts. She confronted this menace head-on, documenting as many crimes as she could. Indeed, it was the photos she didn’t take that ‘hurt her the most’.

Shooting the Mafia is in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg)

Posted on by victorfraga

The BFI are featuring a season of musicals on film which continues to January 2020. One immediately thinks of the great Ginger Roger/ Fred Astaire song and dance Hollywood musicals of the 1930s. These were followed by those of the 1940s and 1950s dominated by Gene Kelly who worked so successfully with Stanley Donen to create a series of outstanding movies – On the Town (1949), and Singing in the Rain (1952) among them.

However, there is a lesser known gem of the French cinema in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg directed by Jacques Demy, a director associated with the French New Wave. It was released in 1964 and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in the same year. Now, after all these years, it is still distinguished by all the dialogue being sung by the characters. The film was the joint creation of Demy as director and Michel Legrand. The sung dialogue seamlessly unfolded the poignant tale of the course of young love. The combination of sung dialogue and beautiful backgrounds lends itself to creating an unique nostalgic quality; the theme tune is haunting and reflects the tone of the bitter sweet relationship between the lovers.

I saw The Umbrellas of Chebourg when it first came out in the 1960s. It contrasted completely with the song and dance musicals produced by Hollywood which were fast and full of movement. However, so much was changing with the French New Wave, one just enjoyed the originality of the sung dialogue and the provincial setting of the story. It was a departure from what one was used to but a delightful glimpse into French culture. Seeing it now, one is almost overwhelmed by the colour, the carefully co-ordinated and constructed interiors and the realistic filming in dark, wet cobbled streets. It still retains a magical quality with something of a fairy tale in its gorgeous use of coordinated colour, the simplicity of the story and the haunting melodies.

Earlier in 1961 Demy had directed another now almost forgotten film, Lola, which was much appreciated at the time with Anouk Aimée as the central character. For those interested in film, it provides an excellent preparation for The Umbrellas – the music shares certain themes as does the story and provides a link to the back story of the diamond merchant in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Demy supports the sequence of events by dividing the narrative into three parts starting with Departure, followed by Absence with the concluding Return. The story begins with an engaging young couple, Guy and Geneviève who are very much in love. Their total absorption with each other adds a new dimension to their mundane lives; each living with family in a port seemingly largely populated by French sailors. The hoped for future of marriage with children is disrupted by Guy being drafted to serve abroad in the army for two years.

While the story line is very much of its period – a couple separated by the Algerian War, with the forlorn girl facing pregnancy without the face-saving possibility of marriage and its economic security – the poignancy of the situation is as powerful as ever. Geneviève’s predicament is beautifully realised with her gradual recognition of the difficulty of sustaining a powerful relationship at a distance.

The final part depicts the challenges experienced by Guy on his return to Cherbourg as a veteran of the war in Algeria. While reflecting on his earlier life with Geneviève, he gradually realises he needs to establish a new life for himself. Rain sunshine and snow all reflect the mood of the characters. Many images and themes are repeated – the Mercedes car brings Geneviève back to Cherbourg where there is a bitter sweet reunion. Not a Hollywood happy ever after resolution but perhaps one with which we can all recognise and identify.

It is stunning to see the beautiful Catherine Deneuve as a 20-year-old at the beginning of a lifelong career. The supporting actors are equally strong in conveying the poignancy of the situation and the working port of Cherbourg creates the gritty realism of every-day life. Much to be recommended – a truly memorable film.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is back in cinemas on Friday, December 6th

The Cave

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

The Cave opens with an establishing shot of Eastern Al-Ghouta, a dusty tableau of decrepit rooftops set against the mountains of the Syrian desert. Five to ten seconds pass before the scene is disturbed by a black object hurtling towards the ground, exploding in a billowing cloud of smoke. It’s a missile, and it’s followed by five more, causing untold terror and misery to the 400,000 people trapped in the devastated city.

This was the reality of the Siege of Eastern Ghouta, which the Syrian Government laid upon anti-government forces from April 2013 – April 2018, killing some 18,000 people and displacing 105,000 more. The Cave is a sobering depiction of the siege and the remarkable people who laboured to restore the threads of their crumbling society. Sadly, it is a struggle that continues in towns and cities across the ruined country.

The focaliser of the story is Dr. Amani Ballou, a young female paediatrician who managed a subterranean hospital known as the Cave with her colleagues Samaher, Dr. Alaa and Dr. Namour. We see bed after bed rush through the emergency entrance, the victims screaming in pain or sprawled out limply, clinging to life. Many of them are so young that they can barely articulate their suffering, they just cry or stare in confusion, covered with blood and detritus.

Dr. Amani is stoic and decisive in the face of this immense pressure, yet the carnage of the civil war is not the only thing she faces – she also receives attacks on her gender. The most notable example of this occurs when a man blames the medicine shortage in Al-Ghouta on her being a woman, ‘find someone who can help me… a male manager who can do a better job.’ What follows is a patriarchal spiel of how women should stay at home, but he is left stumped when Dr. Namour interjects, ‘as a doctor, has my work been bad in the presence of a female manager? Hospitals don’t rely only on one person, it’s teamwork.’

The filmmakers – led by director Feras Fayyad – observe this teamwork with skilful humanism. We see the chemistry between them amongst all the chaos; there are jokes, stories, bickering, but above all there is unerring purpose and perseverance. They make maximum use of the limited resources at their disposal and employ little rituals to keep them sane, such as the classical music Dr. Namour plays on his iPhone during surgery- ‘we don’t have anaesthetic, but we do have classical music!’, he tells one ailing patient.

For some, Syria has become a war rather than a country; a place of relentless violence, partisanship and religious fundamentalism. The Cave shows us the humanity of this awful conflict, immortalising the heroes who risk their lives to save thousands. And if you needed yet another reminder of the terrible loss this conflict has wreaked, four staff members lost their lives during filming of The Cave. They were: Abdul Rahman Alrihani, managing director; Wassam Albas, ambulance driver; Ezzedine Enaya, nurse; and Hasan Ajaj, nurse.

The Cave is out in UK cinemas Friday, December 6th.

Ken Loach’s lucid indictment on free market capitalism

Posted on by victorfraga

Ken Loach remains the most prominent and virtually unchallenged voice of the working class in British cinema. His latest movie Sorry We Missed You is an extremely powerful statement about eroding working conditions in modern-day Britain. Our editor Victor Fraga believes that it is even more excruciatingly painful to watch (and therefore even more effective) than its companion piece from three years ago I, Daniel Blake, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes. That’s because audiences are forced to walk in the shoes of the oppressed working man.

In Sorry We Missed You, Ricky (Kris Hitchen) is a building worker with an impeccable CV, living with his family somewhere in suburban Newcastle. He persuades his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) to sell off her car so that he can buy a van and move into the delivery industry. A franchise owner promises Ricky that he’ll be independent and “own his own business”, and earn up to £1,200 a week. The reality couldn’t be more different. Ricky ends up working up to 14 hours a day six days a week. His draconian delivery targets turn him into a delivery robot. Ricky has been conned. His “independence” is but an illusion. Click here in order to read the review of the movie.

Our editor sat down with Ken in order to understand the challenges that Ricky and the working class in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world face, and what we can do in order to overcome their apparently insurmountable barriers. They also discussed modern-day slavery, Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit, free movement and how British movies have helped the far-right to disseminate prejudices and fake patriotism!

Sorry We Missed You is in cinemas on Friday, November 1st!

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Victor Fraga – Four million working people are currently living in poverty in the UK. That’s four million Rickies and Abbies? How have we failed so many people?

Ken Loach – That’s actually 14 million. One-four [in reality, this is the total number of people living in poverty, not just workers living in poverty]. Four million of those are children. And 1.5 million are in dire poverty. That means that they don’t have the means to the essentials of life.

It’s a process that began with Margaret Thatcher. She destroyed communities in the old working-class areas, with mines and factories being closed. Those were the old days of the secure job, with the eight-hour day and the 40-hour week, a wage on which you could bring up a family and have somewhere to live, have a holiday without losing money. Those working conditions were gradually eroded under the pressures of harsh competition from big companies, because they have to compete on both quality and price, so those who get the trade will be cheaper. They have to cut their labour costs. And they do that by finding new ways to employ people. They don’t pay holiday pay, they don’t pay sick pay. They have no responsibility for the worker beyond their day’s work. They can hire and fire them very easily. So they work through agencies, which also have no responsibility for the worker. They are so called self-employed. The bogus self-employment.

The work in this case, he [Ricky from Sorry We Missed You] is simply providing a service. He’s just a worker providing a service. Therefore they don’t need to obey trade unions rules, they don’t need to pay the minimum wage. It’s just a contract to supply a service. That of course isn’t true, because the driver is entirely contracted to this one company, and they are to all effects and purposes one worker. But this new form of words for the same job means the employer has no responsibility.

VF – Who changed the words?

KL – Employers found clever new strategies. They are market-orientated people who find their way around the rules. The minimum wage doesn’t apply to someone who’s providing a service. So a driver might work 12 hours a day or more and still struggle to make a decent living. The eight-hour day, the minimum wage and the guaranteed working week have been swept away by the gig economy.

It’s a logic. If you are committed to the free market, that’s based on competition. Firms compete on price, therefore they must continue that exploitation, otherwise they are going to lose trade.

VF – We’re seeing far-right and ultra neo-liberal governments destroy working rights around the world. I’m from Brazil, where the phenomenon is more pronounced yet not entirely dissimilar to the UK. Is the erosion of working rights the natural and inevitable consequence of capitalism, or is this just a perverse subversion of capitalism?

KL – I think it’s an inevitable consequence of free market capitalism. Because, as I say, it’s based on competition and therefore they will try to cut their labour costs and increase exploitation. That’s the only way they can do it. And now they use technology in order to do it. So Ricky as a driver, he doesn’t have someone over him telling him he has to work harder. He’s got a machine in the car which knows where he is every two minutes. It beeps if he’s out of the car for more than two minutes. It allows him no time to go to the lavatory. No time for a break. He’s driven by a piece of electronic equipment. He’s forced to exploit himself. And when the worker has to exploit himself, that’s the ideal situation for the employer.

VF – I would argue that we saw improvements in working conditions in the 20th century. And we’re now going back to Victorian times, or even the industrial revolution. Do you agree?

KL – Absolutely. I think that there was a real change in consciousness after WW2, the public good was something that we all subscribed to. Trade unions grew stronger, and therefore workers’ rights grew stronger. The trade unions had the negotiating strength to get the eight-hour day, to get a decent wage. Collective bargaining is the strength of the working class. And that’s what Thatcher aimed to destroy. And to a large extent she succeeded. Partly because the labour movement itself, and the Labour Party, didn’t put up a good enough fight.

What’s much remarkable about this time right now is that with Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, it’s the first time in 100-year history that the Labour Party has a leader of the left. And that leadership will stand for the interests of the working class. Blair stood with business. Corbyn will stand with workers, and that’s why he’s so attacked.

VF – The working conditions in Sorry We Missed You are comparable to slavery. The British Empire was built upon slavery. Have we found a surrogate for old-fashioned colonialism whereby we oppress our very own workforce?

KL – I wouldn’t use the work slavery. It’s too glib. Colonialism has been replaced by the working class of countries were the wages are even lower than they are here. Getting clothes from Bangladesh is a form of colonialism, because we are using their very exploited working class for goods to sell here. When capitalism goes global, the trade goes to those on starvation wages. It’s a race to the bottom. And we know that the working conditions in some Eastern countries are atrocious.

VF – Abbie knows unfettered solidarity and devotion to her job. But she pays a price for that. Has solidarity become unfeasible or even illegal?

KL – They have tried to nullify it, and that’s a challenge for the left. Solidarity needs political intervention. And obviously we need strong trade unions. But in order to get strong trade unions we need a party in power that will restore their powers, which Thatcher took away. A party that will make zero-hour contracts illegal. There has to be some commitment to the working week. Otherwise the minimum wage is meaningless. There also has to be an end to bogus self-employment. And there’s yet another change that we must deliver. Not long ago our post office was nationalised. And was always a public service. We owned it. Then the Tories privatised it, and now we need to bring it back into public ownership, so that parcels are delivered by the postman. That cuts out this need to rip-off delivery companies.

The system pits people against each other. The fastest driver gets the best route, which means they will earn more money. They consciously put one driver against another. That’s what Paul Laverty’s [Loach’s screenwriter for nearly three decades] found in his research. And that’s another reason why this bogus self-employment should end.

VF – Will Ricky be better off in post-Brexit Britain? Will he enjoy more or will he enjoy less labour protections?

KL – This bogus self-employment is happening while we are in the European Union, and it will get worse if Boris Johnson and the Tories are in power when we leave. Brexit is a distraction. Because the big issues – poverty, exploitation and failing public services – are being neglected. For the left, it’s a tactical question.

VF – Let’s say Jeremy Corbyn gets to power. Do you think Ricky will be better off -in a post-Brexit Jeremy Corbyn government?

KL – That depends on the deal. They haven’t negotiated the deal yet. I would hope that a Labour government under Corbyn would negotiate a deal whereby we have control over our fisheries, so that we can protect the fish stock, and we have control over agriculture, so we can control the ecological side. And we would improve on workers’ rights by ending zero-hour contracts and bogus self-employment. We would bring public services entirely back into public ownership. Not outsourced. That might be against EU policies of competitive industry, their rules of what the state can do in terms of intervention. They think that’s against competition.

VF – But aren’t some public services nationalised in the largest EU countries, such as the trains in France and Germany?

KL – Yes, they are, but that’s a tension within the European Union. The European Union’s founding document is based on the free market. So those examples are an anomaly in the practice and in the rules. If you look at the rules, they oppose state intervention if it interferes with competition. I would argue that a Labour government needs to intervene in competition in order to provide a better service and protect workers’ rights. It depends on the deal that Corbyn gets, if he gets elected. If the deal is a good deal Ricky would be better off outside the EU. If the Corbyn deal is not a good deal, he’d be better off inside the EU. It’s a judgement you can only make once you see the deal Labour has negotiated.

VF – What about free movement and diversity? If we close our borders and no EU people can come in, would that have a positive impact on Ricky’s life?

KL – In principle, you have to be in favour of free movement. But I think that in order for free movement to be really free – not a means of an employer getting cheap labour – the economies have to be roughly equal. Because if the wages are lower in one group of countries, people will migrate to where the wages are higher. And that’s what happened. And that can produce problems of racism, because the local people feel undermined in their income. In order to avoid that, there should be a conscious move to equalise the economies. People can travel, freely, but they can have a good living in their own country. Free movement has to go alongside equalising the economies.

VF – But that’s going to take a long time. Wages in Romania won’t be on the same level as Britain in 10 or 20 years. Does that mean we should close our gates for now?

KL – No, I think that we need to work with poorer countries so that their young talent don’t go abroad to work in coffee shops because the wages are higher. But equally, that’s got to be done with planning and agreement, not with one country putting up barriers.

VF – Fake patriotism and nostalgia of imperialism are more rabid than ever, with the ultra-nationalistic Brexit Party coming first in the latest EU elections. How can cinema help to fend off this dangerous and reactionary threat?

KL – Yes, I agree with you that there’s a lot of fake patriotism, xenophobia, chauvinism. I think that cinema and the left in general should communicate that people are of equal value, whatever their origin, religion, the language they speak. Everyone is our neighbour. Our working class people have more in common with the working class of other European countries than with our ruling class. We’ve taken Sorry We Missed You to Spain, France, Germany and Ireland so far, and everywhere it’s the same story. When you show it to an audience in France you realise that delivery drivers here have exactly the same situation as delivery drivers in the rest of Europe, and they have nothing in common with Boris Johnson’s ruling class.

VF – I think that a lot of mainstream cinema has helped to stir fake patriotism and anti-European resentment, and some films are Brexit’s BFF, such as Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) and Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2018). They are a manna from heaven for people like Farage. Do you share my view?

KL – Very much so. We had so many war films after the War where all the Germans were bad, except there was one nice German. That’s where the phrase “the good German” passed into common usage. The message of these films was: “Germans are bad”. The German language became associated with Nazis, even though the British governments were happy to support the fascists in Spain under Franco. Churchill was a rabid imperialist. We supported dictators and the far-right around the world. Same with the States. So came the phrase: “he might be a bastard, but he’s our bastard”. So let’s not take any lessons from the far-right and their patriotism, because the interests of the working people are the same anywhere in the world.

VF – Does mainstream cinema tend to have a subliminal far-right message?

KL – Yes, absolutely. The classic message of the American cinema is: “one man with a gun will sort your problems”. It’s not about solidarity.

VF – What about British cinema?

KL – I don’t know much about British cinema, to be honest. It may seem strange.

VF – It does seem very strange!!!

KL – That’s true. The British war films that I grew up with were always about the “good Brit” versus the “bad German”. Or the coward Italian. They were all stereotypes.

VF – You made a documentary entitled In Conversation with Jeremy Corbyn (2016), yet there doesn’t seem to be much positive coverage of the Labour leader elsewhere. Do you believe that the British media – even the left-leaning papers such as The Guardian – are biased against Jeremy Corbyn, is there a smear campaign, and has that impacted how your documentary was received?

KL – It was a just short film, it never really had a major presence, so I wouldn’t say I encountered resistance.

I spoke to Jeremy very little about this. So this is just my opinion. The right wing and the centre press – the Guardian included (which I don’t see it as a left wing newspaper) the BBC, ITV and so on – certainly have to varying degrees opposed Corbyn. The only paper that supports him is The Morning Star, but the others won’t even acknowledge its existence. There is a smear campaign against him, there is a campaign to undermine and to ridicule him. And key to that are the Labour MPs, the majority of which came to power when Blair was the leader, so they are right wing Labour MPs and their task is to undermine Corbyn. They are the biggest danger we face.

The picture at the top and at the bottom and of this article are of Ken Loach and Victor Fraga on the the day this interview was conducted. The other images are stills from Ken Loach’s latest film Sorry We Missed You.

The making-of of the Cambridge Film Festival

Posted on by victorfraga

The 39th edition of the Cambridge Film Festival starts this week. This year’s diverse programme includes over 150 titles from 30 countries from all continents. They range thrillers and dramas to comedies and documentaries created by the very best of both established (such as Ken Loach, Francois Ozon and Werner Herzog) and emerging filmmakers (such as Mati Diop and Aaron Schimberg).

We asked a few questions to the Stella Frangleton, who is currently the Festival’s Marketing Coordinator. She previously reviewed submissions for the event. She also runs a Young Film Programmers Group at The Abbeygate Cinema in Bury St Edmunds, and holds a degree in English and Film from King’s College London.

The Cambridge Film Festival takes place between October 17th and 24th. Click here for our top 10 picks from this year’s event, and here for the Festival’s full programme (and also in order to book your tickets now).

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Victor Fraga – You are the third-longest running film festival in the UK, and you are now in your 39th edition. Please tell us a little about the relationship between city of Cambridge and film.

Stella Frangleton – Cambridge is a very cinematic city with well known films and series such as The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2015), the Netflix drama series The Crown and ITV’s Grantchester being filmed in and around Cambridge. The Cambridge Film Festival has been a staple of the Cambridge cultural scene since 1977 and has been joined by other film festivals such as the Cambridge African Film Festival in 2002 and the Watersprite Student Film Festival in 2010. We have a vibrant community of film students at both Anglia Ruskin and Cambridge University, many of whom go on to work at the city’s various film events. Boasting three cinemas, this city is certainly one of film lovers.

VF – This year you are screening more than 150 titles from 30 countries. How many people are involved in the curatorial process, and do they work throughout the entire year?

SF – We have a pool of around 10 programmers who select films in a variety of ways. Some attend film festivals all year round to discover the latest and most inspiring films from around the world, whereas others create very specific programmes and are only with us for a small portion of the year. By having a variety of programmers who work in very different ways, our programme achieves an extremely high quality of content across the board and you’ll notice the high level of curation involved. We are well known for our strands such as Camera Catalonia, the Cambridge African Film Festival and the Family Film Festival as well as the great selection of previews and premieres on offer every year.

VF – Are there anecdotes from the past few years that you would like to share?

SF – We have had some very acclaimed directors submit short films to the festival in their fledgling years. Christopher Nolan had a short film accepted in the festival in 1996 and has gone on to become one of the best-known directors in the world having directed such films as Dunkirk (2017), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Inception (2010), Memento (2000), and his films have gone on to gross over $4.7 billion worldwide. Likewise, acclaimed British directors Andrea Arnold (2016′ American Honey, 2009’s Fish Tank) and Shane Meadows (This Is England, 2007) also had shorts screened at the festival before going on to have massively acclaimed careers.

VF – The Festival is run by the Cambridge Film Trust. Could Please tell us about the Trust activities outside the Festival?

SF – At Cambridge Film Trust we believe passionately about great cinema and making it accessible to all. We really feel that cinema can expose people to new perspectives and ideas, aiding cross-cultural understanding and contributing to community engagement and well being. To that end we have lots of events outside the festival throughout the year. Our most well known is Movie on the Meadows, one of the biggest outdoor cinema events in the UK which takes place every August and sees around 3,000 people enjoy amazing cinema in the picturesque location of the Grantchester Meadows. We run a large amount of free community screenings around Cambridge where we bring the latest blockbusters in the heart of communities for people who may not be able to access cinemas due to money, mobility or other social factors. We have brought in a Pay What You Can Afford scheme to our “A Film I Love” seasons at the Arts Picturehouse. We invite special guests to choose a film close to their heart and audiences can choose how much they pay. We are very proud of our year round activities and hope to continue to make greats films available to all.

VF – You have given out an Audience Award since 2015. Are there any plans to expand this, and to include, for example, a jury award?

SF – We are very proud of our Audience Award and have expanded to have a Youth Jury award as well. We recruit a jury of young people who learn about all different aspects of the film industry and watch and critique the film of the festival. We think these awards make the community feel included and we hope the Youth Jury award fosters future film talent.

VF – What’s your advice to both emerging and established filmmakers who want their work showcased at the Cambridge Film Festival?

SF – It may sound obvious but we really are excited about bringing the best cinema we can to our audiences. We welcome submissions from filmmakers at any stage in their career and our submissions team works through the massive amount of submissions rigorously from around March until September. We show submissions from student filmmakers, big name directors, with tiny budgets and with big ones. We just love great film and we feel that shows in our programme and the reputation the festival has for always having such a strong film selection.

All the images on this article are property of the Cambridge Film Festival.

Our top 10 dirty picks from the Cambridge Film Festival

Posted on by victorfraga

The Cambridge Film Festival is now nearly four decades old, making it the third longest-running film festival in the country!

This year’s diverse programme includes over 150 titles from 30 countries from all continents. They range thrillers and dramas to comedies and documentaries created by the very best of both established (such as Ken Loach, Francois Ozon and Werner Herzog) and emerging filmmakers (such as Mati Diop and Aaron Schimberg).

Now in its 39th year, the Cambridge Film Festival celebrates cinema in all its forms while also tackling some of the critical issues facing our world today, including climate change, human rights, women’s rights, prison conditions and mental health.

Because it’s always to decide where to begin in such a large film event, we have decided to lend you a little helping hand. Below are our top 10 dirty picks from the Festival, chosen exclusively for you. Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to exclusive dirty reviews (where available). These are listed in alphabetical order.

Click here for more information about the event and also in order to book you tickets right now.

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1. Atlantics (Mati Diop):

Ada (Mama Sané) and Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré) are young and in love with each other. They walk along the beach and gaze into each other’s eyes. They hold hands and kiss. The next day Souleiman sets off on a primitive pirogue towards Spain, like many other refugees have done. Ada is left to contend with an arranged marriage to wealthy and arrogant Omar, whom she despises. After the ostentatious wedding ceremony, however, strange things begin to happen, such as the nuptial bed that suddenly catches on fire. The police suspect that Souleiman never left and is involved in the arson, and Ada is his accomplice.

This may sound like your traditional love story, but it isn’t. In reality, Atlantics is a an eerie ghost story imbued with religious, social and political commentary. Djinns (supernatural creatures in Islamic mythology) haunt the locals. The dead return in order to seek justice for their loves ones. Perhaps Soulemain died at sea and his ghost is playing tricks with the living?

Atlantics won the Grand Prix at the latest Cannes Film Festival.

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2. By the Grace of God (Francois Ozon):

Francois Ozon is best remembered for his psychological dramas, psychosexual thrillers and twisted comedies. He has now moved into an almost entirely new territory: Catholic faith and paedophilia. The outcome is nothing short of magnificent. The director paints a profoundly humanistic portrayal of the sexual abuse victims of real-life priest Father Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley), thereby denouncing the silence and the complacence of the Catholic hierarchy.

By the Grace of God, which won the Silver Bear at the latest Berlinale, follows the steps of 40-year-old father-of-five and respectable professional Alexandre (Melvil Poupard). He decides to confront Father Preynat, who abused him 30 years earlier, upon finding out in 2014 that the priest still working closely with children. The problem is that the crime took place in 1991 and it has now prescribed (exceeding the 20-year threshold for legal action), and so Alexandre searches for more recent victims of Father Preynat, in a Goliath versus David battle against the extremely powerful and millenary Catholic Church.

Ozon’s latest film is also pictured at the top of this article.

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3. Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg):

Aaron Schimberg’s film about a European auteur directing their first English language movie was never going to be an average movie. In this American film, the bucolic blond Mabel (Jess Weixler)is a beguiling beauty who struggles working with a co-star who is anything but the epitome of conventional beauty. Although she plays the blind lead who falls disgracefully in love with a facially disfigured man (Rosenthal, played by British actor Adam Pearson, who has an actual facial disfigurement), her real-life interactions showcase a Draconian demeanour out of character with the charitable character she inhabits onscreen. It’s one of the many canny references swimming in Chained For Life, a work steeped in residual reference.

This distinctive film strives for originality. Schimberg is unashamed at displaying his innate knowledge of cinema, commencing with the silhouetted opening titles. Opening with one of Pauline Kael’s sparkier quotes, the movie is overtly proud of its understanding of the world of cinema, peering behind, before and between the goings on of a film.

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4. Filmfarsi (Ehsan Khoshbakht):

Iranian cinema can be as well defined by what it doesn’t show as by what it does. Women’s hair is never seen, characters never drink and sex is never depicted. Filmmakers, like Jafar Panahi (still technically under house arrest), must find novel ways to skirt restrictions to say what they want about life and society. What’s truly incredible is that despite these restrictions, Iran can lay claim to one of the richest cinematic cultures in the world.

Style follows form, the government’s rigid censorship paradoxically leading to some remarkably powerful works. Could the metafictional stylings of Abbas Kiarostami or the tightly wound social dramas of Asghar Farhadi have come out of a more liberated society? Perhaps I have been thinking about it all wrong. As the documentary Filmfarsi shows — surveying popular Iranian cinema up until the Islamic revolution of 1979 — Iranian cinema has always been characterised by wild invention, improvising with what you have and melding genres together.

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5. Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe):

This a sensory experience. One that you feel with your skin. Feel the heat, feel the fog, feel the humidity. Director Oliver Laxe and his crew received fire training in order to join the Galician forest brigade as they battle the very large fires that routinely castigate the Northeastern nation of Spain. A very audacious feat. You will be caught right in the middle of hell, surrounded by collapsing trees and gigantic flames. Laxe didn’t even know whether his film equipment would survive. Fortunately for us, it did. Despite this, plus the fact that the actors use their real names, Fire Will Come (which won the Jury Prize for the Un Certain Regard strand of Cannes) is not a documentary.

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6. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (Karim Ainouz):

This is as close as you will ever get to a tropical Douglas Sirk. Karim Ainouz’s eighth feature film and the second one to premiere in Cannes (after Madame Sata in 2001) has all the ingredients of a melodrama. The 145-minute movie – based on the eponymous novel by Martha Batalha – is punctuated with tragic relationships, epic misfortunes, fortuitous separations and untimely deaths. All skilfully wrapped together by an entirely instrumental and magnificent music score.

The titular character (Carol Duarte) and her sister Guida Gusmao (Julia Stockler) live with their traditional parents. Their Portuguese father Antonio is rude and formidable, while their Brazilian mother Ana is quiet and passive. The action takes place in the charming and quaint Rio the Janeiro of the 1950s.

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7. Paper Boats (Yago Munoz):

A mother sends her children to her widowed father for fear of losing them to the New York foster system. A frosty man by nature, he agrees to care for them in the Mexican rustic desert, while his daughter fights for her right to live as an American citizen. It’s not the most original of stories, but it offers moments of raw, impactful soulfulness, proving that blood is indeed thicker than water.

This slow-burn drama is deftly punctuated by Pedro Damian’s steely lead, a no-nonsense grandpa none-too-impressed by his child’s request to unsettle his blissful boat rides by minding her three children. His gruff demeanour is a country away from the metropolitan lifestyle they have become accustomed to.

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8. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma):

The story takes place in 1770 in rural Brittany. An Italian aristocrat (Valeria Golino) has found a wedding partner for her beautiful young daughter Heloise (Adele Haenel), who just returned from a convent to live with her mother is her enormous estate house. Her husband-to-be lives in Milan, and Heloise has never met him. Her mother commissions Marianne (Noemie Merlant) to paint her daughter in secret because Heloise would never consent to it (presumably because the picture will be sent to her prospective husband). Marianne pretends to be Heloise’s mere companion, working alongside the housemaid Sophie (Luana Bajrami). Heloise’s sister has recently committed suicide, likely due to the prospect of a similar marital arrangement. This means that the burden on Marianne is enormous. Could Heloise too attempt to take her own life?

This is a film almost entirely made by women. The writer director is female, and so is the cinematographer (Claire Mathion). Virtually all the characters are female, too. Men are only seen in the end of this 119-minute movie,

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9. Secretaries – A Life for Cinema (Raffaele Rago, Daniela Masciale):

Though it advertises itself an attempt to document the long-range effects cinema brought to Italy, this film is much more interested and successfully in representing the social history it so readily represents. From the profuse luxuriance explored on the screen, it was the penpushers, the workers and the everyday women who made this possible. In its own way, it’s a tribute to Italy, Italian cinema and the indomitable nature of the Italian woman.

The film’s ambitious time-lapse method, converging from the present to the past, is presented in an assemblage of photo clips, showing the women both in their prime and in the fortunes of their Autumnal years. As is the nature of time, these subjects won’t likely be here to detail their story of a sensational decade when the next sensational decade begins.

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10. Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach):

Last but not least on out least is Ken Loach’s latest heart-wrenching drama. Ricky (Kris Hitchen) is a building worker with an impeccable CV, living with his family somewhere in suburban Newcastle. He persuades his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) to sell off her car in order to raise £1,000 so that he can buy a van and move into the delivery industry. A franchise owner promises Ricky that he’ll be independent and “own his own business”, and earn up to £1,200 a week.

The reality couldn’t be more different. Ricky ends up working up to 14 hours a day six days a week. He literally has no time to pee, and instead urinates in a bottle inside him own vehicle (I would hazard a guess that Amazon’s infamous practices inspired scriptwriter Paul Laverty). His draconian delivery targets and inflexible ETAs (estimated time of arrival) turn him into a delivery robot. A small handheld delivery device containing delivery instructions virtually controls his life. Ricky has been conned. His “independence” is but an illusion. He might own his car, his company and his insurance, yet he’s entirely at the mercy of his franchiser.

Our top 10 dirty picks from the 2019 BFI London Film Festival

Posted on by victorfraga

The 63rd BFI London Film Festival, the biggest and the oldest film festival in the UK, takes place between October 2nd and 13th in a number of prestigious venues in Central London. The event will showcase 225 films from both established and emerging talent from every corner of the planet. This year, the Festival will host 21 world premieres, nine international premieres and 29 European premieres. In total, there will be 46 documentaries, four animations, 18 archive restorations and seven artists’ moving image features.

So where to begin? Below is a list of 10 dirty movies that you shouldn’t miss. We have seen the majority of these films (as they premiered in Berlin, Cannes and Locarno earlier this year), so we can vouch for our list, which is teeming with thought-provoking, innovative and downright filthy gems. Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to our exclusive dirty review (where available). The films are sorted alphabetically.

You can click here in order to purchase your ticket now!

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1. Adolescents (Sébastian Lifshitz):

Charting the lives of two girls from thirteen to eighteen, Adolescentes is an immersive documentary depicting the vicissitudes of youth. Five years in the making, filmed twenty-four days a year and composed from 500 hours of rushes, it has the flow of a fine naturalist drama, standing nicely alongside Young Solitude (Claire Simon, 2018) and Belinda (Marie Dumora, 2017) as yet another brilliant French documentary about the complexity of growing older.

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2. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho, Juliano Dornelles):

The little town of Bacurau has been erased from the map. Literally. Locals can no longer locate it on the various online applications. Someone (or something?) is killing the locals. There have been seven murders in one day. Small UFOs monitor the town from above. The locals are prepared to fight back for their survival. They also wish to protect their their identity and cultural heritage. They cherish the Bacurau Museum, a small building where town’s invaluable artifacts are stored. The local doctor Domingas (Sonia Braga) is some sort of matriarch. Men, women and children are ready to take arms. Bacurau is a resistance movie against the rise of fascism in Brazil.

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3. By the Grace of God (Francois Ozon):

Francois Ozon is best remembered for his psychological dramas, psychosexual thrillers and twisted comedies. He has now moved into an almost entirely new territory: Catholic faith and paedophilia. The outcome is nothing short of magnificent. The director paints a profoundly humanistic portrayal of the sexual abuse victims of real-life priest Father Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley), thereby denouncing the silence and the complacence of the Catholic hierarchy.

By the Grace of God follows the steps of 40-year-old father-of-five and respectable professional Alexandre (Melvil Poupard). He decides to confront Father Preynat, who abused him 30 years earlier, upon finding out in 2014 that the priest still working closely with children. The problem is that the crime took place in 1991 and it has now prescribed (exceeding the 20-year threshold for legal action), and so Alexandre searches for more recent victims of Father Preynat, in a Goliath versus David battle against the extremely powerful and millenary Catholic Church.

By The Grace of God won the Silver Bear prize for Best Film in Berlin earlier this year. It shows in a thrill gala as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

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4. Ema (Pablo Larrain):

“Every new Pablo Larraín film is a miracle of imagination, invention and insight into human behaviour. And Ema may be his most lyrical and poetic yet – a character study of a beguiling woman who is ruled by heart and impulse. In a vivid collage of scenes shot by Sergio Armstrong, with an expressive score from Nicolas Jaar, Larraín paints a picture of talented contemporary street/reggaeton dancer and teacher Ema. We learn of a recent trauma and her fiery relationship with her slightly older husband (Gael García Bernal), who is both a choreographer and her creative collaborator. Their recent adoption of a troubled child has gone badly, for which they are harshly judged. They, in turn, blame one another. Writing with Guillermo Calderón and Alejandro Moreno, Larraín’s film intersperses explosive, intoxicating scenes of dance within dramatic moments that are fractured in time.” (Tricia Tuttle)

Ema shows in strand gala section of the BFI London Film Festival.

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5. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (Karim Ainouz):

This is as close as you will ever get to a tropical Douglas Sirk. Karim Ainouz’s eighth feature film and the second one to premiere in Cannes (after Madame Satain 2001) has all the ingredients of a melodrama. The 145-minute movie – based on the eponymous novel by Martha Batalha – is punctuated with tragic relationships, epic misfortunes, fortuitous separations and untimely deaths. All skilfully wrapped together by an entirely instrumental and magnificent music score.

The film, which is also pictured at the top of this article, won the Un Certain Regard award for Best Film in Cannes earlier this year.

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6. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese):

In Martin Scorses’s latest movie and ninth collaboration with Robert de Niro, a labour leader and the infamous head of the Teamsters union, whose connections with organised crime were wide ranging, his career ended with a conviction for jury tampering, attempted bribery and fraud, but he was pardoned by President Nixon in 1971. Not long after, he disappeared. Declared legally dead in 1982, various theories have circulated as to what happened to him. Few are as convincing as that told by Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran.

Written by Gangs of New York collaborator Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List), Scorsese’s The Irishman weaves an engrossing and intricate web of connected events, audaciously cutting back and forth across decades. It is the closing film at the BFI London Film Festival.

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7. Maternal (Maura Delpero):

hat constitutes motherhood? Is it something that is hereditary or something that can be earned? This is the question wrestled with in Maternal, which slyly reimagines the story of the Virgin Mary for modern times. A deeply Christian tale, both in its sense of empathy and its themes, Maternal is a precise chamber Italian-Argentinean co-production that wrestles with the meaning of motherhood, finding no easy answers yet imploring the viewer to bring their own faith and meaning to each scene.

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8. Piranhas (Claudio Giavannesi):

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Neapolitan writer and Camorra expert Roberto Saviani (who also wrote the screenplay), Piranhas follows 10 adolescents in Naples who set up a gang in order to make money and enjoy an unbounded and hedonistic example.

Fifteen-year-old Nicola (Francesco di Napoli) is the gang leader. He convey a very disturbing type of masculinity at a very young age. He takes “protection” money from locals in order to buy drugs, attend expensive clubs, buy branded clothes and posh furniture. Thousands of euros flow like water. He smokes marijuana and snorts cocaine, and circulates locally with the confidence of an adult. He loves to show off his newly found power and wealth. He has a beautiful girlfriend called Letizia, and he also hire prostitutes. He terrorises the narrow alleyways on his scooter.

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7. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma):

The he story takes place in 1770 in rural Brittany. An Italian aristocrat (Valeria Golino) has found a wedding partner for her beautiful young daughter Heloise (Adele Haenel), who just returned from a convent to live with her mother is her enormous estate house. Her husband-to-be lives in Milan, and Heloise has never met him. Her mother commissions Marianne (Noemie Merlant) to paint her daughter in secret because Heloise would never consent to it (presumably because the picture will be sent to her prospective husband). Marianne pretends to be Heloise’s mere companion, working alongside the housemaid Sophie (Luana Bajrami). Heloise’s sister has recently committed suicide, likely due to the prospect of a similar marital arrangement. This means that the burden on Marianne is enormous. Could Heloise too attempt to take her own life?

This is a film almost entirely made by women. The writer director is female, and so is the cinematographer (Claire Mathion). Virtually all the characters are female, too. Men are only seen in the end of this 119-minute movie, in entirely secondary roles. Yet this is a film about men and the subtle ways that they oppress women. Heloise regrets having to marry a man whom she has never met, while Marianne is not allowed to become a fully-fledged painter because the artistic establishment prohibits her from studying male anatomy.

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10. So Long, My Son (Wang Xiaoshuai):

Across four decades of turbulent Chinese society, Wang studies a married couple, using the death of their son as a focal point around which to subtly explore the single-child policy and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.

The unconventional structure zips back and forth through different time frames, gradually moving along a central timeline. The story occurs in episodes which each have the feel of their own short story, but which fill in the details of the other things we have seen. Wang leans heavily on dramatic irony, raising the tension as we wait for truths to emerge. One wonders if he couldn’t have found a way to cut 15 minutes or so from the run time, so languid are the first two hours. It isn’t until the final 50 minutes that So Long My Son really pays off every beat he’s set up. Like a Koreeda film, revelation is piled upon revelation, disarming you with one bombshell and then slapping you with another. Wang even uses the flashbacks to abet this by undercutting the outcome of one scene with the reality of the past or present.

Amazing Grace

Posted on by victorfraga

In January 1972 Aretha Franklin recorded with the choir of the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles, two days of gospel singing, accompanied by the resident preacher the Reverend James Cleveland (a formidable musician in his own right). At this recording her own father C.L. Franklin turned up, a celebrated preacher on his own account, as well as such worthies as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The recording was a full-on religious service, without preaching. The recording turned into one of Aretha Franklin’s best-selling records. Strangely the film recording was shelved for many years but now is released in cinemas in its full glory.

Many people need no encouragement to go out and see Aretha Franklin at the height of her powers. She stretches out the vowels of the title song Amazing Grace, whoops, swoops, pours out her soul and lingers over every crescendo and meaning of the words with a conviction that is incredibly moving. Here you feel that you are experiencing the very heart of the African American experience.

Gospel singing was the one thing that enslaved Africans were allowed to do on the plantations by their tormentors and into it they poured all their hopes of deliverance, sufferings, fears and faith. Despite being the faith of their oppressors, it was the one medium by which they saw some deliverance from the miseries of this present life. The response to their suffering was intensely African.

Amazing Grace is an intensely educational experience. It made me understand why black people are correct in asserting that certain aspects of their traditions cannot be meaningfully appropriated. This is not to damn the great creativity that has come about through the encounter of black and white culture. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had every right to be there. It is just that this film conveys wonderfully the rawness and authenticity of African American culture.

This is not a film about Motown with its finger-clicking, highly professional backing singers and crafted presentation, although Aretha Franklin also excelled in this area. This is a film about music and faith. Aand many people will not be comfortable with the socially conservative values of the gospel tradition in the US. It is never clear whether Aretha Franklin herself shared those beliefs. Amazing Grace gives metropolitan elites pause to realise that great creativity often comes out of great faith and faith is often undergirded by suffering. This should cause those elites to respect the faith of others, even if its beliefs may sharply diverge from theirs.

Amazing Grace invites you to whoop, clap and dance. It lifts you up with joy and exultation. It is out in cinemas on Friday, May 10th. On VoD on Monday, September 2nd.