Tag: dirty movies

The top 10 dirtiest movies of 2023

Posted on by victorfraga

Another year has gone by and DMovies is now nearly eight years old. Since we started in February 2016, we have published more than 2,900 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.

We physically five a-list festivals across Europe: Berlin, Locarno, Cannes, San Sebastian and Tallinn. Other gigs included the Turin, REC Tarragona, Transylvania and the Red Sea Film Festival, in Saudi Arabia, plus the usual suspects across the UK (the BFI London Film Festival and our indie favourite Raindance). We have published in excess of 400 articles and reviews and renewed our biggest partnerships.

We decided to pull together a little list of the 10 dirtiest films of 2022. 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…

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1. All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh):

Chosen by Daniel Theophanous

Loosely based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, All of Us Strangers is the story of Adam, in his 40s, a scriptwriter living a lonely existence working and living at home with an inability to connect with others. His life is marked by the tragic death of his parents, killed in a car accident just before his 12th birthday. The day after his encounter with Harry, in an elaborate trip down memory lane he makes his way to his suburban childhood home in Croydon. Finding himself at his local park, a place which initially gives the impression of a cruising spot, enhanced by the presence of an attractive moustached man in a leather jacket signalling him into the bushes. Adam follows him into an unexpected opening and upon close inspection it is revealed the man is his dad, looking just like before he died. A subtle and playful use of a gay trope nods to Haigh’s signature understated directorial approach.

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2. Asteroid City (Wes Anderson):

Chosen by Anton Bittel

It may come with Anderson’s typical whimsy and familiar cartoonish stylisations, but this formally challenging, hermeneutically convoluted work is focused on a deep, deep grief that no amount of narrative embedding can truly, permanently bury. Anderson’s retro-futurist small-town ’50s setting, the picture-book production design and dead-on cinematography, all the overt artifice and metatheatrical play, and even a story involving a visiting alien (and an incursion of Brechtian alienation effects) cannot quite contain the sense of loss that his eccentric ensemble of characters struggles to suppress as they look away from the grave towards the heavens – and so Asteroid Cityproves a richly layered, constantly diverting study in melancholy. It is beautiful, funny, sad, wise and humane.

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3. Barbie (Greta Gerwig):

Chosen by readership (most read review of the year)

Never before in your life have you seen as much pink. Costumes, houses, cars, streets and even the sky. Your eyes might suffer inflammation or photophobia. You might become pink-blind. This is a luminescent movie that exudes not just colour, flair and vigour, but also some very bright and gleaming messages. At a duration of nearly two hours, Greta Gerwig’s third feature film (after 2018’s Lady Bird and 2020’s Little Women) is her most expensive and commercial one, but this does not mean that the 39-year-old director has waived her auteurial sensibilities, her audacity, and her ability to touch and move even the most cynical and hardened of hearts..

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4. The Eight Mountains (Felix Van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch):

Chosen by John McDonald

Belgian filmmaker Felix van Groeningen, known for the heart-breaking 2019 film Beautiful Boy , is joined by his actress wife Charlotte Vandermeersch for this latest project, an adaptation of the award-winning 2016 novel of the same name by Italian author Paolo Cognetti. It’s a film that has been described as a “straight Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)” which kind of says a lot about it – but this is far from being just a one-dimensional retelling. It explores a simple friendship with complicated edges, a combination of two isolated souls in dire need of this concept, and how it can cultivate into something significant and extremely poignant over time.

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5. Full Time (Eric Gravel):

Chosen by Jeremy Clarke

A single mum with two young kids struggles to hold her working life together in a Paris where the transport network in and out of the city is paralysed by strikes. The brief moment of calm at the start of the movie gives little indication of the relentless nature of what is to follow. Julie Roy (Laure Calamy) sleeps deeply, a figure at rest, as we watch parts of her face in close-ups. Suddenly, this tranquillity is shattered by the aural violation of the quiet by an alarm clock. As she gets the kids up, the radio blares out something about an increase in working hours and something else about the welfare state. The impression is of the microcosm of her life and the macrocosm of the wider world (France) in a state of crisis. She bundles her kids off to the child-minder’s and boards a pre-dawn train to Paris. The train is terminated because of an unwell passenger, so she has to switch to a bus to get to St. Lazare, and as she is trying to get to The Churchill, the luxury hotel where she works as a head chambermaid, she must fend off a mobile phone call about her mortgage repayments.

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6. Faceless After Dark (Raymond Wood):

Chosen by Paul Risker

This is a damn fine genre picture. Responses to the toxicity of social media have revealed that it’s a trickery little devil – concealing its true meaning. One suspects society might be terrified if it knew what an honest exploration the film is of a common, but ignored and misunderstood rage bubbling beneath the surface all around us – in part, how we create our own monsters. All of this is presented with subtlety. Director Raymond Wood, writers Todd Jacobs and Jenna Kanell, who plays the lead character, Bowie, ensure that first and foremost it’s a rollicking good genre picture with plenty of carnage and blood. And, in a time when references and influences aren’t discreet, here, the unhinged artist delicately evokes the spirit of a famous ‘fallen’ female character of 1950s cinema.

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7. Falling into Place (Aylin Tezel):

Chosen by Eoghan Lyng

A German lady and a Scottish man live out their memories on the streets of London, in this highly accomplished German film. Falling into Place avoids the most everyday clichés to demonstrate a love story based on guilt and unfulfilled desire. The audience knows more about the characters than they do, which might explain why they spend so much of the film apart. When Kira returns to London, she catches up with her Irish ex-boyfriend, hoping to rekindle the memories they shared. She’s open and honest in all the ways Ian – a struggling musician desperate to catch a break – is not. His seclusion likely stems from his father’s ill health – not forgetting his sister, who is situated in a hospital to cure her manic depression. They find other loves, but none of their partners seem to reignite the spark they enjoyed on that cold night in Skye. The question remains: Is it better to confine love to memory, or should you break free from the shackles of convention, and “take a risk”?

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8. In the Rearview (Maciek Hamela):

Chosen by Louis Roberts

Premiering at Sheffield DocFest last week, where it went on to win the Grand Jury Award in the International Competition, In the Rearview is a co-production of Ukraine, France and Hamela’s native Poland. Set almost entirely in the filmmaker’s own minibus as he takes thousands of refugees to safety, the film’s intimate yet non-intrusive approach is the very definition of ‘less is more’. Despite the extraordinary circumstances in which its subjects find themselves, the film is incredibly effective as a slice-of-life documentary, a testament to the resilience and courage of the normal people this conflict has affected, as well as Hamela’s determination to tell their stories as truthfully as possible.

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9. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese):

Chosen by Victoria Luxford

After nearly 60 years of filmmaking, Martin Scorsese is still capable of making films that keep you glued to your seat. Teaming up with regular collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro, Killers of The Flower Moon is both a complex power struggle and a howl of rage from America’s ugly past. Lily Gladstone is the heart and soul of the piece, with DiCaprio as ever excelling as a man torn between light and dark. At 81, there are more films behind the Oscar-winner than ahead, but he shows no sign of slowing with one of the most gripping films of the year.

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10. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer):

Chosen by DMovies’ editor Victor Fraga

Jonathan Glazer’s latest creation hits your head so hard that it keeps it spinning vertiginously. It throws your set of inner values and principles into disarray, and make you question the very nature of your humanity. It’s a necessary and urgent film, relevant to people of all nationalities and with a topic as current as it was 80 years ago, when the Third Reich was at its height.

The movie depicts the routine of Rudolf Hoess (Christian Friedel), the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, his wife Hedwig Hensel (Sandra Hueller) and their five children (ranging from babyhood to 11 years of age) around 1943 in a large country house. The facilities are very comfortable, however not particularly extravagant. The dining room and lounge are elegant and spacious, the medium-size garden is populated with gingerly pruned plants, a table and a few chairs. This is where Rudolf welcomes other Nazi officers. A guest casually describes how the gas chambers work, with a factory plant to hand: “load, burn, cool, unload, then start all over again”. It sounds as if they are talking about a food manufacturing procedure. This is also where the children play. Where Rudolf and Hedwig enjoy their intimacy, sharing the friendly banter and occasional joke. A quiet lake nearby provides the family with rural entertainment, reflection and a connection with nature. This could be any German family. It is such casualness that is most jarring. These people lead a hair-raisingly mundane existence.

The Zone of Interest is pictured at the top of this article.

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And here goes one last-minute addition:

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello):

Chosen by Nick Kouhi

One of contemporary French Cinema’s most exciting provocateurs, Bertrand Bonello has cultivated a knack for confidently melding potentially incongruous genres into a recognizably pervasive strain of dread. His new film The Beast is possibly his boldest work yet, as intellectually rigorous as it is stylistically dazzling in its three historically discrete but thematically linked tales of l’amour fou between a couple spanning across a century and two continents.

The would-be lovers bear the same names in their separate lives: Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay), whose paths first cross in early 20th Century Europe. Their chance encounter in Paris sparks a kinship where she confides in him a latent fear of some unknown catastrophe that will befall her. The central premise, inspired by Henry James’ 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, extends to 2014 where Gabrielle is now a struggling actress in Los Angeles and Louis is the thinly veiled double of Elliot Rodger, whose misogynist social media vlogs culminated in six murders near the University of California.

Moving people, moving films

Posted on by victorfraga

Even the most heartless among the population cannot have been drawn in by the suffering and hardships being felt by the Ukrainian people following the invasion of their sovereign land at the hands of Vladimir Putin and his Russian army. The sight of millions fleeing from their homes in search of safety is something that is very hard to watch without being emotionally affected.

Of course, there are, sadly, plenty of similar stories playing out in other areas of the world, some of which don’t get as much coverage on our screens as they deserve, but with this latest war taking place in Europe, there are connotations and connections to how WW2 began and one wonders what might happen next to those who are holding firm and remaining in their homeland.

Many filmmakers have attempted to tell poignant stories around the subject of refugees and forced migration, as well as tales that relate to economically fuelled movements of people, such as those of Oleg Sentsov and some have proven more successful (both in terms of commercial performance and critical acclaim) than others.

Here are my favourite five films of such genre, with very effective storytelling devices. They are listed in order of preference (my favourite ones at the top):

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1. In This World (Michael Winterbottom, 2003):

From filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, this docudrama is so realistic that you’ll think that the footage comes from some stock video taken directly from the events that are being fictionalised.

The story follows two Afghan refugees traveling from a refugee camp in Pakistan and attempting to get to London. Winterbottom covers everything in a visceral way that makes what you are viewing almost seem like a documentary but is, in fact, a dramatisation. The choice of two non-professional actors in the lead roles was a stroke of genius as it adds realism to the piece.

The realistic nature of the subject matter makes it very tough viewing, especially when one of the two main characters suffocates to death in a shipping container, and the ending has an uplifting but surreal quality to it that in some ways mirrors the trials and tribulations that face the modern refugee experience.

In This World is also pictured at the top of this article.

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2. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009):

Though this movie is strictly a science fiction film, it cleverly uses the aliens as a metaphor for the refugee experience, and though the film is a satirical take on the situation, it is also a very effective way to approach the topic.

The film helped launch the career of its director Neill Blomkamp and is a take on his take on the apartheid era in his native South Africa. It’s darkly comic but is also very moving when

it’s necessary, and the whole premise is cleverly put together, and the movie proved to be a box office success.

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3. Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2005):

This 2004 release tells the true story of hotelier Paul Rusesabagina who attempted to save the lives of thousands of refugees during the Rwandan civil war in the mid-1990s. It’s a harrowing film that tells the story of genocide and political corruption, and it earned its lead, Don Cheadle, a much deserved Oscar nomination.

It shows how the outside world largely ignored the plight of millions in the country and how the UN largely watched on and were unable or unwilling to prevent the massacre of millions.

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4. The Visitor (Tom McCarthy, 2006):

This indie film is something of a low-key look at two refugees looking to make a life for themselves in unfamiliar territory but is, interestingly, also a study of a local who seeks to assist them while going through something of an existential crisis.

The Visitor is something of a refreshing take on the subject of immigration. In the film, a college professor (excellently played by ever-reliable character actor Richard Jenkins) returns to his Manhattan apartment, which he hasn’t visited for some months on account of living ostensibly in Connecticut, to find a young couple living there.

He forms a close bond with the pair, and he gets to see how they seek to make a fresh start to their lives, having fled Syria, and this, in turn, helps him to see the meaning in his own.

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5. In America (Jim Sheridan, 2003):

This touching drama is something of a biographical piece by Irish director/writer Jim Sheridan, based on his experiences of moving to New York from his native Ireland.

The movie charts the ups and downs of a young family, with outstanding performances by both Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton and their young children (played by Sarh and Emma Bolger), and the lives of those who live in their tenement block.

It received universal acclaim and led to Oscar nominations for Morton and Djimon Hounsou, who portrays a tortured artist who touches the family’s lives and shows us how a family deals with the upheaval of moving to a new world and the joys and heartaches that ensue.

The top 10 dirtiest movies of 2021

Posted on by victorfraga

Another year has gone by and DMovies is now nearly six years old. Since we started in February 2016, we have published 2,200 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.

Despite the numerous challenges posed by the pandemic, we physically attended five A-list festivals across Europe: Berlin, Locarno, Venice, San Sebastian and Tallinn. Other gigs included the very first Red Sea Film Festival, in Saudi Arabia, plus the usual suspects across the UK (the BFI London Film Festival and indie favourite Raindance). We have published 400 articles and reviews and renewed our partnership with organisations such as the Black Nights Film Festival and VoD providers Festival Scope and ArteKino.

We decided to pull together a little list of the 10 dirtiest films of 2021. 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…

,,,

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1. Annette (Leos Carax):

Chosen by Justin Khoo

Starting with a bombastic ode to the artifice of cinema, and culminating in a heart-wrenching reckoning with misplaced ambition, artistic inadequacy, and parental regret, Leos Carax’s Annette makes the case that self-reflexive postmodern art can still pack an emotional punch. Between these bookend showpieces, the film slides playfully between fantasy and reality, yet remaining grounded in the demanding-yet-graceful performances of its three leads (Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, and Simon Helberg) and a dreamlike set design that recalls 2020 and 1920 alike. For all these lovely qualities, any musical lives or dies by its music, and Annette is fortunate to feature an infinitely hummable score by Sparks, including many songs that you may find on repeat in your head long after the show has ended — a comforting reminder that some things, are, really, “out of this world”!

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2. Baby Done (Curtis Vowell):

Chosen by Eoghan Lyng

The first thing you should know about Baby Done is that yes, it is a film about babies, and yes, as a treatise on biology, it showcases the many unflattering elements that come with childbirth. There’s the belching, the farting, the aging and crying that comes part and parcel with the voyage every potential parent sets for themselves. And between these squabbles over baby clothes, baby showers and baby motions comes the birth of a new cinematic genre.

It’s not an explicitly feminist apotheosis, but it essays mothers at their most urgent, urbane and undressed. “I want a baby,” Zoe says; “I just don’t want to be a mum.” Determined to keep her head up, Zoe searches for “pregnancy fetishes” on the internet. But however reluctant she comes across, or how difficult she appears to her boyfriend, Zoe is never anything less than charming, and beneath the feisty veneer comes a human equally as ecstatic as she is terrified to bring another human to the world.

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3. Black Bear (Lawrence Michael Levine):

Chosen by Charles Williams Ex Aequo

It’s difficult to talk about this American dirty movie without giving the game away. Establishing dialogue suggests a traditional, staid indie mumbler but the film soon morphs into a more experimental space, cohering into a satisfying, chewy thinkpiece by the end; a millennial reimagining of Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001) by way of Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002), updated with more pertinent issues to filmmaking today.

The film is built around two lightning rod scenes, reflections of the same event told from wildly different contexts. It is a diptych of competing quantum narratives with the viewer left to decide whether either, both or neither contain any truth. The implied throughline of a writer exploring these hypotheticals does little to clarify whether the plot is drawn from experience or directly conjured, a torturous creativity writ large.

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4. Dune (Denis Villeneuve):

Chosen by Amhara Chamberlayne

Dune is the best kind of blockbuster – visually arresting, intellectual and emotionally engaging. It feels like a mash-up of Game Of Thrones and Star Wars – in a good way. Its fascinating world is realised through a seamless blend of practical and digital effects, but it isn’t just pretty for the sake of it – its visuals emphasise the depth of the story. It’s hero’s journey is familiar yet it feels fresh thanks to the psychedelic spin and unique setting. The performances are fantastic, and Chalamet does well to hold his own amongst a cast of veterans.

Bring on Part 2!

Dune is also pictured at the top pf this article.

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

Chosen by Paul Risker

Director Karim Aïnouz and screenwriter Murilo Hauser’s Un Certain Regard winner (Cannes Film Festival, 2019), is a deeply emotional film. Adapted from Martha Batalha’s novel, the emotional presence of the drama comes through the audience bearing witness to the lives of the two sisters, Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and Guida (Julia Stockler), unfolding through the years.

Aïnouz plays with the voyeuristic role of his audience and uses their active participation to contribute to the emotional crescendo. Sharing in the pain of the characters, the audiences fears of mortality and time lost are effectively exploited. The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão is a cry against patriarchy and gender inequality, that has inflicted irrevocable hurt on women, denying them the most precious of gifts, time.

Despite premiering in Cannes in 2019, The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao only reached UK cinemas in 2021.

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6. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul):

Chosen by Redmond Bacon

With Memoria, Thai legend Apichatpong Weerasethakul is basically trying to do the impossible: use the cinematic form to depict the vibrating, mysterious connection between all human beings. A dreamy, strange, addictive and loopy dream-like journey through Medellin and the Colombian jungle, his first non-Thai film is the best film of the year.

Tilda Swinton, the patron saint of all things weird, stars, in an unusually downbeat turn. She plays a woman from Scotland travelling to Medellin to visit her sick sister. Her sister’s husband suggests her sickness has been caused by her research: investigating a tribe in the Amazon that purposefully choose to stay hidden. She could be cursed. Like with Weerasethakul’s previous films, one suspects ghosts or malevolent spirits might be involved.

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7. A Place Called Dignity (Matias Rojas Valencia, 2021):

Chosen by DMovies’ editor Victor Fraga

The year is 1989, just months before the end of the Pinochet’s sanguinary dictatorship, somewhere in the remote hinterlands of Southern Chile. The country dares to hope for freedom and democracy for the first time in two decades. Inside Colonia Dignidad, however, there is no visible sign of the end to the years of the institutionalised physical, psychological and sexual abuse to which staff and students are subjected.

This highly mysterious and secluded organisation is run by sadistic German preachers. They are under the purview of Pius (Hanns Zischler), who prefers being called Dauer Onkel, German for “permanent uncle”. There’s nothing pious and avuncular about the old foreigner. He invites his young male students to his bed late at night and forces them to undress. The actions of “permanent uncle” will leave a permanent scar on his young victims.

This shockingly powerful Chilean film is based on real events.

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8. Riders of Justice (Anders Thomas Jensen):

Chosen by Ian Schultz

The latest film from director Anders Thomas Jensen is a black comedy that subverts some aspects of action movies. It’s an incredibly funny but strangely moving film about Marcus (Mads Mikkelson), whose wife is killed in a tragic train accident. He is approached by two men statistical analyst Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann) with their suspicions about the “accident”, and they team up to find out what actually happened. Its one of those films that pretty much anyone could enjoy: it’s an art film, an action film and a comedy, it has a lot of emotional depth, and it even becomes a Christmas film at one point. Riders of Justice is a solid piece of work with loads of great twists and turns, and juggles its tones perfectly. Mikkelson is fantastic as always, turning in an even better than in last year’s Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020).

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9. Some Kind of Heaven (Lance Oppenheim):

Chosen by Charles Williams Ex Aequo

An assured and sumptuous debut documentary feature. Lance Oppenheimer gets intimate access and honesty from his subjects, a motley crew of Floridian pensioners for whom life begins as the end nears. Love, sex, drugs and lawn tennis and are all viable pastimes at The Villages, a retirement-complex-cum-city-state with a population that exceeds the smaller countries. Everything is heightened by beautiful cinematography that brings to mind a slideshow projection of holidays long forgotten.

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10. Summer of Soul (Questlove):

Chosen by Dan Meier

Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978) was knocked off its perch this year, not just by Van Morrison and Eric Clapton’s Covid denial but also Summer of Soul – Questlove’s ode to black culture and its white erasure. Buried for 50 years, phenomenal footage from 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival vibrates with the rhythm of soul and the crackle of protest. Incendiary performances from Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone and Ray Barretto testify to the diversity and freedom of African and Latin American music, arguably creating the all-time greatest concert movie; a moving (in every sense) celebration of anti-racism, not anti-vaxxers.

Our top 10 dirty picks from the BFI London Film Festival 2020

Posted on by victorfraga

The year of 2020 has been like no other, and every single film event had to adapt. The BFI London Film Festival (LFF) is no exception, as the British capital (and the rest of the nation) grapples with the new lockdown rules and restrictions, which have either prevented or discouraged people from leaving their homes in order to go to the cinema. Of course every cloud has its silver lining, and the good news is that all films are now within reach of anyone in the UK, not just the country’s capital.

Throughout the course of 12 days, 14 feature films and a featurette (Almodovar’s The Human Voice) will available to watch in cinemas, namely the three cosy theatres of the BFI Southbank. Plus 59 feature movies are available on BFI Player at specific time slots (which range from a few days to a few hours). They include 50 virtual premieres. You can see the full list and book your tickets by clicking here. In addition, there is also a short film, XR, immersive art and an augmented reality installation – just click here for more information.

Below are our top 10 picks from the programme. They are dirty movies that we watched earlier this year at the Berlin, the Venice and the San Sebastian International Film Festival (the Spanish festival embraced the entire selection from the cancelled edition of Cannes). They are some of the most innovative, provocative and downright filthy that we have seen this year. Of course we haven’t covered every single film in the LFF programme, so stay tuned for more dirty gems throughout the British Festival!

The 10 dirty movies below are listed in alphabetical order. Just click on the film title in order to accede to each individual review:

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1. 200 Meters (Ameen Nayfeh):

Mustafa (Ali Suliman) and his wife Salwa (Lama Zreik) live 200 meters apart in villages separated by the West Bank Wall. When he receives a call from his wife saying his son has been rushed to hospital, he’s denied access at the Israeli checkpoint on a technicality. Leaving him with no choice, he pays a driver to smuggle him to the other side of the wall. Mustafa alongside a small group of strangers come to depend on one another, as they undertake the dangerous 200 kilometre odyssey.

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2. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg):

A history professor, a school music director, a children sports coach and a psychology teacher walk into a bar. They’ve decided to test the theory that mankind should maintain a 0.05% blood alcohol concentration in order to maximise their potential and achieve greatness. Two glasses of wine for kick-off and then top it up throughout the day. You already know where this is going but it’s an intoxicating ride through Sazerac-sodden highs before the crashing hangover sets in. The four male protagonists won the Best Actor prize at San Sebastian. Another Round is also pictured at the top of this article.

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3. Days (Tsai Ming-liang):

The king of slow cinema is back, and he’s in great shape. In his latest movie, two men carry on with their lives as normal on the streets of Taipei. One of them (Anong Houngheuangsy) is young and poor, and prepares a meal in his humble dwelling. The other one (Lee Kang) is a little older and seemingly wealthy, judging by the hotel room that he hires. This is where they meet. The conversations are sparse and wilfully “unsubtitled”. The younger man gives the older man a sensual massage, which gradually develops into full-on sex. The action is delicate and sensual, with a palpable sense of intimacy. The two characters develop a bond, helped by the quietly effervescent chemistry between the two actors. There’s also a touch of tenderness. The older man gives a tiny music box to the young one, which appears again in the end of the movie. The two men are inextricably linked through their memories, embodied by the unusual trinket.

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4. The Human Voice (Pedro Almodovar):

Breaking up with your ex is never an easy task, particularly when he’s already found a new companion. He hasn’t returned home for three days, in a rather unambiguous sign that he has now left for good. You experience a lot of feelings: despondency, jealousy, hate and – first and foremost – rage. You want to stab his chest. You want to cut him up with an axe. You want to set fire to what once was your love nest.

Can you live out these things for real? Probably not a good idea. So the 70-year-old Spanish filmmaker found a cunning solution. He staged the entire action. He built a mock home inside a large warehouse and hired Tilda Swinton to play the jilted lover. She is supported by her doting pooch Dash, dazzling costumes and a jaunty music score by Alberto Iglesias. Almodovar’s latest movie places a 1928 play by Jean Cocteau in a modern context.

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5. Never Gonna Snow Again (Malgorzata Szumowska/ Michal Englert):

Zenia (played by British Ukrainian actor Alec Utgoff) heals the pains and afflictions of the bored and sick Polish bourgeoisie. He lives in a small flat in town, and spends most of his time – massage-bed under his arm – on an upper class district, visiting very different clients. A woman struggles with an unsatisfactory sex life and an unruly daughter. A man is dying of cancer. An old lady is very sad and lonely, in the company of her three bulldogs. And so on. The young and attractive foreigner is a masseur, a healer, a hypnotherapist, a dancer, a friend and a lover, sometimes all at once.

Never Gonna Snow Again is a highly elliptical film. It’s a collection of allegories, some perfectly intelligible, some deeply personal and moot to interpretation. There is a apparent reference to last sequence of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), as a young Zenya uses telekinesis in order to move a glass across the table. Some sequences feel very creepy/ Lynchian, such as an exotic peep show dance (watched by Zenya) and a magic trick on stage (inexplicably performed by Zenya alongside one of his clients). All strangely delectable.

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6. New Order (Michel Franco):

What was intended to be an ostentatious celebration soon turns into a bloodbath, in the movie that won the Silver Lion of Venice. Twenty-five-year-old, pretty and Nordic-looking Marianne (Naian González Norvind) is getting married to the handsome, Italian-looking Alan (Dario Yasbek Bernal). Both families and their rich friends have united at her family’s spectacular dwelling, somewhere in Mexico City. Everyone is dressed to kill, and food and drink are abundant at the extravagant party. Until their conspiring employees open the house gates to trigger-happy, ruthless rioters.

This is no Marxist revolution. The rebels are profoundly consumerist, wide-eyed with greed, as they steal the expensive electronics, jewels and other valuables from their hapless victims. They take enormous pleasure in vandalising the property. They are not concerned about equality. Instead they work in cahoots with local authorities and other groups. Their allegiance is as fragile as the champagne glasses at the wedding party. Nihilism and factionalism prevail. There is no concern for social justice. They are prepared to betray and to kill their associates without hesitation. They just want money. As much money as possible.

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7. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao):

Fern (Frances McDonald) is a beautiful and intelligent middle-aged woman. She is very unusually charming, with her quiet and stern smile. She is also in perfect good health. Someone who could be working in Wall Street. Instead she lives in poverty in the back of her van (not a camper van, but a regular size one), travelling across her large nation in search of temporary employment in fast-food restaurants, factories and so on. She literally has to “handle her own shit”, in reference to the bucket that she uses as a toilet. The movie that won the Silver Lion at Venice is based on Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, a non-fiction work penned three years ago by Jessica Bruder.

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8. Shirley (Josephine Decker):

In the year of 1964, the highly reclusive horror writer Shirley Jackson (Elizabeth Moss) and her husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg) “welcome” two graduate students into their Vermont mansion, Rose (Odessa Young) and her spouse Fred (Logan Lerman). Rose and Fred are vibrant, optimistic and full of life. Shirley are cruel and offensive misanthropes. Shirley will attempt to hurt and humiliate the naive couple at every opportunity. Her equally unpleasant husband will support her in the very questionable endeavour.

Shirley wasn’t just a reclusive, who rarely ever left her large estate. She was also a sociopath. In the few occasions when she ventured out of her property, she helped to ensure that everyone in her surroundings felt threatened and mortified. Her actions included the the sharpest and meanest remarks, pulling scary faces and spilling wine on the sofa. Her gaze overflowing with hate and envy. She has Bette Davies eyes, complete with the bitchiness of Margo Channing in All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950). The difference between between Davis’s character and Shirley is that the latter is genuinely cold-blooded and brutal.

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9. Supernova (Harry Macqueen):

Tusker (Stanley Tucci) has received a diagnosis of dementia, causes and stage unknown. Things are definitely worsening, however, this simply won’t do for author Tusker, renowned for his intellectualism and lively personality. Concert pianist partner Sam (Colin Firth) is stoically resigned to tackle the coming challenges and is considering easy access bungalows or outside help. His heart is completely dedicated towards this new goal to spend their remaining time together. “Every moment”. The two are not entirely on the same page, with the sentimentality of Sam’s approach rubbing against the more clinical outlook of Tusker, railing at the inevitability of becoming a passenger in his own body. The diametrically opposed personal introspection of the writer against the sensitivity of an outwardly performative musician has until now defined their relationship, now causing friction.

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10. Undine (Christian Petzold):

Undine (Paula Beer) is an eloquent historian. She teaches tourists about the architectural history of Berlin in a local museum. She shows them a giant model of the city as it currently is and another one of what it would look like now had the GDR not unexpectedly collapsed 30 years earlier. Her life is also seeing a very abrupt change: her lover Johannes (Jacob Matschenz) is about to dump her. The nonchalant yet assertive female has threatened to kill him in case he proceeds with his plans. She does not wish to see their romance confined to the past, just like urbanistic plans for the defunct communist state.

She then meets the handsome Christoph (Franz Rogowski), a diver familiar with the underwater secrets of the German capital. The grounded lady and submarine gentleman complement each other. They meet entirely by accident (literally), in one of these rare occasions when the underwater world comes crashing into the surface. Undine was unwittingly waiting to submerge into Christoph’s world for some time. Her name is a reference to a 200-year-old German novella about a water spirit.

The top 10 LGBT+ dirty movies on Netflix!

Posted on by victorfraga

Sexual diversity is at the very heart of our vision and mission. Unsurprisingly, in our four years of existence we have come across and helped to promote LGBT+ of all types and from every continent on Earth. Most of these films started on a conventional distribution route, opening in cinemas, then DVD and finally on to the major VoD platforms. Netflix has since grown and taken up many of these dirty gems, which are now an integral part of their selection.

One the films on this list (Isabel Coixet’s Elisa and Marcela; also pictured above) is a full-on Netflix production, meaning that the movie giant was involved in the project from its very conception. This is perhaps a sign that many more LGBT+ films will follow a similar route in the near future. This isn’t good news for traditional distributors with a niche focus, such Peccadillo films.

The films below are listed in alphabetical order. Don’t forget to click on each individual film title in order to accede to our exclusive reviews. These films are available on Netflix UK and Ireland; there may be variations in other countries and regions.

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1. Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman, 2017):

It’s New York, it’s Summer and it’s sultry. The tarmac is sizzling, and the pavement scorching hot. And so are the libidos of young men. Frankie (Harris Dickinson) is no exception. The problem is that he is very confused about his sexuality. The extremely attractive young male is dating an equally stunning female called Simone (Madeline Weinstein, who’s not related to the now infamous Harvey), and he hangs out with young straight men of his age. She struggles to have sex with her, and instead fulfils his sexual needs through online gay chat rooms and stealthy sexual encounters with older men.

This sounds like an ordinary predicament, familiar to many gay men. There’s nothing unusual about a teenager grappling with his sexuality. What makes Beach Rats so special is the director’s sensitive gaze, and the very realistic and relatable settings. The young female filmmaker Eliza Hittman, who’s only on her second feature, managed to penetrate (no pun intended) a male and testosterone-fuelled territory to very convincing results.

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2. Call me by your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017):

Our writer Maysa Moncao argued that Luca Guadagnino twisted Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), and that he had the right to do so. Times have changed. A queer movie can be treated as a universal love story. Call Me by Your Name was praised by public and the critics at 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

In the summer of 1983 in northern Italy, Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a 17-year-old boy, is about to receive a guest in his aristocratic house. He is lending his bed to Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old American scholar who has some work to do with Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor specialising in Greco-Roman culture. Elio and Oliver will share the same toilet as well as a desire for each other.

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3. Elisa and Marcela (Isabel Coixet, 2019):

This is a film about two women in love, and directed by a female. And this is cinema at its most universal. It will move you regardless of whether you are a male or a female, Spanish or British, progressive or conservative, or anything else. This is the real-life tale of two humans being who fell in love and took draconian measures in order in order to remain together, against all odds.

Elisa (Natalia de Molina) first meets Marcela (Greta Fernandez) on the first day of school in 1898. They are immediately fascinated with each other. Their tender affection gradually develops into a full-on homosexual relation. Marcela’s parents intervene and send Marcela away to a boarding school in Madrid for three years. The two women, however, resume their romance as soon as Marcela returns. The residents of the parish of Couso too realise that their share more than a friendship. Elisa is branded a “marimacho”, and the couple become increasingly despised and isolated.

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4. Girl (Lukhas Dhont, 2018):

This is a remarkable movie for many reasons. First of all, Flemish Director Lucas Dhont was only 26 years old when he finished a film that he first conceived at the age of just 18. The fascination with transgender people is conspicuous nowadays in cinema. Filmmakers want to investigate the saga of transitioning, and how to reconcile it with with the mixed perspective of outsiders. The fluid sexual/gender identity and the intense transformations in both the mind and the body allow for the construction of very interesting characters. There has been no shortage of such films in then past couple of years. But there are still topic areas waiting to be addressed in more detail, and this is exactly what Girl does.

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5. Handsome Devil (John Butler, 2017):

Ireland is a fast-changing nation. The profoundly Catholic country was the first one in the world to legalise gay marriage by the means of popular vote, despite fierce opposition from the Church. The society has suddenly come out of the closet, and cinema is keeping the closet doors open so that no one is left inside.

But gay marriage isn’t the only issue that matters to LGBT people. Handsome Devil touches is a very touching and moving gay drama, urgent in its simplicity, delving with two woes that remain pandemic: gay bullying in schools and LGBT representation in sports – the latter is often described as the last and most resilient stronghold of homophobia. The movie succeeds to expose both problems and the destructive consequences for the afflicted with a very gentle and effective approach.

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6. I am Michael (Justin Kelly, 2015):

Executive produced by Gus Van Sant, this is a brave movie for anyone in the US to write, direct or star in given the seemingly irreconcilable positions of openly and happily gay people on the one hand and the bigoted anti-gay sentiments of right-wing fundamentalism on the other. Its starting point is Benoit Denizet-Lewis’ fascinating New York Times magazine article entitled My ex-Gay Friend.

In the article the writer goes to visit his former colleague at San Francisco’s young gay men’s XY magazine Michael Glatze who is now studying at Bible school in Wyoming to become a pastor. The XY period is covered towards the start of the movie while the Bible school episode appears in its last third. In between Michael and partner Bennett (Zachary Quinto) try and build a life together which later becomes a ménage à trois with the addition of Tyler (Charlie Carver).

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7. Ideal Home (Andrew Fleming, 2018):

The tale of accidental “parenthood” (or, more broadly speaking, of the awkward and unexpected bonding of a child and an adult) is no big novelty. They includes classics such as Central Station (Walter Salles, 1997), Son of Saul (Laszlo Nemes, 2015) and also the more mainstream About a Boy (Chris and Paul Weitz). Ideal Home is a welcome addition to the list, providing a very gay and Camp touch to the subgenre.

Erasmus (Steve Coogan) and his partner Paul (a heavily bearded and mega cuddly version of Paul Rudd) lead a mostly pedestrian life, and bickering seems to be their biggest source of entertainment. Erasmus is an accomplished and respected TV boss, while Paul is some sort of younger househusband. One day, the 10-year-old grandson that Erasmus never knew he had shows up for dinner, and he has nowhere to go. That’s because his father, Erasmus’s estranged son, has been arrested on domestic violence charges. The two men are forced to look after the child (Jack Gore), who refuses to reveal his own name.

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8. LOEV (Sudhanshu Saria, 2016):

The first gay kiss in Bollywood happened just ten years ago in the movie Dunno Y (Sanjay Sharma), a year after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India. Sadly, the country has now moved backwards and two years ago it recriminalised gay sex. This makes the graphic content of LOEV, which includes a gay kiss and violence, very subversive for current Indian laws and standards.

This is a very unusual Bollywood movie, not just for its audacious content, but also for its narrative and format. The film shuns easy entertainment devices in favour of much more complex personal and social reflections. Also, the film has very little music, which is also memorable for a movie made in Mumbai.

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9. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan, 2018):

Hitting somewhere between the picaresque brilliance of Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2018) and the corny idealism of Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti, 2018), Desiree Akhavan won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance for her second feature, which takes the personally revealing, post-mumble aspects of her first feature film Appropriate Behaviour (2015) and places them within a YA adaptation that retains her touch but is more accessible, simplistic, and perfect for its teenage target audience.

Chloe Grace Moretz plays Cameron Post, who in 1993 is caught with another girl on prom night and shipped off to a gay conversion camp in Montana. There, she finds herself stuck in a ritual of self-blame, repression and increasing hostility as she and the other teenage inmates attempt to quietly subvert the system and survive their miseducation.

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10. My Days of Mercy (Tali Shalom Ezer, 2019):

Mercy (Kate Mara) is a woman unwilling to offer her own mercy to the criminal who killed her father’s police partner. Across from her, Lucy (Ellen Page) fights for the innocence of her incarcerated father, convinced that he did not end her mother’s life. They meet in a line of picketing protests, where flirtations quickly make way for more romantic endeavours.

This is a profoundly romantic movie also dealing with the impact of grief on our daily lives. Fittingly for a subject on death, it concerns itself on the living and how people live in the face of their mortality. The interchanging lines on the death penalty is strangely hushed at points, Tim Robbins’s Dead Man Walking (1995) dealt with the subject more abjectly and thoroughly.

The dirtiest movie soundtracks ever

Posted on by victorfraga

Films and music have had a long and exciting history. This dates back to the era of silent films, which were scored by a live band, and even sometimes, an orchestra. A good filmmaker knows that audiences watch with their ears as much as they do with their eyes, recognising a whole new dimension to the cinematic experience. A film’s soundtrack has a profound effect on audiences, contextualising what they see on screen by grounding it in their emotions.

That said, here are my top four favourite films with the dirtiest soundtracks that have elicited the most visceral emotions from myself (and audiences, more broadly) since their premiere.

1. Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971):

It’s quite rare that a soundtrack supersedes a film, but Isaac Hayes’ work on the soundtrack of 1971’s Shaft changed the landscape of music in film for generations to come. He, along with guitarist Charles “Skipp” Pitts, had worked on the soundtrack, experimenting with abstract melodies. This now iconic sound was only possible through the use of the iconic Cry Baby Classic Wah pedal, an essential part of guitarist Skip’s studio rig. It’s this out-of-the-box (at least at the time) experimentation that gave the Shaft soundtrack its unique quality — something that has stayed with it to this day.

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2. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017):

Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos gave audiences plenty to take away from his modern retelling of the tragedy of Iphigenia, where Agamemnon is forced by the goddess Artemis to sacrifice his daughter after having killed a sacred deer. However, one unexpected takeaway is the most random use of Ellie Goulding’s dance floor hit Burn in cinematic history. The film opens with violence, a pulsing heart in the middle of an operation, juxtaposed with blaring classical music: Franz Schubert’s Stabat Mater in F minor. This sets the tone for the rest of the film, as it approaches its crescendo without batting an eye. Indeed, the smattering of classical pieces from the likes of J.S. Bach, György Ligeti, and Piette-Laurent Aimard ground and subdue the ostentatious nature of the film itself, giving you the false sense that everything will be okay when things couldn’t be further from it.

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3. Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977):

From the mind of Dario Argento, the cult classic Suspiria has sent many a viewer down the rabbit hole — if the rabbit hole was a dance academy in some obscure town in Germany. While a lot can be said about the different aspects of this iconic film, nothing is more synonymous with Suspiria than its score. The film’s soundtrack, created by Italian progressive rock band Goblin, helped push Argento’s horrific technicolour vision. The band created a slew of eclectic tones and featured one of the earliest uses of synths in horror that gave audiences the lingering feeling of dread all throughout the film. The film has since been remade in 2018 by Luca Guadagnino with Thom Yorke taking over soundtrack duties.

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4. Thoroughbreds (Corey Finley, 2017):

Thoroughbreds is Cory Finley’s black comedy directorial debut, which can be described as Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1979) without the remorse. While this technically is a black comedy, we’re dead serious when we say that this film will move you like no other. A huge reason for this is Erik Friedlander’s jangly nerve-wracking score. Friedlander is a classically trained cellist who has worked on films like 2017’s Oh Lucy (Atsuko Hirayanagi). While the score does add to the film’s visceral effect, where it truly shines is when Friedlander uses silence as a tool to stretch tensions to their breaking point. He bends the elements of tension to his will and inflicts it upon the audience like a knife in the dark. All in all, Thoroughbreds will go down in the history of cinema as a cult classic, and so will Friedlander’s score.

The top 10 dirtiest films of 2018

Posted on by victorfraga

Another year has gone by and DMovies is now nearly three years old. Since we started in February 2016, we have published 1,100 exclusive articles and reviews. We have attended both big and small small festivals and industry events on both sides of the Atlantic, always digging the dirty gems of cinema firsthand and exclusively for you.

This year alone, we have published 450 articles and reviews and renewed our partnership with VoD providers such as Walk This Way and ArteKino. Plus, our weekly newsletter has highlighted the best films out in cinemas, festivals, VoD and DVD every Friday to our 25,000 subscribers! We now have 100,000 monthly visitors on average.

So we decided to pull together a little list of the 10 dirtiest films of 2018. 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).

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1. Shoplifters (Hirozaku Koreeda):

Selected by Alasdair Bayman and Tiago Di Mauro:

Alasdair writes: “Fashioning himself into the hearts of festival viewers for years with features as After Life (1998) even through to neo-noir Third Murder (2017), Hirokazu Koreeda is a master of conveying the purest of human emotions on screen. Yet, his Palm d’Or winning Shoplifters (2018), on the surface, appears in to be purely in the ilk of similar films in his oeuvre. Nevertheless, what is quietly breathtaking about his latest film is that it comes to subvert any predictable pleasures that one may hold before entering the theatre. Central to these small twists is the pivotal final act which lands a sly uppercut to one’s emotional state. Further, the direction is objective towards the titular group of people – they simply exist in a state of love, without any prejudices.

Personally, witnessing the dexterous Kirin Kiki give one of her last on-screen performances, after sadly passing away in September, adds a deeper level of profundity to the narrative. Supported by the whole cast, particularly Lily Franky as the dishevelled father figure, the visuals merge with Haruomi Hosono’s tender score to create a definitive cinematic experience not only the greatest of 2018, but of modern cinema”

Tiago writes: “Reset the world! Hirozaku Koreeda’s magnificent accomplishment by Director Hirokazu illustrates the beauty of the relationships and their impact on our lives – even where they disregard social conventions, laws, assignments and dogmas. The topic fits in very well in a world facing a crisis of human values. It’s a delicate, profound and controversial study of an unconventional family. And of how the family concept evolves with time”.

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2. The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan):

Selected by Redmond Bacon:

“Nuri Bilge Ceylan is never in a rush. His movies are meditative, talky, novelistic. The Wild Pear Tree is no exception, taking over three hours to explore the life of a graduate returning to his hometown to try and write a novel. Interweaving discussions about literature, Islam, love and success, its a film simply bursting with ideas. At first appearing to be plotless, once the central conflict between father and son slowly comes into view, Ceylan has slyly dug his claws in. Its an astonishing mastery of form, showing a director at the top of his game.”

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3. Slam (Partho Sen-Gupta):

Selected by Victor Fraga.

“This is not your average Australian film. In fact, it’s as international as it gets. The action takes place in New South Wales, but the crew and cast are very international indeed. The director Partho Sen-Gupta is originally from Mumbai, while the lead role is played by Palestinian actor Adam Bakri. The topics addressed are also universal: cultural assimilation, Islamophobia and religious/political extremism.

Ameena (Danielle Horvat) is a young rebel. She lives with her mother, a Palestinian refugee. She’s an activist and a feminist. She wears a hijab out of choice because she believes that women should be respected for their fists, and not for their curves. She routinely engages in slam poetry in the local community centre, a competition in which poets perform the spoken word. The letters “S-L-A-M” are written on her hand, very much à la The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Her performances are hypnotic and passionate. Her room is covered in Palestinian freedom, fight racism and antifa posters.”

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4. Blindspotting (Carlos Lopez Estrada):

Selected by Fiona Whitelaw.

“This is a film that has a lot to say, with detail, subtlety and poetic wit. It made me laugh out loud and also flinch with alarm. The central spine is the relationship between best friends since childhood Colin (Daveed Diggs) and Miles (Rafael Casal). This relationship sits within a story of the changing neighbourhood of Oakland, California and the lethal relationship the police have with black men in America.

The first thing that draws you into this story is the visual and vocal panache of a style that realises this tightly wound genius of a script (Daveed Diggs/Rafael Casal). The editor (Gabriel Fleming) deserves a special mention here. Scenes are beautifully cut through with tight cut away shots of doors slamming, feet on truck pedals, faces on wall murals and the juxtaposition of regular and ‘hipster gentrified’ housing.”

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5. Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev):

Selected by Richard Greenhill.

“In a year in which Russia has often dominated headlines, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless reminded us that the most incisive social and political critique often comes from Russia’s own artistic community. His savage thriller is gripping throughout and visually arresting, throwing the viewer into a stark spiritual emptiness that resonates further West too”

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6. Widows (Steve McQueen):

Selected by Eoghan Lyng.

“It’s the closest thing he’s directed to a mainstream movie, but Steve McQueen’s towering Widows (2018) is also his best work since Hunger (2008). His first three films cemented themselves under the performances of Michael Fassbender’s withering body, Cary Mulligan’s naked body and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s naked soul bearing, yet this bears an entire ensemble of credible performances. McQueen has not lost the eye for insurrectory, bringing the muscular Liam Neeson in bed with the beguiling Viola Davis, an addition to this painter turned filmmakers growing collection of incisive and thoughtful pieces.“

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7. Crowhurst (Simon Rumley):

Selected by Paul Risker.

“Aesthetically impassioned filmmaking, Rumley’s visual eye and how he marries it to the soundtrack seers the experience of Crowhurst to one’s memory. Beneath this aesthetic flare lies a touching story of aspiration, that in the time of Brexit offers a reflective insight into the fallacy of the identity of this once great isle”

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8. Burning (Lee Chang-dong):

Selected by Ben Flanagan. Also pictured at the top of the article.

“What do we burn for? Is the question at the heart of Lee Chang Dong’s latest, an extended masterpiece that meditates on the transience of identity, voyeurism, and a changing South Korea. But the Hitchcock of it all, might come as a surprise.

Yoo Ah-in plays Lee, an aspiring writer who begins a fling with a Shin (Jeon Jong-seo), a girl he once bullied in high school. He soon moves out of Seoul and back to his father’s farm, where propaganda alerts from Pyongyang echo from across the border. In a nation that, Dong suggests, increasingly revolves around city life, his family duty has him tethered to a liminal Korean zone.”

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9. Big Fish & Begonia (Liang Xuan, Zhang Chun):

Selected by Jeremy Clarke.

“Around the age of 16, people in the spirit world must visit the world of the humans, with whom they are warned not to interact, as a rite of passage. Thus it is that teenage spirit girl Chun must pass through the elemental maelstrom linking her world and ourswhereupon she is transformed into a red dolphin and made to spend seven days in the seas of the human world.

The whole is rendered in beautifully drawn animation as effective at portraying in the heroine’s internal life as it is in bringing incredible landscapes and fantastic creatures to the screen. The pace is mesmerisingly slow in places, breathtakingly action-packed in others. Where else can you see a girl sell half her life to save someone else’s, a man play mah-jong against three other versions of himself or the terrible portent of snow falling in the middle of Summer? For the finale, it throws in cataclysmic floods and waterspouts descending from the skies.”

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10. The Trial (Maria Augusta Ramos):

Selected by our audience (most read review of the year, with more than 50,000 views).

“The world is blithely unaware of the coup d’état that took place in largest country of Latin America in 2016. Most people outside Brazil assume that the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff was a legitimate process in accordance with the country’s constitution. Many think that Dilma was involved in some sort of corruption scandal and that her removal was an entirely bona fide process. The 137-minute documentary The Trial reveals the details of a process so absurd that it’s akin to Kafka’s eponymous novel, which is mentioned the film. The book tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote authority, with the nature of his crime remaining a mystery. Not too to different to what happened to Dilma.

The Trial premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February, when this piece was originally written. The film received a standing ovation that lasted nearly 10 minutes, the largest one I have ever witnessed at the Festival (which I have attended eight times). This is a powerful venting outlet and denunciation tool for Brazilians who feel that they have been denied a voice in the mainstream media.”

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And a last minute addition (let’s play it dirty and make it 11 instead of 10)…

11. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos):

Selected by Steve Lee Naish.

“It exists as a headfuck, a hallucinatory trip, but it’s one worth taking and experiencing in all its lucid glory. The action takes place in 1983 in the Pacific Northwest of America that seems devoid of people, at least normal people. But we know this is no alternate reality, however much Mandy believes in the supernatural or the otherworldly. President Ronald Reagan appears on the radio rallying against drugs and pornography. If Mandy had been released at the time of Reagan, the moral majority would have flipped at its bent vision of religion and God. Still, the woods, mountains, and lakes are bathed in a fog of dreamy light and aura that offers a sense that weirdness is a norm in these parts.”