Author: The Reviews Hub - Film

Writer and Director: Seemab Gul In Ghost School writer /director Seemab Gul employs the well-worn narrative device of using the viewpoint of an innocent child to expose corruption which jaded adults take for granted. Ten-year-old Rabia (Nazualiya Arsalan) lives in a Pakistani village so poor there are no automobiles and, in the absence of playgrounds, children play football on rubbish tips. The villagers are also prone to superstition and accept the explanation that the only school in the village has been closed due to one of the teachers becoming possessed by an evil spirit. Rabia, however, is not so easily…

Writers: Jacques Akchoti and Valéry Carnoy Director: Valéry Carnoy Boxing films have become so much a genre of their own that the BFI had a whole season devoted to them in April of this year, at which Valéry Carnoy’s Wild Foxes played in preview. While the Cinematic Life of Boxing features expected titles like Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby, Ali and the first Rocky (though none of its sequels), it’s surprisingly what’s missing. There’s no Christy, the underrated Sydney Sweeney vehicle, or the locker room drama of the British Heavyweight, both from last year. And it’s a shame that Chris…

Writer and Director: Sofía Petersen Depending on your mood, you may find Sofía Petersen’s Olivia a profound reflection on human loneliness and isolation or an overly indulgent and frustrating piece that struggles for momentum. Set in a remote cabin in rural Argentina shared by an elderly father who works in an abattoir and his adult daughter who tends to the home, the first 30-minutes of Olivia barely gets going, focused on a series of limited meals made largely of baked potatoes and the title characters obsession with the little beetles and moths that run freely through their permanently dark home.…

Writer and Director: Thea Gajic Surviving Earth is a lovely film. Although also profoundly sad, Thea Gajic’s portrait of her late father is realistic, loving and somehow hopeful. It follows a few months in the life of Vlad, a harmonica player from Serbia who works at a drug counselling centre in Bristol . He has formed a band with two friends from work, and has ambitions to make it big in the music world. Bigger, at any rate, than their current status as occasional  openers for other, better known, bands. There are innumerable films about celebrated musicians from humble beginnings…

Writer and Director: Bart Schrijver Director Kevin Smith dismissed The Lord of the Rings trilogy as being nothing more than three films about characters walking to a volcano. Mr Smith is unlikely to care for Bart Schrijver’s The North which doesn’t even feature a volcano just two blokes walking. Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) are unlikely friends being different nationalities (respectively Dutch and Latino) and personalities. After years apart the former roommates decide to reconnect by hiking along Scotland’s 600km West Highland Way and Cape Wrath Trail. However, the arduous and monotonous journey strains rather than strengthens the…

Writer and Director: Katharina Otto-Bernstein Living through the great events of the twentieth century offers an extraordinary range of experiences, and none more so than for former members of the world’s most renowned secret service organisations as they were being born in times of international conflict and dangerous political extremes. Katharina Otto-Bernstein’s new documentary The Last Spy takes a very traditional approach with an interview format but the life of Peter Sichel is so fantastical and still so stoically accepted that as he reaches his hundredth birthday, Sichel remains convinced he was just doing his job. But Sichel really did…

Writers: Romas Zabarauskas, Marc David Jacobs and Vitalija Lapina Director: Romas Zabarauskas This film from Lithuania promises great things: A gay man infiltrates a Neo-Nazi organisation to track down the killer of his politician boyfriend. However, it ends up like a gritty urban episode of Midsomer Murders with backhand dealing between local dignitaries overshadowing a film that wants to focus on LGBTQIA+ rights in the Eastern European country. Just before a planned Pride march is due to take place in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city, the leader of gay rights movement Rainbow is killed in his home, the same day…

Writer and Director: Alice Winocour With the movie Prêt-à-Porter director Robert Altman came unstuck as his famous improvisational approach failed to penetrate the world of high fashion.  Now with Couture writer and director Alice Winocour returns to the stylish environment but with a less satirical viewpoint and a more ambitious target for her observations. Horror film director Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie) accepts a commission to make a short vampire film as a curtain-raiser to promote Paris Fashion Week. Whilst in the City of Light she is given a cancer diagnosis and told she needs urgent treatment. Ada (Anyier Anei) is…