A highly-charged thriller, Everybody Knows is intoxicating cinema. It’s the work of brilliant Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi who has woven some of the finest stories in recent years including The Salesman, The Past and A Separation. In Everybody Knows, a vital and beautiful girl disappears. Suddenly family threads start to unravel as a shadow of…
A deeply distressing reality piece, Capharnaum pulls at the heart strings. The title translates to chaos and that’s what this film is about – surviving amid chaos. Zain (Zain Al Raffa) is a mistreated 12-year-old Lebanese boy. After being jailed for committing a violent crime, Zain sues his parents – mother Souad (Kawthar Al Bankole)…
Loro is a bloated two and a half hour indulgence that serves up pure unadulterated hedonism. Co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), the film is about Italian media tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi (Toni Servillo) between 2006 to 2010. In this fictional account, Sorrentino speculates on what may or may not have taken…
Romeo and Juliet are transplanted from Renaissance Verona to mid-20th Century Poland in Paweł Pawlikowski’s stunning Cold War. This elegant film charts a fractious love affair against the backdrop of fractious times. Pawlikowski has a reputation as a stylish and thoughtful director; sometimes compared to a younger version of his compatriot Roman Polanski (without the…
Alfonso Cuarón has never been easy to pin down. The Mexican director has slipped effortlessly between genre films (Children of Men), Hollywood blockbusters (Gravity) and human dramas (Y Tu Mamá También). Now Cuarón draws the strands together in Roma, a film that’s paradoxically both his most ambitious and his most intimate to date. Before getting…
The French comedy/drama Normandy Nude tells of a town of struggling farmers who prepare to pose nude for a photo shoot. If this brief synopsis makes it seem like a Gallic variation on both The Full Monty and Calendar Girls, you wouldn’t be far off the mark. The film is set in a small farming community….
– Russian Resurrection Film Festival – Only in cinemas in November 2018 We have 5 double in-season passes. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Happy Birthday to the Russian Resurrection Film Festival! This year, one of Australia and New Zealand’s favourite film festivals is back and better than ever! For your chance to win, enter your…
The Russian Resurrection Film Festival is back this year for its 15th annual outing bringing the best in new Russian cinema to Australia and New Zealand. The FIFA World Cup was of course held in Russia earlier this year, and the festival will open with the sports drama Coach. Directed by Danila Kozlovsky, who also plays the main role, Coach tells the…
If you’re not familiar with Ukrainian politics, you’ll be at a decided disadvantage when you see Donbass. While you may get the gist of it, I dare say much of the nuance would be lost unless you have some knowledge of that part of the world. Corruption, violent and politics feature in this absurdist comedy-turned-tragedy….
