Both meditative and confronting, TIMBUKTU is an incredible slow-burner, a series of snapshots that create a sinister and tense broad portrait of a city, people, and existence built on a geopolitical fault line.
Enemy
We review the Blu-ray release of Denis Villeneuve’s ENEMY, a great experimental psychological thriller done justice by Madman’s immaculate video and audio presentation.
The Wonders (Le meraviglie)
Alice Rohrwacher’s Grand Prix-winning film comes to the Festival circuit with a very strong reputation, and it impresses as a touching family story that is intimately and masterfully told.
Story of My Death
Albert Serra’s latest film has a B-movie concept – Dracula and Casanova are the protagonists – but in fact is a beautiful and experimental feature that plays with adaptation, and perhaps the best thing in competition at Filmfest München.
Winter Sleep
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film, the Palme d’Or winning Winter Sleep, arrived at Sydney Film Festival with high expectations and doesn’t disappoint, cementing Ceylan as one of the true masters of world cinema. A special film that, for the patient viewer, can remind us what it can be like to be in the hands of a truly expert storyteller.
Stop the Pounding Heart
Roberto Minervini’s hybrid documentary forces us to engage with the frame in lingering moments on-screen. The result is not only an intimate portrayal of one young girl’s life, but also an understanding of the greater context of rural Texas itself.
Siddharth
Canadian born film-maker Richie Mehta has crafted a cinematic rarity – an accurate and authentic representation of the contradictions within contemporary India.
Fell
As good as any Australian film in recent memory, perhaps even better, Kasimir Burgess’ Fell is visually stunning and uses its subtext to create an impressive emotional bond to the characters.
Fish & Cat
This postmodern Iranian ‘slasher film’ astounds with its control of time and space, as well as its near-perfect deviations from audience and narrative expectations. An odd one, to be sure, but something truly special.
Lake August
Heng has a highly defined style that he’s articulated to a markedly more distinct degree in his latest work; his characters move around in a confined and claustrophobic foreground, whilst the landscapes behind them drift off indefinitely, leaving the humans in the frame with a tacit insignificance.