With every generation comes paranoia that new cultural mediums will obliterate what came before. The arrival of wireless sets into households saw commentators grumble that people would stop reading books. When home television sets arrived, there was widespread worry that it spelled the end of radio. All that is to say that, while the way…
Girls Will Be Girls, Shuchi Talati’s sharply observed debut feature, begins both literally and figuratively on a mountaintop. Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) is the first girl to become head prefect at her elite, co-educational boarding school in an unnamed town in the Himalayan foothills of Northern India. Mira embodies the focus and diligence of a straightlaced…
This instalment of Something Curated’s ‘In Review’ features three independent films all featuring female characters on a quest: characters in the act of crossing – either physical or symbolic boundaries. Lina Soualem, director of Bye Bye Tiberias, crosses the threshold of memory delving into the history of her Palestinian family fractured by diaspora. In Levan…
Crossing, the fourth feature film from Swedish-Georgian director and screenwriter Levan Akin, is at its heart an immersive quest for connection and catharsis. The film opens in Batumi, the port city on the Black Sea coast of Georgia where retired schoolteacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli) begins a journey to Istanbul accompanied by Achi (Lucas Kankava), a…
Established in the northwest London borough of Brent by filmmakers Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa, Other Cinemas is a project born from the need for more equitable approaches to filmmaking, sharing, and education. Recognising these three elements as closely connected, Shah and Aburawa’s work aims to forge a vital and inclusive alternative to the existing landscape…
Following its release earlier this year, Dune: Part Two continues the science fiction saga directed and co-produced by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Having grossed over $700 million since its arrival in theatres back in March, Villeneuve co-wrote the screenplay with American writer Jon Spaihts, with plans for a third film already in the works —…
Love and relationships never fail to intrigue us: their complexities are responsible for a significant amount of the art that we consume. This summer, several film releases capture the intricacies, tensions, and triumphs of this special human connection – especially when fated to end. Whether it is love at first sight, as the one between…
In the opening minutes of Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, the third feature film from director Elene Naveriani, we meet Etero (Eka Chavleishvili), an austere store owner in a remote village in Georgia, picking blackberries in the wild. She is about to bite into a blackberry when she sees a blackbird. While she is admiring the bird,…