December 2024 brings a trio of films from seasoned directors who have little in common, except that they are somewhat divisive. From the gritty realism of Andrea Arnold’s Bird to the opulent intrigue of Edward Berger’s papal-thriller Conclave, and the chaotic, darkly comic and deeply saddening world of Sean Baker’s Anora, these films showcase a range of modes of…
As part of T A P E’s SNAPSHOT, a year-long touring programme featuring films exploring Black girlhood, made by Black female filmmakers, MILISUTHANDO, directed, written and narrated by Milisuthando Bongela, is screening in select cinemas until March 2025. A deeply intimate portrait of past, present and future South Africa, blending poetry, film, and photography into…
All We Imagine As Light is filled with moments of beauty: moonlight filtering through cobalt saris fluttering by the open window as two women whisper in bed; a transcendent act of lovemaking suffused in golden light; a static shot of a woman reading verses of Malayalam poetry penned by a hesitant lover lit by the…
Transformation, reincarnation, augmentation, rejuvenation … Are we simply entering Halloween season, or is something more sinister lurking in the shadows? Something we’ve long tried to keep at bay? This month’s feature is a Halloween special double bill, spotlighting two movies which hold up to us a concave mirror by exploring our hyperfixation with the body,…
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…