Perhaps only some of our readers can remember family “staycations” back in the early 1990s. There were no mobile phones, no internet and no real notion of time. You tried to make friends with whoever...
Milad Alami’s second feature length film opens with a stark white screen – enough to make you think you’ve already gone snow blind in the Swedish-Finnish border town in which it is set. There’s a thu...
There has been a plethora of feature-length debuts celebrated at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, with writer / director Zarrar Khan joining in festivities. His film, In Flames, breezes effortlessl...
There is nothing subtle about Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark’s Coup! The opening voiceover, complete with commentary about total lockdown, an errant president and the poor dying in their thousands w...
Grief and ghosts often make for good company. It is when we are at our lowest ebb that we often look for answers or signs that we would not normally seek out. And, of course, a presence or a voice of...
Legal dramas are a cinema staple. As audiences, we love rousing closing speeches, heated debates, surprise witnesses and a verdict that seems to go right down to the wire. Courtrooms lend themselves ...
The 1990s in China was a period of extreme flux. As state-owned businesses and structures began to disintegrate, unemployment and corruption began to seep in. Many eagerly embraced the rise of consum...
It is timely that writer / director Farah Nabulsi should make her feature-length debut on the festival circuit. Her Oscar-nominated short, The Present, focuses on the seemingly impossible act of buyi...
It can be slightly unnerving when a film character decides to stare deeply into the eyes of their audience. We don’t usually anticipate being made complicit in whatever is unfolding on screen. And ye...
The first Western movie is said to date back to 1894, a single reel silent film that pre-dates the “golden era of Western” by almost fifty years. When you think of the genre, you think of the geograp...