SALVE MARIA is a rebellion against the sociological monomyth of the ‘immaculate mother’ and a rebellion against a literary inheritance that makes monsters out of the mother disturbed, and a captivating story which also renders visible those who are so frequently mythically distorted: women in crisis.
BEAUTIFUL EVENING, BEAUTIFUL DAY by Croatian writer/director Ivona Juka presents the story of four filmmakers whose artistic, human, and sexual freedom hangs by a thread under Josip Broz Tito’s dictatorship. Shot in black and white, with incredible stylistic nuance and narrative depth, Juka’s LGBTQ drama is a monumental film of striking cultural importance.
WE LIVE HERE is a hard-hitting debut that questions the future of warfare and military action on a global scale, as well as presenting the catastrophic impact of nuclear weapons and radiation exposure.
DIE MY LOVE is unlikely to be considered the pinnacle of Ramsay’s career. Still, even when revisiting themes, the intense clarity of vision ensures Ramsay’s work continues to feel fresh and ominously vibrant.
For audiences interested in the effect of our shifting media landscape on democracy, the weaving of archival footage and personal stories with narrative momentum makes NEWS WITHOUT A NEWSROOM thoughtful, relevant, and well-timed.
We’re delighted to share that we will be collaborating with Cambridge Film Festival and their education partner Anglia Ruskin University, in our role as media partner, on the CFF Reel Voices scheme.
ANEMONE is fortunate in being able to call upon Daniel Day-Lewis’s first film performance in eight years. Although Ronan Day-Lewis manages to garner a performance of simmering intensity from his father, their co-written script is flat and opaque to the point of tedium.
Both Shakespeare and Zhao acknowledge the beauty of grief, which is, of course, a form of love, as well as its horrific reality. Whatever you have lost will be touched upon when you see this film. Tears streamed down my face, my breath coming in shudders by the end.
If Shelley’s novel can be considered the dense and sprawling sheet music for an orchestral symphony of ideas, then Del Toro’s arrangement here is sparser. However, even if the result lacks some of the richness laid out on the page, the tune of FRANKENSTEIN extracts tension, horror and beauty that harmonises with the full version.
With seething social commentary at its centre, BAD APPLES feels contemporary and culturally accurate to the landscape of public education in the UK. Normality becomes quickly warped by extenuating circumstances, and director Jonatan Etzler wields the school setting with skill.
