The Bill Douglas Award concentrates on innovative and new cinema, the fifth instalment of the programme, Connection Signals focusses specifically on routines, patterns, and codes to express socio-cultural effects and influences.
ENFANT TERRIBLE is an energetic, timely and fitting biopic of the notorious, provocative and iconic German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
JUMP, DARLING is a moving feature that resounds the magnetic writing of independent cinema and puts the complexity and beauty of human relationships in the centre of its discourse of LGBTIQ+ life.
COLORS OF TOBI is a beautiful and intimate documentary that says something important about the family’s potential to be a locus of support, love, and trust for LGBTIQ+ people.
DRAMARAMA is a comedy-drama about the secrets within a clique of conservative Christian theatre-kids. The film has a real truth to how it represents the drama of puritanical Christian teenagers that unfortunately makes all the characters quite annoying.
Bryan Fogel’s new documentary feature, THE DISSIDENT, dives into the timeline of Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination, looking behind the curtain at the political powers at play in Saudi Arabia. Much like Fogel’s Oscar-winning documentary ICARUS, he goes to dangerous levels to expose the political grit under the surface.
Coming-of-age stories set against monumental national or world events are a cinematic constant. BEANS excels at both portions of its story, even if it sometimes struggles to connect them.
Goulet’s balancing act between social horror and mythic hope is a masterful cinematic parable.
Taking a decidedly more casual approach to its noirish stylings than Diao Yi’nan’s THE WILD GOOSE LAKE (or even the second chapter of Jia Zhang-ke’s ASH IS PUREST WHITE), Li Xiaofeng’s BACK TO THE WHARF has a quality that could trip a viewer up on occasion.
DREAMS ON FIRE is a film about graft, inspiration, camaraderie and the struggles of flourishing in the real world; in all its awful and wonderful surrealness. Clara Strachan reviews at Glasgow Film Festival.
