The Ice Forest / La Foresta di Ghiaccio (2014)
★★★☆☆
In Claudio Noce’s film, hidden secrets and underlying tensions explode against The Ice Forest‘s mountain landscape.
★★★☆☆
In Claudio Noce’s film, hidden secrets and underlying tensions explode against The Ice Forest‘s mountain landscape.
★★★☆☆
Directed by video artists Masbedo, The Lack is a haunting study of absence through the eyes of six desperate women immersed in a silent natural environment.
★★★☆☆
Sensitive low-budget British indie Hinterland follows two childhood friends getting to know each other again on a weekend road trip to Cornwall.
★★★☆☆
The portrait of a lost generation, Natalya Kudryashova’s Pioneer Heroes unpicks the disappointment of not living up to those childhood Octoberist dreams.
★★★☆☆
The portrait of a teenage mentally handicapped girl in the first throes of sex, Stina Werenfels’ Dora Or The Sexual Neuroses Of Our Parents comes unhinged.
★★★☆☆
More an existential dilemma than a corruption thriller, Tudor Giurgiu’s Why Me? is an important but longwinded tribute to the man who fought the law.
★★★☆☆
Charting Michael Glatze’s path from gay poster-boy to Christian pastor, Justin Kelly’s I Am Michael is a confused, emotionless journey back into the closet.
★★★☆☆
A portrait of life for gay and lesbian youth in Tulsa, Jannik Splidsboel’s Misfits explores homophobia and identity in the Bible Belt.
★★★☆☆
A beautifully monochromatic look at LGBT life in Kenya, the NEST Collective’s Stories Of Our Lives is an important history of fear.
★★★☆☆
Despite a promising concept of heavenly screenwriters, Sabu’s Chasuke’s Journey ends in an occasionally visually arresting but hare-brained disappointment.
★★★☆☆
An atmospheric evocation of life on the banks of the Saigon River, Dang Di Phan’s Big Father, Small Father And Other Stories is a gently haunting muddle.
★★★★☆
With unique archive footage, Christian Braad Thomsen’s Fassbinder To Love Without Demands delivers an honest and intelligent portrait of the German director.
★★★☆☆
Drugs and violent crime trigger a surprising religious conversion for a small-time gangster in London’s East End, in a story that reflects a changing urban society.
★★★☆☆
Israeli and Palestininan schoolchildren overcoming their prejudices as they are taught to ballroom dance together is movingly captured in a fly-on-the-wall documentary.