Maidan (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Uncompromising in its running time, Sergei Loznitsa’s sedate shooting style renders this potentially remarkable account of civil unrest quite the opposite.
Genre
Festival Review: What Happened, Miss Simone (2015)
★★★★☆
Pieced together out of archive footage, interviews and diaries, Liz Garbus’ What Happened, Miss Simone? makes a soul-stirring melody out of the blues.
Festival Review: I Am Michael (2015)
★★★☆☆
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.
Festival Review: Misfits (2015)
★★★☆☆
A portrait of life for gay and lesbian youth in Tulsa, Jannik Splidsboel’s Misfits explores homophobia and identity in the Bible Belt.
Festival Review: Stories Of Our Lives (2014)
★★★☆☆
A beautifully monochromatic look at LGBT life in Kenya, the NEST Collective’s Stories Of Our Lives is an important history of fear.
Greenery Will Bloom Again / Torneranno i prati (2014)
★★★★☆
A stunning portrait of life in the trenches during the Great War, Ermanno Olmi’s Torneranno i prati is a handsome tribute to loneliness and fear.
Festival Review: Fassbinder To Love Without Demands (2015)
★★★★☆
With unique archive footage, Christian Braad Thomsen’s Fassbinder To Love Without Demands delivers an honest and intelligent portrait of the German director.
Love Is Strange (2014)
★★★★★
A poignant New York story of love in a dark time, Ira Sachs’ Love Is Strange makes for a fine romance of the most human kind.
Dancing In Jaffa (2013)
★★★☆☆
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.
Festival Review: Elser / 13 Minutes (2015)
★★★☆☆
What can change a man from pacifist to freedom fighter? Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 13 Minutes pays tribute to the German resistant Georg Elser.
Festival Review: 54 The Director’s Cut (2015)
★★★★☆
Chosen to premiere at Berlin (home of Cabaret), Mark Christopher’s 54: The Director’s Cut recreates a bygone age of synth-infused hedonism.
Festival Review: Nasty Baby (2015)
★★★☆☆
The comic story of a New York gay couple trying for a baby with their 30-something best friend, Sebastián Silva’s Nasty Baby falls apart in the final reel.
La Maison De La Radio (2013)
★★★★☆
Did video kill the radio? Nicolas Philibert uncovers the mystery of the medium in his warmly human documentary La Maison de la Radio.
Testament Of Youth (2014)
★★★★☆
A beautiful adaptation of Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir, James Kent’s Testament Of Youth is a bitter tale of love in wartime for the 21st century.