Ballywalter (2022)
★★★★☆
Northern Ireland-set Ballywalter, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah and written by Stacey Gregg, is a moving little gem that stars Seána Kerslake and Patrick Kielty.
★★★★☆
Northern Ireland-set Ballywalter, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah and written by Stacey Gregg, is a moving little gem that stars Seána Kerslake and Patrick Kielty.
★★★★☆
Fremont directed by Babak Jalali is an absurdist but moving look at displacement and the immigrant experience.
★★★☆☆
Apocalypse Clown directed by George Kane is bizarre and and anarchic: it won Best Irish Film at the Galway Film Fleadh.
★★★ώ☆
Bobi Wine:The People’s President: an illuminating Uganda-set National Geographic documentary about the hugely popular musician turned politician who challenged the incumbent, long-serving President.
★★★★☆
The Innocent (L’Innocent), Louis Garrel’s fourth film, is a César-winning caper with a French accent.
★★★☆☆
Smoking Causes Coughing, the brainchild of über-absurdist Quentin Dupieux, is bizarre, very, very silly, strangely disquieting and rather flimsy.
★★★☆☆
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Opening film: Jeanne du Barry (2023)
★★★☆☆
Love According to Dalva, directed by Emmanuelle Nicot, features some extraordinarily intense performances in a paedophilia drama where the victim refuses to accept she is a child who has been abused.
★★★☆☆
Adam arrives in Cairo to study at the renowned Al-Azhar University and unexpectedly finds himself drawn into the centre of a dangerous world of religious and political power in writer/director Tarik Saleh’s compelling thriller.
★★★★☆
US festival favourite I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is a touching, positive indie movie, female written and directed, made during Los Angeles’ lockdown (see the mask use) focusing on the struggles to be independent of a widowed mother who happens to be homeless, black and female – and beautiful.
★★★☆☆
Berlinale presents San Sebastián award winner El Castillo (The Castle) a strangely moving mixture of documentary and fiction by Martin Benchimol.
★★★☆☆
Peter von Kant is a gender-flipped re-imagining by François Ozon of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 classic power play of sexual obsession The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.
★★★☆☆
Neptune Frost, a visionary collaboration between poet/artist Saul Williams and actress and playwright Anisia Uzeyman, is a unique Afro-futurist political musical filmed in Rwanda.
★★★☆☆
Sally Hawkins stars as an amateur historian in search of the grave of King Richard III in director Stephen Frears’ uplifting true-story drama The Lost King.