The Whistlers (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
The Whistlers (La Gomera) by Corneliu Porumboiu is a Romanian crime thriller with a twisting plot, lots of corruption and a black comedy feel.
Cannes Film Festival
WE ARE ONE: A GLOBAL FILM FESTIVAL – 29 MAY-7 JUNE 2020
★★★★☆
More than 20 film festivals around the world have joined together to stream movies for free on YouTube after the cancellation of annual showcases in Cannes and New York.
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (2019) – on demand
★★★★☆
Despite its silly title, black comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants by J.-P. Valkeapää is a touching – if harrowing – study of an extreme way of overcoming corrosive grief.
The Truth (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Hirokazu Koreeda turns to Europe for a French-language family drama with comic undertones that spans the generations in The Truth.
Fire Will Come (O Que Arde) (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Fire Will Come is a prophetic, arresting and mesmerising love letter to nature by Oliver Laxe.
Bacurau (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Bacurau by Kleber Mendonça Filho is an exhilarating mixture of genres – political satire, western, science fiction – underpinned by savage political and social comment. It’s a blast.
And Then We Danced (2019)
★★★★☆
A deeply physical coming-of-age gay romance in the dance world, And Then We Danced directed by Levan Akin is an uplifting and inspiring feature about the path to queer liberation.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a sumptuously sensual lesbian love story set in 1770 that comments fiercely on the role of women in society – then and now.
First Love (Hatsukoi) (2019)
★★★★☆
Deceptively titled First Love is Takeshi Miike’s irresistibly anarchic yakuza noir, stuffed with gratuitous violence, comedy, romance and severed heads.
The Lighthouse (2019)
Atlantics (2019)
★★★★☆
Atlantic (Atlantique) is Mati Diop’s dreamlike feature debut focusing on the women left behind when Senegalese migrant workers take to the seas.
I Lost My Body (2019)
★★★★★
I Lost My Body by Jérémy Clapin is a dreamlike, beautiful, unbearably sad and tender animation.
London Palestine Film Festival: It Must Be Heaven (2019)
★★★★☆
It Must Be Heaven continues Elia Suleiman’s deadpan global quest for recognition of Palestinian identity and homeland.
Sorry We Missed You (2019)
★★★★☆
Sorry We Missed you is a coruscating anti-capitalist manifesto from veteran politically engaged filmmaker Ken Loach and his longtime collaborator and screenwriter Paul Laverty.