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1 month ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Joseph Fahim |Savina Petkova |Rachel Pronger |Lou Thomas
Director: Christine HaroutounianMaybe it helped that I watched Christine Haroutounian’s stunning debut feature literally after dreaming, having promptly fallen asleep as it started and then woken again, defences down to its hypnagogic spell.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Jason Anderson |Katie McCabe |Savina Petkova |Tara Judah
Peter Hastings’s movie incarnation of the popular graphic novel series presents a cheerful whirlwind of goofball gags, silly puns and moments of real poignancy in an endearing, unpolished package. 7 February 2025It’s a sign of the Hollywood screen comedy’s sorry state that connoisseurs of goofball non-sequiturs, absurdist slapstick and anarchic humour can mainly find what they seek in animated films for kids.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Katie McCabeReviews |Katie McCabe |Savina Petkova |Tara Judah
The burden a parent places on a child, and the question of how much they can be blamed for the damage caused by its weight, runs like a compressed nerve through director Christopher Andrews’s brutal Irish pulp pastoral Bring Them Down. At one point, Michael O’Shea (Christopher Abbott) actually carries his cantankerous, ailing father Ray (Colm Meaney) on his back to show him damage inflicted on their sheep in a mafia-style attack by the neighbouring Keeley family.
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Dec 30, 2024 | 
in.mashable.com | Savina Petkova
One day, you’re an all-powerful CEO, star wife, and mother, and the next day you're eating out of your young intern’s hand, quite literally. How is this contradiction possible, if it is a contradiction at all? The answer for both Nicole Kidman’s character in Halina Reijn’s film Babygirland for many others who identify as BDSM submissives lies in the elusive concept of subspace: a metaphorical space and altered state one submits to during a kink scene, thanks to arousal and exchange of consent.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Gayle Sequeira |Leila Latif |Savina Petkova
Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann takes an unhurried and optimistic approach to documenting a class of primary school children in the working-class Viennese neighbourhood of Favoriten. 5 December 2024As chronic underfunding and culture wars leave their mark on already teetering education systems, is it any wonder that documentarians are turning to the classroom as a significant site of interest?
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Leila Latif |Gayle Sequeira |Savina Petkova |Saffron Maeve
Following her bold debut I am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni digs deep into the surreality of Zambian mourning rituals with the story of a young woman who finds her abusive uncle dead on the side of a road. 4 December 2024A woman in a glittering futuristic mask pulls over her car on a road with no life, human or otherwise, in sight. Her only company is a man’s dead body, laid face down on the pavement. She pulls out her phone and utters with complete dispassion, “Dad, it’s Shula.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Gayle Sequeira |Savina Petkova |Saffron Maeve |Elizabeth Sussex
During the 2021 Covid lockdown, a group of out-of-work actors staged a blunder-filled production of Hamlet inside the world of Grand Theft Auto. Now they’ve levelled up with an endearing documentary about the process. 4 December 2024All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Savina Petkova |Saffron Maeve |Elizabeth Sussex |Jason Anderson
“What fresh hell awaits you today?” sighs a weary toddler mum in front of the bathroom mirror. With a grunt of habitual defeat, Mother (Amy Adams) drapes a stained, oversized shirt over the hairy bump on her lower back, noting its existence but ignoring that it weirdly resembles a tail. The protagonist of Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch is overtired and under-appreciated and, as in Rachel Yonder’s best-selling novel of 2021, on which the film is based, sometimes turns into a dog.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
cineuropa.org | Savina Petkova
- With his sci-fi feature debut, the Asturian director zooms in on a family that falls apart under strange circumstancesBoreal is Pelayo Muñiz Cabal’s first feature: a genre film that centres on four characters over the course of one night, under the eerie Northern Lights that appear in Madrid. Guille, Bea, Anna and Pablo are old friends who are about to discover the hidden parts of each other, with a little help from the supernatural.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
cineuropa.org | Savina Petkova
- The Buenos Aires-based Brazilian director discusses the desires and motivations of his enigmatic 20-year-old protagonistAntonio (Max Suen) is 20 years old and is driven by wants: money, sex and intimacy pull him in all sorts of unpredictable directions out on the streets of Buenos Aires. He is the unruly protagonist of Brazilian filmmaker Sacha Amaral’s debut feature, The Pleasure Is Mine [+see also: film reviewinterview: Sacha Amaralfilm profile].
