On Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn’s ‘The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’ —TIFF
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn’s The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open follows a day in the life of…
Reviews
Finding freedom in Sturla Pilskog and Sidse Torstholm Larsen’s ‘Winter’s Yearning’ —Open City Docs
It would have been too precious for Winter’s Yearning to have been titled Waiting for Alcoa, yet Beckett’s existential drama…
Notes on the City: Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Adrian Jackson’s ‘Here For Life’ —Locarno
In an interview in 1968 Pasolini described going especially from Casarsa to Udine to see Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle…
A House That Is Not A Home: Yoon Sung-A’s ‘Overseas’ —Locarno
How can cinema show social reproduction? Yoon Sung-A’s documentary Overseas (2019), focuses on a training centre for overseas domestic workers…
On Mourning and Paralysis: Anna Sofie Hartmann’s ‘Giraffe’ —Locarno
In Anna Sofie Hartmann’s debut feature Giraffe (2019), the underwater tunnel being built to connect Denmark with Germany is bestowed with a kind…
In The Name of The Mother: Maura Delpero’s ‘Maternal’ —Locarno
What is motherhood? Maura Delpero’s Maternal (Hogar, 2019) shows a world in which two paradigms of maternity – the single…
The Persistence of Fairy Tales: Choice and Desire in Sophie Hyde’s ‘Animals’
Andrea Dworkin calls fairy tales, “the first scenarios of women and men which mold our psyches”, teaching fundamental cultural lessons…
On Looking but not Seeing: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ‘Never Look Away’
The title of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away (2018) is an imperative: don’t look away from art, evil,…
The (Not So) Queer Failure of Chanya Button’s ‘Vita and Virginia’
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West met at a party.i According to historical records this was a dinner party, but in…
A Different Kind of Duration: Lila Avilés’s ‘The Chambermaid’
The Hotel, Room 47: an open suitcase; mussed bedsheets; a torn postcard of Venetian sights, its eight pieces carefully re-assembled….
Aude Léa Rapin’s ‘Les héros ne meurent jamais’ (‘Heroes don’t die’) takes on the ethics of the documentary film – Cannes
Aude Léa Rapin’s Les héros ne meurent jamais (Heroes don’t die) begins with Joachim (Jonathan Couzinié), a thin, bearded young…
No other voice: Claire Denis’s ‘High Life’
Claire Denis’s latest film, High Life, opens with an exchange of voices: the cry of a baby, Willow, and the…
Rebecca Zlotowski’s ‘Une fille facile’ (‘An Easy Girl’) takes on the cliché of the woman of leisure – Cannes
Rebecca Zlotowski’s Une fille facile (An Easy Girl) opens with a contradiction. A quotation from 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise…
Chaining Female Reproduction to Analogy: Kantemir Balagov’s ‘Beanpole’
“What would happen to a woman after the war, when there is a tectonic shift in her mind, her nature?”1…
Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé Mévellec’s ‘The Swallows of Kabul’ (‘Les Hirondelles de Kaboul’) Takes a Rosy Look at Female Sacrifice – Cannes
In their adaption of Yasmina Kadra’s novel The Swallows of Kabul (2002), director/actress Zabou Breitman and animator Eléa Gobbé Mévellec…
On Well-Meaning White Women: Josephine Decker’s ‘Madeline’s Madeline’
“What you are experiencing is just a metaphor,” a nurse hovering above the camera says in the opening scene of…
Monia Chokri’s ‘La femme de mon frère’ (‘A Brother’s Love’) ventures beyond the hellscape of the self – Cannes
La femme de mon frère opens to a combative discussion between four philosophy professors about whether they should pass a…
Watching Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ with my teenage sister
“It’s like I’m waiting in line for like a rollercoaster,” says 14-year-old Kayla to the very small, potentially even non-existent…
De-fetishising the Commodity: Xiaolu Guo’s ‘Five Men and a Caravaggio’
Five Men and a Caravaggio is true to its title: a story of five men, each from different artistic professions,…
On Solitary Companionship: ‘A Wild Stream’ (‘Una corriente salvaje’) by Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda at Cinéma du Réel
Nuria Ibánez Castañeda’s Una corriente salvaje (A Wild Stream, 2018) opens on Omar, wading waist-deep off a remote beach in…
Wonder in Miniature: Shireen Seno’s ‘Nervous Translation’
In Shireen Seno’s Nervous Translation (2017), the world is cut to eight-year-old Yael’s measure. The film unfolds almost exclusively within…