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Director: Lynn Shelton.  USA, 2011.  90 minutes.  Cert: 15A.  Language: English

“a winner…a poignant, witty, brilliantly written and acted film” – New York Times

Still grief-stricken a year after his brother’s death, Jack (Mark Duplass) travels to a remote cabin off the coast of Seattle at the suggestion of his best friend, Iris (Emily Blunt), who thinks that he’ll benefit from the isolation. He arrives to find Iris’s sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), recovering from a bad breakup, and they quickly bond over their shared misery.

When Iris turns up to surprise Jack, she notes a new connection between him and her sister. What begins as a happy reunion soon deteriorates into a fractious encounter, the trio bouncing off one another amid misunderstandings, betrayals and secret affections.

Improvising much of the dialogue, the three actors are terrific, imbuing their complex, sometimes maddening characters with genuine heart. Shelton and her cast develop an idea initially conceived by Duplass into a funny, truthful story about sibling bonds, friendship, love and miscommunication.

 Read The Washington Post review.

Read The New York Times review.

Director: Miguel Gomes.  Portugal, 2012.  118 minutes.  Cert: CLUB.  Language: Portuguese (subtitled).

 “a delirious celebration of story and the cinematic imagination…the most joyously odd and surprising film of the year” – The Guardian *****

The critical hit of the 2012 Berlinale, Miguel Gomes’ rich, funny and poignant film is a two-part tale examining love, loneliness and the power of memory.  Shot in narrow screen black and white, it starts in the present day but culminates at the start of the Portuguese Colonial War in 1961.  TABU is a story about love, memory and melancholy and a rueful contemplation of Portugal’s colonial history.

Three women, neighbours in a Lisbon apartment complex, respond in different ways to the loneliness of their enigmatic existence.  One of them has a dark secret in her past, which gradually unfolds in a long flashback that casts an ironic light on the lost paradise that the characters, the filmmaker and the audience are all in search of.

An excerpt from The New York Times interview with the director:

‘Mr. Gomes’s latest film, “Tabu,” is his most ambitious shape shifter yet. The first section, set in contemporary Lisbon, is the story of Pilar, a devout do-gooding spinster who attends political rallies, haunts movie theaters and indulges the temperamental behavior of her elderly neighbor, Aurora. With the appearance of a man from Aurora’s past, the film travels to the misty mountainside plains of a Portuguese colony in Africa decades earlier to tell the story of a bygone romance in the obsolete language of an old movie.

Asked a few months ago why he so often makes films with two-part structures, Mr. Gomes, a former critic whose deadpan sense of humor is evident both in person and in his work, said, “What counts is the third part, which does not exist in the film but is produced in your mind.”’

Read the whole interview.

Read The Guardian review by critic Philip French [awarded OBE in 2012 for services to film].

Read The Independent (UK) review. 

Read the National Public Radio (USA) review. 

Directors: Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi.  France, Israel, Palestine, 2011.  90 minutes.   Cert: CLUB.  Languages: Arabic, Hebrew (subtitled).

A deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. shot almost entirely by Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS is an extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism.

It’s a sad reality for Burnat that one of the first phrases mastered by his toddler son Gibreel, is “the wall”. Burnat has the misfortune to be living in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which Israeli settlers, protected by an aggressive Israeli army, are attempting to make their own.

Although he first bought a camera to film his family, he also begins recording the increasingly chaotic scenes taking place in the beautiful landscape outside his house. When his camera is shot or smashed, he moves onto another one.  Five years eventually yields five broken cameras, giving the film its title and chapter structure.

Although he never planned to be a film-maker, Burnat proves to be both a brave and an extraordinary one, keeping his camera rolling amidst frightening scenes of unpredictable aggression, often aimed at himself, in a film richly deserving of its many awards.

Winner – Audience Award and the Special Jury Prize at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

Winner – World Cinema Directing Award at the World Documentary Competition at Sundance

Read The Guardian review by critic Philip French [awarded OBE in 2012 for services to film].

Read The Irish Times review.

Director: Christian Petzold.  Germany, 2012.  105 minutes.  Cert: 12A.  Language: German (subtitled).

“one terrific film, as smart, thoughtful and emotionally involving as just about anything that’s out there” – Los Angeles Times

“works its magic slowly, and on multiple levels; it’s a historical drama, a mystery and a love story…Hoss’ performance is simply one of the finest of the year” – NPR

Set in 1980, director Christian Petzold’s latest work centres on a doctor (Nina Hoss) banished to a small town in East Germany as punishment for applying for an exit visa.

Planning to flee for Denmark with her boyfriend, Barbara remains icy and withdrawn around her colleagues, particularly with the lead physician (Ronald Zehrfeld), who is hiding a secret of his own. With her patients, however, the guarded doctor is kind, warm, and protective, even risking her own safety for one of her charges. But as the day of her planned escape quickly approaches, Barbara starts to lose control, over herself, her plans and over love.

Masterfully controlled and totally absorbing, this Cold War thriller expertly details the costs of telling and withholding the truth, and captures the human and political dilemmas of life in oppressive 1980s East Germany.

Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock, Christina Hecke, Claudia Geisler, Peter Weiss, Carolin Haupt

 Read The Guardian review. ****

Read Los Angeles Times review.

Read The Irish Times review.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Malik Bendjelloul. UK, 2012. 85 minutes. Cert: CLUB. Language: English

“a hugely appealing documentary” – New York Times Critics’ Pick

American singer Sixto Rodriguez was the greatest 1970s folk-rock icon who never was. Despite critical praise, his albums bombed in the U.S., and he promptly faded into obscurity, leaving behind only urban legends of a gruesome on-stage suicide.

But somehow a bootleg copy of his album made its way to apartheid South Africa, where his anti-establishment message and distinctive sound resonated with the youth protest movement there, making Rodriguez an instant superstar.

Decades later, two intrepid fans decide to investigate whatever happened to the mysterious rocker. While initially frustrated by a dearth of leads, they eventually trace his roots to 1970s Detroit and a producer named Mike Theodore, who drops a bombshell that completely changes the nature of their investigation.

Truly stranger than fiction, this story of the Mexican-American folk singer from Detroit and his unforeseen success spans decades and continents, and is aptly unraveled to the soundtrack of Rodriguez’ own haunting original songs.

Watch Sixto Rodriquez on The David Letterman Show in 2012.

Read The New York Times review.

Click here to see the film’s website.

Read The Irish Times review.

Read The Guardian review by critic Philip French [awarded OBE in 2012 for services to film].

Director: Joshua Marston.  Albania, 2010.  108 minutes.  Cert: CLUB.  Language: Albanian (subtitled).

Winner – Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, 2011 Berlin Film Festival

American director Joshua Marston emerged in 2004 with the jolting, Oscar-nominated Maria Full of Grace, about a young Colombian woman working as a drug mule. In his remarkable follow-up, The Forgiveness of Blood, he turns his camera on another corner of the world: contemporary northern Albania, a place still troubled by the ancient custom of interfamilial blood feuds.

From this reality, Marston sculpts a fictional narrative about a teenage brother and sister physically and emotionally trapped in a cycle of violence, a result of their father’s entanglement with a rival clan over a piece of land. The Forgiveness of Blood is a tense and perceptive depiction of a place where tradition and progress coexist uneasily, as well as a dynamic coming-of-age drama.

Marston’s outsider’s view lays bare the contradictions between the ancient tradition and the youngsters’ impatience, helped by fine performances from his largely non-professional cast.

Read The Guardian review. ****

Read The Irish Times review.

 

 

 

Director: Bouli Lanners.  Belgium, 2011. 84 minutes.  Cert: CLUB.  Language: French (subtitled).

Winner – CICAE Award, Cannes Film Festival 2011

“a lovely drunken roll of a movie, brightly played by its adolescent cast, luxuriating in a Belgian countryside of whispering grass and fairytale forests” – The Guardian

This hilarious coming-of-age story takes its cues from Mark Twain in exploring uncharted adolescent adventure.  Two teenage brothers expect yet another dull summer, until  Danny arrives and they begin the most perilous and greatest journey of their lives.

Seth and Zak and their tag-along friend navigate a summer by themselves in an abandoned country cottage. As they scavenge for food, hunt for pot and pursue harebrained schemes to make money, they find their bravado repeatedly punctured by the rigours of an adult world they cannot comprehend.

Twain’s Huckleberry Finn take-off is transplanted to the actor-turned-director’s native Belgian countryside.  Shot with a painter’s eye for the lushly wooded landscape, and filled with Bouli Lanners’ bittersweet humour and feel for the rhythms of working class life, THE GIANTS is a funny yet melancholic ode to the idleness, adventures and fears of adolescence.

Read The Guardian review.

Read The Irish Times review.

Read The Hollywood Reporter’s review from Cannes.

Here’s what the San Francisco International Film Festival says.