Archives: Films

Synopsis

Paris, summer 1959. A young Jean-Luc Godard sets out to shoot À bout de souffle (Breathless), a production that looks chaotic, improvised, and under-funded, but is driven by a fierce, almost mischievous conviction that cinema can be made differently. Following the shoot day by day, the film tracks the spark (and frictions) between Godard, his collaborators, and his stars Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, capturing the moment just before a movie (and a movement) rewired film history.

Context and Craft

Linklater approaches Nouvelle Vague as a ‘making-of’ film that doubles as a love letter to the French New Wave, to a particular Parisian film culture, and to the DIY audacity of first features. Cannes’ own write-up frames it as a cinephile’s declaration of love that recreates the period’s methods and atmosphere. Linklater’s choices reinforce the “time-capsule” feel: the deliberate imitation of mid-century film grammar and texture; a lovingly detailed re-staging of the Breathless shoot rather than a modern re-interpretation. At the same time, the film’s big idea is its tension: it honours Godard’s radicalism, but does so through a smoother, more classical flow, making the film feel warm, witty, and accessible even when it’s depicting a famously disruptive artist.

Critical Reception

• “A stylish, reverent homage that’s slick and cinephile-forward-admiring”. — The Guardian
• “Joyful tribute energy, dense with period knowledge and affection for the New Wave’s free spirits”. — BFI Sight and Sound
• ”A second look notes the ensemble’s charm… unmistakably a Linklater film even while saluting Godard.” — BFI Sight and Sound
• “An American director making a French-language, black-and-white film about a French cinematic “holy text,” and the care taken to recreate the original shoot.” — Reuters / AP

Comments:

Why not put on several New Wave films?

• Very stylish, but not knowing his films, story didn’t engage.
• Deliberately bizarre, not sure it worked
• Insight into filmmaking of the past. So natural
• Thankfully slept all the way through
• Not my favourite
• I missed out by not having seen Breathless
• As a director I really enjoyed this film, but not sure how much I would have enjoyed it otherwise.
• A great ending to the season’s films

Synopsis

Mandatory Palestine, 1936. As Palestinian villages organise against British colonial rule amid rising tensions and accelerating change, Yusuf drifts between the slower rhythms of his rural home and the charged streets of Jerusalem, pulled into a widening revolt that will reshape lives and futures.

Context and Craft

Jacir frames the story as historical drama with an ensemble sweep: personal stories threaded through a broad political moment. Rather than centring only leaders or headline events, the film uses Yusuf as a connective figure between village and city, ordinary life and organised resistance, allowing the period to unfold through shifting relationships and competing pressures. Formally, the film leans on period detail and a grounded, observational style, with critics noting a tendency toward clear, explanatory beats designed to orient viewers in a complex history. This is balanced with vivid scenes of daily life under strain. It’s also a film that has sparked discussion about how cinema handles contested history. Some critics have praised the film’s urgency and its attempt to foreground a chapter often under-taught in Britain, while other commentators have argued that certain portrayals compress, simplify, or skew the historical record.

Critical Reception

• “Emotionally stirring… heartfelt… if rather stolidly paced and sometimes pedagogically conveyed.” — The Guardian
• “Prescient… strong ensemble work, with one notably caricatured antagonist performance.” — Variety
• “Broad primer on a complex period, with attention to the political machinery on all sides.” — BFI Sight and Sound

Conclusion

Palestine 36 plays as both human drama and historical reckoning: a big-cast, big-canvas film that tries to make the beginnings of the 1936–39 revolt legible through one young man’s movement between worlds. For audiences, its impact may hinge on that balancing act, between immersion and instruction, story and history, especially given the real disagreements over interpretation that the film has provoked.

Audience Comments:

• Shocking and powerful
• Excellent as a film and explanation of how we’ve arrived at the current situation
• Deeply moving and necessary watch. Thank you for screening this.
• Heartbreaking
• A beautiful film that conveyed incredible emotion. So well depicted and just shows what too many of us is history not well known.
• A very difficult watch – but a necessary one. Haunting.
• Still happening after all these years. The injustice is shocking.

Synopsis

Floria is an experienced nurse, a calming presence in a hospital system that’s anything but calm. On a single late shift in an understaffed ward, routine care becomes a race against time as patients deteriorate, families demand answers, colleagues are stretched thin, and every interruption can mean life or death. As the night progresses, Floria’s professionalism is tested to the limit by the sheer arithmetic of too many urgent needs and not enough hands on deck.

Context and Craft

Director Petra Volpe builds the film around immersion and momentum: rather than giving backstory or big plot twists, she keeps the camera close to Floria as the ward’s pressures accumulate in near real time. The effect is less medical melodrama than workplace pressurecooker – think Boling Point but in a hospital – where the tension comes from triage i.e., what can be done now, what must wait, and what that waiting costs. A key choice is the emphasis on systems over villains. No one person is “the problem”; the crisis is structural and includes understaffing, bottlenecks, and there is a constant moral friction between ideal care and possible care. There is no time for small, human gestures (comforting a frightened patient, a moment of tenderness) as everything is at stake when time runs out. The film was inspired by Madeline Calvelage’s book about nursing conditions, which helps explain the documentary-like insistence on procedure, pace, and emotional labour, alongside a quietly thriller-ish edge created by the night’s escalating cascade of decisions.

Critical Reception

• “The pressure is on in a severely understaffed hospital, carried by Leonie Benesch’s committed performance.” — The Guardian
• “A cinematic tribute to nurses… elevated by the unflashy skill of Leonie Benesch.” — Sight and Sound.
• “Gripping, minimalist portrait that sneaks in a subtle thriller tension while staying focused on the psychological cost of caregiving.” — Financial Times

Conclusion

Late Shift is a study in care under constraint: a film that makes competence feel dramatic, and compassion feel expensive, not because it’s rare, but because the system gives it no room. By narrowing the story to one shift, Volpe turns everyday hospital work into escalating suspense, while keeping the focus on Floria’s steady humanity and the quiet brutality of impossible workloads. It lands as both an intense viewing experience and a pointed piece of social realism.

Audience Comments:

• So depressing
• Probably the most important film I will see all year
• Best film I have seen in years
• A film everyone should see
• Sobering. Moving. What an insight into the nursing world.
• Deeply moving
• Awful music and terrible end, but it was an excellent portrayal of a real heroine.
• Harrowing

Synopsis

In a quiet Burgundy village, grandmother Michelle looks forward to time with her grandson — until an “innocent mistake” with foraged mushrooms shatters the fragile family dynamic. Is it an accident, confusion, or something darker? As Michelle’s loneliness deepens, she finds unexpected companionship when her friend Marie-Claude’s son Vincent returns after prison, drawing her into a web of affection, suspicion, and buried history.

Context and Craft

When Autumn Falls is one of Ozon’s characteristically slippery genre blends: part rural family drama, part “cosy” mystery, part psychological thriller. Tension is built less through plot mechanics than through ambiguity. Village routines turn faintly menacing as accusations and motives blur. Reviewers have remarked on its classic French suspense influences (Claude Chabrol/Georges Simenon) and on the film’s tonal tightrope: gentleness and warmth coexist with insinuation and dread. Much of the film’s power comes from performance and withholding: Michelle’s inner life is readable yet unknowable, and key events are framed to keep moral certainty just out of reach.

Critical Reception

• “The implied Chabrol-esque horror is made to coexist with an odd mood of gentleness and even sentimentality as we witness the loneliness of an ageing woman with secrets and regrets in the autumn of her life.” — The Guardian
• “That it is still worthwhile owes largely to the sympathetic, sinuous performance of Hélène Vincent, in the lead role of a grand-mère who may not be as simply sweet as she first appears.” — Wall Street Journal
• “In the great Ozon catalogue, this seems like an incidental work… [yet] fascinating and the more you think about it, the more there is to think about.” — Mark Kermode

Conclusion

When Autumn Falls is less a straight mystery than a study in moral fog: a portrait of ageing, family resentment, and the stories people construct to live with guilt and desire. Ozon uses the mushroom incident as a deceptively simple spark that exposes old fractures; he then lets uncertainty do the work, pushing viewers to constantly reassess Michelle, Valérie, and Vincent. Whether you read it as a tender drama with sinister undertones or a thriller disguised as villagelife realism, it’s anchored by Hélène Vincent’s quietly commanding performance and Ozon’s knack for making the ordinary feel menacing.

Audience Comments:

• A mushroom stew and two tarts. What a brilliant, dark meal of a film!
• Atmospheric, thought-provoking, emotive. 
• Fungi most fowl!
• It’s complicated, delightful, and nuanced.
• Loved it!
• A touching but unusual web of love and affection. Everyone covers up a possible crime, but out of it, love can flourish. Poignant and well-played. A superb film with so much going on. Well acted and leaves much unresolved. 
• Joyless
• Gentle & heartwarming
• Excellent. Unexpected at times. Extremely well acted and believable apart from the ending!
• Love and loss is a stormy sea

Context and Craft

Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams is part of a trilogy exploring sexuality, longing, and social norms in contemporary Oslo. The film sits between Sex and Love in Haugerud’s thematic cycle, each entry examining human relationships through moral fables and existential comedy. Haugerud’s background in literature and psychological drama shapes the film’s tone: intimate, observational, and grounded in everyday emotional complexity. Cinematographer Cecilie Semec employs a naturalistic visual style that mirrors the film’s focus on interiority, while Anna Berg’s music underscores the tension between adolescent idealism and adult ambivalence. The screenplay’s blend of humour and seriousness reflects Haugerud’s interest in autofictionlike storytelling, reminiscent of Norway’s literary tradition of introspective realism.

Critical Reception

• “Vividly captures the dizzying highs and lows of first love,” and highlights Haugerud’s “rich trilogy of films exploring modern relationships.” — Sight & Sound
• “A teenager’s crush on her teacher cues a complex but light‑handed investigation of romantic awakening, power imbalance, and creative catharsis.” — Hollywood
  Reporter
• “A complex but light‑handed investigation of romantic awakening, power imbalance and creative catharsis.” — Variety

Conclusion

Critics have praised Dreams for its candid portrayal of teenage desire and its nuanced handling of ethically fraught material. Provocative and tender, Dreams stands out as a thoughtful, quietly
daring exploration of adolescent longing and the ways adults project their own desires onto the young. Haugerud’s restrained direction and the film’s layered performances (particularly Ella
Øverbye and Selome Emnetu) create a work that is emotionally rich without sensationalism. As part of Haugerud’s trilogy, it deepens his ongoing examination of intimacy, autonomy, and the
stories we tell about ourselves, and the stories others try to tell for us.

Audience Comments:

• Beautifully written. Brits could never be this emotionally open.
• Makes you remember how self-absorbed you were as a teenager
• Loved the imagery of the nan climbing Jacob’s Ladder. Hope she reached the Swedish hunk!
• Wonderful evocation of young love. Married and elderly wisdom from Grandma.
• An amusing little Ditty
• Sensitive
• Elongated. Interesting and evocative, but became boring/self indulgent

Synopsis

Set in 1944 in the remote Alpine village of Vermiglio, the film follows the Graziadei family, headed by ageing schoolteacher Cesare (Ragno), whose household already includes nine children and another on the way. Their precarious existence, shaped by poverty, tradition, and the isolating mountain landscape, is disrupted by the arrival of Pietro (De Domenico), a Sicilian army deserter hiding from the war. Pietro forms a bond with the eldest daughter, Lucia (Scrinzi), whose quiet resilience and sense of duty anchor the family. As winter tightens and wartime pressures creep closer, the family’s routines, loyalties, and long‑held customs are tested, revealing the fragile balance between survival, community, and personal desire.

Context and Craft

Vermiglio is a slow-burning historical drama rooted in the rhythms of rural life during the final years of WWII. Delpero draws on stories from her own family history, crafting a narrative that privileges observation over plot and emphasises the textures of daily existence in an isolated mountain community. Critics highlight the film’s visual style: cinematographer Mikhail Krichman shoots the Alps with painterly precision, using natural light to capture the harshness of winter and the tentative renewal of spring. The film explores the intersection of personal and historical upheaval. Pietro’s arrival introduces both danger and possibility, while Lucia’s tentative romance becomes a quiet act of defiance against the constraints of her environment.

Critical Reception

• A beautifully observed drama of immense subtlety… Delpero shows phenomenal
  restraint.” — Sight & Sound
• “Attuned to the consciousness of its time… elegant, clean compositions and graceful
  storytelling.” — Roger Ebert
• “A visionary film… the Alps provide a breathtaking emotional backdrop.” — Rotten
  Tomatoes

Conclusion

Vermiglio is a richly textured, visually striking portrait of a mountain community suspended between tradition and the encroaching realities of war. Delpero’s understated direction and Krichman’s luminous cinematography create a world where silence, landscape, and ritual carry as much weight as dialogue. The film’s emotional power lies in its attention to the ordinary, domestic labour, family tensions, small acts of rebellion, and how these intimate moments reflect broader historical forces.

Audience Comments:

• Beautiful scenery
• Very slow at times, but very picturesque
• Great cinematography and very authentic, but incredibly slow
• Raw, emotional. Excellent casting with very natural performances, but very slow
• A powerful story and compelling snapshot into rural mountain life during the war
• Every frame in Vermiglio is like a painting and the characters felt very real. Greatly enjoyed the chance to see it in the cinema when i probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise!

Synopsis

Dead of Winter follows Barb (Thompson), a solitary Minnesotan fisherwoman grieving a recent loss. While travelling through a remote, snow-choked region, she stumbles upon a kidnapped young woman being held in a secluded cabin by an unstable couple (Greer and Menchaca). With no phone signal, lethal weather conditions, and miles of wilderness between her and help, Barb becomes the girl’s only chance of survival. Barb’s grief and compassion drive her into a dangerous rescue attempt.

Context and Craft

A snowbound kidnapping thriller with echoes of Fargo and “ordinary person becomes action hero” narratives. Critics note the film’s generic thriller framework but highlight how Thompson’s casting subverts expectations and how Kirk’s unobstructive direction emphasises claustrophobia, harsh natural conditions, and escalating peril. Thompson’s portrayal has been widely praised for its grounded toughness and emotional depth. Adopting a faultless Minnesota accent, Thompson plays Barb as “tough but tender,” driven by compassion rather than action-hero bravado. Judy Greer’s performance as the antagonist is snarling and darkly humorous, adding unpredictability to the film’s tone, while the raging blizzard and remote setting serve as additional antagonists.

Critical Reception

• “A refreshing little thriller…Judy Greer’s ‘fentanyl lollipop-sucking’ villainy is a standout
  element.” — Independent
• “Technically polished but increasingly improbable… an icy, generic thriller elevated by
  Thompson’s palpable aura of capability and down-to-earth shrewdness.” — Variety
• “Deeply moving and tense kidnapping drama.” — Saga Magazine
• “Both Thompson and Greer for playing “against type… an exhilarating wilderness
  thriller.” — Collider

Conclusion

Dead of Winter stands on its performances, especially Emma Thompson’s unexpected and compelling turn as a reluctant action heroine. The film uses its wintry setting to create tension
and atmosphere, while weaving in themes of grief, compassion, and moral courage. It is widely regarded as a gripping, emotionally resonant thriller elevated by its cast and strong sense of
place. Barb’s emotional wounds shape her choices and give the thriller a sentimental undercurrent, and the film asks what an ordinary person owes a stranger in danger.

Audience Comments:

• Amazing!
• Stunning cinematography, realistic, and story was not what I expected.~
• Thin plot, too much violence, and the premise was poor.
• Gruesome story, but very well filmed. Emma Thompson does a great role. Not a type of movie I would normally choose to watch.
• Gripping film with two female protagonists for a change. Great to see an older woman in the lead.
• Very tense and atmospheric, but a bit one-dimensional.