independent cinema

Bogancloch review - every frame a work of art

Saturday, 31 May 2025

Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional...

Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties

Saturday, 17 May 2025

There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X deadbeat edgelord skater” when she was growing up in the 1990s. The phrase brings the half-forgotten world of Generation X back to...

theartsdesk Q&A: Indian star Radhika Apte on 'Sister Midnight'

Monday, 17 March 2025

Radhika Apte has been acclaimed for her ebullient performance as a reluctant bride in Sister Midnight since director Karan Kandhari’s comic horror movie was launched at Cannes last May. Talking over Zoom from her home near Epping Forest, Apte,...

Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy

Tuesday, 25 February 2025

Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't any problems, because you’re dead.Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy maps out the territory between...

Megalopolis review - magic from cinema's dawn

Monday, 30 September 2024

“What happens if you’ve overstepped your mandate?” aristocrat-architect Cesar Catalin (Adam Driver) is asked. “I’ll apologise,” he smirks. Francis Ford Coppola’s forty years in the making, self-financed epic is studded with such self-implicating...

I Saw the TV Glow - electrifying allegory of gender dysphoria

Saturday, 27 July 2024

There comes a point in I Saw the TV Glow when the repressed high-schooler Owen (Justice Smith) smashes his television’s screen by trying to dive into the box itself, to cross the great divide between his numbed reality and the feminine supernatural...

Crossing review - a richly human journey of discovery

Saturday, 20 July 2024

Crossing is a remarkable step forward for Swedish-Georgian director Levan Akin. There are elements that build on his acclaimed 2019 Tbilisi drama And Then We Danced, but his new film is rich with a new complexity, as well as a redolent melancholy, a...

A House in Jerusalem review - a haunted house and country

Sunday, 02 June 2024

The Israel-Palestine conflict aptly infuses a haunted house in Muayad Alayan’s story of layered loss. The Shapiro family home in Jerusalem which grieving British-Jewish husband Michael (Johnny Harris) and daughter Rebecca (Rebecca Calder) retreat to...

Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a multi-media artist

Wednesday, 24 April 2024

Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s Hunger. It’s gripping from the first frame to the last; the tension rarely lets up as we watch the main character...

Io Capitano review - gripping odyssey from Senegal to Italy

Friday, 05 April 2024

Io Capitano works on several levels. At first glance, it’s a ripping yarn – two optimistic Senegalese teenagers embark on a dangerous journey, across the Sahara, through the hell of Libya and on to an overcrowded boat across the Mediterranean...

Silver Haze review - daughters of Albion dealing with damage

Monday, 01 April 2024

In a Dagenham hospital, Silver Haze’s compassionate nurse Franky, played by Vicky Knight, meets Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles), who’s been admitted as a patient for having attempted suicide. After Franky dumps her boyfriend, the two women begin a...

Late Night With the Devil review - indie-horror punches above its weight

Monday, 25 March 2024

In Late Night With the Devil, light entertainment rubs shoulders with demonic forces on a talk show. It isn't quite the homerun its 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating would suggest, but this Australian indie production punches above its weight with an...

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