Film Festival
Visions du Réel Review: Lobster Soup
Until relatively recently, life in the small coastal town of Grindavík on the southern peninsula of Iceland solely revolved around the fishing industry. To a large extent, this remains the same, but the introduction of quotas and its proximity to the major tourist attractions of Blue Lagoon and the Bridge Between Continents have slowly changed …
Visions du Réel Review: Ostrov – Lost Island
The Soviet Union spanned a vast area of Northern Eurasia, comprised of a number of nominal ‘republics’ and comprising countless different races, ethnicities and religions. Its dissolution sent much of the remaining Russia into chaos. Whilst order was (eventually) restored to almost all the country, inevitably some places fell between the cracks. That is the …
Visions du Réel Review: Courage
Despite campaigning on an independent platform, Alexander Lukashenko soon showed his true colours after his became the first democratically elected president of Belarus. One of his first major actions was to cement ties with Russia and twenty-six years later he’s often referred to as the last dictator in Europe. As you can probably imagine, his …
Visions du Réel Review: The Bubble
Largely thanks to an unusually long period of peace and decades of medical and scientific advancements, most, if not all, of the Western world has rapidly aging populations. Whilst standards of living and life expectancy are undoubtedly improving, birth rates are increasingly falling; with many now choosing not to have children. As societies, we’re not …
Grimmfest Review: Trans
As humans, we’ve long been fascinated with getting bigger, better, faster and stronger. Physical strength and muscular prowess have been a desirable feature, for obvious reasons, of soldiers and warriors down through history. Even going back to Ancient Greece and the first Olympics or the modern incarnations, we celebrate athleticism in many forms. However, homo …
Grimmfest Review: Mara
Memory is a fragile thing. Anyone with friends or relatives who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s know just how painfully true this can be. On the other hand, those suffering from trauma or grief may gladly surrender certain events from their recollection. It’s an area which intrigues science fiction filmmakers, creating such wonderful cinema as …
Grimmfest Review: Rendez-Vous
Each filmmaker approaches their craft in a unique and individual way. This goes all the way back to the basics of how they write or approach a script to the choices made around filming and the equipment they’re going to use. One of the most complicated and complex ways of producing a film is by …
Grimmfest Review: Threshold
Modern technology has been rapidly changing the face of cinema. Long gone are the days when you need cumbersome equipment or a complex development process. Today, all you need is a mobile device, a lot of imagination and the appropriate software. The likes of Steven Soderbergh and Sean Baker have demonstrated what can be done …
Grimmfest Review: The Barcelona Vampire
There are stories and legends of vampires in many cultures and societies around the world. Whilst this folklore deviates in many ways, the evil at the heart of it largely stays the same. It’s a term which has been bandied around as a way of stigmatising or targeting certain people and groups, or as cautionary …
Grimmfest Easter Horror Nights Preview
Grimmfest takes place in Manchester every October and has cemented itself on the UK horror film festival calendar. Given the current ‘situation’, things have been a little different over the last year. However, whilst most of us are stuck indoors with little to do, they’ve decided to launch something a little special. Grimmfest Easter Horror …