Here (2023)

Two characters walk through a Belgian forest on the outskirts of the city. A shot follows one of the characters as they move, and the sound design emphasises the ambience of nature. The leaves rustling, the wind, and cracking trees. We don’t hear the human footsteps as they trudge, and as we see between bushes, […]

Charisma (1999)

1999 is often discussed as a great year in cinema, and key to that is because it was 1999. All the celebrated and successful films of that year tend to share themes about the destruction of the old, the beginning of the new. Or are vibrating on end of the century, millennium anxieties – fear […]

Spoor (2017)

When Spoor (2017; Pokot) opens with a sweeping shot of the majestic snowy landscape of the Klodzko Valley where it is set, accompanied by Antoni Lazarkiewicz’s thunderous score, I was reminded of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. However, this film directed by Agnieszka Holland is not as nihilistic as the Coens, with strong environmental themes, introducing […]