Chess Of The Wind (1976)

The Iranian film, Chess Of The Wind (1976) is initially reminiscent of a Anton Chekov short story, as it observes the fall-out from a matriarch’s death and the remaining family members in the one house, circling around the prospect of her inheritance. The daughter Lady Aghdas (Fakhri Khorvash) is in a wooden wheelchair, looks pale […]

Animal (2023)

Animal (2023) is a film about work and it’s about that mid-life crisis feeling of the party leaving you behind. Director Sofia Exarchou focuses on ‘animateurs’ employed by a resort hotel on Crete; the hotel is not high class or exclusive, it looks affordable enough for older Europeans as a holiday destination. The animateurs are […]

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, […]

Yourself And Yours (2016)

This has happened before with a previous Hong Sang-soo movie where I just took the events at face value, and only later browsing other people’s reviews saw the different ways they were reading into it. Because what the film, Yourself And Yours (2016), covers is often so ordinary and everyday – people meeting at bars, […]

Ash Is Purest White (2018)

Wanting to explore more of Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s filmography, Ash Is Purest White (2018) intrigued me because of how it appeared. In the poster and key images I’ve seen, the film is marketed as a romantic crime movie. And yet, that’s only one third of the story. While I was watching Ash Is Purest […]