https://youtu.be/dScZqPsDGT0 Written & Directed by Erdem Tepegoz Turkey/ 2020/ 94 mins ★★★ Cogs in an endless machine, set in a dystopian world of undefined time or place, factory workers follow one simple creed – obey the system. They work, they rest, they work again; all under the constant supervision of small muffled-voiced cameras. This is … Continue reading In The Shadows – Glasgow Film Festival
https://youtu.be/7M7_DVRlkYw Directed by Alastair Cole UK/ 2021/ 98 mins ★★★★ The Scottish fishing industry is in a position of political peacocking at present, a livelihood to throw around and place on a pedestal. But for the residents of the Island of Barra, fishing is more than an economic foundation – it is their heritage. But … Continue reading Iorram (Boat Song) – Glasgow Film Festival
https://youtu.be/KjSs_b4ZBKI Written by Adrian langley Directed by Adrian Langley & Daniel Weissenberger Canada/2021/94mins ★★ Stop us if you’ve heard this one; four teens breakdown in the sticks of nowhere, one pair search for a phone as the others wait behind. In the overgrowth, something watches, something cruel, archaic and hungry. Butchers sharpens itself on the skeletons of … Continue reading Butchers – Review
https://youtu.be/5FdRKMQMj4o Directed by Vadim Perelman Screenplay adapted by Ilja Zofin Russia, Germany, Belarus/ 2020/ 127 mins ★★★ Treading the line of invention is a difficult option, and potentially dangerous when devising a Holocaust survival story. But in the end, director Vadim Perelman‘s Persian Lessons has little intention of maintaining authenticity throughout; instead, focusing on specific aspects which, tragically, … Continue reading Persian Lessons – Review
Directed by Amel Alzakout Germany / 2020 / 67 mins ★★★★ Of the 300 passengers seeking salvation aboard a smuggler’s dinghy, at least forty-two perished, and director Amel Alzakout thought she would be one of them. She expected to die. Mercifully, most of us will never experience what Purple Sea documents. We will never find ourselves at … Continue reading Purple Sea – Document Film Festival
https://youtu.be/7OmtEff1E5o Directed by Miko Revereza USA / 2019 / 70 mins ★★★ Illegally crossing the border into America isn’t the end of the trials migrants face when desperately seeking a safer, more stable way of life. For Miko Revereza, twenty years after first arriving in the States, travelling anywhere comes with added risk. In making … Continue reading No Data Plan – Document Film Festival
https://youtu.be/gMT5XqvKRzM Directed & Written by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza Spain/ 2007/ 78 mins ★★★★ The literary device, ‘found-footage’, or epistolary narratives are as antiquated as Dracula or The Screwtape Letter – in filmmaking it’s still a relatively recent subgenre, celebrating its fortieth birthday with the 1980 release of Cannibal Holocaust. Before the endless slew of supernatural remakes and sequels, found-footage was an … Continue reading REC – Arrow Films
https://youtu.be/B-2xxKAPssk Written & Directed by Gints Zilbalodis Latvia/2020/75mins ★★★★★ Turning back, a young boy lives in the shadow of a hulking beast, a colossus of immense stature and being. Shrouded in amorphous black wisps and eyes, no matter how far ahead he escapes the being – its presence follows. Away is a concise, relatively short feature from … Continue reading Away – Review
Written & Directed by Jonathan Rescigno ★★★ Through the silence, memory wails its loudest song. A sleeping city, slowly engulfed by an almost cognitive fog, rolling its way across the high-rises and sinking deep into the earth. The usual perverse light of streetlamps, neon signs and cars are all but choked out by the creeping … Continue reading Strike or Die – Document Film Festival
https://youtu.be/orvCJQ0MMPw Directed by Dave Mclean Written by Dave Mclean, Khaled Spiewak & Kyle Titterton UK/91mins/2020 ★★★ You know, Dundee has much more to it than 24hr bakeries and penguin statues. It even has more to it than a brand-spanking-new, though overpriced and under-filled Museum. Dundee - for all of the grim visage and notoriety has … Continue reading Schemers – Review
