Mohammed Diab is a revelation of a filmmaker, maturing into his art in almost ballet-like synchronicity with the revolutionary upheavals that have marked the last 7 years in his native Egypt.
Clash by Mohammed Diab
The Bad Batch by Ana Lily Amirpour
Within the first ten minutes of The Bad Batch, her social critique by way of apocalyptic fantasia, our protagonist Arlen loses both an arm and a leg to a desert-dwelling band of cannibal bodybuilders.
The Salesman, A Film by Asghar Farhadi
It’s a testament to Farhadi’s skill as a storyteller that he keeps shifting our sympathies. In the best traditions of the thriller, we get caught up in Emad’s quest for revenge despite what it does to his soul.
Bar Bahar – Everything but In Between
In a recent interview in the Spanish press, Maysaloun Hamoud sighs with exasperation – “Why would anybody think the characters, who are out partying and having a good time, are trying to escape -just because they drink and take drugs”. She protests. “The protagonists are young, that’s life, life in Tel Aviv.”
Moonlight: A Film by Barry Jenkins
There really couldn’t be any simpler film than Moonlight – a young man named Chiron comes of age in a poor section of Miami. Yet, to signal just how perceptive and multilayered this film will be, director Barry Jenkins opens with a power move: an extended long take in which the camera never sits still, circling the actors like an anxious lion. It’s an amazing display of bravura directing, made even more potent when echoed later in the film at a crucial plot point. But it’s also Jenkins’s wake-up clap to the audience. For despite the film’s low-key tone, aided by such impressive, just downright beautiful camerawork, Moonlight is a revelation of nuanced characters and plot and exposition.
Tackling Monsters – Foster takes on Big Business in timely financial tale of our Times
Jodie Foster has been around a while, but unlike many (nay! the majority) of her artist predecessors, contemporaries and, indeed, imitators, Foster is both surrounded by and imbued with compelling enigma, whether it is through her private life (not so concerning for us), her choice of film as an actor, or the subject matter of her directorial material.