Film, Foreign, Miles Fielder

Five reasons to go to the Italian Film Festival in Scotland 2013

Every Blessed Day, The Commander and the Stork and Piazza Fontana among the festival highlights

The Commander and the Stork 'This is by director Silvio Soldini, who has been to the festival a couple of times in the past. He also made Bread and Tulips, which was very popular when we showed it. We’ve been very supportive of him. It’s a magic…

Hi-So

Inert Thai drama about a directionless twenty-something in Bangkok

Form follows content in this tediously inert Thai drama about a young man caught between eastern and western cultures and suffering from emotional paralysis. Emotional paralysis is quite possibly the state writer-director Aditya Assarat’s film will…

Populaire

Immaculately styled French period romcom starring Déborah Francois and Romain Duris

This immaculately styled French period romantic comedy signals its pedigree with a colourful cartoon credit sequence reminiscent of cute and kookie Hollywood comedies circa the 1950s and 60s. And in fact, co-writer and director Régis Roinsard’s feature…

Alps

Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth follow-up retains that film's weird sensibility but lacks its wider focus

Having launched a new wave of bizarro Greek cinema (see also Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg) with his Oscar-nominated queasy black comedy Dogtooth, Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a follow up that’s just as absurdly idiosyncratic. The Alps of the…

Sister

Utterly absorbing drama about fractured family relationships

Swiss-French filmmaker Ursula Meier follows her feature debut, the tragic-comic domestic drama Home, with another leftfield story about a family in dysfunction. In this case, it’s a family of two comprising a 12-year-old boy named Simon (Kacey Mottet…

Barbara

Slow burning drama set in East Germany with real dramatic weight

Germany’s Best Foreign Language Film contender for next year’s Academy Awards recalls the country’s 2007 winner The Lives of Others inasmuch as it dramatises life lived under the watchful eye of the authorities in East Germany before the wall came down.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Provocative drama from the French Ken Loach, Robert Guédiguian

Not to be confused with the 1952 Hollywood film of the same name, this is the latest slice of social realism from France’s answer to Ken Loach, Robert Guédiguian. Guédiguian’s The Snows of Kilimanjiro takes it name from the 1966 sugary French pop hit…

The Forgiveness of Blood

Compelling Albanian drama from the director of Maria Full of Grace

Los Angelino filmmaker Joshua Marston repeats the success of his first film, the award-winning Maria Full of Grace, with a second compelling foreign language drama that unfolds beyond the borders of the First World. Marston’s follow-up to Maria, which…

Niño

Idiosyncratic Philippine drama about an aristocratic family in decline

This portrait of an aristocratic Philippine family in decline combines the weighty thematic concerns of Chekhov with the heightened melodramatic performance style of daytime television soap operas. When Gaspar, the elderly family patriarch and former…

Philippine New Wave: This is Not A Film Movement

An illustrated oral history of the vibrant Philippine independent filmmaking scene

If you’re looking for an introduction to the largest – and, arguably, the most exciting – of the several new sections introduced into the EIFF programme this year by debuting artistic director Chris Fujiwara, you could do no worse than take check out…

Philippine New Wave

A closer look at the spirited, ambitious and brilliantly diverse films emerging from the Philippines

The largest of several new sections introduced into the EIFF programme this year by new artistic director Chris Fujiwara, Philippine New Wave also looks like being by far the most exciting. Aside from their country of origin, what the 11 features (and…

Mondomanila, or: How I Fixed My Hair After A Rather Long Journey

Wild and extreme pseudo-documentary about the Filipino capital’s underclass

Khavn De La Cruz’s Mondomanila, or: How I Fixed My Hair After A Rather Long Journey has got to be a contender for the wildest film of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Based on the Norman Wilwayco’s cult novel, Mondomanila is, as its…

Silent Souls

A beautiful, beguiling, dreamy and mystifying drama from director Aleksei Fedorchenko

Following the death of the beloved wife of his friend Miron, Aist joins the bereaved man on a trip to transport the dead woman from their small town to the shore of Lake Nero in western Russia, where her body is to be cremated. This, along with several…

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismaki's French language debut is a grimly funny working class drama

(PG) 93min Migrating south to shoot his latest feature in France seems to have lightened the mood of the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, whose brand of deadpan humour has previously proved to be the key in crafting a series of delightfully…

Incendies

Franco-Canadian drama is a deserving award-winner

(15) 130min This commendable and impressive Franco-Canadian drama arrives fresh from scooping of seven Genies (Canada’s Oscars). Set in the Middle East and dramatising an endless cycle of violence and retribution, it’s an unashamedly didactic piece…

Charles Burns - Fear(s) of the Dark

The wildly imaginative and scary animated French portmanteau horror movie Fear(s) of the Dark was made by six European and American cartoonists working with professional animators. The most notable of those cartoonists is Charles Burns, who is a legend…

Fear(s) of the Dark

ANIMATION/MYSTERY The Gallic term ‘outre’, meaning beyond or excessive, perfectly describes this imaginatively conceived and immaculately executed French language portmanteau horror. Much of its impact is derived from its unique nature: the…

Tiramisu

Edinburgh International Film Festival

(Paula van der Oest, Netherlands) 90min Abandoned by her theatre director husband for a younger woman, middle-aged actress and retail therapy junkie Anne seems unconcerned by the impending loss of the Amsterdam houseboat she and her long-suffering…

Heartbeat Detector

DRAMA (12A) 135min Visually spare, leisurely in pace, wordy and featuring an eclectic, occasionally jarring soundtrack, this French corporate thriller is demanding and rewarding in equal measure. Adapted from François Emmanuel’s novel La Question…

Flight of the Red Balloon

DRAMA (PG) 113min Taiwanese New Wave cinema pioneer Hou Hsiao-hsien makes his French language debut with this eloquent drama loosely inspired by Albert Lamorisse’s much-loved 1956 short, The Red Balloon. Taking as its starting point that film’s…

It's a Free World . . .

(15) 96min (Channel 4) SOCIAL REALIST DRAMA Grandfather of British social realist cinema Ken Loach and Glasgow-born screenwriter Paul Laverty’s follow up to their Cannes Palme d’Or-winning rise of the IRA thriller The Wind that Shakes the Barley is…