Tom Dawson

Lady Godiva

17 Jan 2008

ROMANCE (12A) 95min According to legend, Lady Godiva was the wife of an 11th century nobleman, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry in a successful act of protest against her husband’s taxation of his subjects. Here, in her debut…

Profile: Carol Morley

Director of documentary-drama Dreams of a Life

9 Dec 2011

Born 1966, Stockport, England. Background The sister of music critic Paul Morley, film director Carol left school aged 16 to pursue a career as a singer in various post-punk Mancunian bands. Having studied fine art film at Central Saint Martins…

Rendez-vous with French Cinema preview

The chance to see upcoming French films before they hit cinemas later this year

26 Mar 2012

Now that The Artist has cleaned up at the Oscars, attention can turn to other French films that will be released in the UK during 2012. The Rendez-vous with French Cinema event, which runs in London until Sat 24 Mar and at Edinburgh's Filmhouse from Fri…

Big River Man - Martin Strel interview

5 Jan 2010

‘The director John Maringouin first contacted me and my son Borut in 2002 after John’s wife Molly had seen a report on CNN about me swimming the Mississippi. When they found out that I was planning to swim the Amazon in 2007 to raise environmental…

Interview - Céline Sciamma

13 Mar 2008

‘I wrote the screenplay for Water Lilies while I was studying screenwriting at La Femis film school in Paris, and the director Xavier Beauvois, who was on the graduation committee, told me I had to make the film myself. My starting point was that I…

Cleanskin

A gratuitously violent Sean Bean action vehicle light on sociological insight

9 Mar 2012

'I love my country. I’ve killed for it and I’ll die for it', growls Ewan (Sean Bean), an ex-soldier turned secret service agent who is tasked with tracking down a cell of homegrown suicide bombers in this London-set thriller by British writer-director…

Interview: Kaya Scodelario on Skins, Wuthering Heights and Now Is Good

Former star Skins takes lead in Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights

21 Oct 2011

You were in line to work with Red Road and Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold on Wuthering Heights, yet you missed your first audition for the role? How come? ‘I was incredibly nervous about doing a period drama. I thought that to play period you had…

Beautiful Lies (De Vrais Mensonges)

9 Aug 2011

(12a) 104min Despite the efforts of a fine French cast – which includes Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila and Audrey Tautou – this visually unremarkable romantic comedy from writer/director Pierre Salvadori (Wild Target, Priceless), in which mother and…

Tulpan

4 Dec 2009

(12A) 102min We never actually get to see the Tulpan of the title, who is the object of the affections of 22-year-old sheepherder Asa (Asat Kunchinchirekov). Having recently completed his national service in the Russian navy, he has returned to the…

Dorian Gray

11 Sep 2009

Oscar Wilde’s only published novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is tricky to adapt cinematically, requiring a deft balance between its sparkling wit and the Faustian darkness at its core. As the author himself wrote, ‘man sees his own sins in Dorian, what…

Delta

28 May 2009

The spectre of Bela Tarr shadows this slow burning Hungarian tragedy, written and directed by actor/director Kornel Mundruczo (Johanna, Joan of Arc of the Night Bus). Delta’s taciturn protagonist is an unnamed and mysteriously wealthy young man…

Awaydays

14 May 2009

DRAMA (18) 104min The Wirral, late 1970s. Middle-class Carty (Nicky Bell) is a 19-year-old art school dropout stuck in a pen-pushing office job. He’s in awe of The Pack, a gang of knife-wielding local football hooligans who dress in designer…

Paris 36

19 Feb 2009

(12) 120min DRAMA Director Christopher Barratier had an enormous hit at the French box office in 2004 with The Chorus, a saccharine tale of an inspirational teacher at a reform school setting up a choir for the boys. Working now on a much bigger…

Dreams of A Life

Compelling UK documentary-drama investigation into life of dead woman

7 Dec 2011

(12A) 90min Back in January 2006 a 38-year-old Londoner of Afro-Caribbean descent, Joyce Vincent, was found dead in her Wood Green housing association flat located above a busy shopping centre. Her decomposing corpse had lain there undisturbed for…

Mademoiselle Chambon

Moving romantic drama from director Stéphane Brizé, starring Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain

14 Sep 2011

(12A) 101min Mademoiselle Chambon is another bitter-sweet and elegantly orchestrated chamber drama from Stéphane Brizé, the French writer-director of Not Here to be Loved, which plays like a Gallic variation of Brief Encounter. Jean (Vincent Lindon…

A Prophet - Jacques Audiard interview

20 Jan 2010

Unlike his contemporaries – Lars von Trier, Pedro Almodovar and Michael Haneke, the name of French director Jacques Audiard carries little arthouse weight for British fans of European cinema. This situation looks likely to change however with the…

Unmade Beds

4 Dec 2009

Written and directed by Argentinean filmmaker Alexis Dos Santos, Unmade Beds unfolds against the backdrop of the East End of London’s modern day bohemian scene. It’s a world of rent-free accommodation in generously equipped warehouse squats, regular…

Polisse

Sprawling French ensemble drama that veers between compelling and ridiculous

16 May 2012

This sprawling ensemble film, which tracks the harrowing daily routines of a Parisian Child Protection Unit, veers wildly between the compelling and the ridiculous. Scripted and directed by Maiwenn, with Emmaneulle Bercot acting as co-writer, it shifts…

The Adopted

Quirky, saccharine directorial debut from French actress Melanie Laurent

24 Jan 2012

(15) 100 mins Still only 28-years-old, French actress and musician Melanie Laurent makes her directorial debut with this offbeat family tale, which owes more to her recent performances in US indie Beginners and the sentimental melodrama The Concert…

Miss Bala

Impressive crime drama from Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo

12 Oct 2011

(15) 113min Maria Full of Grace meets Heat in this absorbing thriller from Mexican writer/director Gerardo Naranjo (I’m Gonna Explode), whose title translates as ‘Miss Bullet’. Laura (newcomer Stephanie Sigman) is a young working-class woman living…

Inside Job examines 2008 financial crisis - Charles Ferguson interview

Matt Damon-narrated documentary suggest crash was avoidable

18 Feb 2011

An interview with Charles Ferguson, director of the Matt Damon-narrated Inside Job, an examination of the 2008 financial crisis

Biutiful - Alejandro González Iñárritu interview

The Mexican filmmaker talks about his new film Biutiful, Spain, Javier Bardem and fatherhood

18 Jan 2011

‘The starting point for Biutiful was the character of Uxbal [played by Javier Bardem], who got into my head one day. I had listened to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and that had given me an idea for a tone and a mood. Then I had this image of Uxbal…

Of Gods And Men (Des Hommes Et Des Dieux)

30 Nov 2010

(15) 121min ‘It goes beyond religion: the film is about men,’ is how French writer-director Xavier Beauvois has described his serenely controlled drama Of Gods and Men. Inspired by real-life events from the mid-1990s, it chronicles the experiences of…

The Arbor

22 Oct 2010

(15) 94min Writer-director Clio Barnard’s The Arbor takes its title from a semi-autobiographical play written by the late Yorkshire playwright Andrea Dunbar, who grew up on the deprived Buttershaw estate in Bradford. Dunbar was just fifteen when she…

Dog Pound

22 Aug 2010

(18) 90min Young French writer-director Kim Chapiron, who made the hillbilly horror Sheitan, heads to the American Midwest for his English-language debut feature. Based on Alan Clarke’s seminal borstal drama Scum, Dog Pound is set in a Montana…