Sakuran first published by Film4 “Cry and you lose. Love and you lose. Win and you lose.” This is what Seiji (Masanobu Ando) tells Kiyoha (Anna Tsuchiya) of her fragile status as a courtesan in 1700s Japan – and as both a whore’s son himself and Head Clerk at the Tamagikuya brothel in the Yoshiwara…
Fucktoys had its world premiere at SXSW on 9 Mar 2025 Annapurna Sriram’s feature debut Fucktoys opens in an irrational space. Despite her youth, AP (played by the film’s writer/director) has been experiencing a run of freakish bad luck and physical maladies, and so has come to consult a Black trans tarot reader (Big Freedia)…
Much as Maeve Murphy’s feature debut Silent Grace (2002) opened with a strident soundbite from Margaret Thatcher, and built its drama around a very real if little explored female protest in the Eighties, her short film St Pancras Sunrise also begins with an actuality: an archival news item about the occupation of the Holy Cross…
At the beginning of Shadows, 18-year-old Cody (Rahart Adams) is breaking bad. For he is starting to hang around young prostitutes in a peculiar bid to get closer to his tough-as-nails sex-working mother Jewel (Krista Allen) – who abandoned him as a baby, and has only recently reentered his life. He is also ‘upgrading’ from…