Buzzheart first published by Dirty Movies, for its screening at MotelX 2025 Buzzheart opens with text (soon complemented by disturbing archival footage) about behavioural experiments conducted on lab animals in the Sixties and Seventies, before the questionable ethics of these scientific intrusions made them fall out of favour. These tests were intended to determine the…
EXIT MEDEA screened at Cine-Excess, 23rd Oct 2025 Medea holds a contradictory position in myth. A dangerous, powerful woman within a male-dominated, patriarchal culture, she is both terrifying witch and pioneering feminist. She dared to complain about the unfair treatment of women in Ancient Greek society, but also, when cruelly abandoned by her heroic husband…
“If it were done, when ’tis done, then ‘twer well It were done quickly” This is the text that opens Dead Man’s Money, quoted from Macbeth’s soliloquy in the Shakespearean tragedy named after him, when he is contemplating the murder of his king, kinsman and guest Duncan, as an underhanded means to ascending to the…
Les Enfants Terribles first published, in a different version, by Movie Gazette, in Nov 2004 Paul (Edouard Dermithe) is somnolent, sickly and passive, while Elisabeth (a mesmerising Nicole Stéphane) is bold, manipulative and domineering. As siblings, they are like chalk and cheese, but form an intimately tight pair together, “like two limbs of the same…
Justin McMillan’s Sweet River takes place in Billins, a small rural town in the north of New South Wales that has experienced more than its fair share of tragedy. A school bus swerved off the road into the river there, drowning all inside but the driver (played by Eddie Baroo, who also co-wrote the film…
One Deadly Summer (L’été meurtrier) first published by Movie Gazette One Deadly Summer (L’été meurtrier) begins as a portrait of life in a small village in 1970s France. The narration of local fireman Pin-Pon (Alain Souchon) introduces us to his French-Italian family and describes his awkward crush on Elle (Isabelle Adjani), a pretty girl who…
The Banishment first published by Film4 Synopsis: Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Bible-inflected follow-up to The Return banishes a family forever from its fragile idyll. Review: If Andrey Zvyagintsev’s astonishing debut The Return (2003) was a barebones mystery thriller whose characters and their interrelationships were elevated to the realm of mythic archetypes, then his long-awaited second feature The Banishment, pulling…
Footnote first published by EyeforFilm Joseph Cedar’s previous feature Beaufort (2007) used the true story of an Israel Defence Forces-occupied fortress in Lebanon to allegorise the bunker mentality of the beleaguered Israeli state – and this follow-up both expands and domesticates that film’s themes. As in Beaufort, a fortress will play a pivotal role in the plot…
Miss Violence first published by Film4 Synopsis: Alexandros Avranas directs a domestic tale of modern Greece and ancient patriarchy. Review: In a sequence about halfway through Alexandros Avranas’ Miss Violence, mother of four Eleni (Eleni Roussinou) goes with her family’s Father (Themis Panou) to the house of one of his friends. During this visit, seated in…