Nezouh means displacement in Arabic. This three-syllable word denotes a situation where someone is forced to leave their home. It’s an unfathomable term for Motaz (Samir al-Masri), who lives in a ravaged Damascus neighbourhood with his wife Hala (Kinda Alloush) and 14-year-old daughter Zeina (Hala Zein), and refuses to abandon his home as militants close in during the Syrian civil war. Syrian filmmaker Kaadan’s second feature is less about war and more about a lost childhood. It opens with a shot of Zeina cramped under her bed, drawing flowers on her walls, before hurriedly scurrying out whe ..read more

In 2001, filmmaker Spike Lee, frustrated with the heaps of Hollywood movies with depthless black characters written with little purpose other than to mystically aid their white co-stars, coined the term “Magical Negro”. One film that particularly stoked Lee’s ire was The Green Mile, in which a black prisoner on death row miraculously cures a white guard of his sickness. In his directorial debut, Kobi Libii takes inspiration from Lee’s criticism, even poking fun at The Green Mile; however, in 100 dreary minutes, he says little other than the fact that this trope exists – something Lee already ..read more

The history of disability representation in cinema is a long and difficult one, rife with falsehoods, insulting portrayals and misinformation. Despite people with disabilities having always possessed the same creativity and talent as everyone else, their representation behind and in front of the camera has traditionally been minimal. Films featuring disabled characters are few and far between, and when they do exist, it’s usually exclusively with the involvement of non-disabled filmmakers and actors. Slowly but surely, things are beginning to change, with films including The Peanut Butter Fa ..read more

It’s 6.59am Pacific Standard Time, and Luca Guadagnino is sat in the passenger seat of a packed car, shades balanced on dome, and looking down into his smartphone to begin our chat. The last time I spoke to the director was on the occasion of Call Me by Your Name’s swift ascent to the deserving status of global sensation, and in the spirit of the film we conversed while Guadagnino did his morning walk around his one-time hometown of Crema, pausing occasionally to greet passers by. The subject now is Challengers, a skillfully-wrought romantic melodrama of the old school that’s set in the worl ..read more

Anyone in the critical game knows that spoilers — at least for reviews timed to be published with a film’s general release and especially when that film pivots around a killer twist — are to be avoided. Yet in the eternal dance between art and commerce, what might be called the From Dusk Till Dawn effect, can sometimes come into play: a film painstakingly constructed so that it appears to belong to one genre, before it suddenly, violently shifts into another, has its reeling, disorienting pleasures ruined by the film’s marketing campaign long before any critic can spoil the viewer’s fun. Abig ..read more

Growing up amid rugged plains on the outskirts of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, director Zoljargal Purevdash was a remarkably gifted student. So much so that she won a scholarship to a prestigious school, setting in motion a journey which saw her study filmmaking in Tokyo before returning to Mongolia to make her first feature, inspired by her experience of growing up. Purevdesh’s closeness to this intimate and tender coming-of-age story is palpable, one that depicts the universality of the struggle of living in indigence while maintaining its Mongolian essence. If Only I Could Hibernate i ..read more

Metaphor is a strange thing. Conjoining two realms of meaning in a single phrase holds a promise: through figurative means, one can better understand the world. But what metaphoric expressions often do is obscure the power relations conditioning that very same link, between the public and poetic spheres. CPH:DOX, one of the largest festivals in Europe and the world with specific focus on documentary cinema, chose to inaugurate its 21st edition with a potent metaphor: Body Politics. Documentary prides itself on a more direct relationship to the real world, a proximity which entails demands su ..read more

The exploitation and commercialisation of ancient artefacts is punishable by a fate that may be worse than death in Paul Duane’s nightmarish read on Irish folk tradition. The investigative structure and the central idea of an artwork that holds terrible ramifications for all who encounter it gives this literate, slowburn fiction debut the feel of a modern J-Horror: Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse come to mind. It sees a pair of amateur musicologists, Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher), going undercover in the Irish folk scene in an attempt to make a fast buck by ..read more

In 1902, England’s King Edward VII was crowned. Two months earlier, Georges Méliès made a film about it in his French studio to be released at the coronation date. Reportedly, the king said, “What a fantastic machine!” and his exclamation gave directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck an idea: a decade-long research process of examining the possibilities of the cinematic apparatus and the responsibilities that come with its evolution. Fantastic Machine uses the form of a video essay to track historical and ideological highlights in the evolution of the camera, a man-made machine t ..read more

“Everything is sex / except sex / which is power,” sang renaissance woman Janelle Monáe is her ridiculously catchy 2018 banger ‘Screwed’. It’s a sentiment echoed across the filmography of Italian provocateur Luca Guadagnino, who’s no slouch when it comes to a bit of titillation – ever since Tilda Swinton put on that little red dress in I Am Love, it’s been written in the stars. He is drawn to stories about fucking and fucking up, and Justin Kuritzkes’ script for Challengers offers something to satisfy both those appetites, pitting two tennis players against each other in a match that’s as mu ..read more