Reviews

Would you send a digital version of yourself out onto the worldwide web? Not just any old avatar, but a precise copy of you, looking, speaking, laughing and moving exactly as you do. In Uncanny Me it is 26-year-old Lale who finds herself in this predicament. A calm, understated, highly personal yet thoroughly thought-provoking documentary about a dilemma created by the highly technical world we live in.

The stunning scenery of the Austrian Alps acts as the perfect backdrop for Bernhard Braunstein’s absorbing doc about acclaimed ski boarding school Stams, where top young skiing talent chase their dreams. For these fresh-faced youngsters it is all about the possibility of making the Olympics, but their journey also includes strict exercise, academic lessons as well as battles with the dangerously icy slopes.

The partly animated documentary Behind the Lines, world premiering in Visons du Réel Grand Angle Competition, shows the professional and personal life of Syrian female political cartoonist Amani Al-Ali, who uses her powerful pen to fight both war and patriarchy.

A clever balance between magical realism and formal fly-on-the-wall documentary, Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík’s striking Photophobia is an examination of life within Ukraine’s Kharkiv metro, where men, women and children live a strange underground existence as they escape the bombardment of the city.

In Subject: Film-making, acclaimed German filmmaker Edgar Reitz, maker of the much-lauded Heimat trilogy and recipient of the Berlinale Camera 2024, reunites with the former pupils of a unique film class he taught at an all-girls school in 1968. Jumping back and forth in time, Reitz’s love of cinema proves remarkably enduring, having marked these enthusiastic students for life.

Nishtha Jain’s absorbing film Farming the Revolution documents the 2020 march of thousands of farmers on Delhi, protesting against new farm laws imposed by the Indian government. The film takes time to detail the experiences of the farmers and protesters, whose sense of camaraderie is what gives the doc a real sense of heart and purpose, as well as outlining the politics and reaction to the protest.

There is something genuinely feel-good, warm-hearted and touching about Alexandra Sell's documentary Ice Aged which follows six men and women ‘of a certain age’ for the best part of three years, tracking their training at local ice rinks through to their competing at the World Hobby Figure Skating Championships at Oberstdorf in Bavaria.

A truly heart-warming story of love, family and the desire to have a child, August B Hanssen and Even G Benestad’s engaging documentary Fatherhood (Tre Fedre) follows Kristopher, David and Sindre, all in their thirties and living in a loving multi-partner relationship, and who are expecting their first child. The additional spin here is that Kristopher is the birth father and one of Norway's trans pioneers.

In the first four episodes of his planned 16-episode series, Mark Cousins provides a stimulating overview of the history of documentary film up to the 1960s. It’s precisely the director’s personal touch, his willingness to choose, combined with an effort to include more diverse voices outside of the traditional documentary canon, which make this series, at least so far, particularly enjoyable.

The artistic and cultural footprint of cult cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman reaches across decades, from turbulent 1950s New York through to his death in the 1990s and this engrossing and engaging documentary strikingly helps reinforce how the man who created MAD Magazine helped redefine American humour and visual storytelling. The film world-premiered August 16 at Edinburgh International Film Festival.