Reviews

A beautifully immersive examination of the cycle of grasshopper harvesting in Uganda, Grasshopper Republic works both as an analysis of a ramshackle and potentially dangerous makeshift industry and an intimate examination of the life of the grasshopper. Elegantly shot in cinemascope, the film offers a fascinating glimpse into an industry that is both mesmerising and brutal.

On the eve of its demolition, six former inmates return to London’s Holloway Prison which stood for some 150 years in the middle of the city. When it closed in 2016 it was the largest women’s prison in Europe. For the six women the return is part-catharsis and part self-examination as they once again serve time (albeit voluntarily this time) for several days in the building that shaped their much of their lives.

The Whanganui River in Aotearoa/New Zealand is the first river in the world to be recognised as a legal person - as a living and indivisible being – and this engaging and informative documentary might well be the first film where a river receives a shared on-screen ‘created by’ credit along with filmmaker Petr Lom and his producer partner Corinne van Egeraat.

A moving, immersive and prescient documentary, No Other Land, longlisted for the European Film Awards, details the eradication of the villages in the Masafer Yatta area on the Southern West Bank over a period of years, as seen from the perspective of Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist/journalist brought up in Masafer Yatta, and Yuval, an Israeli journalist who supports him in his efforts to bring attention to what is happening to the community.

In what feels like a cinematic counterpart to Ivo Andrić’s literary masterpiece The Bridge on the Drina, Swiss filmmaker Nicole Vögele’s The Landscape and the Fury, longlisted for the European Film Awards 2024, juxtaposes the natural tranquility of the north-western Bosnian landscape with the fury of human struggles past and present, as modern-day refugees pass through areas still mined after the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

In Limbo (W zawieszeniu) is an intimate and insightful look at the war in Ukraine as seen from the viewpoint of a very particular family, and presented in a very personal form. Set against other films from Ukraine which focus on frontline battles, the film is a welcome and moving glimpse into the lives of an ordinary family unit at the onset of the conflict. The film is long-listed for Best Documentary, European Film Awards, 2024.

Even at the age of nine, Iranian Melina has already learned to deal with disillusionment and broken promises - she sees her mother much less than is promised; her father uses Melina's passport, which is in his possession, to exercise power. With great patience, respect and attentiveness, the filmmaker has made a very personal and relatable story of a universal phenomenon: the child who, between two bickering parents, has to fend for themselves.

The final instalment of Wang Bing’s monumental, masterful Youth trilogy about the young, overworked and underpaid workers of Zhili’s vast textile district, strikes a melancholic note after the high-strung energy of its predecessors. As the director put it to BDE in Venice: “With all the ups and downs that these [past 20] years have brought…it has led me to think that there is no actual hope for a future.”

This terrifying inside account of America’s self-proclaimed Patriot Movement, which overlaps with Trump’s MAGA movement, closely follows both violent extremists and surprisingly sympathetic activists leading up to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It is an essential document, and one unsettling in its neutrality. The film world-premiered in Venice Settimana Internazionale della Critica.

It has now been some 50 years since one of the most terrifyingly titled of American horror films – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – both shocked unsuspecting audiences and thrilled horror film fans, who grew to appreciate they were experiencing a rather special piece of cinema. Insightful and astute Alexandre O Philippe’s cleverly structured film allows for plenty of thoughtful and balanced analysis, both of Chainsaw and of director Tobe Hooper’s impact on subsequent generations of filmmakers.