Reviews

For 13 years, director Lea Glob filmed her friend Apolonia Sokol, who was to become a globally renowned painter. What starts out as a portrait of a charismatic young artist ends up, through the magic of longitudinal documentary, as a much more far-reaching picture of the art world, the struggle against patriarchy – and life. And it’s a film you don’t want to see come to an end.

Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters masterfully uses the intricate complexities of self-conscious re-enactment to intimately explore the lives of a mother and her four daughters – two of whom have disappeared and are therefore portrayed by actors. In so doing, Ben Hania’s film joins the ranks of masterpieces, such as Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet.

A disturbing and brutal delve into the dark and violent underbelly of military conscription in Belarus as seen from the perspective of the country’s much put-upon youth, Motherland offers a striking – and deeply prescient – analysis of a system of bullying and abuse borrowed from neighbouring Russia, and how it is reflected in the country itself.

French documentarian Nicolas Philibert offers up a typically astute and compassionate view of a perhaps little-known Parisian institution with his eleventh feature, On the Adamant. The film observes life on board the eponymous decommissioned steamship which has been moored at the Quai de Rapée on the Seine since 2010 and which, while classed as a hospital, is more a floating community which caters sensitively for its patients’ creative needs.

There is something primal and movingly powerful about Anna Hints’ gloriously immersive film Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Savvusanna sõsarad) – which took a Special Jury Award for Directing at Sundance 2023. Set against the hot, supportive and immersive backdrop of a southern Estonian smoke sauna in snowy woods, women sit, laugh, talk, sing and relish the profound camaraderie they share.

A fascinating delve into the life and work of Shere Hite and her contributions to the feminist movement, the intriguingly titled feature documentary is blessed with challenging and evocative archival material as it examines responses to her ground-breaking 1976 survey of thousands of women’s individual sexual experiences, while also detailing the modelling work she did to make ends meet while undertaking her research.

From early justifications for slavery to the discrimination faced by Black Americans today, Stamped From The Beginning argues that economic power has always been at the heart of systemic racism. Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams uses interviews and animated sequences to especially highlight the anti-racist activism of Black women.

In visually breathtaking fashion, and full of wonderful, human, slightly absurdist observations, As the Tide Comes In tells the story of the Danish Wadden Island of Mandø through Gregers, the last farmer resident. At the same time, it is - inevitably - a story about climate change and humankind’s fight for and against nature.

It may not be a hugely original premise - to invite (very) old people to talk about their lives and former partners - but Echo of Life is a wondrous experience that touches your soul. It is a poetic reflection on life and love which indicates that, by the end, we remember what really matters, and shows how important (shared) memories are in a person's life.

A Palestinian filmmaker is stranded in Tromsø, above the Arctic Circle, unable to return to Gaza. This was Mohamed Jabaly’s situation in 2014 when he began filming this documentary. But while his emotional and political vicissitudes inevitably mirror the current war in the region, Jabaly never lets us forget his motto: life is beautiful.