Reviews

A quietly compelling and measured portrait of a life marked by migration, displacement, and crime, From Dawn to Dawn (La noche de la infancia)—the debut feature of Xisi Sofia Ye Chen—offers an unsentimental look at an older brother who, after operating for years as a gangster, resolves to confront his past and consider a profound change of direction.

Three courageous women explore their sexual longings, and open up to their vulnerabilities. Each is interesting enough to have been the subject of her own documentary (which would have been more desirable). Nevertheless, all three deserve recognition for the courage with which they have welcomed us into their midst. That is strength - and whatever it is they’re looking for, they have already found something within themselves which most of us will probably never possess.

Comme un château fort is less about mourning, more a form of mourning itself. Lou Colpé’s debut feature seems especially worthwhile for those of us who have lost loved ones or whose friends recently have. It shows how silence and presence are key to providing the support we need where words often fail.

n absorbing and provocative documentary, sometimes featuring moments of graphic violence, the evocatively titled Hell’s Army follows the brutal rise of Russian mercenary group The Wagner Group and its bloody work from Donbas through to Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic, before its brutal return to full-scale war in Ukraine.

A wonderfully well-observed and deeply compassionate film, Jeanie Finlay’s All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea is set against the backdrop of the deprived North-East coast of England, and shines the light on an unusual group of environmental activists, a deep-rooted fishing community fighting for survival and pleading for support from a Government that seems to lack any interest in their plight.

How to film on the massive scale of a melting glacier? Rafa Molés and Pepe Andreu, directors of the feature doc La Pietà, selected for Thessaloniki Doc Fest International Competition, approach the subject both from up on high and from right up close, considering both the present and the past, but only sporadically connect with the geological and human perspectives.

The haunting, terrifying and chillingly visceral stories told by a series of young women in Paula Cury Melo’s moving and deeply provocative Scarlet Girls (Niñas escarlata) paints a harrowing picture of what it means to be a woman in the Dominican Republic, still one of the few countries where abortion remains criminalised without exception. It is a perfectly formed, elegantly artistic and gently angry film that demands attention.

Excellent film, wrong genre. Whispers in May blurs the boundaries of the hybrid documentary subgenre to such an extent that its documentary status becomes unclear. This doesn’t mean its story is any less engaging or its young leads any less mesmerising. It is a very enjoyable watch – it’s just that it would better be labelled ‘fiction.'

Managing to be both gently beautiful and desperately moving, Suki Chan’s Conscious explores what happens when consciousness and memory begin to disintegrate, with the haunting presence of dementia and mental decline intertwined within a series of distinctive yet similar stories. While the subject matter is familiar, the presentation here is never traditional.

Inspired by the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin and other feminist thinkers, Irene Margrethe Kaltenborn’s The Mother Age is a sumptuously filmed ode to the beauty and power of nature, in which the director all the time seeks alternative ways to relate to, and learn, from the natural world. The film acknowledges our human limitations when it comes to understanding that world, and how we must be willing to learn in order to find what we are looking for.