The inherent challenge that comes with assessing the past is that there is simply so much of it – even by the time you’ve read this very sentence, it can be considered a historical remnant, an action that only exists in the past tense. This has led history to be viewed as stodgy and immovable,…
Category: Drama
Le Lac (2025)
There is a quote by the master storyteller Herman Melville in his timeless classic Moby Dick that I absolutely adore: “As for me, I am tormented by an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts”, which is a beautiful and evocative description of the desire to…
Drive Back Home (2025)
When starting this discussion, I wanted to find a quote that best described the core themes of the film we’ll be exploring. I considered the profoundly philosophical and deeply moving, before settling on one that I feel best describes the core themes, which is taken from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, where she simply states, “what…
Rebuilding (2025)
Life can change in a moment, and there’s nothing we can do about the unpredictable nature of reality – and in many cases, it’s difficult not feel like you have been dealt a bad hand, where even your best efforts can fall apart at the seams. However, as they often say, it’s not the reason…
Preparation for the Next Life (2025)
How fast do you have to run to truly escape your past? This is a question that has been posed in many different ways over the centuries, with the idea of disappearing into the ether and starting anew in entirely different places being a theme that has fascinated artists for generations. It is also a…
I Only Rest in the Storm (2025)
In the early 1970s, Tom Zé released an album that featured a particular song, “O Riso e a Faca” – it’s not widely considered one of his most famous compositions, nor one that is regularly discussed beyond the occasional mention. Despite this, the message at the heart of the song (the title translating as “the…
Souleymane’s Story (2025)
There are few subjects today that stir up quite as much discourse as that of immigration, and it seems like the conversation around the people that seek refuge in supposedly “developed” countries will always undoubtedly devolve into ferocious arguments about the need to preserve a culture and its people, as if many of these countries…
Ponyboi (2025)
When all is said and done, all we have that is truly our own is our identity – material possessions don’t last forever, friends (and even family) come and go, and achievements ultimately mean very little. All we can hold onto in challenging circumstances that can never truly be taken away is our own inner…
Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes (2025)
When travelling through any part of the world that holds some significant history (regardless of region or continent), I am always struck by the feeling that I am not alone at that present moment – even without a travelling companion, there is a familiar feeling that lingers over many of these places, creating a sense…
On Swift Horses (2025)
There is nothing quite as frustrating as the feeling of being forced into a life from which you cannot ever truly escape – not because of anything particularly negative or insidious, but rather that you have become a victim of the status quo, which isn’t always easy to overcome. In his novel On Swift Horses,…
The Postmodern Pelican 