While art has become increasingly secular as times have progressed and the importance of the church in day-to-day life has diminished, it remains a perpetual theme for many artists, who may not may works that outwardly celebrate the power of faith, but rather look at it in different ways, whether the history of religion or…

Compassion is a quality that many works of art seem to genuinely believe they convey, but very few actually manage to capture it in a way that is authentic and meaningful, which has meant that it has unfortunately become an increasingly rare commodity. However, one of the more recent examples of this characteristic not only…

Having visited the Balkan region very recently myself and learning of the history of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia, there is a new set of insights that come from such an experience that make certain films feel very different and far more layered than we may have initially expected had we not been armed…

One of the great gifts we have been given as contemporary viewers is the opportunity to see Alice Rohrwacher flourish into arguably one of the greatest filmmakers of her generation. It has been an authentic, fascinating process to observe, and one that has provided us with several astonishing films, each one handcrafted by a director…

We have all encountered individuals in our lives who make such a profound impact, that we still feel their presence years after our paths deviate. Some of us are lucky enough to reconnect with these people at some point, and this simultaneous reunion and re-introduction often prove to be quite a powerful experience, especially when…

For about a decade, Justine Triet has been circling around being consolidated as one of the most promising young voices in contemporary European cinema – her work is incredibly layered and always very precise, and navigates the vague boundaries between humour and drama with such astonishing ease, it was only a matter of time before…

One knows they have written a truly brilliant piece of literature when the very title not only evokes a very specific kind of memory but has become something of a punchline when discussing the works it tends to define. When it comes to The Grapes of Wrath, few can argue against this being shorthand for…

When discussing Mike Leigh, we usually associate him with stories within the contemporary working class, deeply meditative and profoundly compelling social realist narratives that are firm reflections of the director’s origins within the movement popularly known as the “angry young men” of British cinema. However, he was prone to experimenting in many ways, and after…

Here’s an interesting question – who else could make a film that was abducted by the studio, and edited down to the point of being nearly half the length of the original cut, and still have it be one of the most unimpeachable masterpieces of the Golden Age of Hollywood, other than Orson Welles? For…

The vast majority of us have at some point or another fantasized about leaving our fast-paced urban lives, and instead disappearing into nature, living off the land as far from civilization as we possibly can, under the belief that the natural world can offer us peace and serenity that is sorely lacking in the more…