The cinema of Mike Leigh has always been something I’ve been so deeply fascinated by, with his work being pivotal in my development to truly appreciate the art of filmmaking. One of the first encounters I had with Leigh was when I stumbled upon Vera Drake just after its initial release. Too young to fully…

Nestled comfortably in Northern Italy is the industrial town of Ravenna, which is home to many factories and large-scale businesses, all of which take advantage of whatever natural resources they can get from this region, which they feel compelled to exploit as far as they can. The wife of one of the managers is Giuliana…

Nobody has understood the pain of holding onto broken dreams quite like Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), who was well on her way to success during her teenage years, particularly after winning the regional Miss Juneteenth pageant, which is known to afford the winners a full scholarship to the university of their choice, and thus afford…

Nestled in a humble hilltop home reside Shingo Ogata (So Yamamura), an elderly businessman heading towards retirement and his wife, Yasuko (Teruko Nagaoka). The couple has been married for decades, and have settled into their golden years, living with their son, Shuichi (Ken Uehara) and his young wife, Kikuko (Setsuko Hara), who is growing accustomed…

Milla (Eliza Scanlen) is a precocious teenage girl who has struggled to fit in most of her life, always being something of an outsider. She has been quietly battling cancer for a while and has recently relapsed, making the need for an even more aggressive form of treatment to take over her life. This causes…

Frank Fogle (John Hawkes) has just lost his wife after a long battle with cancer. Before she passed on, she left Frank with one last task – to take a trip to her native Ireland with their son to scatter her ashes over a river that holds some significance to her. The problem is that…

The intersecting lives of a group of ordinary people are presented to us through In Safe Hands (French: Pupille), a beautifully-poetic story that seeks to explore humanity in its various forms. A baby is born, and his young mother (Leïla Muse) is adamant that she doesn’t want to keep him, for a number of reasons….

Doc Delaney (Burt Lancaster) and his wife Lola (Shirley Booth) are a middle-aged couple that have been married for over twenty years. They’re a seemingly idyllic couple – they live in a quaint suburban home and lead a remarkably simple life. Doc is a chiropractor who is beloved by the community, and Lola is a…

Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) and his wife Rosie (Odessa Young) are on their way to Bennington, Vermont, where Fred will be starting a residency at the local university, under the guidance of Professor Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), a revered academic known for his depth of knowledge of literature, and his notoriously challenging approach to…

The Second World War continues to make its way across Europe, gradually taking over the lives of everyone, encroaching as far as the smallest villages of Czechoslovakia, which is where we situate ourselves here. Tóno Brtko (Jozef  Kroner) is a humble craftsman who is perfectly content to live a very simple life as a carpenter,…