I’ve recently decided to broaden my horizons slightly and move out of my comfort zone (even if, based on my diverse taste in a wide-range of genres, I don’t have a well-defined comfort zone). One of my resolutions was to explore some unheralded cinema, such as films made in Africa, which have remained shockingly under-represented…

Recently, in celebration of his victory of winning the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, I chose to watch a film by Hirokazu Kore-eda, a filmmaker I have been very aware of but had not had the opportunity to explore for myself yet. The film I opted to watch was Still Walking (Japanese:…

In a contemporary independent cinematic landscape, there are few filmmakers as consistently reliable as Kelly Reichardt, who has gone relatively underpraised throughout her career, despite the fact that she has made some astonishing films that push the boundary of independent storytelling. Films such as Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy are exceptional examples of minimalist…

I may be able to understand the secrets of the universe, but… I’ll never understand the truth about you. Never. These haunting lines, spoken by Marlon Brando, ring out like a cacophony of unconventional truthfulness in Last Tango in Paris, a film that left me almost entirely speechless, unable to articulate my thoughts precisely (this…

I’m a connoisseur of roads. I’ve been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world” These are the haunting final words of My Own Private Idaho, spoken by the tragic protagonist of the film, Mike Waters (River Phoenix). My Own Private Idaho is a film about…

There are few names that have evoked the concept of “revolutionary auteur” quite like Michael Haneke – throughout his career, Haneke has pushed the boundaries of cinema, making audacious and often extremely shocking films about the human condition, showing the smallest nuances of society and the problems that individuals face within harsh socio-political and economic…

Sometimes the most cathartic way of representing tragedy is through artistic expression, and very few events have inspired people from across the world to express their sorrow and pity quite as much as the Holocaust. For over half a century now, artists have produced novels, non-fiction works, artworks and films to try and convey the…

Two of the major cornerstones of cinema are romance and death, and very often filmmakers blend the two themes in the pursuit of making relatable statements on both of these inevitable, highly-resonant concepts. However, the concept of love has never been as inextricably honest in its relationship to our eventual demise than in  Ildikó Enyedi’s…