The Weekend (Daniel Oriahi, 2024)

The Weekend played at last year's Slash Film Festival and has since enjoyed no less than three screenings at the 2024 London Film Festival, where it received its UK premiere as part of the LFF's Cult strand, which also featured the likes of Noémie Merlant's The Balconettes and Nic Cage-starrer The Surfer.  Directed by the prolific filmmaker Daniel Oriahi (Sylvia, Taxi Driver: Oko Ashewo, Zena), The Weekend is a Nollywood horror that has the potential to travel way beyond its domestic market and the festival circuit, and it showcases a genre that has been gradually establishing itself in Nigerian cinema, yet seldom with such focus.

Buoyed by its selection for the 2024 edition of New York's Tribeca Film Festival, The Weekend cleaned up at the local box office and secured a record 16 nominations for the Africa Movie Academy Awards, from which it won four prizes (Best Film, Best Nigerian Film, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography).  The film delves into the complex dynamics of in-law relationships as it focuses on Nikiya (Uzoamaka Aniunoh), an orphaned woman desperate to fill the void with the family of her fiancé Luc (Bucci Franklin), who, in contrast, wants to maintain the mysterious schism between himself and his parents.

Of course, there wouldn't be much of a film if the insistent Nikiya didn't get her way, and Luc eventually acquiesces to his fiancée's demands.  Opening in medias res, the story, as per the title, unfolds over the course of a weekend as Nikiya and Luc attend the celebrations for the latter's parents' wedding anniversary.  In addition to Luc's mother (Gloria Young) and father (Keppy Ekpenyong), the gathering includes his big sister Kama (Meg Otanwa) and her abusive boyfriend Zeido (James Gardiner), a self-proclaimed "man of substance" who seems a very unlikely candidate to survive the festivities once dark family secrets begin to emerge.

Solidly written by Freddie O. Anyaegbunam Jr., Vanessa Kanu and Egbemawei Dimiyei Sammy, The Weekend saw Oriahi board the project after the previous director dropped out.  Working with the biggest budget of his career to date, Oriahi shot the movie in just three weeks, and the result is generally impressive—although some judicious editing would have helped.  The film deals in familiar horror tropes, albeit ones reframed in a Nigerian setting, and while it's far from bloodless, gorehounds will have to look elsewhere for their fix.  Still, The Weekend's sly sense of humour ensures there's some ghoulish fun to be had here.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI 

Mother Vera (Cécile Embleton / Alys Tomlinson, 2024)

The legendary French director Robert Bresson had a profound relationship with spirituality that ran through his films, which often explored themes of redemption and hermeneutical struggle, all the while reflecting his Catholic upbringing and experiences as a prisoner of war.  Bresson's highly austere work conveyed a deep sense of faith and a near-pantheistic belief in the presence of God in nature; his singular cinematic style, which favoured minimalism and the use of non-professional actors, aimed to decode the mysteries behind quotidian life.  All of which feels very relevant when viewing the stark, ascetic documentary Mother Vera, which was mainly shot on the wintry outskirts of the Belarusian capital Minsk.

Mother Vera is a poignant, visually arresting work that follows the life of a young Orthodox nun, tracing her journey from a tumultuous past to an uncertain, if hopeful, future.  Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson's stately film opens in the thick snow of a Belarusian forest, an icy monochrome setting that immediately nails down the tone for the story of seclusion and redemption that follows; soon, we are introduced to the remote monastery that houses the Vera of the title.  A former addict once known as Olga, Vera has a keen affinity for horses, a calling which will eventually take her far from brumal Belarus to the sun-kissed Camargue, the southern French region known for its eponymous, striking equine breed.

The directors have crafted a documentary that frequently feels like a piece of narrative cinema, one whose Bressonian pace allows the audience to immerse themselves in the depiction of cloistered life.  The decision to shoot primarily in black and white lends an oneiric quality to the film, although a jarring coda in colour comes close to breaking the spell cast by what's preceded it.  Mother Vera is not just about Vera's inner world—it also explores the community that played a crucial role in her rehabilitation, and delves into the wider themes of recovery and the search for meaning.  The cinematography (by Embleton) is particularly impressive, with the camera often training on details such as a horse's hooves.

These stunning, sensorial shots help deepen our understanding of Vera's place in her environment (Bresson's spiritual heir Bruno Dumont pulled off a similar feat in his startling debut feature The Life of Jesus).  The influence of classic Soviet cinema is very much in evidence here, with the film's visual language echoing that of Tarkovsky; languid scenes allow the imagery to seep into the viewer's consciousness, creating a rhythm that dictates the pace of the storytelling.  Mother Vera is a meditative exploration of both the mysteries of faith and the depths of the human condition; this haunting film manages to be at once probing and reticent as it challenges the viewer to evaluate their own place in the world.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Row (Matthew Losasso, 2025)

Matthew Losasso’s feature debut Row received its world premiere at the 2025 Raindance Film Festival, where it proceeded to win the award for Best UK Feature, a category that offered some stiff competition from the likes of White Guilt, Breakwater, The Lonely Musketeer, and festival opener Heavyweight.  Row is a psychological thriller, one that wouldn't have looked out of place in Raindance 2025's packed horror strand, which included other edge-of-your-seat fare such as Slovenian three-hander Hole, Argento homage Saturnalia, Pett Kata Shaw sequel Dui Shaw, and Australian horror-comedy Snatchers.

Row opens in medias res, with barely-alive Megan (Bella Dayne) washing up on an Orkney beach in the wake of a catastrophic attempt at rowing the Atlantic.  Megan appears to be the sole survivor of this ill-fated venture, and she's cared for in a makeshift hospital on Hoy as DCI MacKelly (Tam Dean Burn) asks her to recall what happened on the open seas.  Via a series of flashbacks, we learn of the fraught dynamic between the crew members, which, Megan aside, include Lexi (Sophie Skelton), Daniel (Akshay Khanna), and late addition Mike (co-writer Nick Skaugen), who is subbing for Lexi's injured boyfriend Adam (Mark Strepan).

Megan's memory appears to be hazy at best, and as time goes on it becomes clear that MacKelly's attempts to ascertain what happened between Newfoundland and Scotland are informed by the suspicion that Megan may be the author of this small-scale maritime disaster.  Dayne, who received a nomination for Best Performance in a UK Feature at Raindance—the prize went to The Lonely Musketeer's Edward Hogg—is good value as the quite inscrutable Megan, while Burn brings a welcome gravitas to his role and overcomes initial fears that he may have been slightly miscast as the grim-faced police detective.

Yet to focus on the scenes that take place around Megan's sickbed is to rather miss the point of Row, whose raison d'être is to showcase a series of exhilarating set-pieces featuring a tiny vessel at the mercy of the ocean.  Losasso taps into the brutal, unforgiving nature of offshore waters, creating a real sense of isolation as the seascape continually threatens to overwhelm these sailors—none of whom appear psychologically equipped for such an undertaking.  With a runtime of nearly two hours, the audacious Row is a taut, engrossing thriller, one whose clever structure and well-wrought action sequences belie its status as a debut feature.

Darren Arnold

Images: Raindance