Departures (Neil Ely / Lloyd Eyre-Morgan, 2025)

Lloyd Eyre-Morgan and Neil Ely's largely Amsterdam-set Departures, which screened at last month's BFI Flare, is not for the easily offended.  This horribly watchable film presents an unflinching look at toxic behaviour as it follows Benji, played by co-director Eyre-Morgan, who meets the conceited Jake (David Tag) in a departure lounge at Manchester airport.  Both men are heading to Amsterdam, and end up spending a chaotic few days together.  This trip proves to be the first of many, with Benji and Jake nipping off to the Netherlands on a regular basis, where their conduct sees them firmly adhere to the stereotype of Brits abroad.

But, at Jake's behest, contact between the two needs to be limited to these Dutch excursions, and radio silence fills the gaps between the pair's hedonism-filled jaunts.  Benji appears both baffled and rather unhappy with this arrangement, but goes along with it as he cherishes his time with Jake.  We have a pretty fair idea of where this is all heading, as the film opens in medias res with Jake berating Benji at what is quite clearly the terminus of their relationship.  But quite how they got to that point is the question on which Departures hinges, and we witness the frequently unpleasant events that have left Benji so broken.

Despite this grim journey, Ely and Eyre-Morgan's film is by no means without humour.  Yet it is slightly problematic that the controlling, manipulative Jake's almost invariably dreadful behaviour is often masked by comedy, which somewhat dilutes the impact of his deeds.  But weirdly, the film never feels atonal, and it's made with such spirit and energy that it is only upon stepping back that the viewer can see Jake's actions are far from amusing.  Departures is a highly immersive film, one whose raucous demeanour tends to distract from the insidious way in which Jake tightens his grip on the smitten Benji before casting him aside.

As Departures winds towards it conclusion, there are signs of green shoots of recovery for the traumatised Benji in the form of Kieran (Liam Boyle), a man who has recently grappled with his own demons yet cautiously looks to brighter days ahead.  Both Tag and Eyre-Morgan give brave, committed performances—the film really wouldn't work if they didn't go full bore—and they're ably backed by a fine supporting cast, of which Tyler Conti and Kerry Howard, as Benji's friend and Jake's aunt respectively, provide the most eye-catching turns.  As uncomfortable as it is compelling, Departures is a film destined for cult status.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Hot Milk (Rebecca Lenkiewicz, 2025)

Hot Milk, the directorial debut of Ida screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is a beguiling adaptation of Deborah Levy's eponymous Booker-shortlisted novel.  Lenkiewicz's film, which premiered at the Berlinale and was selected for last month's BFI Flare, examines the knotty relationship between Sofia (Emma Mackey) and her controlling single mother Rose (Fiona Shaw), who are staying in an apartment in the Spanish coastal city of Almeria.  But despite the sun-dappled locale, this is no holiday: Rose is receiving treatment from a local doctor, Gómez (Vincent Perez), for an undiagnosed condition that confines her to a wheelchair.  

As Sofia seeks some respite from her rather suffocating domestic situation, she encounters—and becomes enamoured with—flighty bohemian Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), yet this dalliance eventually proves as frustrating as the fraught relationship with her mother.  Sofia decides to mix things up by heading to Greece (which is in fact where the entire film was shot) to visit her father (Vangelis Mourikis), who now has a new family and is unable to provide much in the way of the fulfilment she so obviously craves.  In a development that underlines Rose's extremely manipulative nature, Sofia is abruptly recalled from her Greek sojourn.

Clearly, Rose is a very damaged individual, and it's implied that her symptoms are largely psychosomatic.  Yet Shaw's immense, nuanced performance leads us to both pity and scorn this troubled soul, who dismisses the incremental academic progress made by Sofia while simultaneously cherishing it as a means to infantilise her daughter, therefore preventing her from growing up and flying the nest.  For her part, Sofia—whose doctorate is currently on hold, at least partly because of Rose's treatment—alternates between dutifully caring for her mother and barely tolerating her endless, grating requests for suitable drinking water.

Mackey, hitherto best known for the Netflix series Sex Education, responds to the marker laid down by Shaw and delivers a turn to match that of her seasoned co-star, while Luxembourgish actress Krieps is good value in a rare supporting role.  Given that Levy's book is one in which much hinges on Sofia's interior life, translating it to the screen is no easy task.  When reviewing a title from last year's Flare—Orlando, My Political Biography—I wrote about the challenges of adapting such novels; as with that film, the haptic, hypnotic Hot Milk takes a sideways approach to adaptation, and the results are highly impressive.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Brussels IFFF: Hello Stranger (Paul Raschid, 2024)

Hello Stranger, which will have its Belgian premiere on Saturday evening as part of this year's Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, is a new psychological horror-thriller interactive film from Paul Raschid (The Complex, Five Dates, Ten Dates, The Gallery).  Coming to Valve's PC service Steam next month, Hello Stranger tells the chilling story of a man trapped in his smart home by a masked stranger who forces him to play three games to survive.  Hello Stranger boasts a cast including Sir Derek Jacobi, George Blagden, Danny Griffin, Christina Wolfe, Kulvinder Ghir, Laura Whitmore and Yasmin Finney.

The film centres on Cam, who conducts life exclusively from his smart home—work, shopping, entertainment and, most notably, socialising.  Cam interacts with strangers on the Hello Stranger platform, a randomised video chatting application.  Eventually, he encounters a masked stranger with an altered voice.  Unnerved, Cam leaves the call only to find the stranger has hacked his smart home and locked him in.  The stranger tells Cam that he must win three rounds of games, or it is ‘game over’.  Viewers must make decisions and play the three games for Cam to survive—but one wrong move could lead to a grisly end.

Paul Raschid wrote and directed Hello Stranger—which features over four hours of filmed content and 10 possible endings—and is one of the world’s most prolific interactive filmmakers.  Before focusing on interactive films, Raschid was a linear feature filmmaker; his most notable credit is as writer-director of sci-fi thriller White Chamber, for which Shauna Macdonald won Best Actress at BAFTA Scotland 2018.  It was released on Netflix following selection for 10 film festivals worldwide, including Brussels IFFF, Edinburgh IFF, BiFan (South Korea), FrightFest (London), Sitges IFFF, and Mumbai FF.

Source/images: Polymath PR

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)

David Cronenberg's new film The Shrouds is a highly personal and strangely moving meditation on grief, love, and the double-edged sword that is technology.  Inspired by the 2017 death of the director's wife, Carolyn, the film follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a bereaved Toronto-based widower who invents an intricate camera system that allows people to observe their loved ones in the grave.  This unnerving innovation becomes both the centre of Karsh's funeral business and a marker of his monomaniacal desire to cling to the past, with his devotion to the dead recalling that of Julien in François Truffaut's The Green Room.

While Truffaut cast himself as the lead in that Henry James adaptation, Cronenberg, who has stepped in front of the camera on a number of occasions, stops short of such a move in The Shrouds—although he does goes as far as to furnish Cassel with a coiffure that bears an uncanny resemblance to the director's distinctive shock of white hair.  Cassel, collaborating with Cronenberg for the third time following the pair's work on A History of Violence and A Dangerous Method, makes a fine job of balancing cool detachment with simmering obsession, as Karsh is sucked into a world even darker than the one he signed up for.

Diane Kruger, who replaced Léa Seydoux just a month before filming commenced, is equally impressive in her triple role as Karsh's wife, sister in-law, and AI assistant, and Guy Pearce is very good value as a jittery IT whiz.  But when the film changes gear and moves into areas such as industrial espionage and corporate conspiracy, these admittedly fun elements prove slightly distracting.  Visually, The Shrouds is stunning, with cinematography (from Douglas Koch, returning from Cronenberg's previous feature Crimes of the Future) that frames characters in a way that underlines the crippling isolation that accompanies mourning.

David Cronenberg's calling card, body horror—an important, if sometimes overstated, aspect of his work—is present here, although it never overshadows the film's emotional core.  Given that the past year has seen The Substance comprehensively out-Cronenberg the Canadian auteur (at least superficially), it's refreshing to witness how latter-day Cronenberg only employs body horror to serve the narrative.  The Shrouds, which was originally envisaged as a Netflix series, is a richly compelling work, one that prompts viewers to carefully consider both the normative emotions of grief and technology's relationship with human values.

Darren Arnold

Images: Pyramide Films

BFI Flare: I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)

Hands-down the finest film of 2024, Jane Schoenbrun's jaw-dropping sophomore feature I Saw the TV Glow is included in BFI Flare's Best of Year strand, where it plays tomorrow alongside Queer, Will & Harper and Power Alley.  Schoenbrun's debut feature, the lo-fi experimental horror We're All Going to the World's Fair, was an unsettling and narratively challenging effort that centred on a sinister online game; while that ambitious, creepypasta-like film heralded the arrival of an exciting new talent, it only hinted at what the filmmaker would achieve with their next feature.  In many ways, We're All Going to the World's Fair feels more like a precursor to Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink than it does to I Saw the TV Glow, despite some obvious thematic connections between Schoenbrun's films—which form part of a trilogy that will be capped by the director's debut novel Public Access Afterworld.   

I Saw the TV Glow wears its influences on its sleeve, and the core of the film's DNA can be traced to Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, the work of David Lynch in general and Twin Peaks in particular, and The Smashing Pumpkins' track "Tonight, Tonight" (and its Méliès-inspired video).  Schoenbrun's film begins, almost in medias res, in the analogue mid-90s, when teenagers Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) bond over young adult TV show The Pink Opaque, which centres on two girls who share a psychic connection they use to fight evil; Owen isn't allowed to stay up to watch the programme when it airs, so Maddy supplies him with grainy VHS tapes of the episodes.  When Maddy suddenly goes missing, presumed dead, the series is cancelled; but she resurfaces eight years later, prompting a confounded Owen to rewatch the frankly terrifying finale of The Pink Opaque.

Looking to explain her disappearance, Maddy takes Owen to a bar called the Double Lunch, a venue that appears in both reality and The Pink Opaque, and as such seems to serve as a nexus between worlds; in an overt reference to Twin Peaks: The Return's Roadhouse and its musical guests, we watch Sloppy Jane perform the mesmerising "Claw Machine" on stage before Maddy embarks on her story.  The detached, dissociative Owen, who once reneged on plans to run away with Maddy, again loses his nerve as she outlines what he needs to do in order to emerge from his torpor, and Maddy subsequently vanishes for good.  Years and decades pass as Owen works at a cinema, then an indoor amusement park, while Maddy and the series seem all but absent from his thoughts—until one rainy, restless night, when he decides to stream The Pink Opaque, which is now quite different from how he remembers it.

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like The Pink Opaque, one of the protagonists, Tara, is played by singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan, whose band Snail Mail contribute a cover of "Tonight, Tonight" to the film's soundtrack; moreover, Amber Benson, who played Tara Maclay in Buffy, appears here as the mother of one of Owen's schoolmates.  Yet this meta-trivia never proves distracting; somehow, the haunting I Saw the TV Glow manages to be both immersive and self-reflexive, and its beguiling crepuscular world(s) may make the viewer as obsessed with the film as Maddy and Owen are with the unnerving YA show.  This eerie, near-unclassifiable work is no mere pastiche; it's a heartbreaking, highly singular piece of mise en abyme cinema, one that gets under your skin and stays there for days.

Darren Arnold

Images: A24

BFI Flare: Black Fruit (Elisha Smith-Leverock, 2024)

Black Fruit (German: Schwarze Früchte), which screens tomorrow at BFI Flare, is an eight-part series from Germany's ARD1 that centres on two black twentysomethings in Hamburg.  The series dips into themes of friendship, identity and loss as it follows Lalo (played by series creator Lamin Leroy Gibba), an ex-architecture student floundering after the death of his father.  When his relationship with the conceited Tobias (Nick Romeo Reimann) ends, Lalo finds comfort in his best friend Karla (Melodie Simina), who is enjoying a successful and steady career in finance but nonetheless struggles with discrimination in her workplace.

The series gets off to a strong start, but its back half is horribly uneven; the low point comes in the form of the fifth episode, which is when directing duties transfer from Elisha Smith-Leverock to David Uzochukwu.  This part is more or less a chamber piece, one in which the players aren't given much of interest to work with.  With better writing, this stark change of pace might have worked, but instead it highlights how the show thrives when it's out on the streets of Hamburg, capturing the sights and sounds of the city's vibrant nightlife; without such momentum, this turgid episode places the dialogue under a scrutiny it can't bear.

Following this episode, Black Fruit gets moving again, but it never fully recovers from this misstep.  The remaining parts feel very lopsided, focusing on Lalo as Karla is all but sidelined until the series finale, when an engrossing storyline centring on her professional difficulties is hastily wrapped up.  Given that Lamin Leroy Gibba is also the show's head writer, perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising, but it's jarring to find that Karla's story arc is neglected for so long; while flashbacks to Lalo's childhood are both engaging and well-wrought, the adult version of the self-centred protagonist could use a bit less screen time.

The cinematography, courtesy of Claudia Schröder and Malcolm Saidou—as with the directors, they get four episodes apiece—is perhaps the strongest element here, with a range of bright and muted tones reflecting the characters' various moods.  Despite its flaws, Black Fruit retains a messy charm, and its exploration of German society, in which it addresses, inter alia, racism, sexism and homophobia, makes for refreshing viewing.  There's the sense that the team involved—a writers' room was set up to develop the script—will have learned a great deal from the experience; with this in mind, a second season would be no bad thing.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

BFI Flare: Heightened Scrutiny (Sam Feder, 2025)

Sam Feder's Heightened Scrutiny, which screens tomorrow and Saturday at BFI Flare, is an urgent exploration of the ongoing fight for transgender rights in the US.  The film follows personable American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Chase Strangio as he limbers up to argue a landmark case—United States vs. Skrmetti—before the US Supreme Court, challenging Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth.  Feder engages with the material on both micro and macro levels, outlining the details of Strangio's personal journey while also examining the media spin that influences public opinion.

This ripped-from-the-headlines documentary—it was only in December that Chase Strangio presented his argument to the Supreme Court, with a verdict not due until June—splices together courtroom drama, media analysis and personal accounts as it focuses on the knotty relationship between media coverage and legislation.  Feder identifies a worrying trend of how some respected mainstream media outlets have contributed to a cultural climate that has normalised discriminatory laws; this most compelling aspect of the film highlights the role—and responsibility—of journalism in moulding public perception and discourse.

The film features conversations with a wide range of experts, and these interviewees prove extremely insightful when it comes to illuminating the issues at hand, offering viewers a well-rounded understanding of the many complexities surrounding transgender rights.  Yet, while Heightened Scrutiny is undoubtedly well-meaning, its rather pedestrian presentation somewhat diminishes its impact.  The film's attempt to pack so much into its sub-90-minute running time can occasionally lead to a feeling of information overload, almost as if some much-needed emotional weight has been neglected for the sake of yet another info dump.

That said, the film performs an important function: as the Supreme Court decision on United States vs. Skrmetti nears, Heightened Scrutiny serves as a valuable historical document.  Feder's film raises awareness of transgender rights, and also invites audiences to consider how media narratives (and their consequences) might apply to wider issues.  While the timely Heightened Scrutiny may be a rather perfunctory documentary, one that will frustrate some viewers on account of its necessarily open ending, it remains an essential watch for anyone interested in the current struggle for trans rights in the United States.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope / Heightened Scrutiny

BFI Flare: Queens of Drama (Alexis Langlois, 2024)

Filmed over the course of five weeks in Brussels, Alexis Langlois' feature debut Queens of Drama is a reflection on the dualistic nature of fame and the often rocky journey artists undergo in their pursuit of success.  This Belgian co-production has already screened at several film festivals, including London and Gent, and it plays at BFI Flare on Wednesday.  Often more odious than melodious, this shrill musical drama follows Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura) and Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), two young women who audition for a cutthroat singing reality TV series that bears more than a passing resemblance to The Voice.

Mimi is selected in the competition and goes on to enjoy a glittering pop career, one largely built on anodyne smash hit "Don't Touch", while Billie is rejected by the show but carves out a name for herself in the underground punk scene.  Langlois weaves a star-crossed romance between these contrasting characters, who make a connection (of sorts) during their brief time together on the TV show.  Also looming large in the story is Mylène Farmer-esque pop star Magalie Charmer (Asia Argento), whose stint at the apex of mainstream music serves as a blueprint for Mimi, who seeks to emulate this stalwart performer's success and longevity.

Despite the very different paths taken by Mimi and Billie, they don't lose track of each other, and the film charts the peaks and troughs of their careers and relationship; a song is never too far away as Langlois attempts to prop up a sagging narrative with musical interludes fashioned by the likes of Yelle, Pierre Desprats, and Louise BSX.  Ultimately, Queens of Drama buckles under the weight of its near two-hour running time, which is padded out by highly repetitive sequences, many of which feature onetime Eurovision contestant Bilal Hassani, who gets way too much screen time as tiresome stan Steevyshady.

Hassani commandeers the film's opening scene in a manner that might sink the hearts of many viewers who, like me, wrongly conclude that they'll have to endure 114 minutes of his grating character; mercifully, Steevy soon makes way for the two protagonists, with the role subsequently functioning more or less as that of a Greek chorus.  Queens of Drama isn't all bad—game newcomers Ventura and Aura both deliver brave, committed performances, and the film is nearly always visually interesting, largely on account of its Day-Glo colour palette—but at least half an hour of it should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

BFI Flare: Cherub (Devin Shears, 2024) / Gender Reveal

Devin Shears' virtually dialogue-free Cherub, which screens on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as part of this year's BFI Flare, is a poignant study in loneliness.  This Canadian feature, which served as Shears' thesis at Toronto's York University, centres on Harvey (Benjamin Turnbull), a shy, overweight lab technician who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after finding a copy of the eponymous magazine, which celebrates larger men (90s Belgian publication The Fat Angel Times inspired both this fictional magazine and the film itself).  Turnbull delivers a brave, touching performance as Harvey, capturing the character's hopeful longing for connection in a world in which he's more or less invisible.  

The project began as a short—the initial script ran to just eight pages—but soon reached a running time that saw it morph into a feature-length endeavour.  On occasion, Cherub does feel a little like a padded-out short, but such moments are fleeting.  Boxed into a 4:3 aspect ratio, Harvey goes about the daily drudge sans complaint, and Turnbull, without the luxury of dialogue, skilfully conveys the character's keen sense of isolation.  Many other Harveys in many other films have been reduced to mere objects of ridicule, but while Shears' film is not without humour, it never stoops to making fun of its wistful protagonist.  This is a moving and wonderfully empathetic work, and a fine example of low-to-no-budget filmmaking.

Another Canadian title showing at Flare is Mo Matton's amusing Gender Reveal, which plays alongside Dutch filmmaker Jop Leuven's Marleen in Sunday's shorts programme I Like Who I Like.  Matton is better known for their work as an intimacy coordinator on films such as Close to You (Flare 2024), but has already directed a couple of shorts prior to Gender Reveal.  Their latest effort follows three flamboyant housemates—Rhys (Ayo Tsalithaba), Ting (Ke Xin Li) and Mati (Alex Miron Dauphin)—who attend a dull, squirm-inducing gender reveal party hosted by Rhys' boss Marc (Alexandre Bacon) and his wife Chloë (Lauren Beatty).  The uneasy trio, who are in a three-way relationship, try to grimace their way through the event.

Being a Canadian production, it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that a smattering of Gender Reveal's dialogue is en québécois, but even the well-meaning if clumsy small talk of Marc, who is also the father-to-be, does little to assuage these guests' discomfort—irrespective of the language employed.  But it isn't long before all this cringing gives way to something more sanguineous, as Matton gleefully orchestrates a riotously gory finale.  If there's a complaint to be made here, it's that Gender Reveal ends too soon; perhaps it should have spent a bit longer in the oven, à la Cherub, and you can't help but feel that there's a potential feature in there.  But even as it is, Matton's impish film is tremendously good fun.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

BFI Flare: Sad Jokes (Fabian Stumm, 2024)

Sad Jokes, directed by and starring Fabian Stumm (Bones and Names, Bruxelles), screens tomorrow and on Sunday as part of this year's BFI Flare.  The story follows Stumm's Joseph, a filmmaker who lives with his close friend Sonya (Haley Louise Jones), who also happens to be the mother of his child.  Sonya is struggling with her mental health and has spent the last few months in and out of a clinic, from which she tends to discharge herself before her treatment is complete.  As Sonya attempts to get her life back on track, Joseph becomes the primary caregiver to their son, Pino (Justus Meyer), while working on various film projects.

Joseph has recently completed one film, which is about to premiere, and is preparing to shoot another, an absurdist comedy whose script is currently failing to convince producer Gero (Godehard Giese).  Given his work commitments and parenting duties, it is mildly surprising to learn that Joseph has the time to attend life-drawing classes, but it is there that he persuades his sunny, likeable teacher Elin (Ulrica Flach) to work on his new film.  Elin is tasked with moulding a ridiculously outsized head based on Joseph, which perhaps tells us something about his ego—although he generally comes across as a fairly grounded sort.

One of Sad Jokes' early scenes (pictured top) sees Joseph playing shopkeepers with Pino.  Perhaps inevitably, the goods involved are DVDs from Joseph's own collection, and this interaction plays out against a backdrop of a bookcase crammed with an extensive range of films, many of which are from UK label Artificial Eye.  The titles that find their way into Pino's bag include an Éric Rohmer box set, which underlines what one of Sad Jokes' key cinematic reference points is.  With this in mind, it would be easy to dismiss the film as a Rohmer pastiche, but Stumm injects enough of his own distinct style into proceedings.

The director is good value in the lead role, but although Joseph is the main character, Fabian Stumm generously makes room for others to shine: Jones doesn't get a great deal of screen time, but nevertheless impresses as the troubled Sonya, while the excellent Flach—a Swedish theatre veteran who here makes her feature debut—provides a genuinely showstopping moment with her superb delivery of a Joan of Arc speech.  The beautifully photographed Sad Jokes is a solid, assured piece of work, one that demonstrates real progress on the part of its talented writer-director, whose next film will be set in Belgium.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Get Away (Steffen Haars, 2024)

Dutch filmmaker Steffen Haars' sophomore picture Get Away sees the North Brabant native reunite with Nick Frost, who starred in Haars' feature debut Krazy House.  Frost—who also penned the script—and Aisling Bea play Richard and Susan Smith, an Anglo-Irish couple who embark on a Swedish summer holiday with their reluctant teenage children, Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres).  After an unnerving encounter at a café on the mainland, the family head to the island of Svälta, which is chiefly known for a 19th-century episode of cannibalism; an ominous title card denoting the other meaning of Svälta— "to starve, to famish"—sets the stage for the mock-sinister atmosphere that permeates the film.

The family's visit coincides with the annual Karantan festival, which has as its centrepiece a performance of a bum-numbing eight-hour play based on the island's bleak history of survival during a flu-induced quarantine.  As expected, the island's inhabitants are less than hospitable and do their best to encourage the Smiths to leave on the next available ferry.  Undeterred, the family head to their holiday rental, which is owned by the rather more welcoming—if decidedly creepy—Mats (Eero Milonoff), who informs the guests that his mother met her grisly end in the house's living room.  Not long after they've settled in, the Smiths receive a threatening nocturnal visit from a mob of torch-wielding locals.

Despite the ongoing spoiler tactics of Svälta's permanent population, the family doggedly persist with their holiday and plan to attend the production of the mysterious play; as in The Wicker Man—in which an island visitor becomes an unwilling participant in esoteric May Day celebrations—there are strong hints that these guests are destined to be more than mere spectators of this lengthy performance-cum-ritual.  As a comic riff on Ari Aster's Midsommar—by far the most obvious reference point here—Get Away possesses a ragged charm, and for the most part it's generally watchable, if a bit undercooked.  But at around the two-thirds mark there's a quite brilliant twist that sets things up for a riotously gory finale.

Any horror comedy—Krazy House also falls under the same subgenre—starring Nick Frost is going to contend with unfavourable comparisons to Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, and Get Away is no exception.  Like Shaun, Get Away explicitly references more than one straight horror film as it goes about its business, and there is a sense here that Frost actively embraces his legacy as part of Wright's fondly remembered cult movie; he's a likeable presence, but Aisling Bea, herself better known as a comedian, gives the most eye-catching turn in the film as the cheerful, witty Susan.  The uneven Get Away largely treads water for its first hour, but the mayhem that unfolds in the final stretch is worth sticking around for.

Darren Arnold

Images: IFFR

Julie zwijgt (Leonardo van Dijl, 2024)

Kortrijk native Leonardo van Dijl's feature debut Julie zwijgt (English: Julie Keeps Quiet) is a solid, if occasionally ambiguous, psychological drama that delves into the vagaries of human emotion and the strength of silence.  This nuanced film, selected as Belgium's entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, was written by the director and Ruth Becquart, and stars Becquart, Tessa van den Broeck and Laurent Caron.  Its narrative is set against the backdrop of an elite Belgian tennis academy, where the protagonist of the title (Van den Broeck) faces a moral dilemma when her coach, Jeremy (Caron), is suspended.

The dedicated, driven and solitary Julie is quite clearly the best tennis player in the current cohort, but her life is upended when allegations surface against the oily Jeremy, whose conduct may have spurred the suicide of another highly promising student, Aline.  When the rather inscrutable Julie's classmates come forward to speak out, she—as per the title—opts to keep quiet.  This key decision forms the nub of the story, which explores themes of peer pressure and the isolating weight of silence.  Julie zwijgt is a film that invites the viewer to reflect on the power of their own voice, and how they might choose to use (or withhold) it.

Julie zwijgt's production journey is an interesting one: the film's genesis lies in Van Dijl's 2015 short Umpire, which was awarded a VAF Wildcard; the feature was announced in March 2023, and the project quickly gained momentum with the involvement of the revered Dardenne brothers—who co-produced the film through their company Les Films du Fleuve—and Cargo director Gilles Coulier.  Playwright Florian Zeller and tennis player Naomi Osaka served as executive producers, with the collaboration between these luminaries from very different fields adding an extra layer of authenticity to this well-rounded film.

Julie zwijgt throws light on the hidden battles many face in their daily lives, and it presents viewers with the stark calculus of the consequences that come with walking the path of the lone wolf, which in this case involves facing extreme adversity; moreover, Van Dijl's film forces us to consider the cost of silence and the scars it leaves behind.  As a drama that tackles real-world issues and examines the human psyche, the assured Julie zwijgt is a timely exploration of a thorny subject matter; the film's success on the festival circuit and the fanfare surrounding its release suggest that it will ignite debate for some time yet.

Darren Arnold

Images: Flanders Image

Maldoror (Fabrice du Welz, 2024)

Despite his Belgian nationality, Fabrice du Welz has often been linked with the New French Extremity, as has that fine performer Laurent Lucas, whose extensive work in the movement includes Leos Carax's Pola X, Julia Ducournau's Raw, Marina de Van's In My Skin, and a trio of films for Bertrand Bonello.  Maldoror sees du Welz once again reunite with Lucas, who previously starred in the director's films Calvaire, Adoration and Alleluia.  As with du Welz's feature debut Calvaire, Maldoror pits Lucas against a quite diabolical character played by Jackie Berroyer, an actor who has never been more sinister than in his work for du Welz, which also includes a turn in Inexorable (pictured below), whose female leads Alba Gaïa Bellugi—sister of Galatéa— and Mélanie Doutey both have roles in Maldoror.

While Du Welz's longstanding fascination with the macabre is present in the riveting Maldoror, what is conspicuous by its absence is the streak of jet-black humour normally associated with his work; given that the film focuses on the case of Marc Dutroux, Belgium's most notorious child killer, this seems wholly appropriate.  Many consider the string of abduction murders carried out by Dutroux to be the worst crimes in Belgian history—indeed, the impact of the case was so profound that one-third of Belgians with the surname Dutroux sought to change their last name.  Prior to the Dutroux affair, the Charleroi suburb of Marcinelle was best known for a 1950s mining accident that killed 262 people; that this disaster has now been eclipsed says much about these brutal murders' terrible legacy.

As such, du Welz needed to take a most cautious approach when preparing his film, which features some fabricated elements in order to provide a sense of justice that many Belgians felt was lacking from the real-life case (the director has cited Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood as a key influence in this regard).  The names of the characters have been fictionalised, with Sergi López's skin-crawling Marcel Dedieu serving as a proxy for Dutroux as Anthony Bajon's young police officer Paul Chartier becomes obsessed with linking the suspect to the disappearance of two young girls.  The impulsive Chartier is largely hamstrung by both his jobsworth boss Hinkel (Lucas) and a system in which, à la David Fincher's Zodiac, three separate police services are rarely on the same page.

Maldoror is a police procedural that has much else in common with Fincher's touchstone of the subgenre: each film runs to over two and a half hours and features a protagonist whose monomaniacal devotion to cracking a serial killer case results in the loss of their job and family.  In choosing to focus on the investigation as opposed to the crimes, du Welz handles the material in a subtle, tactful manner—yet Maldoror remains a queasy spectacle, one that will prove too strong for some.  It is now almost 30 years since Dutroux was apprehended—he was caught in 1996, the same year the death penalty was abolished in Belgium—but this dreadful episode remains a highly sensitive matter for many of Fabrice du Welz's compatriots, as does the topic of his next film: the rubber trade in the Belgian Congo.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

After the Long Rains (Damien Hauser, 2024)

Following 2021's Blind Love and 2022's Theo: vestlus aususega, After the Long Rains is Damien Hauser's third feature film—not bad going for someone in their early twenties.  The Zurich-based Hauser is an extremely hands-on filmmaker, and a brief glance at the end credits of the IFFR-selected After the Long Rains reveals the extent of his involvement; beyond Hauser's duties as writer-director, his responsibilities include editing, producing, composing, photographing, driving, and mixing the sound.  Hauser's multitasking appears to be a direct result of budgetary constraints—as opposed to a monomaniacal desire to control virtually every aspect of this handsome-looking production.     

After the Long Rains centres on Aisha (Eletricer Kache Hamisi), a lively ten-year-old who dreams of becoming an actress.  Once this plan is vetoed by her elders, Aisha focuses on becoming a fisherwoman, something she considers to be a more achievable ambition.  However, even that career choice is frowned upon by others, who think of fishing as an exclusively male activity.  This gender bias also goes in the other direction, as Aisha's older brother Omari (Ibrahim Joseph) is handy with a sewing machine and has a secret passion for making clothes, yet he's widely expected to follow in the footsteps of family patriarch Bakari (Emmanuel Baraka Gunga), who earns his living as a motorcycle chauffeur.    

Undeterred by such views, the headstrong Aisha pushes on with learning all she can about fishing, and she's helped in this endeavour by local angler Hassan (Bosco Baraka Karisa), who is happy to tell the child what he knows—including a handed-down tale of a mythical golden fish.  Hassan is generally an amiable sort, but his fondness for a few drinks leads to a heated exchange between the fisherman and Bakari that puts Aisha's training in jeopardy.  Towards its conclusion, After the Long Rains brilliantly veers off into a magical realism that provides a glimpse of the dazzling work it might have been (budget permitting).  As it stands, Damien Hauser's film is likeable and pleasant, but far from essential.      

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

David Lynch (1946–2025)

"I'll see you again in 25 years"

RIP, Mr Lynch.

Image: StudioCanal

A Common Sequence (Mary H. Clark/Mike Gibisser, 2023)

In just under 80 minutes, this experimental documentary zips around North America between South Dakota, Washington State and Mexico as it deals with three pressing eco-political issues, all of which are bound up with the erosion of longstanding ways of life.  A Common Sequence's first port of call is the Mexican state of Michoacán, home to the Lake Pátzcuaro salamander.  This neotenic, axolotl-like creature—known locally as the achoque—is exclusively found in the body of water from which it takes its name, but overfishing, pollution and the introduction of invasive species have all contributed to nudging these salamanders to the brink of extinction; it is thought that less than a hundred achoques now exist in the wild, although four colonies for captive breeding have been established in Mexico.  One such laboratory, close to Lake Pátzcuaro, is run by Dominican nuns, who extract a syrup from the achoques' skin, which is then sold to generate funds for the convent.  The locals who consume the syrup do so in the hope that they may take on some of the achoque's special qualities, for these salamanders possess remarkable regenerative abilities, and can even regrow entire limbs.

Yet the achoque's borderline-magical properties have attracted attention way beyond Mexico, with the American military taking a keen interest in these remarkable amphibians' restorative capacities; perhaps unsurprisingly, the US Department of Defense has pored over the achoque's DNA to see if it can be used to help soldiers who have lost arms and/or legs.  But A Common Sequence also considers how the human genome is being studied, with the film later moving its focus to the lands of the Cheyenne River Sioux, where it is alarmingly revealed how private companies are sequencing the DNA of indigenous peoples in an attempt to better understand their resistance to certain diseases; tribal sovereignty in the United States is not a new concept, but in A Common Sequence noted biological scientist Joseph Yracheta argues how people in general, and Native Americans in particular, should have control over their own DNA.  The film's third narrative strand deals with a Washington State University AI machine that has learned to harvest apples, and this subject is linked back to Lake Pátzcuaro, as its fishermen, faced with a declining aquatic population for which they are partly responsible, have ventured to the Pacific Northwest in search of fruit-picking work.

A Common Sequence instils a sense of unease in the viewer as it looks to the future, with a planet that's staring down the barrel of a post-fossil fuel era already looking for new materials to extract and commodify.  Although we are currently living in an age where data mining is commonplace, Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibisser's film points to a world to come in which people are unwittingly reduced to a lengthy code consisting of just four distinct letters.  With the possible exception of the US DoD's research into limb regeneration, all of the ventures detailed in A Common Sequence dance to the tune of capitalism, from the sale of the achoque oil to the logging of Native American DNA to the robot designed to outperform the workers it imitates.  That the filmmakers have been able to weave these initially seemingly disparate threads into a fluid, cohesive whole says much about the skills of those behind the camera.  What's more, A Common Sequence is as interesting visually as it is narratively, with some striking imagery used to good effect.  This is an assured, thought-provoking film, one which deftly avoids didacticism as it invites speculation on what lies ahead.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI