Ioncinema

Here are the winners! As we predicted, Yellow Letters was a formidable film in the competition of twenty-two films.

Golden Bear: Yellow Letters
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: Salvation
Silver Bear Jury Prize: Queen at Sea
Silver Bear for Best Director: Grant Gee – Everyone Digs Bill Evans
Silver Bear for Best Lead Performance: Sandra Hüller for Rose
Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance: (Tie) Anna Calder-Marshall & Tom Courtenay for Queen at Sea
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay: Geneviève Dulude-de Celles for Nina Roza
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution: Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch and Banker White (U.S.)… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Strategy of Tragedy: Chen Overdoses on Drama in Sprawling Family Portrait

The most succinct aspect of Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s latest feature, We Are All Strangers, which focuses on a modern day working class family in a country usually only defined by its opulence, is the title. Despite the prolonged running time, clocking in at over two-and-a-half hours, which allows for what feels like an endless parade of unfortunate events, the pressure cooker approach superficially bonds us to its characters’ woes, but we really don’t know too much about them at all. They are indeed strangers. If Edward Yang is who Chen aims to emulate, this falls perilously short by comparison (and, in fact, feels more spiritually aligned with something like Father of the Bride Part II, 1995).… Read the rest

Continue reading…

It Doesn’t Follow: Linares Villegas’ Queer Horror Forgets the Fright Factor

Horror has long been a safe space to explore queer stories; from cult classics Jennifer’s Body and Ginger Snaps to horror villains found in The Babadook and the androgynous gender fluid figure Pinhead from Hellraiser. Dominican filmmaker Victoria Linares Villegas ambitiously threads themes of closeted homosexuality into a horror framework in her debut feature Don’t Come Out (No Salgas). Invoking a homophobic killer as both threat and metaphor, despite its conceptual promise, the film struggles to generate genuine scares, fully realized characters, or a narrative pulse strong enough to sustain tension.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Perfect Blue: Covi & Frimmel Marinate in Memories

“Everything changing all the time. Even the air you breathing change,” notes a character in August Wilson’s classic play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), which encapsulates the essence of The Loneliest Man in Town, the latest documentary feature from directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel. Unlike like their last title, Vera, which featured actor Vera Gemma as a version of herself while also navigating a fictionalized narrative, this is more aligned with their past catalogue, such as Mister Universo (2016), following a central subject’s experiences (and enhanced by a source novel penned by Covi).… Read the rest

Continue reading…

This Makes Two of Us: Mitić Explores Binding Connection of Trauma & Silence

Adolescence is once again cinematically explored as a breaking point between innocence and forced adulthood, and North Macedonia filmmaker Kosara Mitić‘s debut feature tackles this with blunt-force assault realism. Working within the confines of personal, and then shared psychological trauma, 17 visits the cycle of shame, the unseen, the unsaid and the long-game silence with an intense ground-level Dardenne Bros. type immediacy. Conceptually built with inspired by a real-life event curiosity and without sensationalism, while this suffocating, bleak Euro drama tends to feel contained and repetitive narratively, what it does best is present a rare form of female solidarity through violence.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

The Unbearable Likeness of Being: Trobisch Mines Banality in Family Drama

Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…and sometimes those unhappy ways are boring. Such is the case with Home Stories (Etwas ganz Besonderes), the third directorial effort from Eva Trobisch, a film which the English language title already indicates as quite nondescript in an effort to encapsulate what it’s actually about. The original German language title, translates to ‘Something Very Special,’ which in actuality is more apt in capturing how innocuously twee Trobisch’s screenplay tends to be as it focuses loosely on three different narrative strands affecting one particularly bland family in Greiz.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Capitalism & The Cosmos: Jinwei Ambitiously Explores China’s Future with a Stark Warning For Its Present

Long have Chinese filmmakers used the medium of film to address China’s growing industrialisation and embrace of capitalism. Modern master Jia Zhangke comes to mind as an inspiration but few have tried something quite as unique as with Light Pillar. For his debut animated feature, Xu Zao (also known as Xu Jingwei) has crafted a sometimes baffling, visually daring dreamscape grounded in reality with genuinely unique formal decisions. The animation is pushed to its limits as he weaves live-action performers into its zany, eclectic world — though not in any way you’ve seen before.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

All the Small Things: Eimbcke Explores the Pleasures of Disruption

The titular insects of Fernando Eimbcke’s latest feature, Flies (Moscas), metaphorically represent an unwanted, aggravating presence. But sometimes, these are elements which force us to snap out of stagnation and ennui, as is the case with the somewhat cold, and initially closed off Olga, an older woman who’s resigned herself to a sort of social oblivion in modern day Mexico City. Shot in black and white by DP Maria Secco, the Mexican metropolis is reduced to gray, dismal stretches of a sprawling apartment block, which visually feels more akin to East Berlin.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

The Torn Birds: Thornton Returns to Brutality of the Australian Frontier

The sovereignty of Australia was never officially ceded by its First Nations peoples, succinctly stated in the 1980s slogan “Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land,” coined in the land rights movement intended to reaffirm their stance as the continent’s original inhabitants. As custodians of their own cinematic stories, there are still very few Aboriginal Australian directors, but prominent among them is Warwick Thornton, who returns to darker days with his latest period piece, Wolfram. It’s a spiritual follow-up to his earlier 2017 title Sweet Country (read review), working once again with screenwriters Steven McGregor and David Tranter.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Where Did Our Love Go?: Schanalec Deconstructs the Break-Up Drama

True to form, or rather, anti-form, Angela Schanelec’s latest exercise, My Wife Cries (Meine Frau weint), aims to defy the naturalistic approach to her theme and subject. This time around, a vaguely related collection of characters united metaphorically by a construction site find Mercury is in full-swing Retrograde as relates to their thinly defined relationships. To exemplify this, they all talk about it. A lot. A key figure of the New Berlin school filmmakers, who actively embrace anti-naturalism in their approaches, Schanelec’s film’s often excel with this approach, usually assisted by limited dialogue.… Read the rest

Continue reading…