Archival footage of past conflicts between the North and South of Ireland accompany the opening credits of Irish director Cathy Brady’s politically-charged Wildfire, which addresses renewed fears that trouble could return to the Irish border in the wake of Brexit. This tension forms the…
Recent reports in the media that claim that the UK government is planning to house asylum seekers offshore come at a timely moment for Ben Sharrock, whose second feature, Limbo, charts the efforts of a Syrian refugee seeking access to Britain. Omar (Amir El-Masry)…
Rose: A Love Story is yet another example of art-house horror that plays coy with its genre elements. It’s the kind of film that wants to be more than just horror, but winds up ladling on heavy-handed symbolism and doom-laden portent instead of being…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
London Film Festival 2020 — Dispatch 3: Ammonite, Limbo, Rose: A Love Story
Ammonite Three years on from Francis Lee‘s terrific gay drama, God’s Own Country, Lee has moved on from the romantic union of two lusty male farmers to a 19th-century entanglement between a female paleontologist and an unhappy wife. Away from the rural wilds of…
American Utopia provides a brief respite from reality and leaves the viewer hopeful for what’s to come. In the midst of the annus horribilis of 2020, with the US still being ravaged by a global pandemic, all manner of racial strife, a severe economic…
Shithouse marks a promising debut from writer-director Cooper Raiff, effectively capturing the awkwardness and insecurity of the collegiate experience. One’s reaction to the coming-of-age dramedy Shithouse will likely depend on how one relates to its central protagonist, Alex (writer-director Cooper Raiff), a white, middle-class,…
Put simply, there’s a reason The War with Grandpa sat on the shelf for three years. Originally slated for release way back in ye olden times of April 2017 (how young and innocent we all were then) Tim Hill’s The War with Grandpa is finally seeing…
Rather strangely, Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli represents the second of two recent films in which Riz Ahmed plays a musician impacted by health problems. In the upcoming Sound of Metal (a 2019 festival circuit hit), Ahmed stars as a drummer struggling with the loss…
A patron of the British arts, Phyllida Lloyd’s transition from a director of theater to film could hardly have been more conspicuous. Her debut feature, Mamma Mia, set box-office records, while her follow-up, The Iron Lady (2011), went on to win two Oscars —…
Gay indie cinema is full of well-meaning films centering on toned, good-looking twenty-somethings searching for deeper connection while overcoming their demons and past traumas. By that measure, co-director/co-writer/leading man Matt Fifer‘s Cicada fits right in, depicting the tentative relationship that develops between Ben, a…
