Locarno etc.

The Dreamed Path

2018-08-17T12:02:37+00:00

“Two couples suffer the failure of their relationships 30 years apart. Director Angela Schanelec’s bisected narrative is a quietly beautiful meditation on love, loneliness, and happiness just out of reach. Rigorous, intelligent, and formally beautiful, her work deals with notions of chance and transience, the complexity (and frequent opacity) of human relations defying the dictates [...]

Winter Song

2018-08-17T12:11:23+00:00

“Satire and surrealism meet in Otar Iosseliani’s delightful “Winter Song”. (…) Moments after raping and pillaging an entire war-torn town, soldiers from some unnamed battalion gather in silence around a piano, surrounded by empty wreckage, as one of the men plays a solemn tune. Then they’re baptized. In another time and place, protestors are carted [...]

Paradise

2017-05-19T14:29:32+00:00

“A humdrum but quietly affecting character study chronicling everyday sexism in today's Iran, “Paradise” introduces a promising new writer-director from the country in Sina Ataeian Dena. World-premiering in competition at Locarno, this implicitly feminist study of a disaffected 25-year-old schoolteacher has picked up the Ecumenical Prize and was runner-up for the Best First Feature award. [...]