Against my better judgement and for the second year running, I got a festival pass to Cinecity, Brighton’s international film festival. I watched eleven films in ten days which, apart from hurting my eyes and aggravating my sciatica (I’m ageing very well thank you), made me laugh a little and cry a lot and gain some critical insight into other worlds.
As if running around the city and squandering what little daylight we have left until the spring wasn’t enough, I logged my reviews in the style of British film mag Little White Lies, rating my expectations, immediate experience, and thoughts in retrospect. You won’t find any plot recaps here (no time!), just my rough and ready thoughts.
Here they are in viewing order:
Friday — A Real Pain, dir. Jesse Eisenberg
Anticipation: ☆☆☆ I’m hoping for a thoughtful take on Holocaust memorialization and memory tourism. Plus, I’m a Succession nerd and it’s got Kieran Culkin in it.
During: ☆☆☆☆ First thoughts: I’m unsure about the almost exclusive use of Chopin for the soundtrack. Yes, Chopin was Polish; yes, they arrive and leave from Warsaw Chopin airport… but it just doesn’t work.
Otherwise, I was very moved. The film is simple, unshowy — no tricks or melodrama. Both Culkin and actor/director Jesse Eisenberg do some incredible work with their characters. David’s line about Benji being an “all-encompassing human” struck a chord.
One other thing: this older man’s deep voice is transporting me back to childhood but I have no idea who he is.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆ I felt more strongly about this film that the people I went with did, but I’m sticking to my guns. Turns out the deep voice guy was in Law & Order.
Saturday — Mother Vera, dir. Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson
Anticipation: ☆☆☆½ Part one of my day ‘at church’, so to speak. Pity this and Conclave weren’t scheduled for a Sunday. Moderate expectations for this one, even though it ticks a lot of my boxes — shot in black and white, photography-led, centred on women, heaps of snow, and so on. If the narrative flops, I’m hoping the visuals will still sweep me off my feet.
During: ☆☆☆☆ A lonely documentary with images that actually made me gasp. Cold. Striking. Remarkable play on perspectives between the directors Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson. I leave the cinema full of gratitude for them for bringing Olga’s story to the world.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆ One critic said this film would be better suited to a fictional story because we needed a complete arc. I disagree. The ‘character’ of Olga/Mother Vera is a human, and humans don’t have neat storylines.
Still from Mother Vera (dirs. Cécile Embleton & Alys Tomlinson, United Kingdom, 2024)
Saturday — Conclave, dir. Edward Berger
Anticipation: ☆☆☆☆ Alright, church part two. This time with Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. I was rejected by the Catholic church as a baby (thank God!), on account of being a bastard — I wonder if this is why I can’t say no to a juicy Vatican drama.
During: ☆☆☆ Melodramatic in the best way. Pleasantly multilingual. How gorgeous is Ralph Fiennes voice? It’s nice to be with an audience that knows when to laugh, though I wonder if we’re laughing due to voting-related trauma from the recent American election. The cinematography is trying very hard to be stunning, but it’s slightly too polished — it can’t match Mother Vera today. Also, bird metaphors in film should be banned at this point, but I must say I loved the turtles.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆½ Lead down many Google rabbit holes about language in the Vatican.
Monday — Birdsong, dir. Kathleen Harris
Anticipation: ☆☆☆ I’m seeing this instead of Rumours, a political horror-comedy. Should be obvious why.
During: ☆☆☆☆☆ I’m crying. I can’t recommend this film enough — it held us all in a kind of quiet, attentive rapture. Interesting introduction by Mike Unwin, a nature writer, who spoke about the use of birdsong in film to evoke specific moods.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆☆ Here’s a link to join the online screening of this film on November 24th.
Tuesday — When the Light Breaks, dir. Rúnar Rúnarsson
Anticipation: ☆☆☆ I thought this film was queer based on the poster, and I’ll check out a lot of things simply for being queer. Marion warns me on the day that not only is it maybe not queer, but it’s also about grief. Grief’s been present for me in a big way this year — let’s see how we get on with this.
During: ☆☆☆ I cried a lot, in the way that you do when others are crying. The film did a good job with that flip flop from sobbing to dancing and back again that comes with sudden death.
In retrospect: ☆☆½ In the moments between the actual narrative, the filmmakers attempted some artsy visual interludes, but were unsuccessful and lost the audience. It could’ve been a sharper, better short film.
Wednesday — Earth (1930), dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko
with a live score by Misha Kalinin and Roksana Smirnova
Anticipation: ☆☆☆ A silent film depicting the consequences of the Russian revolution on rural Ukrainian life, with a new modern score. Sounds up my alley.
During: ☆☆☆☆ Ok, first, what is going on with the subtitles? This film is supposed to be the pre-eminent work of early Ukrainian filmmaking — somebody ought to pay a translator to re-do the English subtitling. Distracting transliterations aside, I’m in awe! The light and shadow on laden apple trees, the wind patterns in the wheat, the mirror images of curious horses and curious men — all beautiful. I did a series of black and white photos of a sunflower field some time ago and I’m sure Dovzhenko’s sunflowers were subconsciously in mind.
And the dancing, the dancing! I’m transfixed by movements of the farmers, particularly the women tying their wheat into sheaves. All this lost human choreography. The music was minimalist, a little jazzy — not at all like the original scoring, but absolutely perfect. One particularly impactful scene had Smirnova’s piano running joyful arpeggios while Kalinin sounded a faint and intermittent alarm on the electric guitar — when an ambulance is very far away and you’re not quite sure where it’s coming from, or where it’s going.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆ I vote to move silent films with live scores into the Brighton Dome, on account of the chairs and floors at the ACCA being inappropriately creaky. I don’t want anything pulling my attention away from this kind of magic.
Thursday — Witches, dir. Elizabeth Sankey
Anticipation: ☆☆☆☆ A documentary about postpartum depression and psychosis, told alongside an investigation of the depiction of witches and motherhood in cinema. Again, should be up my alley.
During: ☆☆ Disappointingly surface level. A number of opportunities for real research were missed in favour of screening reams of 3-second clips from ‘witchy’ films. There were some poignant, informative, and sometimes heartbreaking messages from the director and her interviewees, but unfortunately they were shoehorned into a “we’re the daughters of the witches they couldn’t burn” novelty card.
In retrospect: ☆☆½ I do hope this film sparks some important conversations about maternal mental health.
Saturday — Flow, dir. Gints Zilbalodis
Anticipation: ☆☆☆☆ I cried at the trailer. My own cat Pascal looks just like the protagonist and I’ll never recover if something bad happens to his animated doppelgänger. I’m a little worried that the video game style animation will make me motion sick.
During: ☆☆☆☆ I may have felt sick to my stomach about climate change the whole time, but I’ve not loved an animated film more on a first watch since Spirited Away.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆ I wondered how children would respond to a feature-length film without any dialogue, but the 9-year-old friends ahead of us in the line to leave beamed as they handed over their score cards to the usher (5 stars!) and said they loved it.
Saturday — We Live in Time, dir. John Crowley
Anticipation: ☆☆☆ A rom-com, I think? I know nothing about this film, but I recently re-watched Never Let Me Go and am happy to see Andrew Garfield again.
During: ☆☆☆☆ Ok, not really a rom-com. There’s an over-the-top meet cute and totally unrealistic London properties, but we’re 30 minutes in and I’m sobbing.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆½ The film tries to get around its humdrum plot it is by shuffling the scenes out of chronological order. But it’s a warm and genuine, and I really loved watching it. Content warning for cancer and fertility.
Sunday — The Colour of Pomegranates (1969), dir. Sergei Parajanov
Anticipation: ☆☆☆½ This will be my third viewing. I was bewildered by the first, inspired by the second, and expect to leave this third viewing in a state of rapture.
During: ☆☆☆ The colours are so beautiful they’re heartbreaking. Every scene is a poem. I could stare at some of these tableaus forever, though the snoring from the back tells me this feeling isn’t universal.
Enjoyment slightly tempered by the animal cruelty warning right before it started (I’d clearly erased these parts from my memory). Whispered “fish, chickens, possibly a sheep (?); no idea about the timing!” to my poor partner as the lights went down. Forgot about the lion, yikes. I feel like we need a vegan cut of all films made before 1990.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆ A work of art made for the big screen. Unfortunately, the remastered score was a little abrasive, as if something was off with the speakers. I can’t help thinking I’d love for Misha Kalinin and Roksana Smirnova, the duo from Earth, to do a live score.
Sunday — The Seed of the Sacred Fig, dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
Anticipation: ☆☆☆☆ Expecting a strong film from a strong director. All I know is that it’s about a family in Tehran falling apart in the wake of Masha Amini’s murder and the subsequent Women, Life, Freedom protests.
During: ☆☆☆☆☆ In brief: Iman’s promotion at work to state investigator turns into a nightmare when it becomes clear that his new job is to rubber stamp death sentences. Every character here is caught between a rock and a hard place, and the claustrophobia is unbearable. Iman’s wife and daughters are essentially under house arrest. The use of real social media footage in a fictional drama puts atrocity into context — a brilliant move by the director against the ambivalence of watching horrors unfold live in between pregnancy announcements and ads for natural wine. What felt like a psychodrama in the beginning escalates into a violent fever dream — it’s almost over-the-top, but maybe it needs to be.
The women in this film are astonishing, particularly Soheila Golestani as the mother Najmeh. As usual, the man you should be the most afraid of is always the one who claims to protect you.
I think the whole audience was holding their breath. When the credits rolled, we let out a kind of collective sigh I’ve never heard in a cinema before.
In retrospect: ☆☆☆☆☆ Any minor flaws in this film are overshadowed by its importance and by the actors’ artistry. Harrowing but not bleak — Rasoulof goes out of his way to show us that Irans’s government and courts have built up their power on a foundation of sand.