Realism without filters, Chernov’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is a devastating war vérité that strips conflict of rhetoric, leaving only attrition, absurdity, and the unbearable weight of patriotic labour carried by ordinary Ukrainian men.
Unadorned in form yet uncompromising in purpose, Jacir’s invigorating new work about the late ‘30s Arab revolt in Palestine shows that power lies in the clarity with which one reframes both past injustice and present responsibility.
Shot nearly entirely in one location, and very close to real time, Linklater’s sublime chill pill of a Berlinale entry centers on the legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart, who suffers a severe morale dip, played by Ethan Hawke in an Oscar-worthy performance.
Linklater brings his ‘hangout’ cinema vibe to the French New Wave era, centering on Godard’s attempt to direct his first feature, in this breezy, blissful ‘comedy’ (for cinephiles at least) that is nostalgia-laden and wonderfully cast.
Messy, chaotic and overlong but perverse, thought-provoking and utterly ingenious, the Romanian provoc-auteur channels A.I. in his filmmaking with a humongous smirk on his face, as his meta-film implosively deconstructs ‘Dracula’.
A father, with son in tow, follows a group of ravers to find his missing daughter in the dusty desert of North Africa, in Laxe’s stunning, foreboding road movie about faith and despair, marked by thumping beats, shuffling bodies, and bellowing trucks.
Winner of Best Director at the Berlinale, this assured work about growing up in a Chinese village in 1991 as the winds of modernity begin to change lives, reminds one of a cross between Zhang Yimou’s early rural dramas and Yang’s Yi Yi.
Park channels detestation, deception and anxiety into this slick and entertaining, if somewhat protracted, black comedy about a family man who loses his cushy job and thus must devise a nefarious plan to eliminate his competition to get the new job he so desires.
PTA’s tour de force, operatic long-arc film not only sets a new tone for studio filmmaking but ‘bobbles’ with such incredible airtight momentum that it oscillates between absurdist comedy and high-stakes action-thriller with effortless ease, as a man is haunted by the consequences of his past political actions.
This confirms Aster as one of America’s most provocative auteurs, as he uses a fictional town on the brink of the coronavirus to capture the post-2020 zeitgeist of rage-baiting politics, the toxicity of social media and post-truth nihilism, backed by a sensational turn by Joaquin Phoenix.
Eternality Tan 