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The world's most popular movie franchise at long last released its first female-led movie; one beyond words. 'Captain Marvel', the MCU's 21st movie, takes us on an intergalactic adventure, similar in the vein of some of the franchise's best, such as 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and 'Thor: Ragnarok', yet it keeps the premise entirely original. Featuring Oscar-level talent such as Brie Larson (Captain Marvel) and Jude Law, 'Captain Marvel' continues the anticipated path set by 'Avengers: Infinity War', creating its own lore and corner within the MCU, all while leading us to the final destination that is 'Avengers: Endgame', next April. The movie depicts the never-before-told story of the Kree-Skrull War, as well as how "Fury" lost his eye... Being set in the past, 'Captain Marvel' has a great deal of freedom, which it fully exploits, referencing popular culture movies such as 'Top Gun' and 'Pulp Fiction'. This makes the movie the "blast-from-the-past" we never even knew we wanted. The history of the MCU is greatly broadened, while somehow managing to greatly set up the franchise's future. The movie proves that there are great stories to tell by taking a step back. 'Captain Marvel' greatly succeeds with one thing that comes with any Marvel movie: the humour. The mid-90s setting allows the movie to create humour from infamous elements set in this period, recognisable to anyone who lived in the 90s. There are no cliche jokes; all the humour is enacted through the behaviour of individual characters, which are developed extremely well. There are many minor titbits that many fans of the MCU or those who have recently watched particular instalments in the franchise may spot. This is mainly accomplished through shared characters - these characters do have large roles in the movie, but in no way does the plot rely on their previous appearances. One thing millions of fans have been clamoring for ever since 'Marvel's The Avengers' was achieved by 'Captain Marvel': Agent Philip J. Coulson. Coulson was given a large role in this movie, all while not contradicting the 110 episodes of his own show. This is a must-see for fans of the show! The make-up, costumes, set designs and visual effects are all the best in the game. There are very few movies I would rank higher than 'Captain Marvel' on this basis, especially as much of the movie is a "space epic". The action is much better than the majority of blockbuster movies; Marvel has started to use longer takes for their fight scenes, and I think this feature is here to stay. Seeing the movie in IMAX 3D, I benefitted greatly from all of the above. The movie utilises its IMAX format to the maximum, having multiple IMAX scenes throughout the runtime (the majority is shot in IMAX). During these scenes, IMAX viewers are presented with an extra 26% of footage! There is no misuse of 3D, which many often complain about with other movies. While the movie was converted to 3D, the 3D conversion is honestly the best I've seen recently. I didn't even realise it was converted until I was informed later. IMAX should be your first port-of-call. The movie always keeps you on the journey of Carol Danvers, never giving you the greater perspective of the movie until the title character herself discovers it. It is an interesting and lucrative concept - a way to diversify the general plots and shy away from any similarities to other movies. You are always kept guessing, while enticed into the story. Once the true nature of the movie is revealed, you are in for one hell of a ride. Just make sure you stay behind until the very end of the credits! There is no universe in which I do not highly, highly recommend you to see this movie - IMAX APPROVED. ★★★★☆

(Flee • 2021 • Documentary/Animation ‧ 1h 30m Show times London, Sun 28 Nov, Genesis Cinema, 5,6 km·Whitechapel, 93-95 Mile End Road, LONDON E1 4UJ, United Kingdom, 17:40) "Flee" "Flee" tells the story of Amin Nawabi (Fardin Mijdzadeh), as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon Saif (Milad Eskandari) to be husband. It's the story of a extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan. Beginning with the death of his father in Kabul when he was a young child, and continuing in Moscow, when members of his family made several harrowing attempts to resettle in 'Western Europe', Amin’s childhood was defined by periods of waiting, hoping, and fleeing. Too much pain and heartbreak remained lodged beneath the surface, and he feared for both his own safety and that of his family, so they left the idea knowing that they would re-visit it when the time feels right. Copenhagen in the 90s. We first encountered the well-dressed newcomer on a local train when he's a middle school students, He's an Afghani immigrant who acclimated well to Denmark through a strong work ethic and great social skills. With very few immigrants Amin (Milad Eskandari) stands out in the crowd. He arrives from Afghanistan all by himself and lives in a foster home, For at least half his life, Amin avoids telling anyone his story. He loves playing volleyball in Kabul, But then his life takes a drastic turn. He spent five years living on the run, before he finally arrived, all alone. The trauma associated with his childhood is creating distance between everyone in his life, not being able to share his full self had become a heavy burden for Amin. But he also wants to share his story to make people understand what it means to flee for your life, "Flee" gives us new insights into the drastic consequences of fleeing home, especially as a child, like Amin. We've to understand the difficulties that children like them face, when their past and present are so disconnected. Why they tended to look ahead to the future, while keeping a safe distance from the people around them? What it’s like to have a deep secret that you cannot share with anyone, but which will always be a silent presence in that person’s relationships and in life in general? As for Amin, we realized that this feeling of displacement still is very present in him, even after all these years. It's the story of one man struggling to find the true definition and meaning of home. After many years, Amin finds it in the form of a loving partner Fahima (Elaha Faiz), a meaningful profession, and an actual home, in the Danish countryside. So many people in the world are looking for a place to call home, and Amin’s been trying to do that for his entire life. In script form, the movie centers on a man looking back on the early years of his life, examining the traumatic events that shaped him as a young immigrant who went on to become a successful academic. Having repressed many of these memories, ones too painful to recall, the film uses animation styles that reflected his different states of mind. The bulk of "Flee" employs conventional 2D color animation to show true-to-life happenings in Amin’s past framed as vivid snapshots of his early years, the memories of what happened to him in life. Other sequences, in more graphic and abstract, correspond with traumatic events in his life that he struggles to recall, including harrowing scenes of his family fleeing Moscow as trafficked refugees. Growing up in Afghanistan, it's always taught to be respectful, open-minded, and curious about the people around you, despite their past, political beliefs, or whatever else they might have stood for. Meeting people whoever they're and wherever they're in life is one of the main core approaches of the film. The goal is to make honest and real connections in a trusting environment. We've to understand their nuances and complexities, including the vulnerable or ugly sides, and even the most inhumane facets of their lives. The theme of flight and dislocation is especially important to us. In the process of telling these intimate stories, the film explores new ways and approaches to share the story. The film works with theater reenactments and fictional/documentary hybrids. "Flee" creates a compelling and inviting narrative in order to give testimonies to the platform they deserve. The film reaches out with a message to an adult platform, delivering on a level that’s accessible and vi1sually inspiring.

(Available 24 December Exclusively on Curzon Home Cinema) "The Humans" Erik Blake (Richard Jenkins) has gathered three generations of his Pennsylvania family to celebrate 'Thanksgiving' at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare. "The Humans" explores the hidden dread of a family and the love that binds them together. A lot of the opening shots are done with an 18mm lens, which conjures something epic from this very mundane image of a person in an empty apartment, like Roman ruins from the specific angle we’re hiding behind. The story takes place in just a handful of hours and goes from day to night. The tight-knit Blake family, long-time residents of Scranton, Pennsylvania, gathers in New York City to celebrate the holiday in the shabby Chinatown apartment of youngest daughter Brigid (Beanie Feldstein) and her boyfriend Richard (Steven Yeun). Parents Erik (Richard Jenkins) and Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell), grandmother Momo (June Squibb), and older daughter Aimee (Amy Schumer) share resentments, commiserate, laugh, and grieve as the evening together unearths uncomfortable, sometimes devastating truths. As the night wears on, eerie noises haunt the rundown building and the apartment’s lights fail one by one as each of the Blakes lays bare their deepest fears and most humbling secrets. Elements of psychological thriller, domestic drama, horror and black comedy come together as the 'Thanksgiving' dinner veers from festive celebration to family squabble to poignant confessional in a deft exploration of the lurking economic, emotional, and existential fears of an unraveling 'American Dream'. "The Humans" takes place almost entirely in Brigid and Richard’s apartment, which is labyrinthine and disorienting. The story is so much about the unspoken anxieties of this group of people; visuals could communicate so much without dialogue. The other priority is to create distance at the start, to start the film as voyeur of the family and by the time we’ve come to know them well at the pig smash, we’re literally closer, we’re sitting at the table with them. The framing of the shots is very specific and contributes to an atmosphere of both claustrophobia and intimacy. There’s a lot of complicated business going on, cooking, eating, fiddling with the lights or cleaning, that's presented both front and center and in the background. The film presents the relentless anxiety of the modern age with haunting visuals inspired by classic cinema and fine-art photography, all inside a meticulous recreation of a Manhattan prewar apartment. "The Humans" is a nuanced exploration of the hidden anxieties and fears of an American family and the love that binds them together. "This Humans" is inspired by tropes from the horror and psychological thriller movie genres. The films of Edward Yang, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Krzysztof Kieślowski really helped put together a unique cinematic language for the film and create a visually oriented screenplay. "The Humans", like a lot of Kieślowski’s work, sits in a world where the possibility of both the ordinary and the numinous hang in the air. All of these things come together as we follow the private life of a family, watching people spill in and out of the frame, seeing people through doorways, half-hearing conversations. The film is interested in sounds like the hum of a refrigerator, how the noises are connected and what that blend would sound like. It's not about 'Halloween' horror floor creaking. The family’s financial struggles seem to resonate to any people from a certain economic class that have been overlooked. You can viewed the story through a political lens, a response to Trump’s election. It's a kind of literal political rhetoric. Stories about fear are popular because we like to sort of creep into someone else’s basement and look at things other people are struggling to deal with. On some level, that can make people feel less alone. On some level when you’re not telling a story about a group of people solely to celebrate them or to lift them up as the example of how to be a family, you leave a lot of room for people to process their own joys and terrors and highs and lows, their own ideas about what love looks like. And sometimes it could be those political discussions. That can be a reminder that finding the political via the personal is not just viable, but perhaps in some ways a more enduring way to do it. You don’t have to write something about Hillary Clinton or Trumpism. You can say more just by showing real people and their lives, their imperfect lives.

For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood hero's identity is revealed, bringing his Super Hero responsibilities into conflict with his normal life and putting those he cares about most at risk. When he enlists Doctor Strange’s help to restore his secret, the spell tears a hole in their world, releasing the most powerful villains who’ve ever fought a Spider-Man in any universe. Now, Peter will have to overcome his greatest challenge yet, which will not only forever alter his own future but the future of the Multiverse. ★★★★★ Directed by: #JonWatts Produced by: #KevinFeige #AmyPascal Starring: #TomHolland#Zendaya#JacobBatalon #BenedictCumberbatch #MarisaTomei Released: 15th Dec 2021 Film review by: Ahmed Abbas | Published: 15th Dec 2021 | Edited: 24th Dec 2021 Almost exactly two years prior, I sat perched on the very same seat in Leicester Square’s IMAX for the end of a popular saga, one obnoxiously riddled with attempts to please the fans and ultimately left viewers very underwhelmed. Yesterday, in that same seat, I witnessed a masterclass of how this should be properly executed, a masterclass created by director Jon Watts and producers Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal, known to the masses as Spider-Man: No Way Home. Spider-Man: No Way Home achieves something I’ve never seen any movie ever do to the same level. When watching the movie, you can really feel the energy on set as the stars bring their A-game. Every actor truly gives their all, allowing for this movie to have the best acting out of all the Spider-Man instalments, if not all comic book movies; this is especially true for the leading actor. Every movie in which Peter Parker (Tom Holland) features in, Holland is given an intimate scene to display his acting tour de force, and each subsequent performance tops the last; this makes sense, as Holland develops his acting ability through more and more experience in his early years. Each of his performances come closer and closer to breaking my lifelong tradition of never shedding tears in a movie, with his latest finally achieving the impossible. No Way Home features Holland’s crème de la crème in acting and is worth the price of admission alone – he truly cements why Marvel made the choice to recast the role just four years after the previous reboot and shows they were justified – Tom Holland gives the performance of a lifetime. Spider-Man: No Way Home undoubtedly has the largest scope of the trilogy but manages to simultaneously have the most personal storyline to Peter Parker – a true character study – the movie breaks him down, shows his vulnerabilities and what makes him tick, and builds him back up with new motivations and sense of purpose. The supporting characters have more to do, despite the extended cast, and not only that, but each character has a defined arc in line with their last appearance, giving the audience an emotional journey with each of them. The step-up in cinematography only adds to the emotion. Scenes are beautifully and befittingly lit, with flawless chroma key compositing and stunning set design. Paired with the scenic attributes, is a technological achievement through flawless de-aging that I didn’t notice or even consider for the briefest of moments, despite the fact I knew it was being used beforehand. Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios clearly pulled no punches in the production of this instalment. The film is not formulaic and is certainly the least formulaic of all Spider-Man movies, which is one of the few, yet most recurrent criticism of Marvel movies. The movie feels like a breeze and at no point ever drags. It manages to keep the fun, vibrant feel of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and the classic comics (which I believe is essential to this interpretation), while going deeper in both story and emotion than any MCU or Spider-Man movie, with the most interesting premise. It addresses any and all criticisms of the previous movies and the character as a whole. The writers left no room for the same complaints to circulate the Twitter space. No Way Home is the only movie I’ve ever seen that, coming out, I instantly wanted to purchase another ticket and see the next screening. The film gave me everything I wanted as a Spider-Man fan, and a Marvel one. I’d go as far as saying it gives everyone what they want, but in a meaningful way that makes sense both logically and with the direction the franchise is moving in, unlike the other saga-ender I mentioned in my introduction, which threw characters and references at viewers without meaning or explanation. I had high expectations, and No Way Home not only met them, but shattered the ceiling. In every possible aspect, Spider-Man: No Way Home has reached the top of my tier list for Spider-Man movies, as well as for comic book movies, and it will be a difficult feat for the next movie to top, but I find myself saying that approximately twice a year. Spider-Man: No Way Home is the gift that kept on giving – the perfect Christmas delight! With Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the majority of their releases had fans stating that each respective movie couldn’t be topped, and said the same at the next, and the next, finally culminating in the masses proclaiming this for one last time with Endgame. For No Way Home, fans will once again go back on their word. Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios have done it again, and truly raised the bar for the blockbuster market. As other movie studios will now inevitably be taking notes, Spider-Man: No Way Home pioneers a new era in cinema. Having seen how the movie ends and what it sets up, I’m extremely excited for the future of Spider-Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Please see this movie before any spoilers make their way to you, and do your best to avoid them, as clips and images are all over the internet, despite the movie only releasing in one territory the morning of writing. As has become commonplace in my reviews, I suggest the ideal format to experience each film, and No Way Home, with its format-exclusive aspect ratio of 1:90, simply must be experienced in IMAX Digital, which has now become a must for MCU instalments. Like Endgame and Infinity War before it, Spider-Man: No Way Home was filmed entirely in IMAX, which is a very rare feat in cinema. The scale of this movie deserves the bigger screen & taller expanded aspect ratio – visiting your nearest IMAX guarantees 26% more picture. If anything deserves the IMAX experience, let it be Spider-Man: No Way Home. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

(Ailey • 2021 • Documentary ‧ 1h 35m • Showtimes London • Tue 4 Jan • Wed 5 Jan • Thu 6 Jan • Fri 7 Jan • Sat 8 Jan • ODEON Luxe Holloway, 5,8 km - Islington, 419-427 Holloway Road, LONDON N7 6LJ, United Kingdom, 19:15) https://www.odeon.co.uk/films/ailey--qa/HO00002315/ "Ailey" Alvin Ailey was a trailblazing pioneer who found salvation through dance. "Ailey" traces the full contours of this brilliant and enigmatic man whose search for the truth in movement resulted in enduring choreography that centers on 'The Black American' experience with grace, strength, and unparalleled beauty. Told through Ailey’s own words and featuring evocative archival footage and interviews with those who intimately knew him, the documentary weaves together a resonant biography of an elusive visionary. Alvin Ailey was born on January 5, 1931, in Rogers, Texas. His experiences of life in the rural 'South' would later inspire some of his most memorable works. Ailey was introduced to dance in Los Angeles by performances of 'The Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo' and 'The Katherine Dunham Dance Company', and his formal dance training began with an introduction to 'Lester Horton’s' classes by his friend Carmen de Lavallade. Horton, the founder of one of the first racially-integrated dance companies in 'The United States', became a mentor for Ailey as he embarked on his professional career. After Horton’s death in 1953, Ailey became director of 'The Lester Horton Dance Theater' and began to choreograph his own works. In the 1950s and 60s, Ailey performed in four 'Broadway' shows, including 'House Of Flowers'. On March 30, 1958, Alvin Ailey led a group of young 'African-American' modern dancers in a now-fabled performance at 'The 92nd Street' in New York City that forever changed the perception of 'American' dance. Since then, 'Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater', a company dedicated to enriching 'The American' modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of 'The African-American' cultural experience, has gone on to perform for an estimated 25 million people in 71 countries on six continents. He created 79 ballets in his lifetime, including his first masterpiece, '1958’s Blues Suite' and his must-see signature work 'Revelations', which has been seen by more people around the world than any other work of modern dance since it's 1960 premiere. Several works set to music by jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Hugh Masekela, but maintained that his company was not exclusively a repository for his own work. His ballets have appeared in the repertories of major dance companies around the world, including 'American Ballet Theatre'; 'The Joffrey Ballet'; 'Dance Theatre Of Harlem'; 'Paris Opera Ballet'; and 'La Scala Ballet'. He established 'The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center' (now 'The Ailey School') in 1969 and formed 'The Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble' in 1974. Throughout his lifetime, Ailey received numerous honors and awards, including several honorary doctoral degrees, a 1976 'NAACP Spingarn Award', and a 1982 'United Nations Peace Medal'. In 1988, he received 'The Kennedy Center Honor' in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to 'American' culture and achievement in the performing arts. Ailey was a pioneer of programs promoting arts in education, and the final program he launched before his passing on December 1, 1989. Before his untimely death in 1989, Ailey named Judith Jamison as his successor, and over the next 21 years, she brought 'The Company' to unprecedented success. Jamison, in turn, personally selected Robert Battle to succeed her in 2011. Robert Battle is without question the creative force of the future. Ailey was posthumously awarded the 2014 'Presidential Medal Of Freedom', the country’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of his contributions and commitment to civil rights and dance in America, as well as the 2017 'Logo Trailblazer Honor', celebrating him as a leader at the forefront of 'LGBTQ' equality. The film is about Alvin Ailey, an artists, who tenaciously follow his own voice and in doing redefined his chosen forms. Ailey’s dances, celebrations of 'African American' beauty and history, did more than move bodies; they opened minds. His dances were revolutionary social statements that staked a claim as powerful in his own time as in ours. 'Black' life is central to 'The American' story and deserves a central place in 'American' art and on the world stage. A working-class, gay, 'Black' man, he rose to prominence in a society that made every effort to exclude him. He transformed the world of dance and made space for those of us on the margins, space for black artists like Rennie Harris. Ailey was a pioneer in establishing a multi-racial repertory company that presented important works by both dance masters and emerging choreographers. Having performed in 71 countries on 6 continents for an estimated 25 million people worldwide, as well as millions more through television broadcasts, film screenings, and online platforms; 'Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater' continues to inspire and unite people of all backgrounds around the globe. Through the remarkable artistry of 32 extraordinary dancers, 'Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater' continues to celebrate 'The African-American' cultural experience and to preserve and enrich 'The American' modern dance tradition. Using the universal language of dance as a medium for honoring the past, celebrating the present and fearlessly reaching into the future. The documentary is inspired by.portraits like Tom Wolf's "Maria By Callas" and Raoul Peck’s "I Am Not Your Negro", and by the poetic cinematic approaches of films such as Barry Jenkins "Moonlight" and Terrence Malick’s "Days Of Heaven". The goal is to blend these influences into a sensorial, poetic documentary portrait. Nothing prepares you for the experience of Ailey, the emotional, spiritual, aural, and visual overwhelm the senses. You didn’t need to have known him personally to have been touched by his humanity, enthusiasm, and exuberance and his courageous stand for multi-racial brotherhood.

(Nightmare Alley • FSK 162021 ‧ Crime/Thriller ‧ 2h 20m • Showtimes London, Fri 21 Jan ▪ Sat 22 Jan • Sun 23 Jan • Mon 24 Jan • Tue 25 Jan Wed 26 Jan • Thu 27 Jan • Picturehouse Central, 600 m·Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 12:30 • 15:45 • 19:00 Regent Street Cinema, 1,6 km·307 Regent Street, LONDON W1B 2HW, United Kingdom, 20:15 The Cinema in the Arches, 3,1 km·Battersea, Arches Lane, LONDON SW11 8AB, United Kingdom, 13:40 • 16:00 • 20:50 Vue Cinemas, 3,4 km·Islingto, 36 Parkfield Street, LONDON N1 0PS, United Kingdom, 19:30 Everyman Screen on the Green, 3,7 km·Islington, 83 Upper Street, LONDON N1 0NP, United Kingdom, 19:00 The Gate Picturehouse, 4,9 km·87 Notting Hill Gate, LONDON W11 3JZ, United Kingdom, 20:20) "Nightmare Alley" When charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena Krumbein (Toni Collette) and her has-been mentalist husband Pete (David Strathairn) at a traveling carnival, he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly acquired knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York Society. With the virtuous Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara) loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), a dangerous tycoon, with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) who might be his most formidable opponent yet. "Nightmare Alley" journeys into the most arrestingly dark, sweeping and realistic world; the cinematic world of film noir. The film moves from the inner circle of a 1930s traveling carnival, a realm of shocks and wonders, to the halls of wealth and power where seduction and treachery reside. At it's core lies a man who sells his soul to the art of the con. Stanton Carlisle begins as a literal nobody, a man who has ditched a scarred past, and is so desperate to separate himself from his origins that he decides to join a passing carnival and become a member of a world unto itself. Here, no questions are asked, and no one cares who you were before, as long as you pitch in right now. Stanton’s rise through the ranks of the carnival troupe continues onto the higher echelons of American society all against the background of the great depression in America. The carnival is an incredibly close-knit, hermetic society. It’s a place where people keep their secrets, and many are escaping a life of crime or a past they've to leave behind. And yet, they form a strong society. It’s almost like a microcosm of the world. Everybody’s there to swindle everybody. But at the same time, they know they need each other, and they protect one another. The carnival geeks are usually opium junkies or alcoholics deprived of their fix, willing to do anything to avoid withdrawal. In the carnival hierarchy, the geek is the lowest in their societal pecking order, reviled and pitied even by carnies. Pulled from dark alleys in the dead of night, the geek is everything Stanton fears about himself. He's a man who's given all the elements to change his life. He has people who believe in him, who love him and trust him. Yet his drive and his own hubris are so strong that they turn him away from that. It's the story of a man hoisted onto his own karma. This is Stanton Carlisle, a drifting hustler who transforms himself into a dazzling showman and manipulator so masterful he comes to believe he can outwit fate. Once he learns how profitable delusion and deception can be, Stanton never turns back. Within "Nightmare Alley", there are seething layers of corruption, vice, lust, betrayal, and cosmic absurdity that build as Stanton learns to cynically prey on the human need to believe in something outside themselves and our world. The film avoids the trademark visual aspects of noir, keeping the story speeding forwards, as Stanton’s life becomes a harrowing circle. He's now a broken man who has learned to lie to get the reactions he wants from people. As Stanton’s skills increase and he becomes a consummate performer, the carnival world gives way to a city realm far shinier and glitzier on the surface but seething with anxieties underneath. Stanton is a character of devastating darkness. He's a mercurial character, who transforms according to circumstances. As Stanton makes his delirious rise, the film tracks a reckless 'American Dream' running off the rails. But in that darkness, there are three beacons of truth in three different women he meets, Zeena, Molly, and Lilith. Stanton’s first real relationship when he arrives at the carnival is with Zeena. Zeena knows the ropes better than anyone. Married to her once brilliant and loveable co-star, now a pathetic alcoholic, she gravitates to Stanton but senses he's, like the tarot card of the hanged man he draws from her deck, headed on a difficult path. She’s the type of person who’s constantly wanting to heal and help and fix. Zeena is someone who changes the tires on her truck. She’s a total competent. You’ve got to keep it. The savvy mentalist Zeena relishes the physical passion she finds with Stanton and opens his worldview on how to operate in America. The disarming ingénue Molly falls hard for his deceptive, aspirational optimism. If Stanton has any moral compass, it exists for his paramour, Molly wins Stanton’s attention early on with her warmth and hopefulness. It's she who believes he has greatness in him, enough to take a chance on him and leave behind the community she loves. She tries very hard to keep Stan on the right track. Once Stanton and Molly leave for the bright lights of Buffalo, where they strike it rich as a swanky nightclub act, the film and ambiance do a 180. A sleek Art Deco aesthetic reflecting the hot new trends of the late 30s prevails in the second part of the film. Dr. Lilith Ritter is a sharp-as-nails psychoanalyst who sizes up Stanton quickly as a broken psyche beneath his suave act, but also as a very dangerous man she has the game to outmaneuver and take down for good. Stanton and Lilith’s clash is epic. Lilith has her own dark past that she’s trying to avenge and she’s very smart. Lilith is also someone who’s interested in both the practical and mystical sides of psychoanalysis, so that’s part of why Stanton intrigues her. She’s trying to work out what makes him tick as she’s a bit of a shaman herself. Their entire relationship takes place in her office, so we thought about that set as being not just a physical space but a psychological space. The carny who changes Stanton’s life the most is Zeena’s husband, Pete, a fading star who drowns his self-recriminations in the bottle. Once Pete was the creator of a hit mind-reading act, based on an ingenious code he created, that wowed high-paying audiences. Now isolated and guilt-ridden, Pete is momentarily buoyed by the thought of taking Stanton under his wing and oblivious to his wife’s relationship with him. He approaches him with a naïve, paternalistic pride. Even though Pete warns Stanton to never abuse the act in ways that might take advantage of the audience, or a spook show, that’s exactly what Stanton does. Pete has the melancholy of a guy who once owned the stage but fell victim to alcohol and lost it. The carnival’s manager, Clem Hoately (William Dafoe) is also it's bombastic barker, an old school carny with an intimidating gruffness, but willingness to give anyone his or her one chance. He has a bit of a conman in him, too, and he wants to make a dollar. But there's a sweet side to Clem as well, where he feels responsible for his carnival family. A guy like Clem has been around, he's probably done time, he’s had to scrape to get by, and he knows what that’s like, so he’s willing to help Stanton. Clem gives Stanton refuge, but he also demonstrates the depths of his own darkness in his harsh treatment of the carnival’s geek. Unmissable with his two-tone, heeled boots and crimson-and-gold barker’s jacket, Clem is one of the carnival’s most multihued characters, and one of it's most unpredictable. When Stanton and Molly relocate to Buffalo as both war and boom times sweep the nation, Stanton sets his sights on a very lofty goal. He aims to gain the trust of the town’s wealthiest industrial magnate, Ezra Grindle, a man haunted by loss and willing to go to any lengths for answers. Despite his riches, Grindle is blind to all that he possesses. He’s fixated instead on his fear that he caused the death of a woman he loved. Bruno (Ron Perlman) is a noble person who acts like a father figure to Molly and tries to protect her from Stanton. He’s complex and full of love for her but is incapable of outwitting Stanton. Each helps Stanton harness his skills, yet they each watch him choose the most insidious path at every fork in the road. The film is based on William Lindsay Gresham’s novel published in 1946 about a charismatic huckster consumed by uncontrolled ambition. The adaptation is set in 1939, just as the nation had barely recovered from one 'World War' and entered another, and as the country faced stark divisions. This time is in many ways the birth of modern America. In an era before television, the traveling carnival is the epitome of live, local entertainment for the masses. The visitors transformed one muddy, small-town field after another promising to mystify, provoke and make a hard life a little more magical. As much as they offered alluring fairy tales to audiences, beneath the paint, tinsel, and outrageous claims, they could be exploitive and dehumanizing to their performers. But they're also alternate communities for people who would otherwise be on the margins. Naturally drawn to the macabre and profoundly human world of carnival sideshows, Gresham’s novel as autobiographical and wants to explore the murky lines between illusion and reality, desperation and control, success, and tragedy. With sharper edges than any movie, the film is a true hardboiled tale of crime, betrayal, and scathing comeuppance. It's a tale about the dark side of American capitalism. Indeed, in it's visceral realism, the film takes on the urgency of a moral fable; a of fate’s bill coming due, structured to end with a bang. When an audience is invested in the story of a person’s rise, their greatest fear is the fall and that fall can be very emotionally strong, "Nightmare Alley" is about fear, about greed, and it’s about manipulation. The look of the film is, per usual, meticulously composed to set an inescapable mood. It has all the dark underpinnings of what seems to be a very polite society. The world of the carnival might have some trickery and deceit, but it has the beating heart of a true community. It's the high society in this film that is far more threatening and terrifying.

(Memoria • 2021 ‧ Drama/Narrative ‧ 2h 16m • Showtimes London • Mon 31 Jan • Tue 1 Feb • Wed 2 Feb • Thu 3 Feb • Picturehouse Central, 600 m·Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom • 12:15 Vue Cinemas, 3,4 km·Islingto, 36 Parkfield Street, LONDON N1 0PS, United Kingdom • 16:50 Genesis Cinema, 5,6 km·Whitechapel, 93-95 Mile End Road, LONDON E1 4UJ, United Kingdom • 18:15 Vue, 5,9 km·West Hampstead, 02 Centre - Finchley Road, LONDON NW3 6LU, United Kingdom • 14:30 The Castle Cinema, 7,7 km·First floor, 64-66 Brooksby's Walk, LONDON E9 6DA, United Kingdom • 15:30 • 21:00 ODEON Wimbledon, 11,1 km·The Broadway, The Piazza, WIMBLEDON SW19 1QB, United Kingdom • 17:40) "Memoria" "Memoria" is a bewildering drama about a Scottish woman, who, after hearing a loud bang at daybreak, begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia. Spanning an atemporal, apolitical space of the narrative, "Memoria" centres on Jessica Holland (Tilda Swinton), a Scottish botanist, visiting her sister Karen (Agnes Brekke) in Colombia. In Bogota and 300 km away in Pijao the morning bang disappears. With it the precious, murky, drifting realm is gone. For better or for worse. Hundreds of tiny lights flicker across the vast darkness. Some of the glimmers belong to the invisible ships and boats sailing in silence. Above them the sky is full of illuminations. The stars and the man-made lights look identical so the horizon seems to vanish. Closer up, beyond the curved window, is a blinking light on the airplane’s wing. This sight must be similar to that from a spaceship on a long voyage; time unknown. One livid morning at daybreak, Jessica is torn from sleep by a loud bang resembling the reverberating sound of a large stone ball falling on metal. The immense noise reverberates around the brain, but instead of waking you up fully, it puts you in a semi-conscious state, listening, anticipating. It's a scenario in which Jessica Holland, a comatose character from Jacques Tourneur’s 'I Walked With A Zombie', wakes up. She finds herself in Bogota, being drawn by a dream or a trauma that she doesn’t remember. She walks, sits and listens. In her brief 'South American' journey she bears the melancholy of a stranger. Clandestine sounds at a distance echo through the land. Still shrouded in the mist of the film from 1943, she hears the rumbles of the voodoo drums. They encourage her to walk and become part of a ritual. For a second, she wonders if she's still in that film, lying in bed, opening her eyes from a dream. Then, as on the previous night, the echo leads her towards the dark ocean. Plagued by sleepless nights, she decides to get to the bottom of the noise's origin. This haunting sound dispels her sleep for days, calling her identity into question and guiding her from recording studios to secluded villages. Thus begins a personal journey that’s also historical excavation, in a film of profound serenity that, like Jessica’s sound, lodges itself in the viewer’s brain as it traverses city and country, climaxing in an extraordinary extended encounter with a rural farmer that exists on a precipice between life and death. As we peer into Jessica’s head, we see the mountains with their creases and creeks mimicking the folds of the brain or the curves of sound waves. Her footsteps cause the inner terrain to inflate and tremble, generating landslides and earthquakes. The noise, which only Jessica seems to hear, carries a foreboding beauty that's part of the surrounding landscape; be it the busy streets of Bogotá or the verdant mountains around the excavation site where Jessica travels to meet up with her sister, an archaeologist researching human remains that bear the signs of ritual deaths. In her journey to understand this uncanny sound, she seeks the help of Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego), a sound engineer who does his best to recreate the noise for her. Jessica also shares memories with Hernán, who speaks of the past, the future, and the memories of the dead. From there, Jessica’s mission begins to unravel into a bizarre and fantastical voyage into the depths of the human psyche. The skull with a hole is to be filled or to be emptied out. We don’t know. This sign of humanity exists deep in the mountains, which in themselves are holding layers of memories. Jessica walks a lot, which is an elegant gesture, to trace and collect these layers. Then she sits down by the stream and listens. Time decelerated. Would this feel like tapping into other people’s memories, or making a film in a foreign country? Possess an equilibrium state when the self is removed; when nothingness could mean freedom. Maybe this is the answer to everything, including Jessica’s migration. The film explores one woman’s confounding sensory syndrome, while slowly revealing itself to be an unforgettable cinematic experience. As a kid we were drawn to jungles, animals, and mountains. We grew up reading novels about hunters looking for treasures from lost civilisations. The film forms the basis of a character whose audio experience synchronises with the country’s memory. The massive sierras, with their creases and creeks, are like the folds of the brain, or the curves of sound waves. With the scores of acts of violence and trauma, the terrain inflates and trembles, to become a country with never- ending landslides and earthquakes. The film itself is also seeking for a balance in this active topography. It's skeletons, the images and sounds, are shaken out of place. "Memoria" takes us into the Colombian jungle on the introspective journey. The film weaves a narrative style into a carefully designed land and soundscape that captures the elusive genius of the locus with precise, perfect simplicity. It's a lyrical and meditatively decelerating film experience. "Memoria" explores the sublime space between reality, myth, history, and memory in this mesmerizing, sensory meditation on isolation and alienation in the modern world. Collective and personal ghosts hover over every frame of "Memoria". In this characteristically dreamy film, urban landscapes collide with verdant and dense countryside, creating a world that might look familiar, but feels anything but. It's feels now like a subterranean world. The images are dim, as if they're in a stage of decay. Logic is not clearly understood. Time decelerated. To be free, you need to extract yourself from everything, even your own experiences.

(Curzon Home Cinema ● Available 28th February) "Amulet" "Amulet" explores the story of Tomaz (Alec Secareanu), an ex soldier from an unnamed foreign conflict, living in strained circumstances in London. Following an accident that leaves him homeless in London, Tomaz is brought to the rotting home of Magda (Carla Juni), a lonely woman, in desperate need of help as she looks after her dying mother (Anah Ruddin). Haunted by his past, he's offered a place to stay in a decaying, claustrophobic house. As he starts to fall for his new companion, Tomaz cannot ignore his suspicion that something insidious might also be living alongside them. Though at first resistant, Magda eventually welcomes him into their lives and allows him to help her care for them. But as he worms his way into their routine and begins to fall for Magda, Tomaz starts to notice strange, unexplainable, and ugly phenomena. Something seems very wrong with the mysterious old woman who never leaves the top floor, and Magda may in fact be enslaved to do her otherworldly bidding. This film is about international efforts to prosecute rape as a weapon of war. There's a lot of discussion of how the perpetrators mentally recategorize the rapes that occur in war after the event. Allowing them to return to normal civilian life and apparently normal relationships. It's about a character who categorizes himself entirely as a protector and cannot see himself as a aggressor; and how the ideal male protagonist hero role as protector and savior has been used by men in fiction and film to disguise the reality of relations between men and women. The script could be categorized as drama in a similar vein but keep getting drawn back to macabre forms such as horror, noir and ghost stories etc. To talk about some quite elemental ideas about the persecution of women and the film wants the audience to be physically sharing the extreme emotions that persecution engenders in women, it seemed better to describe these in these more extreme or visceral forms. The film takes the audience on a journey of questioning the protagonist and his motives. From Tomaz as a figure deserving of our pity and Magda as a helpless victim of her mother, an older woman, of course the pariah to a place where we start to understand that Tomaz is living alongside an evil that he believes he can escape and make his own retribution for; that he can decide his own punishment. It's important too that he's a man of high education, stable and loving home life and moral compass; that his act comes as a result of opportunity to do it and opportunity to hide it; not innate evil. Tomaz is a really difficult character.because you’ve got to love him and you’ve got to root for him, but he’s also got to be capable of being revealed as something more sinister. He’s an ex-soldier, you don’t know his nationality, he’s enigmatic. You get the feeling that he’s punishing himself for something that he’s done but for a long time, you don’t know why. He’s a man that’s isolated himself and he’s struggling with the idea of whether he’s allowed to forgive himself for this enormous wrong that he’s committed, that’s what we like about the story, this inner battle of morality. And what you learn about Tomaz very quickly is that he’s got an imposing physicality, but he’s also got puppy dog eyes and you definitely get lovable; but you can believe sinister. The film plays with a bending or warping sense of reality so rather than us always setting up an absolute truth to explore Tomaz sensory landscape with editing that uncoupled the sound or dialogue from the picture at points and so the film feels quite visceral. When you first meet Magda, she’s scared and sad, she’s almost stereotype of how a male dominated society views women. We're servants, the male is the patriarch so it’s a comment on how ridiculous is it that Magda does all these things for Tomaz. The film plays with gender roles. How the mother being an old woman automatically makes her evil in this genre. That Magda professes herself entirely not in need of protection and yet we don’t question Tomaz enforcing himself on her. And it's always the intention to allow the film an element of slyness. For Magda, she has a plan, a trap for Tomaz to fall into even though she gives him chances not to fall for them. Sometimes the chances are quite hidden, sometimes they’re very obvious but he still doesn’t take that chance to escape, which says something about him. A sort of dark humor in it's more extreme moments and the 'Sister Claire' (Imelda Staunton) role really encapsulates that. Tomaz ends up becoming the source of the evil, Magda ends up becoming the rescuer and the older woman in the attic becomes a former victim. An iconic marker of horror is the haunted house, which is the beating heart of "Amulet". The London modern day exteriors needs the realistic look and feel of a contemporary drama, the flashbacks have a sense of foreboding fairy tale and the modern day sections in Magda's house has the air of a classic horror in the style of 'Trouble Every Day' or Kusurski's 'Possession' which because of it's very unusual genre placement and, because it's very much grounded in gender war, becomes a touchstone reference. The Magda house interiors gives a sense of unsettling, paranoid feelings; high wide's of rooms or extremely low angles on faces. The film also plays with theatrical slides and pans to give the audience the sense of an unconscious impassive observer to the protagonist's moral degeneration. "Amulet" uses a lot of yellow in the house and a palette of faded yellows and browns that enhanced the sense of a classic horror element to it in these scenes so the sense of time period as well as place feels quite fluid. It breaks down the different spaces that the characters encounter in "Amulet". We've three very distinct worlds, the forest is very saturated and lush and that's to make you feel at home in that space, essentially another way of making the revelation of what’s happened there even more shocking. The house is supposed to be more somber and womb-like and then the blues of the real world are in contrast to that, giving three very different flavors, lulling you into a false sense of security. "Amulet" demonstrates a hauntingly assured work constructed with frightening momentum. The film builds a profoundly restrained dread, unleashes a phantasmagorical nightmare seething with imagination and purpose. Approaching folklore with a fiery spirit, "Amulet" propels a terrifying morality tale into the realm of high art. A lot of the film is very technical, a lot of genre films, particularly horror are highly constructed films, made very much with the cinematography at the forefront. In a drama, you might allow the actors to really play within a space as they could if they’re on stage. You absolutely can’t do that with a horror film, everything is about specific, constructed shots, which the actors have to step into and do certain things to make it work. Initially it’s a comment on victimization, which is huge in itself, but also on religion and who religion was created for. Usually a man, so then what's the woman’s role? It’s about how self-serving religion can be but there’s also a great deal of pain and fear and anger and abuse. It’s a feminist horror about forgiveness and we should all ask ourselves, whether forgiveness is ours to give or if we should take it from someone else. Also, if you look at a lot of horror films, there's the question of ‘are we deriving a voyeuristic pleasure from this because it’s about women being hunted or attacked. There are certain tropes around horror, certain expectations in terms of the victim and the savior and the film takes the audience’s comfort and complicity with that and turns it on it's head, messing with convention. Horror is always a response to societal conflict so whatever the topic is, film and horror especially, finds a way to hold a mirror up to that. So part of the subtext of "Amulet" might be around the shift in gender roles that have come up in recent years as more women join the conversation about being marginalized or abused. Women rising up, women having a voice, women taking control, as per the themes in our film, obviously feels like a reflection of current changes in society. It’s the moral issue that emerges from this film.

(Glasgow Film Festival • Select event time • Here are a list of days and times at which this event will take place • March Thu 03 • Screening time 20:30 • Fri 04 • Screening time 18:15) https://glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival/shows/bergman-island-nc-15 "Bergman Island" A filmmaking couple living in America, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), retreat to the mythical Fårö Island for the Summer. In this wild, breathtaking landscape where Bergman lived and shot his most celebrated pieces, they hope to find inspiration for their upcoming films. As days spent separately pass by, the fascination for the island operates on Chris and souvenirs of her first love resurface. Lines between reality and fiction will then progressively blur and tear our couple even more apart. The script brings two filmmakers to Fårö and of using landscapes and Bergman’s world as a backdrop, in other words, the two parts, a glimpse into the heroine’s film-in-the-making, a painful first love experience without closure inspiring filmmaker Chris writing, the subsequent episodes that you can’t tell which part of the narrative they belong to, past or future, reality or fantasy. Filmmaking allows to recreate memories that tend to substitute for the reality that inspired them. Chris seems to come to terms with Tony's sometimes unpleasant attitude. You can tell this couple's connectedness and intellectual camaraderie are strong, they've an experience together. Besides, they've a child. But it's not easy for an artist couple to find the right balance between dialogue and sharing that are desirable, on the one hand, and necessary loneliness, on the other. You need to accept to stay outside the mental space that only belongs to your partner. Some intimate things can only be entrusted to fiction, some confessions can only be made through it. Which may cause some pain, how can you figure out what's said, what's left unsaid? This echoes a more universal questionhow well do you know the person you live with? When Chris lays claim to the mill, next to the main house, as her office, it points to her ambivalent relationship with Tony's filmmaker self. It's far enough for her to have a chance to forget about him and take hold of the place, and close enough to be able to sense him and watch him through the window. His own relationship to writing doesn't seem to be as complicated, and he doesn't seem to have to confide his doubts. But you can wonder if Tony's resilience isn't only shallow and if, deep down, his imperviousness isn't a smokescreen for even greater vulnerability. Regardless, we don't judge either of the two characters, we just bear witness to what they experience, to what happy and unhappy moments come out of it, and to what the heroine must do to come out on top. Coming out on top, that's just what happens throughout the film. You could think the film also portrays the awakening of self-confidence, of a calling you must pursue. It's a way for Chris to own up to the fact that in film, her life can inspire fiction, and that fiction can reflect life, like a ping-pong game, or two parallel mirrors reflecting the same story endlessly. The film is about how something unlocks in Chris, how she embraces fiction, imagines a film, a film in the making that's originally called 'The White Dress' but that could also be named Bergman Island in the end. "Bergman Island" is an emancipation story. It's about emancipation from our masters, but also about a woman's emancipation from a man. It's what the Chris character, who considers herself as vulnerable and dependent, finds out about her own creative force. However, Chris must also free herself from the man she lives with in order to find her freedom. If they must break up, then it should happen once the film is over. As a rule, we need to feel an off-screen space to be able to believe in the character's lives. If the film ends with closure, we don't believe in their existence as much as if a sequel remained to be written. You may think the journey of this couple is bound to end, but what's the film is interested in is to show that there's still some understanding between them. How can they journey on together, in spite of what drives them apart, of a gap widening because of their respective fictions? It all hangs by a thread, but it's still there. The film is two-fold, it's a film about love for cinema, and Bergman particularly, but also about a double love story. The film moves playfully between different dimensions, past, present, reality within fiction or fiction within reality. The construction comes from the subject matter that comes down to two interconnected questions; that of couples and that of inspiration. When you deal with a filmmakers couple, how much of their dynamic is based on loneliness and how much on camaraderie? Where does fiction come from? Although the film is not about Bergman, the latter's presence is palpable through the film's mood, which raises very interesting issues, including the working of our imagination; it's clear that our perspective on certain landscapes or places may be entirely shaped by how a filmmaker like Bergman has influenced it. Our imagination belong to us and is also shaped by films. That's what the film's about, how a fantasy leaves such a mark on a place that it shapes our perspective on it. As the lady guide explains, Bergman's Fårö Island existed before the actual Fårö. Bergman fell in love with the place because it echoed a landscape that had been on his mind for some time. But his Fårö is a rougher place than the one we discover in the film. Most importantly, he explores faces, and with him, you hardly see the actual places, the horizon or the sky, which have such an intense presence on the island. Bergman's Fårö is a mental construct that tells about his obsessions and inner demons. So, when you're there, this Fårö is both everywhere and nowhere. Bergman directed some of his most famous films there and spent the last years of his life there. Remotely located in the middle of the Baltic Sea, the island embodies an ideal both terrifying and attractive, austere and exciting, it’s the ultimate place of absolute artistic integrity that we associate Bergman with. After he died in 2007, a book was published for the auction sale of his properties and all that they contained, it was Bergman’s will, considering it was impossible to divide his properties among his nine children. The pictures of his paintings, of the rooms of his houses, of his objects echoing his everyday life didn’t make his work any less fascinating, all these things, whether highly personal or trivial, only added to the aura and the mystery of an island haunted by his work and his presence. Luckily, Bergman’s legacy hasn’t been scattered. Timeless landscapes, stone walls, wildflowers, black sheep, countless birds. To the island's harshness and silence. Actually, the scope format comes as an obvious choice, but the film experiences this option as a liberation. And the film's about this liberation. Fårö was, and still is, a magical place. Autumn is our most prolific season. We remember 'The Merry Widow', and 'The Magic Flute'. So, the time has come, we think the decision we've made. A home, a hideaway, a fantastic workplace, whose peacefulness and wholesomeness are unparalleled. So, we feel it's important that this place should keep it's unique atmosphere in the coming years. And we believe that the best way to do so is to make 'Hammars' a foundation that, when our time comes, should be passed on to the municipality to be converted into a school or a spiritual retreat for artists. The municipality owns the foundation at no other cost than maintenance and operations. This film is about the power of landscapes. These Swedish landscapes remind us those of Haute-Loire we've seen in 'Goodbye First Love'. The happiness we feel in Fårö brings to mind childhood and teenage memories, although these are very different landscapes, the Baltic Sea on the one hand, Ardèche and the Loire River source on the other. But what they've in common is a wild, pristine quality, a silent atmosphere that invites you to a kind of meditation and that left an impression on our imagination. Nature has been always an inspiration. The pleasure, the emotion you feel when watching nature can easily go hand in hand with a character's journey and inspire fiction in us. That's what happened with 'Bergman Island'. We feel drawn to this physical place, which is also a mental, inner place, naturally. We feel like doors that have been locked so far are opening and that the island makes it possible. written by Gregory Mann

(Glasgow Film Festival • Select event time • Here are a list of days and times at which this event will take place • March Sun 06 Screening time 15:30 • Mon 07 Screening time 15:15) https://glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival/shows/where-is-anne-frank-nc-8 "Where is Anne Frank" "Where is Anne Frank" begins with a miracle, Kitty (Ruby Stokes), the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank (Emily Carey) writes in her famous Diary, comes to life in present-day Amsterdam. Unaware that 75 years have gone by, Kitty is convinced that if she's alive, then Anne must be alive too. It's the beginning of an adventurous journey. It's the story of Kitty's quest across contemporary Europe searching for her beloved friend. Armed with the precious Diary and with help from her friend Peter (Sebastian Croft), who runs a secret shelter for undocumented refugees, Kitty follows Anne's traces from the Annex to her tragic end in the Holocaust. Disoriented by our broken world and the injustices that child refugees endure, Kitty wants to replace Anne's cause. Through her honesty, she presents a message of hope and generosity addressed to future generations. Kitty is the leading role and the protagonist of the movie. What happened to Anne during the end of the war. How did she die? In doing so, she also discovers the current situation in Europe, with refugees from all over the world, running away from war zones. Another two conditions are to connect past and present time and to follow the last 7 dreadful months of Anne Frank's life. Kitty has always been there. But just in the Diary and not as an actual person. Anne Frank has left us many descriptions of Kitty, who she's, what she looks like, what kind of personality she's. And of course, there's her dialogue with Kitty. The movie makes Kitty into an alter ego of Anne. She's not under the control of parents who set her limits, as Anne was. For Kitty, there are no fellow inhabitants in her hideout criticising her. She's therefore free to do whatever Anne had wanted to do in her own imagination. In the movie Kitty becomes an activist for refugees in the present day. She's a part of new, political youth movements about climate and human rights. She's indeed a child of our times. The character of Kitty started out as Anne's imaginary friend, basically. But in the movie she's building a bridge between the past and the present. As she ventures out into the world, she meets young people such as herself who are in danger, maybe because they've to run away from war zones. That reminds Kitty of Anne and the fact that Anne did not have an opportunity to run away during her relatively short time in hiding. This experience turns Kitty into an activist. At the same time, she realises her powers to promote a movement for children's rights. And these powers grow from her being a visitor in our world. Alongside Kitty, audiences confront the 'Holocaust'. The character of Kitty is not meant to be an extension or a rebirth of Anne's personality after her death. As Kitty leaves the house and ventures forth into the world, she has her own options. The Diary casts the relationship between Anne and her sister Margot (Skye Bennett), her mother Edith (Samantha Spiro) and Albert Dussel (Andrew Woodall) in a negative way in some respects. The one scene where the Frank family arrives at the Auschwitz concentration camp is the hardest task in the whole movie. Shortly after Otto Frank (Michael Maloney) published the Diary of his daughter Anne Frank in 1947, he decides to have it adapted for stage. The success of the Broadway show 'The Diary Of A Young Girl' (1956) followed by the Oscar winning movie by George Stevens is the beginning of the success of the Diary to ensure that all royalties are used to support charitable and educational work, Otto Frank established the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel in 1963, which he appoints his universal heir. Against this background the foundation initiated the animation movie in which Anne Frank's imaginary friend comes to life. The movie represents an introduction to lessons of history, the Holocaust, discrimination and anti-Semitism. "Where is Anne Frank" is a Holocaust movie. It's a new dimension to tell the 'Holocaust' story. But our minds are incapable of creating a visual connection to these stories and cannot fully grasp what happened. Sure, animation lets you reinvent the world. But the movie decides at the outset to break with a certain pattern of the genre. Most war movies show the present in colour and the past as monochrome. "Anne Frank" goes the opposite way. Therefore, in the movie present-day Amsterdam is depicte in monochrome colours, the city is in wintertime and has been completely drained of colour. On the other hand, the past is seen through the eyes of Anne, it's very lively, colourful and rich in tones. If you has to tell such a harsh story, you can work either with humour or a lot of emotions. But if you exaggerate and force the audience to delve into tired clichés of agony and woe, you risk losing your viewers. You must maintain an even-handedness while showing human aspects of the characters and avoid overplaying emotions and turning to gimmicks. You've to present a new, entirely different approach to the Diary, which is fairly well known among young audiences. Scenes unfolding in the past are telling the story of the Diary and even the future beyond the Holocaust has been anticipated in the Diary to a certain extent. But the movie tells the story in a different way, namely not as a monologue by Anne, but as a dialogue between the girls. For us, the imaginary friend has become real and they're discussing among themselves what Anne has written down as her monologue. It's not only about the Holocaust, which must of course never be forgotten, but also about the lessons that we can take from it for our own life. So it's not only a matter of looking back at what happened then, but also to see what's essential about the Diary and it's message for the new generation. The educational programme looks at the Holocaust, Jews, anti-Semitism, but also at children's rights, migration and refugees today. The movie deals with these topics at a time when this is urgently needed again. But this story is missing the horrible fates of those who starved in the ghettoes or who were deported in trains towards the East into the Final Solution. When it comes to the past, these elements are dramatic, they originate from, or are based on the original text in the Diary. What's shown in the movie is what arises from reading the text and from what Anne Frank wrote about her dreams, emotions and wishes. Although the par about the Holocaust is not in the Diary. Reading the Diary without putting it into the context of the present is meaningless as we need to learn the lessons of the past to make a difference. Children are still running away from war zones and their lives are in danger, minorities, refugees and individuals are still discriminated against. Written by Gregory Mann.

(Glasgow Film Festival ● Select event time ● Here are a list of days and times at which this event will take place ● March Sun 06 Screening time 17:15 Mon 07 Screening time 15:00l https://glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival/shows/vortex-nc-15 "Vortex" The story of the film is very commonplace, it’s just something that happens quite naturally for people aged 80 and over that their children must manage. And these situations are so heavy day-to-day that most of those over 50 carry them like individual curses that they’re almost ashamed to talk about. The film emphasizes the shared loneliness of the father (Dario Argento) and the mother (Françoise Lebron). We realize that when one of the characters leave the frame, leaving us alone with the other, we really want to continue to see what he or she's at the same time. Reality is the sum of the perceptions of those who make it. And since there’s nothing more boring in cinema than this artificial tv movie language that almost everyone uses. Guy (Alex Lutz) is interested and deeply moved by time. He turns around and tries to move forward. We've the impression that he moves in different worlds, he has rather the image of a comedian. He only thinks about making unique objects, which don’t resemble each other. The character was into drugs or if he had given up. He had taken himself in hand, that he worked in some organization. We suggest that the character get some help from a social worker (Laurent Aknim), that he worked in editing to have a schedule that allowed him to get high. He’s into drugs without being into drugs, it’s the eternal problem of the addict who knows very well that; that’s what he’ll be all his life. In the script he's.closer to his mother, while he has had fights with his father in the past, a father who has had to scour police stations and clinics for his son. Old age involves very complex survival issues. People who suffer from Alzheimer’s often have problems with speech and don’t always respond when they’re spoken to. It generates overwhelming situations in which those who've protected you most revert in turn to their childhood. It's a film with an extremely simple narrative, with one person in a state of mental deterioration losing the use of language, and her son who has not yet mastered it, as two extremes of this brief experience that's human life. It feels like we’re following two tunnels that evolve in parallel but never meet, two characters irrevocably separated by their paths in life and by the image. The camera language is a bit complex, and, as usual. "Vortex" describes a very common situation, which most people are or will become familiar with; it’s the toughest. The film scared people, turn them on, make them cry, in life as at the cinema. Tears really do have a sedative effect when they come into contact with the membranes of the eyelids, which makes them one of the most pleasurable substances there's. It’s a provocative, violent film. Gaspar Noe is the son of a painter, and he works like a painter, he prepares his frame like a painting. He’s very meticulous with the composition of the image. Still, he's seen as a provocative director, with scenes that venture very deep into violence or sex. It's also a very radical, desperate film, in any case not very Manichean. It’s just the story of a genetically programmed disintegration, when the whole house of cards collapses. The film probably refers to the emptiness that surrounds us and in which we float. The mess you've left behind. That’s death, the objects of a life you leave to others and that disappear in a garbage truck as quickly as memories that rot along with the brain. In any case, since the hand of destiny gives us some joyful extra time, We've also been told that it recalls 'Enter the Void' in the sense that it's subject is the great emptiness that's life and not death. We feel that we're more serene with these two concepts we call life and death. In addition, the convalescence that's imposed on us, followed by this fabulous collective experience of confinement linked to a virus, allows us to spend time discovering the greatest melodramas of Mizoguchi, Naruse and the unjustly forgotten Kinoshita, whose melancholy, cruelty and aesthetic inventiveness reminded us what truly great cinema could be. Culture is one of the last sanctuaries where it's a duty not to be afraid. To paraphrase Pasolini, what we do is more important than what we say. written by Gregory Mann

(Framing Agnes ● BFI Flare GBTQ London Film Festival ● Wednesday 16 March 2022 00:01 ● 27-03-2022 11:59 pm ● BFI Player Sunday 20 March 2022 20:45 ● BFI Southbank, NFT3 Monday 21 March 2022 18:30) "Framing Agnes" Agnes (Zackary Drucker), the pioneering, pseudonymized transgender woman who participated in Harold Garfinkel’s gender health research at UCLA in the 1960s, has long stood as a figurehead of trans history. In this rigorous cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, "Framing Agnes" explores where and how her platform has become a pigeonhole. Framing Agnes endeavors to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed, one that has remained too narrow to capture the multiplicity of experiences eclipsed by Agnes’s. Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an impressive lineup of trans stars take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans health care. The films signature form-rupturing style radically re-envisions the imposition of the frame on the cultural memory of transness through his communally driven excavation. This reclamation tears away with remarkable precision the myth of isolation as the mode of existence of transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who've been forgotten for far too long. Agnes approaches the UCLA Gender Clinic with one very specific goal, to have gender confirmation surgery. To accomplish this task, she produces an impenetrable narrative of self that does not allow for a fluidity or revision of experience. She's in a long-term committed relationship, and works as a secretary. Georgia (Angelica Ross) is a trans woman from the South who's looking for help, from the Church, the military, and now the gender clinic. Due to the racist climate in Los Angeles at the time, she faces constant scrutiny by police and is unable to find a job. Though far from her birth family and community, Georgia is happily married and eager to find new pathways for her future. Barbara (Jen Richards) is located in the heart of a sprawling underground network of trans people in 1950s Los Angeles. As a community ambassador, Barbara is often responsible for educating doctors about the more intricate details of trans life and organizing meet-ups where people share resources about transition. Denny (Silas Howard) is an affable, working class man who finds himself occupying the borderlands between what we might now call butch lesbian and trans man. Uninterested in pursuing surgery, as he doesn’t want to lose access to the lesbian community. Denny is partnered and employed. Henry (Max Wolf Valerio) lives a solitary life, reclusive writer isolated and alienated from the world around him. Denied medical care, unable to get a job because his legal documents don’t match his gender, Henry (Max Wolf Valerio) is experiencing a pervasive hopelessness about his tenuous position in the world. Jimmy (Stephen Ira) is a 15 year old kid who approaches the UCLA Gender Clinic feeling confident about his identity as a boy, even while his parents and doctors continue to tell him otherwise. Jimmy is playful and easy-going, often joking about himself and others throughout the interviews. to tell him otherwise. Jimmy is playful and easy-going, often joking about himself and others. "Framing Agnes" features preeminent trans culture-makers breathing new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury. In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Gender Clinic seeking gender-affirming surgery. The film wants to disrupt the relationship between authorship and authority. There's no group of people more ubiquitously tied to our current decade’s politics than trans people. TIME’s Transgender Tipping Point in 2014 was just that, the catalyzing moment that brought trans people into the mainstream consciousness in a way we hadn’t been for nearly forty years. The documentary is grounded in a commitment to using experimental and performative methods to put pressure on culture-making moments that impact the trans community, from animating medical technologies to tell a story about the institutional surveillance of gender, to a performative and satirical response to invasive and imagined questions about minoritized identities. "Framing Agnes" is born out of these fundamental beginnings which are rooted in a belief that trans people should remain leaders of the trans movement, and narrators of trans stories. This project is uniquely positioned to address critical questions that are being illuminated by the current spotlight on trans issues. The recent proliferation of stories on transgender rights and figures in popular media has resulted in unprecedented attention on gender non-conforming communities. Presenting one person’s story, rather than a story about a group, is a common storytelling method in medical and media histories of trans people. For example, the 1993 murder of Brandon Teena, as depicted in Kimberley Pierce’s "Boys Don’t Cry" (1999), remains a touchpoint of both news media and Hollywood attention. Trans people are positioned in isolation, untethered from community and family. In reality, trans communities have been navigating and world-building together behind the scenes since before 'trans' was a thing. Isolation is, in fact, a narrative produced and patrolled by medicine and the media. Representation of trans and gender nonconforming communities has changed dramatically in the last decade. "Framing Agnes" emerges as an incisive opportunity to both acknowledge social transformation and remember the formative, often flawed makings of history. Our project is emboldened by a team of artists motivated to blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction, past and present, in pursuit of a more expansive and nuanced future. The film is a labour of love that has relied upon the grit, talent and endurance of so many. We can imagine and enact social change. Indeed, Agnes survived by breaking frames of interpretation and understanding. "Framing Agnes" aims to show us how this may be one of the few arenas where our lives and our histories have been well-documented and linked to the contemporary times in which we find ourselves living, dying, and sometimes thriving. Are we evidence of the sexual revolution’s victory? Or a disconcerting evolution of the tech era? Are we a fundamental threat to heterosexuality? Or glamorous entertainers giving thrills to bored housewives? Examining and upending these narratives, as "Framing Agnes" aims to do, will illuminate not only how media narratives about trans people have changed over time, but also how the concerns of an era are read onto the bodies of some of the most marginalized in society without their consent. The film becomes an important object of study for those interested in popular culture, media studies, and the history of race, class, and gender. There’s extraordinary value in imperfect histories. They help us recognize where we're now and imagine new possibilities for our future. As society wrestles with the legacy of histories told and buried, "Framing Agnes" offers something urgently relevant to help us move differently towards a more equitable future. Written by Gregory Mann