An affair bringing many members of the industry back together, Mad Fate is a project that defies genres in its frenzied tale of destiny. Directed by Soi Cheang rejoining with writers Yau-Nai-Hoi and Melvin Li, they bring their collective years of experience and talent to make a masterful tale about fate and our place in […]
By Gabby Foor and Keri O’Shea We are rounding off our coverage of Fantasia for this year with another block of short films; this time, the uniting factor is that all of these films were directed by a female director. There’s no one genre uniting these films per se, although there do seem to be […]
By Gabby Foor and Keri O’Shea We were delighted to be offered Fantasia’s short film blocks for coverage again this year. Small Gauge Trauma, the festival’s genre short film collection, is a great way to spot upcoming talent, clever homage, brand-new ideas and ingenious storytelling. As ever, the range has been incredible, with everything from […]
We know something’s up as #BOSSBABE gets underway: not only are we at a funeral, but we’re at a very glam funeral, one which could almost be a photoshoot, if not for the sales talk colouring the eulogy. This eulogy – which refers to the entrepreneurial genius of the deceased, marking her out as a […]
New Life (2023) opens in medias res: a bloodied, panicked young woman makes her way along a street, clearly fearful of being seen or stopped. She heads home, cleans herself up – but her safety and her memories of this place soon get left behind, and she’s moving again. It’s immediately clear that an old […]
Review by Darren Gaskell When directionless Taka (Sho Mineo) receives a mysterious tape containing details as to the whereabouts of his hitherto missing archaeologist brother Mune (So Yamanaka) he sets off on a rescue mission, which also comes complete with side quest relating to the retrieval of a wooden box. Of course, the wooden box […]
Home Invasion (2023) is not your standard style of documentary; there’s no talking heads here, no voiceover, no familiar features as such. Instead, it all unfolds via on-screen text, which displays to viewers via what looks like an aperture, representing the film’s key subject matter (or at least, key for the first hour): the home […]
My first short film experience was an enchanting one. Transylvanie, the French short film from writer and director Rodrigue Huart, is a dark, beautiful little story, straddling the world of Let the Right One In, of how children are already a little like vampires: secretive, creative, and a bit creepy sometimes. The tale follows young […]
With the help of Shotaro Ishinomori, writer and director Hideaki Anno is back with another iconic hero entry into the massively popular Shin Japan Heroes Universe with Shin Kamen Rider (2023). Created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kamen Rider which debuted in the early 70s and boasts nearly 100 episodes, this film comes only […]
Hippo (2023) isn’t a particularly easy film to sum up, much less to recommend along easily definable lines: it’s an often moody, deeply eclectic, art-house-leaning project with a storyline which is both minimal and yet…profound, at times. It doesn’t sit snugly in any one genre, it moves from vast or unpalatable topics into domestic familiarity […]
I haven’t had a film pull me in so many different directions at once in some time, all of them curious and moving. With Love and a Major Organ, an absolute genre bender packed with innovation from director Kim Albright and writer Julia Lederer, is full to the brim with emotion, though no person is […]