MIKHAIL KRICHMAN WINS FOR LEVIATHAN AT CAMERIMAGE

Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan adds yet another major festival award to its trophy case. Poland's prestigious Camerimage festival, which specifically honours films for their cinematography, handed its top honor to Mikhail Krichman for his strong work on the Oscar contender. The jury, which was headed by director Roland Joffe (two of whose films have received Academy Awards for their cinematography) presented Ehab Assal with the second place citation for his work on Omar, and Andre Turpin the third place citation for his work on Mommy. Recipients of awards in other sections of the festival were, thankfully, from more obscure titles, at a festival which included screenings of restored Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger prints, Oscar hopefuls like Birdman and The Imitation Game showing, and appearances from major celebrities such as Martin Scorsese and Philip Kaufman. Full details of winners below:

Golden Frog

Leviathan (Mikhail Krichman and Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Silver Frog

Omar (Ehab Assal and Hany Abu-Assad)

Bronze Frog

Mommy (Xavier Dolan and Andre Turpin)

Golden Frog - 3D Films

Beyond the Edge (Richard Bluck and Leanne Pooley)

Best 3D Feature Film

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (Thomas Hardmeier and Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Golden Frog - Polish Films

Hardkor Disco (Kacper Fertacz and Krzysztof Skonieczny)

Golden Frog - Grand Prix for Feature-Length Documentary

Blood (Yura Gautsel, Sergei Maksimov and Alina Rudnitskaya)

Special Mention for Feature-Length Documentary

Monte Adentro (Nicolas Macario Alonso and Mauricio Vidal)

Directors' Debut Competition

Theeb (Naji Abu Nowar and Wolfgang Thaler)

Cinematographers' Debut Competition

When Animals Dream (Jonas Alexander Arnby and Niels Thastum)

Golden Tadpole - Laszlo Kovacz Award for Student Film

Berlin Troika (Andrej Gontcharov and Julian Landweer)

Silver Tadpole for Student Film

The Shadow Forest (Andrzej Cichocki)

Bronze Tadpole for Student Film

Do You Even Know (Arthur Lecouturier and Clemence Warnier)

Special Award for Student Film

Room 55 (James Blann and Rose Glass)

Golden Frog for Short Documentary

Starting Point (Przemyslaw Niczyporuk and Michael Szczesniak)

Special Mention for Short Documentary

Shipwreck (Morgan Knibbe)

Lifetime Achievement Award

Caleb Deschanel

Philip Kaufman

Polish Filmmakers Association Award

German Film and Television Academy

TRASH WINS ROME AUDIENCE AWARD

In a career characterised by the steady downward progression in quality of his upwardly 'prestigious' films, Stephen Daldry has shocked many by turning out a bona fide hit. Trash, which is written by Richard Curtis, has won the top award at the Rome Film Festival. Daldry's film competed against a host of other titles for the audience award, since the fest did away with official juries this year. There were special awards to directors Miike Takashi and Walter Salles, a variety of artistic and technical awards and some high profile winners, including Gone Girl. Full list of winners right here:

The BNL People's Choice Award: Gala

Trash (Stephen Daldry)

The BNL People's Choice Award: Cinema d'Oggi

12 Citizens (Zu Ang)

The BNL People's Choice Award: Mondo Genere

Haider (Vishal Bhardwaj)

The BNL People's Choice Award: Cinema Italia (Fiction)

Fino a Qui Tutto Bene (Roan Johnson)

The BNL People's Choice Award: Cinema Italia (Documentary)

Looking for Kadija (Francesco G. Raganato)

More winners after the cut!

BEST OF LFF 2014

To wrap up my coverage of the 2014 BFI London Film Festival, here's my list of the best of the fest. Only one win per film, so some have had to make do with runner-up citations in lieu of officially placing first more than once.

Best Film
From What Is Before (Lav Diaz)
Lav Diaz does it again with yet another extraordinary rumination on the human condition. What a cliche that might be to say, but his films are just that profound and that monumental. I saw many great films at LFF this year, but none even came close to beating From What Is Before.
Last year's winner: Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)

Special Mention
Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (Wiam Simav Bedirxan and Ossama Mohammed)
This gutting documentary is perhaps the most emotionally shattering film I've seen, and not just at LFF this year. It's brilliantly, beautifully cinematic, but as much a vital humanitarian document as an artistic one. Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait will be a documentary for the ages.
Last year's winner: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)

Competition for these top awards came from Aleksey German's Hard to Be a God, primarily. Deserving winners would also have included The Duke of Burgundy, Foxcatcher, The Furthest End Awaits, Jauja and The Tribe, though, truthfully, they didn't stand a chance.

Best Directing
Aleksey German (Hard to Be a God)
And he's dead! Completed by his widow Svetlana Karmalita, and his son, fellow filmmaker Aleksey German Jr., Hard to Be a God is the maverick Russian director's final film. It took roughly six years to even get off the ground, and just about that long to actually make thereafter, but the immensely long and complex production was wholly worth it. German's inimitable style is pushed to its extreme in this bewilderingly detailed stew of sense, nonsense and a wealth of unidentifiable shit (literally) in between. An obvious choice.
Runners-up: Chiang Hsiu Chiung (The Furthest End Awaits), Lav Diaz (From What Is Before)
Last year's winners: Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani (The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears)

Best Female Actor
Li Yi Qing (Dearest)
Peter Chan's Dearest is, unquestionably, the weakest film to win in any of these seven categories, but it's far from the least deserving winner when one considers why it's done so. I've seen few films so packed with great, truly great, performances as this one: child actors such as Zhou Pin Rui and Zhu Dong Xu, and adult performers like Huang Bo, Hao Lei and Zhao Wei, the latter two of whom would have been worthy winners in this category. But it's the very young Li Yi Qing who was my favourite, in a very small role as a young girl left in an orphanage when her mother is sent to prison. In just a few scenes, she'll completely and utterly break your heart.
Runners-up: Evelyn Vargas (From What Is Before), Zhao Wei (Dearest)
Last year's winner: Isabelle Huppert (Abuse of Weakness)

Best Male Actor
Body / Luke (White God)
The rules state that there may be no tied wins, but I had to make an exception in this case. You see, I couldn't tell the difference between Body and Luke, the two leads playing the same role, Hagen, in Mundruczo Kornel's gripping thriller White God. What's so remarkable about their win is that neither Body nor Luke is a human being - they're dogs! But the intensity and the spontaneity of their performances, and the incredible range of emotions both was fully capable of expressing with their whole bodies, made them the clear frontrunners for this win.
Runners-up: Zhu Dong Xu (Dearest), Steve Carell (Foxcatcher)
Last year's winner: Elyes Aguis (The Past)

Best Screenplay
Lisandro Alonso and Fabian Casas (Jauja)
Lisandro Alonso's superb western, relocated to colonial Patagonia, is awesomely well-considered, considering Alonso's sparing style of scripting. The concept and the themes behind it craft an innately intriguing drama, with a series of subtle but remarkable shifts in style and setting that will boggle the brain to brilliant effect. It's a wondrous film, and wonderfully written.
Runners-up: Wiam Simav Bedirxan and Ossama Mohammed (Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait), Lav Diaz (From What Is Before)
Last year's winners: Christophe Bataille and Panh Rithy (The Missing Picture)

Artistic or Technical Achievement
Faris Badwan and Rachel Zeffira (The Duke of Burgundy) - music
A beguiling, 1970s-inflected score from duo Cat's Eyes for Peter Strickland's film that might be described exactly as such. The music for The Duke of Burgundy slithers through chords and cadences into more chords and cadences, a semi-entrancing soundtrack of brief cuts drawn as much from the pop music sphere as from the classical. Not only a perfect compliment to the film's thematic, narrative and stylistic complexity, but an essential component of it too, and a marvellous standalone work.
Runners-up: Timo Salminen (Jauja) - cinematography, Sergey Kokovin, Georgy Kropachev and Elena Zhukova (Hard to Be a God) - production design
Last year's winner: Heidi Chan (Rigor Mortis) - makeup design

LEVIATHAN WINS LONDON FILM FESTIVAL OFFICIAL COMPETITION

The London Film Festival only includes a small fraction of its selection each year, roughly 5%, in its official competition, but they're many of them excellent features. Critical mega-hit Leviathan won the top award from Jeremy Thomas' jury, reportedly the unanimous choice, beating my preferred choice, The Duke of Burgundy. Full winners below:

Official Competition

Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Special Mention

Girlhood (Celine Sciamma)

Documentary Competition

Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (Wiam Simav Bedirxan and Ossama Mohammed)

First Feature Competition

The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

Best British Debut

Sameena Jabeen Ahmed (Catch Me Daddy)

BFI Fellowship

Stephen Frears

LFF REVIEW - THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY (PETER STRICKLAND)

Love is a torment in Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy, a third consecutive feature from the director to appear wildly ambitious and yet utterly effortless. His burgeoning, meticulous, vivid mise-en-scene presents content as context, a bountiful hive of concealed information - he delves as far into his characters' cerebrums as their crotches, and as the amplified atmospheric noise of insects, obsessively small, obsessively detailed, seeps into reality. But what is reality? Strickland toys with our expectations, turning askew situations around, and around again, and again, our senses luxuriating in the immense, idiosyncratic beauty of his film as our heads gasp for some clarity, some definite sense of place. We will not be afforded such distinctions; nor will his characters. Their carnal yet chaste relationship, obsessed with whatever extremities they feel compelled to pursue, takes the form of a Moebius strip, like a spiral of repetition, encompassing birth, death, rebirth, life and its byproducts to be consumed, a fetid pool of textures left swirling around them as does one's placenta, or perhaps one's faeces, if not taken proper care of. Proper care is perverted in The Duke of Burgundy, though, obsessively distorted to fit one's needs; what of the relationship's needs? Obsession is obsessed with itself, descending down that spiral to the most minute details. What pleasure Strickland permits us to derive from this film, of endless analytical value, is in his playfulness, that toying that he extends to so much of his work. It's self-reflexive style, progressive pastiche, and it's the most persuasive argument conceivable for non-narrative cinema: The Duke of Burgundy is of such enormous worth as said exercise, as a mosaic of exquisite artistry, be it in Andrea Flesch's supple fabrics and sensuous seams, Cat's Eyes' aptly non-classifiable score or just in Strickland's singular artistic intentions. It's an experience meant for those willing to experience it, and its premier message lies therein.

LFF REVIEW - THE WHITE HAIRED WITCH OF LUNAR KINGDOM (JACOB CHEUNG)

Jacob Cheung employs tools of simplicity and serenity to hysterical effect in The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, an overblown and over-complicated martial arts picture that mistakes business for energy and melodrama for emotional sincerity. It's easy to see where he got waylaid - the plot doesn't exactly lend itself to restraint and carefulness, though with so many classical twists the film could have used much more of both - but stylistically this is a gauche and rather disrespectful film that will disappoint all but the hardiest fans of the genre. Cheung, whether knowingly or not, constructs a consciously artificial historical environment, responding to the magical elements of the text with a lack of imagination: the lens flare, the cumbersome production values and the brash, Westernised score (unfortunately now commonplace among many similar films) cheapen The White Haired Witch, which otherwise has enormous potential for sensory brilliance. Such cannily-selected details as the impressive authentic scenery or Timmy Yip's magnificent costumes are relegated to the background, as Cheung over-emphasises hollow spectacle, be it in interminable close-ups of mediocre acting, or poorly edited wuxia sequences. Tung Wei's action choreography is creative, but indistinguishable from the array of lacklustre stunt work spliced into these scenes. Indeed, Cheung displays a determination to render inherently dramatic aspects as banality, with his attentions apparently focused upon more questionable content: in particular, a wretched final scene that is just the wrong side of being an outrageous triumph of bad taste, but is therefore merely outrageously bad.

LFF REVIEW - FAR FROM MEN (DAVID OELHOFFEN)

The futility and the absurdity of law over a lawless landscape. In the struggle to exact their cultural identity upon Algeria's fearsome desert, men of all different heritages and creeds engage in a senseless conflict, feuding over a place in the world that eats them alive in great swathes. One detects the natural tension in David Oelhoffen's Far from Men, the perception that danger is forever present, even as supposed enemies are not. There's an otherworldly desolation to the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, a notion that these men are aliens upon this land, their only real hope to see sense and abandon it. They may adapt through openness - the willingness to accept their shortcomings and realise their true, humble purpose in life. Tellingly, it is only the men whose 'honour' has been stripped of them who are capable of such - they are loners, outsiders, fittingly dwarfed in tremendous isolation by the impressive scenery. Oelhoffen's film is lean and succinct, as one expects a thriller of its kind to be, but not as one has to be. There's relatively little analytical scope in Far from Men, the intriguing complexities of out enigmatic leads revealed early to be mere hollow character descriptions, and Oelhoffen resists the opportunity to develop their relationship to its full potential. The film is mostly only as it seems: simple and plain, though effective in its plainness. Whether it's as densely textured as one hopes it will be or not, the fact is that Far from Men is a solid piece of work founded on solid thematic and stylistic grounds.

LFF REVIEW - THE FURTHEST END AWAITS (CHIANG HSIU CHIUNG)

The adult characters in Chiang Hsiu Chiung's exquisitely sensitive drama The Furthest End Awaits each experience the lure of memory, of familiarity, of an existence that has passed, abandoning them in a space from which they have not. It is when one runs from one's future that the real damage is done, but when one accepts the need to move forward - but with patience, always - that damage can be repaired. The Furthest End Awaits has the trappings of a gentle 'slice-of-life' drama, simple, uncomplicated, observant and non-judgemental. Those are valuable qualities for most films to possess; Chiang appreciates their true value by applying them to a concept that only gradually, with the same patience she admires in her characters, becomes apparent. The film formates positive, optimistic methods of adjustment to the complexities of pursuing a practical existence - in Japan, where it is particularly pertinent to feel rooted in both past and future, given its rich heritage and its lust for development in a great many regards. Old rituals and new technologies combine, and bridge gaps, heal discord, when their masters are of pure intention. Chiang's presentation is plain, her content clear, a vast reverence for the beauty of the natural world and all of the life therein showing in her careful attentiveness, her respect for the delicate textures and thin materials so prevalent on this narrow strip of islands, facing a gigantic ocean on one side and a gigantic continent on the other. She finds inroads to the deepest depths of her characters' souls, unveiling the benevolent, sincere desires that lie beneath all the unnecessary concerns of life. Their preoccupation with revisiting and returning becomes cleansed, a gracious comprehension of the healthier requirement of looking ahead replacing it. Families that have been broken or lost, its members left as isolated as they are at this rural tip, this furthest end, are re-found, bonds re-made, and harmony restored. This is a hugely spiritual, beautiful film.

LFF REVIEW - SONG OF THE SEA (TOMM MOORE)

The connection between the flourishing animated film culture in Japan to the fledgling one in Ireland may not be evident to all, but it's a connection that makes unexpected sense, despite the two nations being half a world away. Both are island nations at the edge of a continent - like many island nations, their culture on the whole is defined in no small part by the sea. Rural dwellers close to the shore live existences that are extensions of the water that faces them for as far as the eye can see in Tomm Moore's enchanting animation Song of the Sea. Moore makes full and sensitive use of Ireland's rich magical mythology, so well-developed by centuries of isolated living. The challenge when tackling material like this is to perfect the presentation; luckily, Moore and his art director Adrien Mericeau have a masterful aesthetic intuition, and Song of the Sea is, at times, an extraordinarily beautiful film, possibly even too beautiful to thoroughly digest all of its visual wonders in one sitting. The wealth of shades the employ to imbue their 2D images with vibrancy and character lend them a glowing quality that puts most expensive 3D animated designs from major American studios to utter shame. The stylistic reverence is apparent too, reinforcing the authenticity in Moore and writer Will Collins' concept. Moore has devised an elaborate window onto the natural world that exists within and beneath the increasingly-urbanised world we've attempted to create above it. His instinct to elucidate, visually, does render the film devoid of much mystery - the storytelling in Song of the Sea is rather prosaic as a result. But the magic remains, in glorious, wondrous beauty, allowing the film to rank among the finer features of recent years from those animation masters half a world away.

LFF REVIEW - LEVIATHAN (ANDREY ZVYAGINTSEV)

By and large, the boundaries between Greek tragedy, social satire and soap opera are thin and difficult to define, often set more by the tone of the project, rather than the content. Andrey Zvyagintsev is brave to utilise elements from all three dramatic genres in total earnest, even if his inevitably sharp cinematic intuition leads one to opine that his intentions in so doing were wholly self-aware. Leviathan is his most unambiguous essay on the modern human condition yet, so brilliantly represented, as ever, by the uncivilised citizens of a supposedly civilised country, his native Russia. The film is obvious, but always on target in its excoriating tirade against our own species, the ludicrous means to which we go to justify how viciously we abuse each other. These machines are rigged not only to reward the undeserving but to punish the victims in society, and Zvyagintsev observes no visible means by which to take said machine out. People of an overpopulated world end up as detritus on the beach, indistinguishable from the sand and rocks; their oppressors and murderers exploit that machine, that leviathan, to maximum advantage. If it seems ridiculous, objectively, the numerous stages of degradation which these innocent characters must undergo all make total sense within the film, its grandeur excusing all, its allegorical purpose excusing all, its position as Greek tragedy, or social satire, or soap opera excusing all, its humour excusing all. Equally unambiguous about Leviathan is its straightforward, honest humour. Zvyagintsev does not imply that we ought not to cry or despair, he just forces us to laugh through it. His comic touch is even more effortless than his flair for high drama, though its lasting impact is less.

LFF REVIEW - JAUJA (LISANDRO ALONSO)

Lisandro Alonso brings us on a journey back to reality, across unknown spaces in both geography and time. Jauja occurs as does a dream, its advent in some vague realm of understanding, giving way to the weight of the abstract that hovers above it, turning the image on Timo Salminen's grainy film acidic shades of chartreuse, lemon and beguiling blue tones. Red cuts through at times, a crude intrusion, its uncultured arrogance trespassing on these pastoral scenes, just as Alonso's cast of intruders do. They have become lost in ostentation and self-importance, imposing upon the land on which they tread unnatural laws and habits. First and last in Alonso's concern is that land, that which these humans purport to conquer; they are forever at its mercy, unengaged with it until they can avoid its dominance no longer. They are each so rigorously posed, occupying a supposedly impenetrable space in their environment, certain in their confidence, blind to what lies beyond each new horizon. Oh, those horizons. The eye scans either side of them for some sign of warmth and welcome - Jauja's beauty is soothing, almost distractingly so, but in a deceptive, cruelly beautiful way, and thus we do not doubt where the true power lies in this intriguing film. Viggo Mortensen's Danish captain's sense of self begins to wither as his physical strength and mental lucidity do - he embarks on that journey back to reality with us, encountering little but mystery at its end. The cryptic close of Jauja awakens us to our own arrogance, our innate apprehension that we will learn, we will understand, no matter how long it takes. It takes Captain Dinesen his whole life and longer, yet the landscape he will traverse to his death is the most unfamiliar of all.

LFF REVIEW - FOXCATCHER (BENNETT MILLER)

Bennett Miller redefines the classic American male in terms such a male might understand. Or, in terms the man who has been conditioned to consider himself thus might understand. The coarse chanting that closes Foxcatcher reverberates through one's mind into the credits, the depth of its penetration frighteningly far into the psyche of a confused, broken, susceptible mind. Channing Tatum's face is a golden canvas for abuse, open, blank, the perfect receptacle for a ruthless hunter's warped insecurities. What John du Pont cannot comprehend - what none of these misguided men can - is that they are not the hunters: these vulnerable individuals are the prey of society, of a culture that plies them with praise in expectation, and rejects them in humiliation when they inevitably come up short. A sexless, mostly woman-less sealed environment, the wrestling circles of Foxcatcher provide a safe space for men who have failed to fit into that society, but such wounded souls, so unwilling to admit to their own deficiencies in the hope that they will, some day, meet what has been expected of them, are incapable of maintaining harmony here. Miller operates on the terms of his characters throughout, expressing emotional content through physical interpretation, touch and sight communicating what speech and thought can't. And injury to the body thereby means injury to the mind, degrading the male in his very essence; even the wealthy, irresponsible males who appear dominant to the classically superior, 'stronger' man at first are delivered a fitting pummelling - again, on their terms, through more direct psychological humiliation. du Pont must escape his own legacy, destined to reach its pathetic end at his hands, and the expectation that carries, and also his own physicality, and the shame it unavoidably brings upon him. Three men, three supposedly formidable forces, collide in this horrible comedy / hilarious horror film, their encounters reimagining the traditional sports drama in that most historically 'shameful' of concepts: latent homoeroticism. Foxcatcher mocks most specifically the culture that expects heteronormative simplicity, and rejects those unable to conform. The naive jock, the closeted creep and the sensitive bear dry hump themselves into obscurity, punishment and death, respectively. A fitting end for any would-be 'classic American male'.

LFF REVIEW - HORSE MONEY (PEDRO COSTA)

The rich density of Pedro Costa's form meets the clinical purity of its application in Horse Money, his latest piece on hermetic environments influencing damaged minds. The coldness of his technique and the warmth of the devices he employs achieve a characteristic austere decadence, each individually isolated and given full, unlimited space to flourish. There's an unmistakable poetry to what Costa does, an intense, heady beauty, bringing with it the sensation of smothered life, all existence roasting under the oppressive cloak of despair. It's supreme style, but to what end? Costa unites all of his artistic tools to express a legacy of pain among the indigenous population of Cape Verde and their descendants, largely as borne out in Ventura, an ageing man struggling to locate his sanity, lost in an institution that will reveal to him the essence of the challenges he faces in overcoming the past. It's a simple, basic purpose to which Horse Money has been put, though ripe for intensive probing - after all, the theme here is no less than the collective grief of an entire people - probing which does not surface. Costa appears to enamoured with the grandeur of his construct, the theatricality he finds so alluring, the momentousness of his intentions that he leaves it alone, a monolith of symbolism and archaic notions of artistic integrity that feel ungainly, under-developed, and actually quite pointless. One character even remarks that life has always been hard for Cape Verdeans, in such direct terms - the film acknowledges as much, and then acknowledges it again, and again, and again etc. It's plain old poverty porn, but it remains undeniable that no-one knows how to frame an image like Pedro Costa, no-one possesses anything like the talent that lies behind the sensorial sumptuousness of his films. Whether that redeems an otherwise questionable film, or vice versa, is difficult to determine.

LFF REVIEW - LI'L QUINQUIN (BRUNO DUMONT)

Bruno Dumont's chilly comedy exists both as an extension of his signature style and as a perversion of it. Li'l Quinquin possesses the same wry, aloof distance that has characterised his austere dramas thus far in his career, only it takes these qualities further than ever yet before, applying that sardonic edge to themselves. It's with this weary self-critiquing stance that Li'l Quinquin becomes a portrait of pessimism and profanity come full circle, fighting fire with fire, or perhaps ice with ice. Actually, Dumont's long pauses and the apparent simplicity and basic clarity of his mise-en-scene provide the perfect canvas for comedy, sourcing a certain, strange comic timing in the idiosyncrasy of his touch. In a landscape which, we come to observe, has been predictably smothered in an insidious evil, disguised in plain sight among the innocent naivety of these people and the bracing freshness of the Breton air, Dumont poses that we either hold our sides from laughing, or hold our heads in despair. The gutting final scene, after a gradual darkening in tone, assures the viewer that Dumont's inherent humanism has not been lost among all the politically incorrect humour. After over three hours, what qualities in Li'l Quinquin were once cute and beguiling have been unmasked as falsities, essentially, themselves disguising the harsh reality that Dumont desires us to take notice of - the film entire plays out like the slow, dispiriting realisation that the answers were there all along, staring you in the face, and you've spent too long enjoying yourself to make a difference now. Dumont's flippancy remains a tough sell, no matter how impressive his technique of introducing grandiose elements only to instantly degrade them, it can never offer genuine comfort. Where one may find such comfort in Li'l Quinquin, though, is in a peculiar attribute: the mentally handicapped actors here employed naturally project a dislocation with the rest of the world, but Dumont's world itself is so dislocated, that there's finally some small sense of belonging here.

LFF REVIEW - THE TRIBE (MYROSLAV SLABOSHPYTSKIY)

To see is to know, but to feel is to understand. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's masterful exploration of different forms of communication, The Tribe, is, for once, a truly original piece of cinema. Its candour, spilling over into vicious brutality, utterly dissolves the potential bewilderment, and Slaboshpytskiy demonstrates an extraordinary comprehension of the visual language of film, more than compensating for what his film lacks in verbal dialogue. With meticulous mise-en-scene, he expresses sublime silence and noise via almost purely visual means, the leanness of his technique directing the attention toward the most pertinent elements within each frame. Articulating a primal essence in his fixation on the physical, the language he discovers, devises and enhances bears formidable power. The long tracking shots he employs create new spaces and perspectives within larger environments, acting as an invitation to interpret Slaboshpytskiy's images both as they appear within the action and outside of it - our role is as outsider and observer, an objective participant as the film's male lead gradually regresses from this role. Watching, as we do, often from behind barriers, we begin to know what it feels like to be deprived of a supposedly essential sense; it's as the characters' experiences increase in intensity, as cracks appear in codes of behaviour, that both they and we begin to feel. Slaboshpytskiy de-sensationalises the dramatic events that ensue by filming them in their entirety, his camera unflinching, their reality accented - he thereby actually strengthens them, affords them greater effect. As The Tribe's narrative specificity narrows, like the long canals of space prevalent throughout the film, its allegorical power expands. A riveting and shocking film, The Tribe succeeds as both an essay on the nature of societies' attitude toward the individual, and as a terrific personal, human drama.

LFF REVIEW - IN THE BASEMENT (ULRICH SEIDL)

The people in Ulrich Seidl's films inhabit their own sealed space - Seidl's space, the landlocked nation of Austria. And, within his static interior shots, framed by doorways and corridors, their insularity is heightened, the bizarre and bewildering environments of their minds entirely conceivable in such a closed, closeted, sterile space. Whether In the Basement, which bears extraordinary resemblance to Seidl's fictional films both in aesthetic and in character, represents a neat concentration of his unique directorial style, or appraises those films as masterpieces of skewed realism in demonstrating just how truthful his vision of his homeland is, is unclear in a larger context. But this is Seidl's space, one that invites you to question the boundary between fiction and reality, that depicts genuine occurrences that seem so extreme as to appear fantastical, or staged ones with an intense, unflinching realism. In the Basement is, then, a horror comedy in bracing purity, yet while one might struggle to perceive such a genre product as existing within the frame of documentary filmmaking, here one is. It's his portrait of a nation, set underground, glints of sunlight only occasionally mingling with nasty artificial lights, an unnatural place for humanity to exist. The most satisfying aspect of In the Basement is exploring that invisible boundary, and examining this process in relation to documentary as an art form - if these curious creatures, or perhaps only a few of them, are performing for Seidl's camera, under direction or just out of personal desire, then how can one evaluate the truthfulness of anyone's intentions while stood before a film camera? Seidl's technique, and the purpose driving it, have become unfortunately blatant, the vivid obviousness of In the Basement resembling a conscious attempt to appeal to the masses whose sensitivities have not yet been tested by his work. Nonetheless, the film is funny and fascinating, and as worthy a document of Austrian society as of its Austrian creator.

LFF REVIEW - EDEN (MIA HANSEN-LOVE)

Paul sees the world differently from others. Or, to rephrase, he hears it differently, a silent chorus of birdsong, a million audio tracks converging into a brightly coloured flight of fancy. Yet Mia Hansen-Love's Eden is neither a depressive tragedy about artistic genius blighted by commercial failure, nor a celebratory biopic - it's just the real thing. Hansen-Love's own familiarity with the house music scene that blossomed in Paris through the '90s and into the '00s begets a frank portrait of the seminal experiences of one of its pioneers. There is glorious success and dismal failure, the only constancy (aside from the unrelenting financial difficulty of such a lifestyle) being the music; even as it morphs, adapting to fit the times, its insistent Frenchness and the qualities that entails hold firm. What these young DJs offer is invention and reverence in perfect harmony, ensuring the artistic merit of their work even as it changes over time. Hansen-Love knows well, though, the inevitable impossibility of sticking too closely to one's guns - in Eden, music can heal wounds, but it cannot prevent injury from occurring to begin with. This is an optimistic film despite its downbeat notes, and Hansen-Love possesses the wisdom to stress the practicalities of everyday life, not just benign nostalgia, thus allowing reality to give vital perspective to the viewer, as it does to the characters. They largely refuse to give up, working even through the hard times, maintaining their strength of self. The evocation of specific moments is beautiful, especially the slow pans across heady nightclub scenes, the euphoria provided through simple soundwaves uniting the audiences in attendance; also the passing of time is excellently depicted, with Hansen-Love charting the changes in circumstances, whether big or small, momentous or inconsequential, or even both. The fresh, acidic, pallid palette of Northern France is perfectly judged, though doesn't even dare to compete for attention with the soundtrack. It's a thorough and thrilling snapshot, like a Facebook photo album, of French house music over the last 22 years, and an ideal distillation of the film as a whole.

LFF REVIEW - SILVERED WATER, SYRIA SELF-PORTRAIT (WIAM SIMAV BEDIRXAN AND OSSAMA MOHAMMED)

Searching the images they've been bestowed by citizens of war-torn Syria, Wiam Simav Bedirxan and Ossama Mohammed find truth, but no clarity. Their own footage attempts to better delineate their interpretations of the recent conflict, which they unambiguously present from a rebel perspective, yet here they find only more questions in response to the questions they pose. Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait is cinema in and of itself, its own response to the Syrian war but also to cinema as a whole; it's virtually not a possibility to witness what they have compiled here and not wonder why other directors try, why other films even get made. Is there so important, so worthy a discussion as that which Bedirxan and Mohammed spark herein, in a work of singular artistry that is cumulatively difficult to describe. Its individual components, though, are identifiably harrowing, hopeless, shudderingly horrible, as draining as one could expect any film to be. Above and beyond the transcendent poetry with which Silvered Water has been created, this must be its primary purpose, and there's no more appropriate purpose for a document such as this, of such unimaginable horror. And it is truly unimaginable, non-sensationalised yet as graphic in its content and as immediate in its effect as the most gratuitous of movie violence - thus, it acts as a condemnation of violence as a concept, be it the mere threat of it, or the mere simulated representation of it. There's nothing as real as the real thing. Bedirxan and Mohammed communicate such a phenomenal wealth of material in even the most ostensibly basic of shots or devices, bringing to mind the early works of James Benning perhaps, but most directly question the concept of change: where have we come from to end up in so dire a position as the current situation in Syria, and where will we end up in future? The film provides only more questions in response to this question, the only discernible clarity in Bedirxan and Mohammed's pessimistic, though entirely comprehensible conclusion: we live only to die, and thus 'survival is the strongest of choices'.

LFF REVIEW - IT FOLLOWS (DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL)

It's not what follows in David Robert Mitchell's second film as a director, and his second to centre upon a group of American teenagers, but what does not follow. It Follows is a film composed of a number of promising, provocative concepts, followed up by largely banal and unadventurous filmmaking. Criticising a film for something that it is not is a practice I don't approve of when forming my evaluations of films, but it is only that It Follows bears the blatant potential to be a superior film than it actually is, in that it often indeed is that superior film. Mitchell possesses a grand sense of style, gleaned perhaps from the various works of artistic inspiration he consciously invokes, and he puts it to sporadically good use; there are several imaginatively mounted set-pieces, usually involving a considerable arsenal of frights, all derived from the one, unexpectedly chilling motif. Yet Mitchell allows too much of It Follows to become referential in a more latent, less intriguing way, instead invoking the less memorable exposition sequences in the horror films that have collectively brought about this nostalgic pastiche. Although, Mitchell is markedly stronger at delineating his personal style as a director, as the '80s references are already tired at the film's advent. Despite a gradual diminishing in interest deserved and delivered (save an effective climactic scene), the genesis of It Follows' mediocrity is, at least, founded in a concept that serves as a fresh spin on horror staples, but also serves as serious food for serious thought. American attitudes toward sexuality, particularly regarding teens, are explored tentatively, and with little genuine sense of assurance, nor unique insight, but in this aspect It Follows demonstrates a desire to display intelligence and thoughtfulness, and a willingness to push the boundaries of mainstream indie horror, if only a minimal amount.

LFF REVIEW - A GIRL AT MY DOOR (JULY JUNG)

She arrives as the sole moving figure in a sedated landscape, a disruptive force, like paint stripper eroding layer upon layer of sweetness and simplicity to uncover the caustic rot that has been concealed beneath. July Jung's A Girl at My Door is a film about what we reveal, and when, and how, and our choices therein. Her sensitivity is easily consumed as an accurate representation of that aforementioned simplicity, but Jung's balance of the delicate and the destructive is, in retrospect, enormously well-maintained. She disguises it behind an apparently average human drama, which itself is finely scripted and acted, and allows it to fuel and, in turn, feed off these theatrics - the film is a much more intricately-constructed piece of work than it ostensibly appears to be. Jung emphasises the fragility of her characters and their situations, these slim, slight Korean women, riding rickety bikes through rustling fields of grass along skinny dirt tracks; it keeps the film appropriately on edge, and her keen insight into her characters' thoughts provides a legitimate purpose for that edge - there's always something at risk, and, in attempting to instil order in a largely orderless community, the smallest nudge of the domino sends the whole stack tumbling down. Yet one remains unprepared for quite how hard the film's final stretch will hit, its clinical cold-heartedness serving as the ultimate disruption, potentially even threatening to restore those layers of careless, orderless paint over a rot that has not yet been purged. Viewed from the perspective of its later developments, there's little to criticise about A Girl at My Door (though rarely a lot to rave about either), still it's difficult to excuse the loss of energy in this closing section, which rather runs over the same points to exhaustion. Yet, when Jung keeps moving, as her main character, traversing through darkness and light with such nimble balance, A Girl at My Door is vital and involving.