Festival de Cannes

13-24 May 2009

Website

Even before Cannes 2009 had started, critics and film buffs had celebrated this year’s line-up as the strongest official selection in years, primarily on the basis that some of the most bankable directors in world cinema had rushed through post-production to take their latest offerings to the Croisette. And with Michael Haneke’s excellent The White Ribbon (Das Weiße Band) winning the Palme d’Or ahead of a handful of mostly satisfying entries, including Jaques Audiard’s intensely gripping A Prophet (Un Prophète), Park Chan-wook’s slick and stylish Thirst (Bakjwi), Johnnie To’s likable Hong Kong action drama Vengeance, and British filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s assured second feature Fish Tank (also screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June), the prestigious competition section did to some extent live up to its promises, even beyond the usual predominant poles of Dardennes-style reality bites and mainstream juggernauts. Yet what really made Cannes a thoroughly enjoyable experience was the wealth of ‘smaller’, weird and wonderful films that screened in the festival’s increasingly popular sidebar sections or at the Marché du Film.

Despite being a little patchy this year, the Un Certain Regard selection remained a good place for discovery. One of the most pleasurable entries here was Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos’s prize-winning Dogtooth (Kynodontas), a nice little oddity that centres around the daily life of three teenage siblings cut off from the outside world and confined to the fake, grotesque universe dictated by their parents’ cruel games and extraordinary educational methods. A hyperbolic piece of absurdist satire that skews genre conventions to the extreme, the film creates a convincingly bizarre world beyond the garden fence where the kids spend their days dwelling in their induced infantilism, until nasty, violent reality catches up with them in the form of a woman who is allowed into the house to have sex with the son.

From the fairly large selection of Asian titles, I quite enjoyed the new film by Hirokazu Koreeda, Air Doll (Kûki Ningyô), a poetic and soft-centred urban fairy tale about an inflatable sex doll that suddenly comes to life (based on the graphic novel by Yoshiie Gouda), as well as Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Nymph (Nang Mai), a slow-paced, abstruse yet strangely engaging ghost story about a pseudo-happy married couple who take a trip into the forest. But the pick of the festival for me was the superb and beautifully accomplished Mother by The Host director Bong Joon-ho. Offering a standout lead performance by long-time Korean TV actress Kim Hye-ja as a feisty widow determined to prove the innocence of her fragile, dim-witted son who has been accused of murder, the film merges a stunning visual language and use of sound with a brilliant script. It creates a poignant exploration of pure, uncompromising motherly love against the backdrop of a tense, twisted murder mystery, intensified by rare moments of violence.

The biggest disappointment by far this year was Lars von Trier’s latest work, the constrained and increasingly infuriating horror essay Antichrist. Another let-down was Spanish thriller Hierro, which had its premiere at the market. After the first showing was cancelled when a mob of demonstrating French electricity and gas workers blacked out cinemas around the Palais des Festivals, the rescheduled screening revealed an initially decent but ultimately weak and hollow thriller about a woman’s frantic search for her missing son. Eagerly awaited (and hyped) as the latest hit in Spanish cinema’s wave of feral, aggressive and stylised chillers, the film failed to deliver anything like the powerful, subtle and uniquely terrifying experience provided, for example, by last year’s Cannes stand-out, Pascal Laugier’s controversial French horror tale Martyrs.

All in all, this year’s festival offered a passable feast of gore and horrific thrills, and it was perhaps Park Chan-wook who contributed with the most enthusiasm. His Thirst not merely adds another pleasurable angle to the renewed interest in the vampire genre but shows signs of Park getting back to form, with a style that is reminiscent of his wildly imaginative, brooding Vengeance trilogy. It’s a tale of a troubled and sick priest who volunteers for a dangerous medical experiment and who, to his utter disgust, inadvertently becomes a vampire as a result. While the film certainly has its flaws and the plot becomes increasingly erratic and messy, Thirst is a visually riveting and peculiar experience, as indeed the festival was overall.

Pamela Jahn

Still from: The Detective

Terracotta Far East Film Festival

21-24 May 2009

Prince Charles Cinema, London

Terracotta website

Over just four days, Joey Leung hopes to dramatically change your perception of Asian cinema. With his specially selected program of 13 films from all over the Far East, Leung’s Terracotta Festival is an ambitious attempt at breaking the stereotype that Asian films are all just about extreme horror, guns and spooky ghosts.

One recognisable name in Terracotta’s program is Oxide Pang – the Hong Kong director responsible for The Eye (2002). But the film of his that is being screened isn’t yet another sequel to that notorious horror franchise. The Detective (2007) is a much more restrained film about a young gumshoe searching for a missing girl in Bangkok’s Chinatown and shows his strength as a director without having to rely on flashy visuals.

Similarly, Johnnie To is best known for his crime thrillers but Terracotta will give audiences the chance to see the director working on a different level in the light-hearted 60s-influenced crime caper Sparrow (2008): ‘Everyone keeps saying the end is like Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)’, says Leung, ‘It didn’t do well in Hong Kong but film fans can appreciate the stylistic and artistic picture he’s trying to paint. That’s the point of a festival – to unearth films that might not be commercial.’

As well as art-house ponderings – also showing are Kim Ki-duk’s surreal Dream (2008) from Korea and Taiwan’s Keeping Watch (2007) about the strange reconnection of two childhood friends – Leung is making sure that action fans are also provided for in his intriguing cross-section. The festival is set to open with a bang thanks to Korea’s heist thriller Eye for an Eye (2008), but Legendary Assassins (2008) should be the most entertaining film on offer: ‘Jacky Wu’s first film is a throwback to 80s Hong Kong B-movie action. Li Chung Chi from Jackie Chan’s stunt team co-directs.’

The Terracotta Festival will provide the one and only opportunity to see these films in the UK. In the case of High Kick Girl (2009) – the debut of real-life teenage karate champion Rina Takeda – it’s even showing before its release in Japan. ‘Terracotta is a big push for Asian titles’, Leung explains. ‘We’re getting together with distributors such as Manga and Third Window so we can pool our resources and target the market in one go – a shot in the arm to get Asian film to the forefront of people’s minds.’

Leung’s own Terracotta Distribution will release Singing Chen’s God Man Dog (2008), a drama examining the changing social classes of Taiwanese society. A much different, and much weirder, social statement can be seen in Malaysia’s Zombies from Banana Village (2007): a comedic insight into the country’s village life, ‘it has political overtones about Malaysia and it’s giving an insight into Islamic life and its strict hierarchies’.

Other comedies such as Thailand’s Me… Myself (2007) and Japan’s caper After School (2008) are also in the mix alongside the animé update Ghost in the Shell 2.0 (2008) and kick-boxing actioner Muay Thai Chaiya (2007). As Leung puts it, ‘I’m trying to tread a line between being commercial and putting on an event I’d like to go to’. Terracotta looks set to be a festival where film fans of all kinds will find something to enjoy.

Richard Badley

SCI-FI LONDON

29 April – 4 May 2009

Venue: Apollo Cinema

Festival website

Now in its 8th year, Sci-Fi London has developed into a more wide-ranging science fiction festival than ever before. In previous years, 90% of the festival was focused on films and the Arthur C. Clarke awards for sci-fi literature seemed a strange satellite event not fully integrated into the rest of the long weekend. Now, albeit still housed in a cinema, Sci-Fi London includes talks on literature, science and comic books that not only sit alongside the film events in the programme, but provide a dialogue with the screenings: TV and radio writers will discuss sci-fi comedy while comic book artist Kevin O’Neill will talk about his drawings on screen and the film based on them, Hardware (1990), which will be shown afterwards.

Perhaps due to growing maturity, the festival is less embarrassed to be associated with what casual observers might see as the more kitsch aspects of SF fandom than in previous years – the opening film is Eyeborgs, which stars ‘TV’s Highlander‘ Adrian Paul. A perennial and popular strand at SFL is the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 all-night screenings, where fans of SF B-movies watch a TV version of those films, with heckling by an onscreen astronaut and two robots. This year’s festival takes that idea into the realm of stand-up comedy, screening one of the films showing in the festival again with a live redub of the soundtrack by improv comedians. Elsewhere there are different kinds of interaction with SF fans. For the first time in its history, SFL 8 will screen a ‘fan-film’, The Hunt for Gollum, which boasts production values similar to any of the authentic Lord of the Rings films and should keep devotees of the saga happy before the official prequel hits the big screen. In addition, SFL features an on-stage reading of a radio play script, The Brightonomicon, by some of the original cast, allowing the audience to see behind the scenes of something they’d normally only hear.

The films at this year’s SFL are a mixture of old and new, Western SF and films from further afield. As well as The City of Lost Children (1995), featuring a Q&A with co-director Marc Caro, there’s a kids screening of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986), Ever Since the World Ended (2003), and four of the best Star Trek movies from the 1980s, which fans can see for free. World cinema is represented by Turkish comedies G.O.R.A. (2004) and A.R.O.G. (2008), Japanese SF epic Twentieth-Century Boys part 2 and a selection of Israeli short films. New films and premieres include Bill Plympton’s Idiots and Angels, Stingray Sam (from the director of The American Astronaut, a low-fi American indie favourite of recent years) and new Japanese / American co-produced animé Afro Samurai: Resurrection, featuring the voices of Samuel L. Jackson and Lucy Liu. Perhaps the most obvious example of combining old and new at the festival is Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2.0, which is a remix of the original film, replacing all of the backgrounds and some of the characters with new visuals. Whether Oshii’s interference with his own film is on the level of George Lucas’s endless tinkering with Star Wars – making it worse each time – or Ridley Scott’s various re-edits of Blade Runner – all equally as good and as unneeded – remains to be seen.

Full details of this year’s festival are available online at their website, including last minute changes and additions to the programme.

Alex Fitch

Birmingham, UK, various venues

11-15 March 2009

Website

I’d been looking forward to Flatpack ever since interviewing the organisers, Pip and Ian, way back in December. At that point the schedule was in its embryonic stages – with many films and speakers still to be confirmed – but, even then, it was clear that there was a rare thoughtfulness and passion behind the festival’s programming. And spending five days zig-zagging between Birmingham galleries, art-house cinemas and specially converted warehouses, I wasn’t disappointed.

A perfect combination of careful programming and a jumble-sale of treasure troves, Flatpack is a breath of fresh air among increasingly industry-focused UK festivals. Community is paramount to its identity – whether between visiting filmmakers or local cinema-goers – and there was clearly a great deal of reciprocal love between city and festival.

The opening night paid homage to Birmingham’s answer to Mitchell & Kenyon – the entrepreneurial Waller Jeffs – and Brum made recurring cameos throughout the programme, from a delightful selection of films made by a local boys’ group in the 1950s (my personal favourite was their attempt at sci-fi shot against a chalkboard solar system) to Peter Watkins’s magnificent Privilege (1967). A satirical look at the record industry, the film opens with Manfred Mann’s Paul Jones, an increasingly reluctant pop puppet in the government’s manipulation of youth, on a messianic pilgrimage through the city streets. With a hilariously wooden performance from Jean Shrimpton, psychedelic renditions of ‘Jerusalem’ and some wonderful 60s tailoring, the film is at once a trippy, hallucinogenic dream and an acute critique of the commercialisation of youth and protest.

As always, music films were very strong at Flatpack, from the hip-hop classic Style Wars (1983) to Kieran Evans’s lyrical and beautifully paced documentary Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before (2008) – a fascinating look at the myths and memories involved in the folk singer’s now legendary 1960s’ horse-and-cart journey to the Outer Hebrides.

One of my personal highlights of the festival was ‘Unpacked’ – a day-long series of panels and discussions exploring the creative methods behind many of the works being screened at the festival. Animator David O’Reilly proved particularly popular as he gave a whistle-stop explanation of the theory behind his animation film, Please Say Something (winner of the Golden Bear for best short film at this year’s Berlinale). Several panel discussions explored the use of pre-cinema technologies – a strong element across many of the films and art installations displayed at the festival. With many of the guests coming from fine arts backgrounds, it was interesting to hear differing approaches to the filmmaking process. These talks are a new feature of Flatpack and make a very welcome addition to the programme – the audiences were really engaged and the warm atmosphere prompted some very fluent and insightful discussions.

Another nice new touch to this year’s programming was the children’s strand, which took in a wide range of material from the Moomins to Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 classic, The Red Balloon. Paper Cinema was a particular gem among the children’s screenings as illustrator Nic Rawling moved paper cut-outs (think Quentin Blake crossed with Saint-Exupéry doodled onto old cereal packets) in front of a live video camera. Watching the film being created before their eyes, the audience was enthralled. It was great for children to be involved in the festival and exposed to imaginative works of art at such a young age. Just like Unpacked, Paper Cinema provided inspiration and an intimate, inclusive atmosphere, sadly lacking at older, more institutionalised affairs.

A young, fresh festival with a fantastic range of films, discussions and installations, long may Flatpack reign!

Eleanor McKeown

London International Documentary Festival

John Samson Retrospective

Screening on: Saturday 28 March and Monday 30 March

Venue: Horse Hospital, London

LIDF website

A political activist who came of age in Scotland’s shipyards during the tumultuous 1960s, John Samson (1946-2004) discovered documentary film after he met his wife-to-be, a student at the Glasgow School of Art. Trading precision tool making for the bohemian art world, Samson began experimenting with photography before moving on to filmmaking in the early 1970s. His first short, Charlie (1973), earned him a scholarship to the National Film School.

A 2008 exhibition at London’s Seventeen Gallery that featured three of Samson’s films was entitled ‘More Quoted than Seen’, an indication of both his cult status and the paradox of his obscurity. This year, the London International Documentary Festival is featuring a special retrospective dedicated to the ground-breaking filmmaker, screening five of his rarely seen films: Tattoo (1975), Dressing for Pleasure (1977), Britannia (1979), Arrows (1979) and The Skin Horse (1983). Drawing on his own experience as an outsider, Samson’s films reflect a fascination with the lives and behaviour of people living on the margins of conservative, mainstream society.

Tattoo opens with tight close-ups of a work-in-progress: a man’s arm is being shaved, the skin prepped for a tattoo that takes shape throughout the film. Interviews with both artists and the tattooed delve into the links between exhibitionism, pain, and very personal desires. But the film’s climax lets the tattoos speak for themselves: the camera lingers on the elaborately decorated bodies of both men and women, wordlessly offering the audience a glimpse at an otherwise very private art form.

Banned by London Weekend Television, Dressing for Pleasure is an intimate, candid film about people with a rubber fetish. An interview with John Sutcliffe, the legendary clothing designer who also founded AtomAge, ‘a magazine for vinyl wearers’, is woven through the film, while blown-up pages from the magazine are used as a backdrop to the carefully composed scenes of participants parading their outré costumes. An interview with a shop assistant at Sex, the King’s Road boutique owned by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, one of the few places that openly sold latex and rubber wear, links fetish wear to the equally scandalous punk scene. There’s nothing deliberately sensational in Dressing for Pleasure, and what emerges is not a film about people into S&M, but a portrait of an alternative lifestyle that embraces pleasure without shame.

One of Samson’s more compelling films, despite its relatively tame subject matter, is Arrows, a 1979 film about Eric Bristow, aka The Crafty Cockney – a young, cocky champion darts player who became a national celebrity in the UK. The most captivating scenes are those of Bristow drinking pints and smoking his way through an exhibition at a working men’s club; the film is a revealing snapshot not only of Bristow, but also of an England that’s virtually disappeared.

Although there are elements in Samson’s films that are undeniably dated – notably Tattoo‘s classic 70s soundtrack – the lifestyles he captured on camera are still strikingly relevant. His refusal to sensationalise and exploit his marginalised cast of characters makes his documentaries all the more remarkable in the current era of gossip-driven reality television.

Sarah Cronin

The John Samson retrospective is screening on Saturday 28 March and Monday 30 March at the Horse Hospital (London). More details on the LIDF website.

Berlinale

5-15 February 2008

The 59th edition of the Berlinale film festival was challenging before it had even started. After a day-long delay in snowed-in Heathrow, the first film that was on offer on arrival was Sion Sono’s dizzying, daring, nearly four-hour epic Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi). Outrageously irreverent, both visually and thematically, the film is a fast-paced saga that follows a rebellious young boy whose life is thrown into complete turmoil upon the death of his saintly mother. The only way for Yu to gain the affection of his father, who has become a Catholic priest, is to perpetually commit sins, and by doing so he eventually runs into Maria, a man-hating riot girl. Possession, perversion, mass murder, up-skirt sneak photography, Christianity and mysterious religious cults, a sprinkling of martial arts and bold references to films such as the 1970s Female Convict Scorpion series are just some of the elements that make up this unique adolescent love story. Although the film starts off at a frantic pace, it gradually slows down as the devious plot develops before concluding on a surprisingly serious and truly emotional note.

After such a thrilling start, it was difficult not to wonder whether the rest of the selection could possibly match it, and it has to be said that on the whole this year’s Berlinale was fairly downbeat and uneventful. Despite this, there were pleasures to be had: although not quite on the same level of inventiveness as Love Exposure, there was something disturbingly funny and compelling about seeing a baby sprout wings in Franí§ois Ozon’s bizarre new feature Ricky, one of the films competing for the Golden Bear. However, once again the true gems were to be found not in the official competition but in the Panorama and Forum sections. Take, for instance, When You’re Strange, Tom DiCillo’s insightful feature-length documentary, which explores the rise and fall of The Doors against the violent backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Nixon era. Incorporating previously unseen footage, it provides the first detailed record of the band’s early years on film, from their initial performances to Jim Morrison’s tragic death in Paris in 1971.

Also of note was the new film by Lucí­a Puenzo, the Argentine writer-director behind 2007’s well-received XXY: engaging and handsomely shot, The Fish Child (El Niño pez) mixed teenage romance and soft-centered thriller. This year’s Forum programme was dominated by four Korean productions, the most impressive of which was Baek Seung-bin’s debut feature Members of the Funeral (Jang-rae-sig-ui member), a quietly riveting and grimly funny drama. And the festival even offered a spot of Midnight Movie-type deviance with Dominic Murphy’s White Lightnin’, a phantasmagoric vision of the legendary ‘Dancing Outlaw’ Jesco White, who has spent most of his life battling madness, obsession and an uncontrollable wicked streak. Even though Murphy’s wild re-imagining of White’s story is at times somewhat over the top, White Lightnin’ was an enjoyable splash of cinematic ferocity, more of which would certainly be welcome in future editions of the Berlinale.

Pamela Jahn

Explore the alternative side of the Berlin film scene with our online feature on Julia Ostertag’s DIY punk film Saila or read an article on Berlin squat cinema in the new print issue of Electric Sheep. Our spring issue focuses on Tainted Love to celebrate the release of the sweet and bloody pre-teen vampire romance Let the Right One In, with articles on incestuous cinematic siblings, Franí§ois Ozon‘s tales of tortuous relationships, destructive passion in Nic Roeg‘s Bad Timing, Julio Medem‘s ambiguous lovers and nihilistic tenderness from Kí´ji Wakamatsu. Also in this issue: Interview with Pascal Laugier (Martyrs), the Polish New Wave that never existed and comic strip on the Watchmen film adaptation + much more!

Photo from Zift

Pí–FF: Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

13 November – 7 December 2008

Website

As the guide books are quick to point out, there’s something unmistakeably Disney about Tallinn’s old town – its medieval spires, the charming narrow streets and the perfectly preserved merchants’ houses, all overlooked by the stern towers of an ancient fortified hill, and wrapped, at least during the month of December, in a tangle of lights and tinsel. Market sellers proffer Glí¼hwein and gingerbread, while students dressed in medieval cassocks beckon from the doors of Hanseatic-themed restaurants: it’s all rather twee.

So it’s something of a surprise to step out of the cobbled courtyards and into the urban sprawl of the modern city, wherein lies the Coca-Cola plaza, a neon no-man’s land indistinguishable from any other multiplex in the Western world, as well as the sleek surroundings of the Hotel Forum, where director Tina Lokk presided over proceedings for the 12th Black Nights Film Festival (named for the seemingly endless nights that cast the city in darkness from 3pm to 10am at this time of year). Having built the festival up from modest beginnings, Lokk can be credited with hosting one of the most inclusive and (ironically, given the sub-arctic temperatures outside) warmest festivals in Europe, featuring a host of small strands aimed at promoting minor works that might otherwise slip under the radar, and a number of events for students, including a dedicated competition and a Film School connecting future talent with well-known specialists.

The Black Nights’ open-door policy is aimed to some extent at allowing Estonian audiences otherwise starved of international fare access to a selection of world cinema, with the emphasis on European films. The programme mostly comprised the great and the good from this year’s circuit, bulked out with the best of the Baltic’s offerings and spiced up with a regional focus, this year on Turkey (who produced a sadly lacklustre set of films, rife with the melancholic self-indulgence that art-house poster boy Nuri Bilge Ceylan has made his trademark). The weighting was somewhat reflected in the awards, with Jos Stelling’s panel handing out the top prizes to the already heavily decorated Hunger, Genova, Waltz with Bashir and Il Divo. Some plaudits were deserved, others less so; but tempting as it would be to put the Jury’s choices down to jumping on the bandwagon, the general feeling was that after a strong couple of years, 2008’s regional contingent lacked bite: inspiration was thin on the ground this time round, and it was whispered that the winner of the Tridens prize for best Baltic film, Laila Pakalnina and Maris Maskalans’s Latvian documentary Three Men and a Fish Pond (for which Maskalans also won best cinematography), was the best of an undistinguished bunch, despite the Jury’s gracious description of the film as an affecting portrayal of the parallel ecologies of human friendship and the natural world. In fact, it was from neighbouring Finland that the Black Nights’ real discovery may have come – although not from the expected source. Directed with a firm hand by brother of Aki, Mika Kaurismäki, Three Wise Men had masculine melancholia in spades, but served it up with a light touch and a refreshing sense of aesthetic restraint, doubtless in part a result of the younger Kaurismäki’s background in documentary film. The semi-improvised script allowed for superb performances from the three leads Kari Heiskanen, Pertti Sveholm and Timo Torikka, justly rewarded with a joint prize for best acting.

It was in keeping with the kitsch cityscape and the mostly middlebrow tone that the festival’s gala performances and dry-ice-swathed award ceremony were held in the resplendent Russian Vene Theatre, a throwback to a bygone age burnished in red velvet and gold brocade. But a short clatter down the city’s side streets revealed hidden gems tucked in between the city walls in the form of the tiny Kinomaja and Von Krahli theatres. It was in the latter, a black-washed performance space with a makeshift screen, that audiences could discover Bulgarian neo-noir Zift (loosely translated as ‘Shit’), a pounding, putrid pastiche of classics such as Gilda, which made for an exhilarating experience. Admittedly, it was followed by the loathsome Blink, from the Philippines – putrid for altogether different reasons; as is the case with the city itself, you take your chances by venturing off the beaten track, but the rewards may well be worth it.

Catherine Wheatley

Photo from Lion’s Den (Leonera)
Discovering Latin America 7

27 November – 7 December 2008

Website

It takes some guts to make a film where the closest anyone gets to resolution is a dead body being re-interred after its 10 years of settled decomposition are interrupted by the lease on the plot coming up. This is just one of the dangling elements that make up Andrés Wood’s engaging and intimate examination of life in the city of Santiago de Chile, The Good Life (La Buena vida).

Even the corpse only gets another 10 years’ peace. There are always negotiations pending for Wood’s characters. They are allowed development but no conclusions, drama but no dénouement. Not that they are casual drifters; their desires and ambitions are concrete forces driving them on but life keeps turning solidity to haziness and even death doesn’t offer finality.

The Good Life was just one notable achievement on display at the 2008 Discovering Latin America Film Festival. As a triumph of imagination and resourcefulness over obvious budgetary limits it is perhaps fairly typical of the best films coming out of South America. Pablo Trapero’s prison drama Lion’s Den (Leonera), on the other hand, could never be described as typical or limited in any way. It’s a film that delivers the best you can expect from cinema, a totally absorbing emotional experience. In contrast to The Good Life, Lion’s Den focuses entirely on one character, Julia, a 25-year-old student who wakes up with blood on her shoulder and two bodies slumped in her flat and proceeds to travel, pregnant, through the Argentine legal system. Martina Gusman’s performance as Julia is astonishing. She begins as a blank and is progressively more vividly outlined as the film unfolds. It’s an emotional journey without clichés or superfluous sentiment. Trapero makes full use of his prison locations, hovering over their spaces, letting the stillness speak for the agonising passing of time and coaxing a curious mixture of cosiness and frustration from the children’s section to which Julia’s pregnancy grants her access. After the birth of her son, we get one magically incongruous scene of the prison’s brightly lit night-time serenity interrupted by the baby’s cries and the consequent howling chorus of fellow infant inmates.

Lion’s Den was the highlight of this year’s DLAFF for this writer. The festival has grown considerably over the seven years of its existence. This year, there were 21 feature films and seven documentaries shown at seven London locations. It is now the most significant opportunity there is to see South American films in the UK, an especially remarkable achievement considering the festival is run entirely by volunteers. They even manage to donate a proportion of ticket sales to a chosen charity each year. This year’s beneficiary was Progressio, a group working with women suffering from AIDS and HIV in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Other notable screenings included the UK premiere of Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (La Mujer sin cabeza), a film that has divided critics following its appearances on the festival circuit, and Rodrigo Plá’s account of the Cristiada rebellion in 1920s Mexico, The Desert Within (Desierto adentro). I also enjoyed Espectro (Al final del espectro), a spooky thriller from Colombia that cleverly exploits its claustrophobic setting, and A Gastronomy Story (Estí³mago), a quirky and mischievous study of human appetites and weaknesses.

Nick Dutfield