CONTENTS Page 3 4-7
Editorial The Tale An investigation into one woman’s memory as she is forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
8-11
Never Goin’ Back Jessie and Angela, high school dropouts are taking a week off to chill at the beach. Too bad their house got robbed, rent’s due, they’re about to be fired and they’re broke.
12-15
Hereditary When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.
16-19
Leave No Trace A father and his thirteen-year-old daughter is living an idyllic existence in a vast urban park in Portland, Oregon, when a small mistake derails their lives forever.
20-23
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn Lulu Danger’s unsatisfying marriage takes a turn for the worse when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform an event called “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn For One Magical Night Only.”
24-27
Eighth Grade A teenager tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth-grade year before leaving to start high school.
28-31
FilmFest Follower Edinburgh Film Festival
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Poster: The Tale.
PHOTO CREDITS: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: 1,4,6,7,8,10,11,12,14,15,16,18,19,20, 22,23,24,26,27,32 IMDB: 4,7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We would like to thank the following people for their help regarding this issue of Movies by Mills. Megan Jones, Elizabeth Taylor and Charlotte Moore at PremierComms.com. All the staff at Picturehouse Central. 2
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EDITORIAL This edition of our magazine is devoted to the Sundance London Film Festival which was held at Picturehouse Central, Piccadilly on the May 31st to June 3rd.
MbM reviews six films from the festival: Never Goin’ Back, Hereditary, The Tale (our cover feature review), Leave No Trace, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, and Eighth Grade. The Tale examines the topical subject of sexual abuse which is handled delicately by the director Jennifer Fox and is based on her own experience. There is the occasional feature of Film Festival Follower which looks at the main films scheduled to screen at the Edinburgh Film Festival from June 20th to July 1st. Once again, I hope there are some films here that you will get to see when they play at your local arthouse cinema.
Enjoy the read.
Brian Mills Magazine Editor Designer
Paul Ridler Magazine
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THE TALE Directed by Jennifer Fox Starring: Laura Dern, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Ritter, Ellen Burstyn, Chelsea Alden. Why are you telling this story Jenny? - Jennifer It’s my life. Mine. - Jenny.
Of all the films that were selected from the Sundance Film Festival in January to screen at Sundance London, The Tale was the most anticipated film because of its powerful narrative and the enthusiastic reception it received at Park City: a ten-minute standing ovation. It is a drama directed by documentarian Jennifer Fox and tells of a woman who is forced to confront her past of being sexually abused at the age of thirteen by her 40-year-old track coach. She had written a school essay about him and his accomplice, Mrs G, the horse-riding instructor who introduced them. Jenny wrote in her essay that they were two very special people who I have come to love dearly…I’m lucky enough to be able to share in their love. The story of The Tale is about the resurfacing of Jenny’s essay which is discovered by her mother who rings her daughter and confronts her with the shocking words which she had written about her first relationship with a grown man. Jennifer Fox does not hide behind a pseudonym for the character of Jenny but uses her real name. Her story is told in flashbacks with her leaving her fiancé to head home to try and piece together her past which she had conveniently forgotten until her mother discovered what she had written when she was a teenager. We see a young Jenny hero-worship a former Olympian and his imposing, and married, girlfriend Mrs G. Flashing forward to the present we witness Jennifer tracking down an elderly Bill and Mrs G and interviews her mother and childhood friends.
As Jennifer made quite clear that The Tale had changed a lot since its first draft. “I wanted to tell a story about how a 13-year-old 4
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constructed the identity of this person that I became ‘a tough woman, independent woman who leaps into dangerous situations and rejects marriage as bourgeois without questioning who implanted that idea in her head”. Fox calls The Tale a ‘fictional memoir’. The character’s name and story are hers. “If I didn’t leave my name on it, this film would be open to attack by people who’d say this can’t be true.” Jennifer Fox: I think you can see from the film that I wanted to tell it since I was thirteen and then I wrote “The Tale” and the tale that both Laura and Isabelle reads is a real true tale that I wrote, so you’re hearing real words and then as I became a filmmaker I always thought I want to make this film but it wasn’t until I was in my forties that suddenly what I called ‘the relationship’ all of a sudden I realized it was abuse and it was talking to other women around the world and hearing my story back to me that there was a shift, that was when I said I’m ready. Then it took me years to write it because it was such a complicated story. It is really about the stories we tell ourselves to survive and why we want to tell ourselves stories with things that are too heavy to deal with.
Laura Dern: I got a call from Brian de Palma who was a friend, colleague and a great admirer of Jennifer as a documentarian and he said: you’re going to receive this script that is difficult, painful and brave, but take it seriously because she wants to tell a story about memory and survival in her own way like nothing we’ve ever seen. It’s so radical, it’s so brave and you should go on this journey. Then I got the same call from another colleague and admirer of Jennifer, Owen Moverman. So, hearing this from two filmmakers I admired, that did it for me.
This is the journey that Jennifer Fox made in making this film. It is a story that had to be told. It is a film that must be seen. No UK theatrical release date is scheduled at present but is expected this autumn.
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Sundance Film Festival Jason Ritter and Elizabeth Debicki in The Tale.
Sundance Film Festival Elizabeth Debicki in The Tale 6
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Sundance Film Festival Isabelle NĂŠlisse in The Tale.
Sundance Film Festival Jennifer Fox, Isabelle NĂŠlisse and Jason Ritter at IMDB Studios.
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NEVER GOIN’ BACK Directed by Augustine Frizzell Starring: Maia Mitchell, Cami Morrone, Kyle Mooney, Joel Allen, Kendal Smith, Matthew Holcomb. Jessie, wake up. You have to get up now because I have something really, really, awesome to show you. - Angela Jessie and Angela, high school dropout BFFs, are taking a week off to chill at the beach. Too bad their house got robbed, rent’s due, they’re about to get fired and they’re broke. Now they’ve got to avoid eviction, stay out of jail and get to the beach, no matter what!!! The two roommates work in a diner, dreaming their life away to escape the job they hate. Though they have a boss who is kind and understandable and tolerates the lateness, it is not enough to keep them, but to raise the money to pay for their holiday they get into arrears with their rent, and it doesn’t help them at all when the police raid their home and find hash which their brother has supplied to them as he is a drug dealer; the girls are arrested on a drug possession charge and their vision of blue skies ahead seem to be clouding over. This is Augustine Frizzell’s debut feature as writer director. The problem she has is in the narrative and expecting an audience to embrace the two girls and warm to their dilemma and crazy escapades. Their friendship is their strongest asset and that and their sense of humour really keep them together. Sure, they are full of fun and stupid antics and ideas which may get a few sniggering’s but the humour comes wrapped in toilet tissue and the majority of sentences uttered are foul mouthed. Will vulgarity raise laughs…yes, among some audiences it will, but it will depend on the type of audience, and a film festival I would have thought, would have been an ideal platform. It opened at Sundance at Park City, Utah in January and since then has done a few film festivals before finally get a U.S. theatrical release. Beyond that, we must wait and see. A trap that the film falls into is that it is too long; and as its running time is 85 minutes that would seem a harsh comment, but those 85 minutes seem like a torturous two hours at times. The competition in films is getting tougher all the time. Quality, and a cast-iron 8
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screenplay is expected. Never Goin’ Back fails on both counts. For this film is unlikely to cause a flair amongst film critics, giving publicists a tough job because Never Goin’ Back is a film that people are ‘never goin’ to see. However, if we look at the audience that the movie will appeal to, we will see that the ideal viewer would be teenage girls and boys who would understand the bonding between Angela and Jessie. The laugh-out-loud moments in Never Goin’ Back is directed at them and that is where Frizzell’s movie will find its heart. But let’s eavesdrop on the director herself, Augustine Frizzell, and tell how the film came about. “The idea for the feature I had for a very long time. The Shorts I had, I looked at as practice rounds for various scenes and techniques that I wanted to explore and maybe feature. It feels that it was time I guess. I spent so much time planning and prepping and thinking and you know we really over planned it. It is about two teen girl friends who have dropped out of school and they’re at a diner and they just want a little time to be actual teens and a carefree life. I had a weird upbringing and I just wanted to explore that, make it comedic instead of dramatic. First, I actually wrote it which became this movie, a story that actually happened to me: writing it was one thing and then reliving it and telling it and being on set and I watched it happen. It was my dream”.
And Maia Mitchell (Angela) gives her take. “The friendship between my Angela and Jessie was so strong throughout the whole film and there is a lot that goes on and there are a lot of things that go wrong. But no matter what comes there way, they are together the whole time and they are never divided and so that message about female friendship is really important and exciting”.
And Cami Morrone (Jessie). “In the script there was, as actors, some very bold and courageous scenes that maybe at first when you read it, you might be a little bit hesitant and nervous. Anything that is a little bit challenging as an actor, I think is a little bit terrifying and I think that is what drew us to the roles.
We go through so many scripts and you read so many scripts, this one stood up and I said I don’t want to do this, which means I should probably do it”. So, that is how it came about for Maia and Cami and how they decided to accept the challenge and make the movie. And the bottom line for the audience is to accept the challenge and see it. But if these girls can get through all the stuff life throws at them… why can’t we?
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Sundance Film Festival Augustine Frizzell.
Sundance Film Festival Maia Mitchell & Cami Morrone in Never Goin’ Back. 10
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Sundance Film Festival Augustine Frizzell at IMDB Studio.
Sundance Film Festival Maia Mitchell & Cami Morrone in Never Goin’ Back.
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HEREDITARY Directed by Ari Aster Starring: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Woolf, Milly Shapiro. My name is Annie. My mum died a week ago. She was a very private woman and she wasn’t altogether there at the end. - Annie. When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. Another film which purports to be greater than its sum total and swallowing its own hype of being a film that will scare and leave you afraid of turning off the lights at night and revisiting the film that seemingly will take-up residence in your head. As a horror film it fails miserably to impress and left me with a feeling that I had been sold a narrative that had lost its way and forgotten what its aims were. What inspired director Ari Aster to make this film? What horror films had he watched and studied? Surely it wasn’t his goal to lose his audience with such a twisted storyline that resulted in being ludicrous rather than credible. The story is set around the tragedies that befall the Graham family who live in a grim and dark house in Pacific Northwest. Gabriel Byrne is Dad, Toni Collette is Mom, Alex Woolf is Peter, their son, and Milly Shapiro is Charlie, their daughter. The film opens with a scene at the funeral of Annie’s mother, whom she never got on with. Annie reads an elegy. The death will be the first of many in this ‘feel-bad’ movie. The only semblance of sanity seems to be the father that we can sympathise and warm to. Gabriel Byrne is ideally suited to this role with a wonderfully calm demeanour. Like us, he observes the craziness of his wife and his concern for his son Peter, particularly when he has a car accident which beheads his sister; this sends Annie into delirium and totally blames Peter and refuses to talk to him. Annie decides to find a help by joining a bereavement and counselling group to compensate for her feelings of loss and confusion, which by now would be strongly recommended to the viewers of Hereditary. 12
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The resulting actions of the therapy on Annie only lead her to dabbling in the occult. Although the acting can’t be faulted, the film, as the aforementioned showed can.
Here is what Toni Collette stated when asked about her character and the film. “This beautiful piece is about grief. About a family trying to navigate their way through some very deep pain”. And of course, she had to face such horrific scenes, how did she cope with that? “I explicitly said to my agent I don’t want to do anything heavy. I’d done a couple of films that I thought were heavy and were kind of getting ginky on my system and I just wanted to shake it off and do some lighter and one of my agents said, I know you said this, but I think you should really look at this. He was right, I really couldn’t put it down. I’d never come across anything like it. I think as an actor I prayed for the opportunity to go for it and this was that opportunity in spades. And regard to working with Alex Woolf’s character Peter.
Alex and I were very different to each other. I’m very kind of instinctive and thought I had a very easy understanding of what I had to do. So, instead of grinding and ruminating and trying to keep it alive, I tried to get rid of it, because I think he really put himself through the ringer. Ultimately, I must return to the publicity hype and reviews of this film that erroneously compare Hereditary to The Exorcist and The Sixth Sense. It does not even get close to the impact of these two movie classics that epitomise what real horror films should be: scary because they are believable and yes, will keep you thinking about them afterwards, because of the imbedded thought that this could happen to you.
Never for one moment does Hereditary make you feel scared to the point of being white-knuckled shocked. If you don’t believe me go watch The Exorcist and The Sixth Sense and see if you can sleep with the lights off when you go to bed on the night after seeing them. Hereditary is unfortunately a shambles and an insult to the horror genre.
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Sundance Film Festival Milly Shapiro, Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Woolf in Hereditary.
Sundance Film Festival Toni Collette in Hereditary. 14
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Sundance Film Festival Alex Woolf in Hereditary.
Sundance Film Festival Milly Shapiro in Hereditary.
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LEAVE NO TRACE Directed by Debra Granik Starring: Ben Foster, Thomasin McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Isaiah Stone, Dan Millican. Are we going to be safe here? - Tom We still think our own thoughts. - Will
Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) have lived off the grid for years in the forests of Portland, Oregon, when their idyllic life is shattered, both are out into social services. After clashing with their new surroundings, Will and Tom set off on a harrowing journey back to their wild homeland. The film is directed by Debra Granik from a script by Granik and Anne Rosellini. The last time Debra Granik had a film at Sundance it was the coming-of-age thriller Winter’s Bone, which had Jennifer Lawrence hacking through dangerous terrain to hunt down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact. Leave No Trace is equally a compelling watch. We first encounter Will and Tom gathering and cutting wood for a fire and shooing away packs of dogs outside their tent. Granik’s visual telling of the story is immediate as we see propane tanks and apple boxes and shelves and tarps that they have gathered and don’t need to know anything more to realize that they live in the woods. They are in fact living in a large public park in Portland, Oregon, making occasional trips into town to buy groceries and visit the hospital. Will is a veteran who has issues with post-traumatic stress; for income, he sells the pain medication he gets at the hospital to dealers at a tent city. Will cannot shake off the demons in his head that tell him to have nothing to do with the outside world with its houses and its responsibilities. The film manages to connect with its audience because of the tenderness and love between Will and his daughter Tom. Will has concern for Tom, and Tom portrays her desire to please her dad, as well as the genuine happiness of being with him.
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The most poignant sequence is when they are caught by the authorities and they bring them back into society and separate them and we immediately empathise with them and worried what will happen to them. The film is adapted from a novel by Peter Rock called My Abandonment.
Now let us get a take on the film by Debra, Ben and Thomasin as they reflect on their feelings.
Ben Foster: What attracted me to the film was the beautiful script. I was a fan of Debra’s work for a long time. Her pursuits are values that I connect with as an audience member first and I came in as a fan first. The relationship (between father and daughter) interested me on a multitude of levels and most specifically I was an expecting father when I read the script. This led me to consider what fatherhood means.
Debra Granik: I felt the way the author had depicted their isolation. They had a huge amount of material between them. There was going to be a lot for them to do. When I read the novel, it wasn’t just la-deda. The intensity
Thomasin McKenzie: I think the knurled experience was when I got to work with the bees. It is so cool being around them. You think it would be terrifying, but I was standing in front of the hive and you feel the vibration and the warmth and this amazing smell of the honey and propolis. It is so incredible to watch, communicate and work with each other. It is so cool.
Ben: I miss the trees after making this film. So, the first family vacation was to return to the trees.
And the experience of seeing this film will want you to return to it. Leave No Trace will be theatrically released in the UK on the 29th June.
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Sundance Film Festival Thomasin McKenzie in Leave No Trace.
Sundance Film Festival Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace. 18
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Sundance Film Festival Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace.
Sundance Film Festival Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace.
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AN EVENING WITH BEVERLY LUFF LINN Directed by Jim Hosking Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Jermaine Clement, Emile Hirsch, Maria Bamford, Craig Robinson, Matt Berry. Another film purporting to be a comedy which in fact, is anything but that. The fault lies in the direction and the writing. Lulu Danger’s unsatisfying marriage takes a turn for the worse when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform an event called “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn: For One Magical Night Only.” There is nothing magical about this film, though I wished that I had a magical wand that I could use to make the experience of enduring this terrible film go away. Hosking attempts to create a wacky and weird comedy with stupid characters with a habit of wearing abominable wigs which I thought could have been handed out to the audience so that we could pull them down over our eyes. The film starts with a character named Shane Danger (Emile Hirsch) who has one frowned expression throughout the film, perhaps realizing his mistake in being in the film in the first place and intending to fire his agent after the critics’ reviews come in and send the film to the cinema cemetery. Shane learns from his boss that he must fire his wife and employee from the donut shop. Things get worse, both for us and the film, when Shane steals money from a convenience store owner named Adjay (Sam Dissanavake), who then sends a hired gun named Colin Keith Threadener (Jermaine Clement) to get it back. Colin ends up running away with Lulu, who takes him to a hotel where the mysterious musician named Beverly Luff Linn (Craig Robinson) is set to perform. When Lulu attempts to interact with Luff Linn in the hotel pool or lobby, he merely grunts and grunts. 20
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Don’t waste your time spending an evening or even a minute with Beverly Luff Linn unless you are an incurable masochist. The low rating is one of the lowest that Movies by Mills has given and would have been even lower had not been for Jermaine Clememt’s performance as Colin, the only sane character in the film and makes the dance sequence with Aubrey Plaza pleasurable but only just.
And what was the director’s take on the film. Jim Hosking: It starts with a married couple who are in a desperate situation which a lot of us are familiar, which coincides with this mysterious man and his playing partner who comes to perform this event, and everybody is excited about it. It is a story where everyone is in love with somebody else.
Aubrey Plaza: I read the script and thought it was totally insane like everybody else and started researching Jim Hoskins and watching these videos and it made me laugh out loud.
Matt Berry: Jim asked me if I wanted to do it and I said yes. It really was as brief as that. I had actually seen his films and I said yes very quickly.
There you have it. In retrospect I hope that they don’t regret their initial enthusiasm for wanting to do the film. At present there is no theatrical release date for An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn in the UK. It will be a surprise to me if there is any distributor brave or stupid enough to take it on.
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Sundance Film Festival Audrey Plaza in An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn.
Sundance Film Festival Audrey Plaza in An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. 22
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Sundance Film Festival Sky Elobar, Jermaine Clement and Craig Robinson in An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn.
Sundance Film Festival Craig Robinson in An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn.
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EIGHTH GRADE Directed by Bo Burnham Starring: Josh Hamilton, Elsie Fisher, Emily Robin, Daniel Zolchadli, Missy Yager. The topic of today’s video is about Being Yourself. Being yourself can be really hard. But it’s like I’m being myself but being yourself is not changing yourself to impress someone else. - Kayla Bo Burnham is a comedian and You Tube star. In this film which he has directed, there is a realistic charm to the film and doesn’t turn away from the confrontations and so many humiliating situations that happen to Kayla. Kayla is the class wallflower always fumbling and hesitant to speak because she does not really know what to say and when she does speak it is always turns out to be something stupid and embarrassing which tends for fellow classmates to give her a wide berth when they see her coming. Consequently, she doesn’t have many friends. What the film does is to address the issue of awkwardness and to make such kids feel a little less alone. The story follows 13-year-old Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) during her final week of middle school. Within a few minutes of meeting her, we realize that she has no friends and unlikely to make them. You laugh when you see Kayla’s bad boy crush appear and his bad boy theme music begins to play. You cringe and feel for her when an older teen dares her to take off her top in the back seat of his car. Through her YouTube videos, you can feel she isn’t trying to be professional to validate her existence but to be liked and gain friends by those who might like what she is saying. It is her father, Mark (Josh Hamilton) who spends the entire movie trying to be someone for her. He reassures her that she’s human and as perfect as any flawed human can be. In typical teen behaviour, she resists his gross attempt at a little bit of love. But it is her father that she will eventually listen to. This is a delightful film and is backed by a winning electronic score by Anna Meredith which leads a pulsating thump to Kayla’s dreamy-eyed crush and a hopeful buzz to her life.
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JOSH HAMILTON: I’m excited to see it and see what Bo did with it. It was very much about Elsie and from Elsie’s point of view. No more than experiencing the world as being an adolescent and I’m her dad. But where in the scene I don’t know, the angles and tone that Bo is going to get. So, I’m looking forward at being inside Elsie’s head. Bo is wise beyond his years. He did not seem like a first-time director. He was very confident in exploring different ways of getting things done and we would do things in a million ways in rehearsal and how he did different things as a comedian. It wasn’t like we have to get it one way and that’s it. He was like let’s try it this way, let’s try it that way. To me, having done theatre, that’s my favourite way of working. My kids are not this age yet but think how they are going to navigate this world. I am happy that people are dealing with this as I have no idea how I’m going to navigate my kids to deal with that. I didn’t know Bo beforehand, so I did a little scratch course. I had to stop watching his stuff. I got about ten minutes and I thought this guy’s amazing. Now I’m a huge fan. BO BURNHAM:
I wanted to write something on the internet and I wanted to write something about how I was feeling at the time which was really anxious. I felt the two things were connected somehow. So, I set about writing it. I wrote a lot of things and stumbled on this voice and I sort of thought I could say everything I wanted through her and it sort of made sense to me. ELSIE FISHER: Kayla is 13 years old going through her 8th grade and she’s a nervous weird kid, but you know, who isn’t? But the film is just walking through her life. Bo was fantastic. He knows me very well as a person so it’s easy for him to communicate things and working with him is really easy for me. BO BURNHAM: For me I was doing stand-up for ten years and I was so tired of my own face. I really exhausted myself as a subject. I felt understood by people like Kayla before I presumed I could understand people like Kayla.
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Sundance Film Festival Luke Prael and Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade.
Sundance Film Festival Elsie Fisher & Josh Hamilton in Eighth Grade 26
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Sundance Film Festival Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade
Sundance Film Festival Elsie Fisher & Catherine Oliviere in Eighth Grade.
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EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 20TH June – 1st July
OPENING NIGHT GALA PUZZLE Directed by Marc Turtletaub Starring: Kelly Macdonald, Irrfan Khan. Agnes discovers she is a natural at puzzles. A quick worker who can see patterns and is innately good at maths. She escapes her sniffling blue-collar life and husband and two sons and heads to New York to find a shop specialising in puzzles.
PEOPLE’S GALA THE PARTING GLASS Directed by Stephen Moyer Starring: Denis O’Hare, Ed Asner, Cynthia Nixon, Melissa Leo. A family reeling from their younger sister’s death as they embark on a journey to collect the remnants of her life. The family delve into past memories to pierce together a portrait of the woman they lost.
BEST OF BRITISH CALIBRE
EATEN BY LIONS Directed by Jack Wingard Starring: Jack Carroll, Antonio Arkeel. Two half-brothers head to Blackpool to search for lost family.
IN DARKNESS Directed by Anthony Byrne Starring: Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein. A blind musician is stalked by killers.
OBEY Directed by Jamie Jones Starring: Marcus Rutherford, Sophie Kennedy.
Directed by Matt Palmer Starring: Jack Lowden, Martin McCann.
One young man’s struggle to better himself takes a dark turn.
A weekend hunting trip in the Scottish Highlands goes badly wrong.
Directed by Toby MacDonald Starring: Alex Lawther, Pauline Etienne.
DEAD IN A WEEK Directed by Tom Edmunds Starring: Tom Wilkinson, Aneurin Barnard. An ageing hitman offers to help a young man who keeps failing at suicide.
THE DEVIL OUTSIDE Directed by Andrew Hulme Starring: Noah Carson, Keeley Forsyth. When a teenager finds a body in the woods, he realizes that God has sent him a sign, albeit a strange one.
DIRT ROAD TO LAFAYETTE Directed by Kenny Glenaan Starring: Neil Sutcliffe, David O’Hara. A musical journey from the Scottish Highlands to the southern USA.
OLD BOYS
An awkward pupil at a private school helps a schoolmate woo a girl.
PATRICK Directed by Mandie Fletcher Starring: Beattie Edmondson, Ed Skrein. A young woman inherits a naughty pug called Patrick.
SONGBIRD Directed by Jamie Adams Starring: Cobie Smulders, Noel Clarke.
A fading rock star accidentally enrols at university.
STEEL COUNTRY Directed by Simon Fellows Starring: Andrew Scott, Denise Gough. A truck driver turns detective.
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TWO FOR JOY
HUMOR ME
Directed by Tom Beard Starring: Samantha Morton, Billie Piper.
Directed by Sam Hoffman Starring: Jemaine Clement, Elliott Gould.
A family in a crisis must stick together.
Struggling playwright moves in with his joke-telling when his wife kicks him out.
WILD HONEY PIE Directed by Jamie Adams Starring: Jemima Kirke, Sarah Solemani A couple’s marriage runs into trouble.
IDEAL HOME Directed by Andrew Fleming Starring: Paul Rudd, Steve Coogan. No Plot Given.
WINTERLOG
LOCATING SILVER
Directed by David Jackson Starring: Frances Magee, Harper Jackson.
Directed by Eric Bilitch Starring: Finn Wittrock, Josh Peck.
A teenager moves in with his poacher father.
A would-be-writer is drawn to a charismatic and dangerous man.
MY NAME IS MYEISHA
JELLYFISH Directed by James Gardner Starring: Liv Hill, Sinead Matthews. A tormented teenager turns to stand-up.
Directed by Gus Krieger Starring: Raechyl Walker, John Merchant. A teenager drifts into a hip-hop musical at the moment of her tragic death.
THE NEGOTIATOR
LUCID Directed by Adam Morse Starring: Billy Zane, Sadie Frost. A shy young man is taught to seduce through dream therapy.
MARY SHELLEY Directed by Haifaa al-Mansour. Starring: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth. The story of the creator of Frankenstein.
MY FRIEND THE POLISH GIRL Directed by Ena Banaszkiewicz Starring: Aneta Piotrowska, Emma Friedman-Cohen. An intriguing post-Brexit British drama.
AMERICAN DREAMS HEARTS BEAT LOUD Directed by Brett Haley Starring: Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons, Ted Danson. A young-at-heart father about to sell his record shop just as his daughter is heading to college to study medicine.
Directed by Brad Anderson Starring: Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike. A smart and powerful spy thriller in the 1980s.
PAPILLON Directed by Michael Noer Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Rami Malek. A new adaptation of the classic novel about a French penal colony.
SEARCHING Directed by Aneesh Chagantry Starring: John Cho, Debra Messing. A devilishly clever suspense thriller.
TERMINAL Directed by Vaughan Stein Starring: Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg. A classy noir thriller.
UNICORN STORE Directed by Brie Larson Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson. A unicorn-obsessed young woman faces some tough life lessons.
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WE THE ANIMALS
DUMPED
Directed by Jeremiah Zagar Starring: Evan Rosado, Ismiah Kaistian.
Directed by Eloise Lang Starring: Camille Cotting, Camille Chamoux.
A pack-like trio of brothers face a troubled childhood.
Two mis-matched sisters take their mother on a tropical holiday.
WEIGHTLESS
SEVERAL CONVERSATIONS ABOUT A VERY TALL GIRL
Directed by John Albertin Starring: Alessandro Nivola, Julianne Nicholson. A father with mental health issues finds himself in charge of a son he has never met.
WHO WE ARE NOW Directed by Matthew Newton A quietly powerful study of hope and redemption.
WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY
Directed by Bogdan Theodor Olteanu Starring: Silvana Mihai, Florentina Nastase. A love affair within four walls.
THICK LASHES OF LAURA MANTY VAARA Directed by Hannaleena Haura Starring: Inka Haapamaki, Rosa Honkonen.
Directed by Madeleine Olnek Starring: Molly Shannon, Amy Seimetz.
Two Finnish friends head into a hormone storm.
Emily Dickinson and her wild, wild nights.
Directed by Cyril Schaublin Starring: Sarah Stauffer, Fidel Morf.
EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES
THOSE WHO ARE FINE
A bleak, incisive reflective on isolation and dehumanisation in modern capitalist society.
3/4
MUG
Directed by Ilian Metev Starring: Mila Mihova, Nikolay Mashalov.
Directed by Malgzata Szumowska Starring: Mateusz Kosciwkiswicz, Agnieska Podsiadlik.
An honest, understated portrait of modern family life.
A quirky drama about a Polish man who receives a face transplant.
THE APPARITION
TULIPANI: LOVE, HONOUR AND A BICYCLE.
Directed by Xavier Giannoli Starring: Vincent Lindon, Galatea Bellugi. A journalist investigates a woman’s claims to have seen the Virgin Mary.
C’EST LA VIE! Directed by Eric Toledano & Olivier Nakache. Starring: Jean-Pierre Bacri, Jean-Paul Rouve. A classic ensemble comedy set against the backdrop of a French wedding.
CHARLIE & HANNAH’S GRAND NIGHT OUT Directed by Bert Scholiers Starring: Evelien Bosmans, Daphne Wellens. A strange magical and love-fuelled night out for two Belgian buddies.
A young woman on a whimsical journey to Puglia discovers her past.
WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY Directed by Iram Haq Starring: Maria Mozhdah, Adil Husain. A Pakistani teen living in Oslo rails against tradition.
WOMAN UP Directed by Tonie Marshall Starring: Emmanuelle Devos, Suzanne Clement. Battle of the sexes in French big business.
ZAGROS
DIVING Directed by Melanie Laurent Starring: Gilles Lelouche, Marla Val verde. A couple try to mend their tempestuous relationship.
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Directed by Mike van Diem Starring: Ksenia Solo, Gijs Naber.
Directed by Sahim Omar Kalifa Starring: Feyyaz Duman, Halima Ilter. A jealous Kurdish shepherd follows his wife to Belgium.
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WORLD PERSPECTIVES AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL Directed by Bo Hu Starring: Zhang Yu, Peng Yuchang. An acclaimed epic Chinese drama.
AZOUGUE NAZARE Directed by Tiago Melo Starring: Valmir do Coco, Joana Gatis. A bold clash of cultures in rural Brazil.
THE BUTTERFLY TREE Directed by Priscilla Cameron Starring: Melissa George, Ed Oxenbould. A father and son are entranced by the same woman.
FLAMMABLE CHILDREN Directed by Stephen Elliott Starring: Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue. A raucous comedy set in Aussie beachside suburbia in the 1970s.
GIRLS ARE ALWAYS HAPPY Directed by Yang Mingming Starring: Nai An, Yang Mingming. An unflinching but darkly funny tale of a Chinese mother and daughter.
THE GREAT BUDDHA Directed by Huang Hsin-Yao Starring: Cres Chuang, Bamboo Chen. A wry, funny and clever look at social inequality.
THE HEIRESSES Directed by Marcelo Martiness Starring: Anna Brun, Margarita Irun. Award-winning South American drama.
PARTY ‘ROUND THE GLOBE Directed by Hirobumi Watanabe Starring: Gaku Imamura, Ringo. Two factory workers take a wry road trip to a Paul McCartney Concert.
RADIANCE Directed by Naomi Kawase Starring: Masatoshi Nagase, Ayame Misaki. A moving tale of the power of sight.
SUPA MODO Directed by Likarian Wainaina Starring: Stylie Waweru, Marianne Nungo. A young Kenyan girl escapes real life through a superhero fantasy world.
THREE SUMMERS Directed by Ben Elton Starring: Robert Sheehan, Rebecca Breeds. Love and music evolve at an Australian Folk Music Festival.
WARU Directed by Ainsley Gardiner Starring: Mirianna McDowell, Teneka Heke. A clever structure and a suspenseful and moving film.
DOCUMENTARIES The highlight of this section is undoubtedly the following three films.
THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES Directed by Mark Cousins Featuring: Jack Klaff, Beatrice Welles. A look at the inspirational creativity of Orson Welles.
LOVELING
HAL
Directed by Gustavo Pizzi Starring: Karine Teles, Otavio Muller.
Directed by Amy Scott Featuring: Hal Ashby, Jeff Bridges, Alexander Payne.
A clever and compelling Brazilian comedy.
A film portrait of the acclaimed 1970s director.
MOKO JUMBIE Directed by Vashti Anderson Starring: Vanna Vee Girard, Jeremy Thomas. A magic realist coming-of-age drama set in Trinidad.
NO. 1 CHUNG YING STREET Directed by Derek Chiu Starring: Fish Liew, Yau Hawk Sau. A powerful political drama about protesters in Hong Kong.
WHITNEY Directed by Kevin MacDonald. The life and times of superstar Whitney Huston.
CLOSING NIGHT SWIMMING WITH MEN Directed by Oliver Parker Starring: Rob Brydon, Adeel Akhtar. An accountant whose life seems to be in order when he starts to think his wife is having an affair.
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