God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya (2021)

Direction: Teona Strugar Mitevska
Country: Macedonia

The opening shot of God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya, the fifth feature from Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska (I Am From Titov Veles), struck us with its force and energizes us with the punk music that invades it. Also of an enormous strength is the film’s central character, Petrunya (Zorica Nusheva), a 32-year old unemployed historian who provokes a national scandal after impulsively taking part in a sacred traditional ceremony reserved only for men. 

The case involves both the church and the police directly as well as a frustrated female TV reporter (Labina Mitevska), who not only sees an opportunity to stand out but also to call the attention of the public for the country’s deeply ingrained misogyny and sexism. 

In parallel, the film portrays Petrunya’s toxic relationship with her unsupportive mother, Vaska (Violeta Sapkovska), who makes everything tenser. These mother-daughter brawls can easily slip from verbal to physical aggressions.

Mitevska, who collaborated with Elma Tataragic (Stitches; Snow) in the screenplay, based herself on a true story, assembling a promising satire whose whole fails to be greater than its uneven parts. It only pays off intermittently with some humorous insubordinations and the vision of furious, silly men hurt in their egos, but other scenes are unnecessarily spoiled by a clumsy playfulness or, like during its final stage, with a disordered arrangement that is anything but convincing.

My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell it To (2021)

Direction: Jonathan Cuatras
Country: USA

My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell it To, the remarkable debut feature from Colombian-American Jonathan Cuartas, is an indie family horror-drama piece built at the crossroads of the disturbing stillness of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth and the urban, gothic tones of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive. It stars Patrick Fugit (who also produces), Ingrid Sophie Schram, and Owen Campbell as three siblings who are forced to live according to a dark secret that must be kept in the family.

Dwight (Fugit) and Jessie (Schram) make enormous sacrifices in their lives - including killing people who won’t be missed - to keep their chronically sick younger brother, Thomas (Campbell), alive. The latter is a fragile, dependent vampire that feeds on blood and needs to be kept at home at all the times, away from the sunlight. However, he often implores to get out and claims he needs friends. On the other side, Dwight dreams of leaving the town and put an end to the nightmare, whereas the remorseless Jessie commands the gruesome operations with an iron fist.

This bleak, vicious tale is endued with compelling performances, a noteworthy cinematography by the director's brother Michael Cuartas, an ominously droning score by Andrew Rease Shaw, and a great soundtrack that includes Helene Smith’s I Am Controlled By Your Love, the R&B tune that inspired the title of the film and earns a bitter meaning in the context it plays. 

This is the type of vampire flick that works more at the psychological level and doesn’t need to show any fang to involve us in its bizarre, chilly atmosphere.

Days (2021)

Direction: Tsai Ming-liang
Country: Taiwan

The insipid long shots and minimalist ways of Malaysian-born Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang has always required patience and tolerance from the viewers. His latest opus, Days, appealingly captures two solitary men in their daily routines with contemplative tones and a nearly speechless, deliberately unsubtitled approach. Peculiarly framed, the images are loaded with loneliness, sadness, pain and affection, speaking by themselves in a way that is real and clear. 

Ming-liang’s long-standing muse, the actor Lee Kang-sheng (their association started in 1992 with the great The Rebels of the Neon God) is Kang, a middle-class man who lives in an apartment in Hong Kong and undergoes treatment for his neck and back. He comes across Non (Anong Houngheuangsy), a younger Laotian immigrant living in Thailand and whose meticulous cooking we follow with curiosity. Their painful loneliness are momentarily interrupted when meeting in a Bangkok hotel room for an erotic massage, and then, silently sharing a meal at a local restaurant, just like two old pals. 

Although categorically artsy and observant in its details, the film is ridiculously long for what it intends to say, flirting with boredom. On the other hand, the subtle tension-release flux of this modern alienation (in which relentless background noises and occasional silences play a role) is disconcerting, and raw emotions can naturally emerge. Simultaneously mesmerized and exasperated, I struggled to reach the end, and I don’t believe the ones who say they didn’t. What I do believe, is that it’s hard to cope with this tremendous loneliness in a life dominated by mundane practices.

Oxygen (2021)

Direction: Alexander Aja
Country: France

Oxygen is by far the most interesting film of French helmer Alexander Aja (High Tension; Crawl), but it still struggles with a few aspects, especially in regard to the plot written by Christie LeBlanc. The film, technically inventive yet dramatically familiar, relies heavily on the performance of Mélanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds; Beginners) as a locked up scientist who, without knowing her identity and experiencing both transient recollections from the past and psychotic episodes due to isolation, tries to survive inside a cryogenic chamber.

Assisted by a sophisticated computer interface called MILO (voice of Mathieu Amalric), the protagonist sets a series of attempts to contact the right people as the oxygen inside the cabin declines to dangerous levels. After figuring out what her name was, she comes to the conclusion she had a husband (Malik Zidi) and suspects someone has framed her. 

Some convoluted uncovering and unlikely behavior - how can you put on airs when you’re running out of oxygen? - put me a bit off, but there was this mental labyrinth against the clock and a super claustrophobic environment making me relatively tuned. Both the scenarios and the special effects are accomplished in a modest sci-fi flick.

The Disciple (2021)

Direction: Chaitanya Tamhane
Country: India

Evoking The Music Room by Satyajit Ray, The Disciple is an inwardly focused drama film about a conservative classical Indian musician, Sharad Merulkar (newcomer Aditya Modak), who struggles to reach the top as an artist. He tries to follow the steps of his aging guru (Arun Dravid), whom he takes a good care of, and his late father (Kiran Yadnyopavit), who almost forced him into singing. Both are accomplished performers in the Anwar music tradition. 

Although seeking inspiration in the exceptionally rare lectures of Maai (voice of Sumitra Bhave), an insightful and legendary musician, Sharad is not there yet, and he knows it. He lives haunted by the fear he will never reach that excellence in his artistic career, which makes him lose confidence in himself. He’s also very unbending in his musical ideas.

This slow-burning tale set in contemporary Mumbai is never deeply moving, but it does have some stinging truth in it. Visually accomplished, it feels and looks intensely personal. Yet, the sleep-inducing pace, repetitive sequences, and uninvolving ambience might strain the patience of some viewers. 

Sophomore writer/director Chaitanya Tamhane, who made his debut in 2014 with Court, continues to demonstrate qualities in his work. However, the long duration of the film and a somewhat soulless approach gives this lesson in life an extra bitterness.

The Paper Tigers (2021)

Direction: Quoc Bao Tran
Country: USA

The Paper Tigers is an entertaining, feel-good kung fu comedy. The feature debut from director Quoc Bao Tran makes for a perfect lazy Sunday rental in the spirit of the Karate Kid franchise, grabbing our attention with the dynamics of a simple script centered in three middle-aged men - Danny (Alain Uy), a divorced workaholic insurance agent; Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins), a demotivated boxing coach; and Hing (Ron Yuan of Mulan), a limping man on the plump side - all former kung fu prodigies and disciples of the honorable master Sifu Cheung (Roger Yuan - a real martial arts fight trainer).

Having abandoned the martial arts to have ‘normal’ lives, they reunite years later to avenge the murder of their master. First they have to deal with disrespectful young street punks and a ludicrous childhood rival, Carter (Matthew Page), but soon they reach a more powerful adversary, Zhen Fan (action director Ken Quitugua), a former pupil of their master who became a hitman. 

Being as much silly as likable, the film is an ode to the old school martial arts films, yet light on plot and characters. Bao Tran doesn’t avoid the formulaic but doesn’t forget the fun and the kinetics of a good fight.

Mostly shot in Seattle’s Chinatown, The Paper Tigers won’t make the day of Bruce Lee’s fans but, if nothing else, has its heart in the right place.

Enfant Terrible (2020)

Direction: Oskar Roehler
Country: Germany

Oskar Roehler’s Enfant Terrible puts its focus on the life of unconventional filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose mundane pleasures and quest for love are portrayed here with undeniable panache. Fassbinder, remarkably impersonated by Oliver Masucci (Look Who’s Back; Never Look Away) in his most glorious role to date, was an irascible provocateur in life and in film. He never gave up on his dream to be among the greatest European directors, even after his first film, Love is Colder Than Death, a gangster film which he described as a remake of Raoul Walsh's White Heat, has been ridiculed. He could be a tyrant to the people working for him, and his homosexual relationships with actors had a tendency for the tragic.

His first obsession was Gunther Kaufman (Michael Klammer), a married black man who wanted to be in his films; the latter was followed by the restless Moroccan El Heidi ben Salem (Erdal Yildiz), the inspiration for and the lead in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974); and then Armin Meier (Jochen Schropp), a former butcher turned actor whose performances were not so prominent. The film only stresses these three, but there were more, including women.

Although incomplete and unfluctuating in mood, this biographical film gathers sufficient material for us to understand the director’s controversial personality. Soaked in alcohol and drugs, Fassbinder always said he understood his film characters in everything they did wrong in life. This was probably his mea culpa talking, a consequence of that wild fury and coarse manners that characterized him.

Keeping the tension at a fever pitch, Roehler, who worked from a script by Klaus Richter (their second collaboration), mounted it with some decadently fascinating moments.

The Dry (2021)

Direction: Robert Connolly
Country: Australia / USA

In The Dry, two murder cases are solved by a celebrated federal agent who returns to his arid hometown, Kiewarra, twenty years after he has left in an emotional turmoil. Eric Bana gives more body than soul to this groomed law enforcer who, helped by an insecure local sergeant (Keir O'Donnell), investigates the recent murder suicide that implicates a childhood friend. Concurrently, he tries to decipher in his head what could have happened to his girlfriend back then, who was found dead in a river that is now parched. The two cases might be connected.  

A desperate small farming community, a bunch of aggressive and surreptitious suspects, successive lies and shady moves are part of a screenplay co-written by director Robert Connolly (Balibo) and Harry Cripps (Penguin Bloom), who adapted Jane Harper’s novel of the same name.

It’s better the idea than the execution since the film plays as an over-plotted murder-mystery with an anticlimactic outcome. What went wrong with this adaptation? It simply collapses under the weight of its tonally one-note developments and clunky narrative.

Collective (2020)

Direction: Alexander Nanau
Country: Romania

This elucidative Romanian documentary directed by Alexander Nanau (Toto and his Sisters) follows a tenacious investigation led by Gazzete’s journalist Catalin Tolontan who, alongside a small team, disclosed governmental and corporate corruption related to the rotten Romanian health care system. 

People moderately injured by a fire in the Bucharest night club Colectiv succumb due to bacteria in a hospital with improper disinfection policies. 

The findings led to massive public protests and then to the resignation of the Minister of Health, prompting the new one, Vlad Voiculescu, to cooperate with the journalists and take unprecedented measures. Corrupt hospital managers and politicians  were identified together with negligent medical staffs. Still, in the end, we are consumed by the frustration that arises from unpunished bribes and a fraudulent, dysfunctional Romanian state.

Solidly structured and incisive in its observations, the film never leaves you in doubt, showing that the truth is way too hard to digest. What we see here is not pretty - it’s simultaneously scary and infuriating to realize that people who are paid to guarantee a proper functionality of a health system don’t give a damn if you live or die. Collective leaves us speechless, but, fortunately, honest journalism still exists.

A Sun (2020)

Direction: Chung Mong-hong
Country: Taiwan

A Sun is a crime-infused Taiwanese drama film directed by Chung Mong-hong (The Fourth Portrait; Soul), who co-wrote it with screenwriter and novelist Chang Yao-sheng. The excellent performances could have hurled the film into stardom by themselves if the overdramatic score by Lin Sheng-xiang didn’t attempt to increase the emotional toll in each and every key scene. Thus, in my view, the film would have worked better if the constantly bitter tones were cooked raw. Despite this quibble, the well-written plot didn’t left me indifferent.

We follow the tortuous path of A-Ho (Wu Chien-ho), whose troublesome teenage years in Taipei led him to a juvenile correction facility. While doing time, he learns that his 15-year old girlfriend is pregnant and that his brilliant and introspective older brother, A-Hao (Greg Hsu), has committed suicide. Their father (Chen Yi-wen), a peculiar driving instructor, deliberately refused to fight for A-Ho in court, on a case where the hand of a young man was chopped and thrown into a boiling soup by his son's friend Radish (Liu Kuan-ting). Misfortunes for this family are far from over, especially when the latter is released from prison.

This is a tale of tragedy, reconciliation and crime punctuated with effective comedic touches, becoming an exposé of parental fault, disintegration and collapse. This atmospheric conundrum among this family of four, shapes into whether sensitive or violent behaviors in a credible script wrapped in emotional complexity. Peace is ultimately found but at a high cost.

Mong-hong also takes charge of the cinematography, taking an impressive stance on the visuals, but he could have taken A Sun to another realm by simplifying a few aspects.

The Woman in the Window (2021)

Direction: Joe Wright
Country: USA

The elegant filmmaking style of Joe Wright, the British director of modern classics such as Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007) and Darkest Hour (2017), becomes powerless in face of the tremendous destabilized screenplay of The Woman in the Window, an Hitchcockian psychological thriller that took its influence too far. Tracy Letts, who also stars, adapted A.J. Finn’s bestselling novel of the same name, but not even a great cast fronted by Amy Adams and including Gary Oldman, Fred Hechinger, Julianne Moore, Wyatt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh, was capable to make it convincing or stimulating.

Anne Fox (Adams) is an agoraphobic child psychiatrist living in Manhattan, New York. She loves to snoop on her neighbors. Recently separated from her husband, who took their daughter with him, Anne immerses herself in this noxious daily routine, which also includes alcohol and drug intake as well as some minimal interaction with her tenant, David (Russell), a sinister singer/songwriter turned handyman. When the Russells move into an apartment she owns across the street, she gets to know more about them - the controlling and temperamental Allistair (Oldman), his nosy and fragile wife Jane (Moore), and their sensitive 15-year-old son, Ethan (Hechinger). One day, from her window, she witnesses a murder in their house.

In addition to a synthetic central character, the weak intrigue and rigid dynamics place the film between a poorly investigative case and a phony state of paranoia. The flaws are significative throughout, ultimately leading to a more ridiculous than revelatory closure. I expected much more from Wright than just craftsmanship behind the camera. This is stale when it should be tight.

White On White (2021)

Direction: Théo Court
Country: Spain

White on White, the sophomore feature from Spanish-born director of Chilean heritage Théo Court, can be described as a neo-western with glowing images but a grim soul. As a strange melancholy surrounds us through impressionistic well-lit interiors and the now snowy, now arid landscape of Tierra Del Fuego, we are drawn into a vortex of darkness whose epicenter is a mysterious, wealthy and unseeable landowner called Mr. Porter. The latter hires a meticulous photographer, Pedro (Alfredo Castro), to take pictures of his future wife, Sara (Esther Vega Perez), who is still a child. She fascinates Pedro in an artistic way (I want to believe) but his intentions are taken as an offense after the first session. The place has limited accessibility and the atmosphere ranges from gloomy to hostile.

With the wedding postponed, Pedro realizes how sad is the life of the ones inhabiting the propriety, where most of them drink to overcome the solitude. The men not only take pleasure in killing the Selk’nam, an indigenous people of the Patagonia region, but also are rewarded for that. Pedro feels trapped and forced to participate in these manhunts, even if he refuses to kill.

To better understand the film’s mood you can consider a crossing between Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and Antonio di Benedetto’s Zama. There’s an inescapable sense of trauma and perversion throughout, with a finale that lifts the veil on the ignominious complicity of Pedro, who, betraying his principles, seems to opt for immoral work instead of going crazy. 

The apt performance by Castro (who earned accolades in Pablo Larrain’s Tony Manero, Post Mortem and The Club) and the breathtaking cinematography by José Ángel Alayón help us conquer the languorous pace of the story.

Identifying Features (2021)

Direction: Fernanda Valadez
Country: Mexico

In Fernanda Valadez’s heartbreaking debut feature, Identifying Features, a 48-year-old woman called Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) sets off to the border between Mexico and the US in a desperate attempt to track down her missing son, Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela). During the perilous route that takes her from Guanajuato to a forbidden rural zone called ‘La Fragua’, she comes across with another woman in the same situation and a deported young man, Miguel (David Illescas), who returns to his village to see his mother. Then she visits an elderly Indian Mexican, a survivor of a bus assault, who might know what happened to her son.

Sorely meditative and minimally composed, the film carries an enormous emotional weight in each frame. The spiky script, co-written by Valadez and Astrid Rondero (they also edited and produced), steadily cranks up its social and emotional charge, at the same time that, even without providing any answer, makes us inquire about Mexico’s unremitting violence. Hernández shines particularly convincing as the unsettling scenes capture the tormenting reality of Mexico’s several degrees of inhumanity.

Identifying Features is a harrowing tale of loss, anguish and disenchantment whose brutally cold conclusions left me stunned.

The Man Who Sold His Skin (2021)

Direction: Kaouther Ben Hania
Country: Tunisia

For her second fictional feature film, Tunisian writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania sought inspiration in the Belgian contemporary artist Wim Delvoye's living work Tim (2006). She tells the story of Sam Ali (Yahya Mahayni), a Syrian refugee who was forced to flee his tumultuous country to Lebanon, where he was literally turned into a flesh-and-blood piece of art by the provocative Belgian artist Jeffrey Godefroi (Koen De Bouw). The latter’s concept consists in tattooing a Schengen visa on Sam’s back, which, ironically, allows him to travel to Europe, not as a human being but as a work of art. 

Unwillingly, Sam left his sweetheart, Abeer (Dea Liane), at the mercy of Ziad (Saad Lostan), a smug politician who works for the Syrian embassy in Belgium. Years later, they have a chance to meet again in Brussels.

The duality achieved between being a famished refugee and an exploitative object of art is thoughtful and works well until we reach the film's midpoint. At that stage, Hania makes this crushing love story nosedive into fabricated banality, also spoiling the potential of the romance. It really seems that the finale was cooked up under pressure after an ambitious start. 

As my interest kept declining, The Man Who Sold His Skin showed to have a lot more in mind than what it could handle. This once promising satire, made imperfect by a weak twist, misses the killing blow.

Two of Us (2021)

Direction: Filippo Meneghetti
Country: France

Construed as a bittersweet hymn of love, Two of Us is an auspicious debut for Filippo Meneghetti, an Italian-born director based in France, whose work should get him a zealous set of admirers. Crafted with strong visuals, narrative focus and aching intimacy, the film chronicles  the story of two women in their sixties - Madeleine Girard (Martine Chevallier) and Nina Dorn (Barbara Sukowa) - who have been neighbors and secret lovers for decades. The former is a widow, a mother of two and grandmother who makes arrangements with the latter, a former tour guide from Berlin, to sell their apartments and move to Italy.

If the plan suddenly got to an impasse due to Madeleine’s children - the caring Anne (Léa Drucker) and the insensitive Fred (Jérôme Varanfrain) - then it became practically ruined after a sad incident that forces both women to fight hard to stay together. 

The film’s extraordinary qualities - including a ferocious performance by Sukowa - outweighs any quibbles in a story that fluidly toggles affection and tension. There’s no artsy nonsense here nor dull moments, but rather an afflictive desperation and yearning that rings true. The instinctual need for love we see here is extremely powerful, with Meneghetti guiding the two lead actresses with firm hand as well as working all the environment that surrounds them to attain the credibility that the story he co-wrote with Malysone Bovorasmy, deserves.

Wrath of Man (2021)

Direction: Guy Ritchie
Country: USA / UK

Wrath of Man, Guy Ritchie’s disappointing remake of the French heist film Le Convoyeur (2004), stars the British actor Jason Statham as a charmless avenger, in what is his fourth collaboration with the director after Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998, Snatch in 2000, and Revolver in 2005.

The plot focuses on a mysterious man, Patrick “H” Hill (Statham), who starts to work for an L.A. armored truck company that transports millions in cash every week. The cash trucks are frequently targeted by the organized crime, but H not only demonstrates advanced combat skills when leading with the robbers but also drives them off with his presence. While promptly earning the respect of his colleagues and superiors, this man reveals other intentions than just doing his regular job.

It’s a bit of dark fun that we get before the film gets stuck in by-the-books action scenes with plenty of violence and machine gun pyrotechnics. Everything is set in autopilot mode and the menacing score by Christopher Benstead - who worked with Ritchie in The Gentlemen - is a constant presence, even in the scenes where it wasn't needed.

It’s all bloated spectacle in the end, a long and boring trail of deaths presented with a deceptive slickness, where Statham doesn’t even bother to bring a sense of grief to his miserable existence. Ritchie has enlisted the actor once again for his upcoming film, a spy thriller involving the MI6 and the CIA. I hope he can find different strategies to get better results.

You Will Die at Twenty (2021)

Direction: Amjad Abu Alala
Country: Sudan

This revelatory Sudanese drama film directed and co-written by the debutant Amjad Abu Alala tells the lugubrious story of Muzamil (Mustafa Shehata), whose life is negatively affected when a holy prophet passes the message that he will die at the age 20. 

Whereas his father (Talal Afifi), too disturbed by the curse, decides to leave the family and go abroad, his mother, Sakina (Islam Mubarak), embraces sadness and premature mourning while keeping her son at home. Consequently, the boy is deprived from having a proper education and a healthy social life. Still, whenever there’s an opportunity, Muzamil goes out, just to be bullied by the other boys who call him ‘the son of death’. This dark prospect doesn’t refrain Naiema (Bonna Khalid), his only childhood friend, from showing her love for him years later. However, he’s too afraid to take any step toward her, unable to break free from impairing superstitious creeds and strict religious procedures. 

As a smart boy who, at 19, memorized the Quran in two reading styles, he begins to see a new reality due to the influence of Sulaiman (Mahmoud Elsarraj), a free-minded man with a passion for cinema and a bad reputation among the villagers.

Shot with an eye for cultural particularities and holding on to a competently structured storytelling, this fable of death exposes the current problems - many in the guise of tradition - of countries marked by long-lasting dictatorships and inflexible visions. It also serves as a metaphor for our world today, where ridiculous and unsupported beliefs are taken to extremes.

Both the narrative quality and stylistic grounds suggest a crossing between Youssef Chahine and Satyajit Ray, in a sad film dedicated to the victims of the Sudanese Revolution.

Sator (2021)

Direction: Jordan Graham
Country: USA

Sator is an art-house horror movie that impressed me more with its imagery than with its story. Written and directed by Jordan Graham, who sought inspiration in his own great-grandmother experiences, the film follows Adam (Gabriel Nicholson), a tortured man who lives in a cabin in a secluded forest where a supernatural entity - a demon called Sator - claims all members of his family as he stalks his lineage for centuries. His senile grandmother, Nani (remarkable first appearance on the screen by June Peterson), a practitioner of automatic writing, is the one who informs him about the knowledgeable creature that can’t be seen in the dark and talks in her head. While the alert Adam seems disturbed with the fact, his siblings, Pete (Michael Daniel) and Deborah (Aurora Lowe), don’t show any signs of weakness. 

Posing as an enigmatic, folklore-infused chimera, Sator is not a typical scarer as it detaches from all those stereotyped elements such as punctual startles, sudden loud noises, creepy visuals and foreboding score. Instead, Graham frames his shots with two different techniques (B&W 4:3 and Color 16:9), employs occasionally ruminative soundscapes and routine Bible passages that come from a radio, and throws in Rachmaninoff’s “Concerto no. 2” in the most sinister moments of the film. Yes, I thought the grandmother was far more bone-chilling than Sator itself. 

Even so, the slow-moving passages and dull dialogue make the film drag all along, while the outcome never matches the promises made in the first segment of the story. This self-reverential exercise drowns in a deep melancholy and gets lost in the vision of bovine-like skulls risen from the dead.

Crock of Gold: a Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (2020)

Direction: Julien Temple
Country: UK

I was never a big fan of The Pogues, but I remember to have read interesting stories about its frontman, the rebellious Irish punk Shane MacGowan, who is the subject of this engrossing documentary directed by the British director Julien Temple (The Filth and the Fury, 2000; London: the Modern Babylon, 2012). 

The title of the film partly stems from the novel by the Irish writer James Stephens, which already had lent its name to the sophomore album of MacGowan’s post-Pogues band, The Popes, while the few rounds certainly takes my mind to his long-lasting alcohol addiction. The singer/songwriter talks about his childhood, spent at a farmhouse in Tipperary, Ireland, where he started to drink at the age six. He also weighs in on the IRA and the Irish War of Independence, his nervous breakdowns, acid trips, heroin and alcohol dependency, lost and regain of faith, his love/hate relationship with England, and many more episodes that made his life so singular.

Expertly structured, the film intertwines conversational segments between MacGowan and the former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams as well as the actor Johnny Depp, terrific animation sequences by the legendary illustrator Ralph Steadman, unseen archive footage from The Pogues in concert, and statements of elucidation by Shane’s sister, Siobhan.

The resulting documentary is a sincere, funny look at the wild life of a poet/musician, who, emerging here as a survivor of all types of excesses (even musical), is brutally honest when dealing with the life he chose and the circumstances that made him who he is. By the way, MacGowan will also be remembered for his oddly contagious laugh.

The Sleepwalkers (2020)

Direction: Paula Hernandez
Country: Argentina

A couple in crisis, Luisa (Érica Rivas) and Emilio (Luis Ziembrowski), alongside their 14-year-old daughter, Ana (Ornella D'Elía), gather with the rest of the family at the country house of the dominant matriarch, Memé (Marilú Marini). It's New Year’s Eve in Argentina and the normal tensions and conflicts between adults within a family feel insignificant here, as a more complex tragedy takes place, leaving irreversible emotional marks.

Shot with a refined taste and hanging on subtle details to illustrate what’s with each character, Paula Hernandez’s The Sleepwalkers succeeds in piling up small doses of tension that end up bursting into an agonizing climax.

An extremely talented cast makes everything in the flesh, but it would be unfair not to stress the magnificent performances of Rivas and D’Elía, who ensure the credibility of a mother-daughter relationship.

Despite all its strengths as a sobering, wrenching and well-acted drama, The Sleepwalkers faces some limitations, the biggest of them being the predictability of the story. The way Hernandez mounted the script makes no room for surprises, yet, the film still poses interesting questions about responsibility. Is there anything that could have been done to avoid such an atrocious outcome of this Argentinian family reunion?