Wildland (2021)

Direction: Jeanette Nordahl
Country: Denmark

In Jeanette Nordahl’s debut feature Wildland, an introverted 17-year-old is caught in the criminal web weaved by her family. The statement that opens and closes this journey - “for some people, things go wrong before they even begin” - adjusts perfectly since this austere family crime-drama almost feels like a noir coming-of-age film loaded with corrosive toxicity.  

After her mother’s death, Ida (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) becomes an orphan and goes to live with her aunt Bodil (Sidse Babett Knudsen), whom she had never met before. She quickly learns that the domineering matriarch commands a group of robbers that consists of her three sons - the immature Mads (Besir Zeciri), the reserved David (Elliott Crosset Hove) and the authoritarian Jonas (Joachim Fjelstrup). Ida enjoys all the attention she gets from her cousins, but what was fun at first becomes a nightmare when an operation goes wrong and the relationships grow tenser. 

Shot with clarity as it is magnificently photographed by the expert David Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent, 2015; I Am Not a Witch, 2017; Birds of Passage, 2018), Wildland is an unsettling ride that flows at a calculated pacing, encompassing topics such as loyalty to and sacrifice for the family, identity, sense of belonging, and the choice between the good and the bad.

There’s plenty of disturbing aspects in the plot by Ingeborg Topsøe that makes the film compulsively watchable. The performances are strong - not only from Kampp and Knudsen who are at the center, but also from Hove who truly impressed me (it will take me some time to forget the immense emptiness in his look). This uncompromisingly ugly story managed to linger in my mind after its conclusion.

Annette (2021)

Direction: Leos Carax
Country: France / Belgium / Germany

Provocative French filmmaker Leos Carax (Holy Motors, 2012) teams up with brothers Russell and Ron Mael (the duo Sparks), who wrote the original story and the music, in Annette, his first English-language film. The result was disappointingly mediocre, and what was eagerly expected as a grandiose musical hit, became mostly an insipid spectacle that feels too literal and pedestrian to fly higher. What happened to that delightful ambiguity and abandon that Carax so stylishly exerted in other works? 

Despite its efforts of production, the film is thwarted by a deficient development, a blatant lack of surprise and the dragging singing scenes that go with the extremely artificial staging. Adam Driver (Paterson, 2016; Marriage Story, 2019) - who sings with a Nick Cave vibe when not mumbling - doesn’t excel in playing a stand-up comedian in decline, while Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose, 2007; Two Days One Night, 2014) is modest in the role of an acclaimed opera singer. Their child, Annette, is a miracle that the world needs to see, and in fact she saves the film from total oblivion with that last touching scene, where she appears in a pure human form (young newcomer Devyn McDowell is brilliant).

Apart from that, what we have here is some first-rate imagery in a second-rate movie filled with third-rate dialogues. The music and chants didn’t please me either, contributing to a pretentious, kitsch expression that is more irritating than emotional. 

Carax’s Annette is blatantly uninspired and I was simply left in the cold of its contrived machination.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Direction: Drew Goddard
Country: USA

I must confess I expected more from Drew Goddard, the director of Cabin in the Woods, in his sophomore feature, Bad Times at the El Royale, a fuzzy Tarantino-esque pulp-without-juice thriller that only modestly entertains. The stellar casting doesn’t avoid a pretty clumsy payoff in a story that, after an intriguing start, gets messy, violent and cheesy, continuing its downfall until the end. 

A robber in the guise of a priest (Jeff Bridges), a serene singer (Cynthia Erivo), a traumatized young clerk (Lewis Pullman), a trio of cult-derived psychopaths (Dakota Johnson, Cailee Spaeny and Chris Hemsworth) and a special agent (Jon Hamm) forge some surprising spins and stunts, but the film loses opacity too soon and becomes less and less interesting. Moreover, it all looks phony and sounds artificial from side to side.

I wouldn’t bother visiting this 2-star hotel.

Dara of Jasenovac (2021)

Direction: Predrag Antonijevic
Country: Serbia

Horrifying atrocities of war seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old Serbian girl (Biljana Cekic) placed in the Jasenovac concentration camp of Croatia in the WWII. This is what Predrag Antonijevic proposes in his somewhat inarticulate new drama. The film, based on the testimonies of survivors, wants to be so realistic  in its depictions that falls into artlessness, often failing to extract natural emotions from the scenes.

Thus, episodes of profound compassion and self-sacrifice in favor of others alternate with brutal violence and authoritarian repression, leaving a huge gap in between. Angels and demons are taken to extremes, while the anticipation of cruelty, in most of the cases, makes the film’s own worst enemy.

The weight of history can be felt and the unacceptable treatment inflicted to the Serbs and Jews severely condemned, but the film could have been more plot-oriented and less heavy-handed. Screenwriter Natasa Drakulic, who shares a good slice of responsibility in this misfire, forges an unsatisfying conclusion that leaves everything in suspension. What should be agonizingly poignant becomes merely superficial.

Nina Wu (2021)

Direction: Midi Z
Country: Taiwan

This finely crafted, ever restless psychodrama film co-written by Midi Z (The Road to Mandalay, 2016) and Wu Ke-xi, who also stars, provides an absorbing cinematic experience that gets creepier and infuriating as the details of the story emerge. 

Sufen Wu (Ke-xi) left her rural hometown eight years ago to try her luck as an actress in Taipei, where she adopted the artistic name Nina Wu. She was only picked to play background roles in a few short films and minor commercials, and has been making most of her living as an online celebrity. Now, that an opportunity to have the leading role in a major feature came up, Nina doesn’t want to screw up and goes for it, even if the nudity and sex scenes in it make her extremely uncomfortable. How much humiliation and submission is needed for an actress to be successful?

The film-inside-the-film concept works well, and we find her being provoked and bullied by the strict director (Shih Ming-shuai). We also learn through episodic scenes that Nina misses her childhood friend Kiki (Vivian Sung) most than anyone, and that she deals with different problems in her family. Her recurrent strange dreams show her state of mind, which is deeply affected trauma.

The film is cleverly structured and the title character shaped with feverish, Darren Aronofsky-like layers, which adds well to the suspenseful coldness of Michael Haneke and the voluptuousness and paranoia associated with Gaspar Noé. It can be manipulative and disorienting at times, and not all scenes work at the same level. Still, it’s a chilling statement involving the movie industry that will leave you disturbed and disgusted.

There Is No Evil (2021)

Direction: Mohammad Rasoulof
Country: Iran

Four short, if complex, stories centered on the topic of capital-punishment and immersed in moral dilemma is what the Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof (A Man Of Integrity, 2019) offers us in There Is No Evil, his seventh fictional feature and the one that led him to prison and house arrest (just like Jafar Panahi) via the fierce censorship exerted by the authoritarian political regime of Iran.

With pragmatism, Rasoulof doesn’t condemn individuals but rather the political system behind the acts, posing questions about morality, justice and personal liberty.

Cerebral and presented with sang-froid, the first story centers on a husband/father (Ehsan Mirhosseini) in his family routines; the second chapter is thrilling and defiant of the system, focusing on a jailed Iranian soldier (Kaveh Ahangar) who refuses to kill; the third tale is painful and complex as it follows another soldier (Mohammad Valizadegan) who crosses the woods to visit his girlfriend (Mahtab Servati) but is struck by an unexpected surprise; and finally, the fourth story, the most intriguing of them all, is marked by a nice twist as an outcast doctor (Mohammad Seddighimehr) welcomes his Germany-based niece (director’s daughter Baran Rasoulof) as she visits the parched mountainous area where he lives.

The very naturalistic performances enhance the conflicts of conscience and the questions on how to deal with such a complex issue. How can you fight for your freedom and make your choice when your government is criminal and wants you to act according its ways? Although uneven, this is a brave, revelatory film from a smart filmmaker who presents things from the perspective of the executioners, drawing attention to the impact of their acts on themselves and the ones who surround them.

Val (2021)

Direction: Leo Scott, Ting Poo
Country: USA

This documentary, co-directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo, about the career successes and health struggles of American actor Val Kilmer, uses precious footage captured by the actor himself throughout the years, from family gatherings in his childhood (with the help of his two brothers) to auditions to the present time. 800 hours of footage were narrowed down to only 108 minutes, a fact that turned to be the best feat of the film.

Kilmer, who started being noticed in the mid-80s (primarily with Top Gun, 1986) and attained a career peak in the early 90s with his personification of Jim Morrisson in Martin Scorsese’s The Doors, (1991), fought an aggressive throat cancer that left him nearly speechless. Now, he uses a voice box to express himself but his son Jack narrates the film in his behalf. 

As passionate about its subject as the actor was about acting, the film tells Kilmer’s story intimately, with compassion, without never going into unnecessary sentimentality. Yet, this self-portrait of the star is not as powerful as I had imagined, even losing its track a bit by the time that Kilmer’s film Cinema Twain (2019) is mentioned. It’s an OK watching, not a fascinating one.

Servants (2021)

Direction: Ivan Ostrochovsky
Country: Slovakia / Czech Republic / other

Servants is a sharp, atmospheric arthouse thriller whose noir tone straddles between the classic Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951; Au Hasard Balthazar, 1966; Mouchette, 1967) and the contemporary Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, 2014; Cold War, 2018). Shot in 4:3 format and exhibiting a dazzling visual austerity for each impeccable black-and-white frame, Servants can be suffocating at times in its denounce of the church involvement with the Czech Communist regime in the early 1980s during the Cold War.

Slovak director Ivan Ostrochovsky (Goat, 2015) co-wrote the scrip with regular collaborator Marek Lescák and Ida’s co-writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, with the purpose of depicting on screen a few real events that mirror the bleak, oppressive atmosphere lived by the clergy at the time. Staged with virtuosity, the tale focuses on theology students Juraj (Samuel Skyva) and Michal (Samuel Polakovic), and their moral dilemmas when it comes to serve the Communist regime with information instead of focusing on their true vocation.

The quiet, toxic battle that takes place in the shadows between the religious doctrine and the political ideology is a chilling, enraging exposition of years of abuse, and the film has absolutely no qualms about saying that leaders of Theology University were conniving with politics to save their school from closure. Ostrochovsky puts on display the ways found by some students and priests to resist.

Servants could have been tighter in its final stage, but it’s still a rigorous, peculiar journey of faith that entangles in a slow, sure-handed fashion. Here, the enemy is not the devil or ‘witches’ or anything supernatural, but rather a human-made political system that operates in silence.

Never Gonna Snow Again (2021)

Direction: Malgorzata Szumowska / Michal Englert
Country: Poland

Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska (Body, 2015; Mug, 2018) teams up with her cinematographer ex-husband, Michal Englert, in the direction, aiming to leave some magic in the air with Never Gonna Snow Again, a lightly layered drama with enchanting tones and an ambivalent playfulness.

The story follows Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), a Ukrainian masseur born in the now ghost-town Pripyat, nearby Chernobyl, who moves to a wealthy Polish neighborhood and builds a sort of cult following through the gift of touching the peoples’ souls and healing them. Experiencing faint memories of his childhood, the popular Zhenia proves to be a hard worker who can make his female clients jealous, even if he has no time for intimate relationships.

Shot with taste, the film benefits from a hypnotic camera work and balanced image compositions, allowing you to enjoy these characters even more. The low-key Utgoff conveys the requisite curiosity and charm that Zhenia requires, spicing up the psychological phenomenon that he carries with him without touching any dark mysticism. On the contrary, everything is subtle and sensitively ironic, shaping up into a provocative satire that is punctuated with controlled surreal hysteria and some offbeat wit.

The idea for the film came from a real Ukrainian masseur but the filmmakers are more interested in dissecting the vulnerabilities of the Polish bourgeoisie than really scrutinize which type of superpowers Zhenia was gifted with. Sometimes giving the sensation that is going to dry out, the plot never flounders and maintains its steady pulse. To tell the truth, I was never truly hypnotized but never lost the interest either.

Apples (2021)

Direction: Christos Nikou
Country: Greece

Apples, the intriguing feature debut by the up-and-coming Greek director Christos Nikou, who worked as an assistant director for Yorgos Lanthimos in Dogtooth (2009) and Richard Linklater in Before Midnight (2013), flows with offbeat quirkiness and deadpan humor, doling out more in terms of emotion than I was expecting at an early stage. 

The film’s nature and pace won’t rocket you to the edge of your seat but offers something deeper than just a mere laconic examination of memory. Posing interesting questions about identity, relationships and loss, the film takes some deciphering, but attentive viewers will take tiny bits of dialogue as hints for the puzzle until the final twist is tossed at us, giving a proper meaning to the story.

The mood and style are primarily reminiscent of Lanthimos’ The Lobster but there’s some of Wes Anderson’s melancholy humor and Quentin Dupieux's absurdity thrown in the mix. Yet, Nikou finds his own beat, making it less dystopian and ‘self-sabotaged’ by the inscrutable central character, Aris (Aris Servetalis). The latter lost his memory due to - imagine! - a worldwide pandemic, giving the impression of being totally out of sync of his true feelings. This avid apple-eater gladly joins the governmental New Identity Program, which serves to give him a ‘new life’ - new experiences, new memories. He eventually forges an atypical relationship packed with peculiar episodes with an amnesiac woman, Anna (Sofia Georgovasili). 

Although narratively opaque for most of the time, which makes us constantly aware of not seeing the whole picture, Apples is a very clever film. Bizarre indeed, but ultimately so simple at its core.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2021)

Direction: Lili Horvath
Country: Hungary

In Lili Horvát’s uncommonly moody romantic drama, reality and fantasy intertwine in the mind of a woman in love.

The director’s sophomore feature follows Marta Vizy (Natasa Stork), a highly qualified neurosurgeon in her early forties who leaves the US, where she lives for nearly two decades, to return to her hometown Budapest. The reason for this professional downgrade is Janos Drexler (Viktor Bodó), a man she met in a conference in New Jersey, who she thinks is the right one for her. They didn’t exchange phone numbers but decided to meet one month after in the Pest end of the Budapest’s Liberty Bridge. Janos didn’t only show up to the rendezvous but also claims he never met her before when confronted with the situation.

This romantic move turned frustration develops with a few episodes - her appointments with a psychologist that puts everything she reveals in question, a short flirt with a fourth-year medical student, and her curiosity in knowing more about Janos’ life.

The film, decorously shot in 35mm, flows with a languid propulsion permeated by melancholy, only sporadically surprising in a plot that lacks that expected ingenious spin that would give the best sequence to what had been previously created. It gets lost somehow in its ambiguity and that affects the whole.

The film, once an extraordinary idea, becomes out of shape at the moment that Horvát tries to give it one. The reversion of the roles of Marta and Janos brings an emotional hollow that transforms these Preparations in an unaffecting put-on.

Gaia (2021)

Direction: Jaco Bouwer
Country: South Africa

Executed with above-average imagery, Gaia, a trippy eco thriller directed by South African Jaco Bouwer, tells the nightmarish experience of a park ranger, Gabi (Monique Rockman), while conducting a routine operation in a secluded forest. Injured, she accidentally bumps into two reclusive survivalists - father (Carel Nel) and son (Alex Van Dyk) - who show to have a bizarre relationship with the forest. 

The woods feel alive with wilderness-spawned creatures and a phantasmagoric energy all its own. Fungus attacks and folklore elements are not rare, but the dreamlike sequences are excessive and repetitive. With that said, the film is solidly inventive in what it gets right.

The acting is good enough and Bouwer directs competently, availed by Pierre-Henri Wicomb’s effective sound design and Jorrie van der Walt’s beautiful cinematography. It seems intentional from the filmmaker to keep things vague rather than providing too many details. Thus, the plot by Tertius Kapp feels fresh until it takes us to familiar places.

Even limited in budget, Gaia is a surprising poke in the eye of our horror-movie expectations.

Volcano (2019)

Direction: Roman Bondarchuk
Country: Ukraine

The first fiction feature from Ukrainian Roman Bondarchuk started as a documentary. Volcano got its roots from the real life of the director’s girlfriend’s uncle, a former head of a fish farm who lost everything and now lives tormented by the future.

In this surreal comedy drama, Bondarchuk cooperated with Alla Tyutyunnik and co-producer Dar’ya Averchenko in the script, mounting a tale where fiction and reality touch with sufficiently eventful episodes and oddities to keep us absorbed.

While working with an OSCE mission in a forgotten steppe region next to the Crimean border in South Ukraine, Lukas (Serhiy Stepansky) gets lost, also losing track of his colleagues. He’s picked up by a local young woman, Marushka (Khrystyna Deylyk), who takes him to her father, Vova (Viktor Zhdanov), a jobless man with some strange ideas for business.

The anarchy of the place is alarming, and Lukas ends up being robbed, arrested, beaten up, abandoned in a hole to die, and involved in spectacular fights with a gang of a neighbor village. He also sees a mirage of dead people in the sun, and experiences friendship and true love. Is he crazy enough to stay? 

Never overheated, the film plays like a nightmarish fairy tale that is by turns austere and affecting. While the absurd humor generates crushing awkwardness, the convincing environments promulgate a sad authenticity. And this mix functions correctly, regardless the so-so finale.

Zola (2021)

Direction: Janicza Bravo
Country: USA

Co-writer and director Janicza Bravo (Lemon, 2017) based herself on the 2015 tweets by Aziah "Zola" King and a related Rolling Stone article by David Kushner to set up her sophomore feature, Zola, starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun and Colman Domingo.

The story follows the title character (Paige) going on a bizarre two-day road trip from Detroit to Tampa, Florida, after being invited by cunning stripper and sex worker Stefani (Keough) to dance for quick cash in clubs. They are joined on the road by Stefani’s slow-witted boyfriend (Braun) as well as her sly pimp (Domingo).

More pathetic than serious, the film tends to minimize the grimness of the situation with mindless episodes and an I-don’t-care attitude' that remove all the possible thrills within the incidences and also the curiosity we could show in the story. I left not caring what the future held for a single one of these characters because it’s all too complacently vulgar. 

The idea of Zola may be appealing at its core, but Bravo was unable to present it in a satisfying manner. She certainly aims for satirical laughs here, but wears pretension on her sleeve, and the film just doesn’t deliver.

Flurries of Afrobeat try to infuse some energy but what we get here is a negatively intoxicating vibe that forced me to get absent really fast.

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Direction: Jaume Collet-Serra
Country: USA

Based on Disney’s riverboat amusing ride, Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise is a tiresome effects-soaked extravaganza with shallow characters and uninterrupted ostentatious sequences. The plot, written by regular associates Glenn Ficarra/John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, 2009; Focus, 2015) together with Michael Green (Logan, 2017; Blade Runner 2049, 2017), contains plenty of incidents that never materialize quite right on the screen.

It all starts when a courageous and charming British researcher, Dr. Lili Houghton (Emily Blunt), decides to cross the aggressive Brazilian Amazon rainforest by boat in search for the mythical Tree of Life on account of its healing powers. Her secret is that she can’t swim, an extra motive to hire the experienced boat skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson), who is far more secretive than her but knows the jungle as the palm of his hand. Whereas she can be described as a female version of Indiana Jones, he resembles a raucous Popeye with no need for spinach.

Fancily decorated, the film also evokes Pirates of the Caribbean, Goonies and Aguirre (just a little due to the presence of the Spanish conquistador), but ends in a cluttered mess devoid of magic, where every attempted thrill becomes ineffective. With the director botching the scenes with suffocatingly busy scenarios, I had two hours of little fun. It feels that he and the screenwriters were so obsessed with the visuals that they simply forgot the human emotions. This adventure has no soul.

Khibula (2018)

Direction: George Ovashvili
Country: Georgia

The contemplative, poetic ways of Georgian helmer George Ovashvili remain intact in his third feature, Khibula, a political drama film inspired by the last days of the first democratically elected president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Despite of this fact, the director rejected the term biopic since the name of the president in the film, played by Iranian actor Hossein Mahjoub (The Colors of Paradise, 1999), is deliberately unspecified to give the film a broader dimension.

We observe the painful rural journey of a demotivated, self-proclaimed president who returned to his devastated country after being overthrown by an authoritarian regime. Escorted by a few faithful supporters, he refuses to leave Georgia again, but is forced to hide from the enemy, visiting several houses while gradually losing hope in his cause. 

The sadness of his reality contrasts with the immense beauty of the images, impeccably captured by Italian cinematographer Enrico Lucidi (Baaria, 2009) in his first collaboration with the Georgian director. Visibly tormented with the decaying state of things, the president seems incapable of changing his fate. His death, whether by assassination or suicide, remains in mystery. 

Shot in 35mm, Khibula is not as strong as Ovashvili’s previous films - The Other Bank (2009) and Corn Island (2014) - whose backdrops were the 1992-1993 War in Abkhazia. However, this desolate tale of a political leader in steep decline can’t be ignored.

Limbo (2021)

Direction: Ben Sharrock
Country: UK

Limbo is a beautiful comedy drama. Bitter and tender by turns, it tells the story of Syrian refugee and oud player Omar Youssef (Amir El-Masry), who gets indefinitely stranded on a remote island in Scotland, patiently waiting for his application for asylum to be approved. Meanwhile, and because he is not allowed to work, he deals with anxiety and guilt not just for having borrowed money from his parents but also for having left Syria without saying goodbye to his brother, Nabil (Kais Nashif), who chose to fight. 

Unmotivated to play his instrument, Omar enters in a fragile emotional state that, on the one hand, is aggravated by the xenophobic observations of some locals, and, on the other, is attenuated by his Afghan friend, Farhad (Vikash Bhai), one of the few who remain optimistic and encouraging.

British writer/director Ben Sharrock borrows some humorous traits from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki (immediately detectable in the first scene), who is the European summit in the thorny issue of immigration (Le Havre, 2011; The Other Side of Hope, 2017). Still, he infuses his own vision by giving a refreshing take on the topic and molding the film to become poignant but unsentimental, with an urgent humanist side.

As an affecting and intimate declaration of faith in human values, the picture works its way quietly and steadily into our emotions. Every line and frame have something of interest and it’s nearly impossible not to care for these characters as we witness their pain, compassion and hope. Limbo is difficult to forget.

In the Earth (2021)

Direction: Ben Wheatley
Country: UK

Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth uses cheap tricks for mood, never achieving acceptable levels of satisfaction. The narrative develops with chunky episodes and mechanical dialogues, following a cooked-to-formula script that tries to play edgy with contemporary anxieties and an impure-nature setting.

The story pairs up Martin Lowery (Joel Fry), a scientist impassionately committed to making crops more efficient, and Alma (Ellora Torchia), an affable park ranger, as they venture into the woods when a deadly virus keeps ravaging the world. In the course of this journey they bump into a deceiving stranger, Zack (Reece Shearsmith), as well as Martin’s fellow colleague, Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires).

There’s not enough skill in the plotting and execution of a criminally boring fiction that comes packed with hallucinogenic pretentiousness. While exposing glaring plot holes, the film drowns in waves of imbecility, rendering everything frigid with a tacky approach.

The only thing this murky film can do is to trigger an epileptic attack via the unpleasant images that try to bring it to a climax. The woods can actually be scary, but not here. Wheatley’s new trance is not recommended, confirming the bad shape of the British director after the unsuccessful remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 2020.

My Little Sister (2021)

Direction: Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond
Country: Switzerland

A Nina Hoss in top form (one of Christian Petzold’s muses - Phoenix, 2014; Barbara, 2012) spearheads a capable cast invested to make this intensely sincere family drama work. My Little Sister deals with the subject of illness and death in all its hardness.

The sophomore fictional feature from the long-standing pair of directors, Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, chronicles a difficult period in the life of twin siblings Lisa (Hoss), a former playwright turned educator, and Sven (Lars Eidinger), a passionate theater actor with terminal cancer, who reunite after the latter has been subjected to an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant. Their inextinguishable bond and the pain shared for not being able to do what they most like in life, will give them motives to fight the adversities with courage and perseverance, even if what they aspire seems impossible to be achieved.

The handheld camera attempts to reproduce the anxiety in Lisa, who’s having a hard time trying to convince her husband, Martin (Jens Albinus), to return to Berlin, especially after he has been offered a new 5-year work contract in Switzerland, where he runs an English school. Also, her neurotic, sloppy and ego-centered mother (Marthe Keller) is not much of a help, intensifying the moments of friction. 

Bathed in strong emotional currents, the story develops in a sober, believable way, showing a family in crisis but focusing its gaze on a dissatisfied, innerly fractured woman who desperately seeks some balance when in the eminent presence of loss.  

Bristling with different kinds of vulnerability, My Little Sister is grim, earnest and emotionally turbulent, inflicting that real-life pressure we look for in this kind of drama.

State Funeral (2021)

Direction: Sergey Loznitsa
Country: Lithuania / Netherlands

Assembled with previously unseen footage, propaganda taken from radio broadcasts and dramatic classical requiems (Chopin and Mendelssohn included), Sergey Loznitsa’s State Funeral is a long, mournful dirge focused on the days that preceded the funeral of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in March 1953.

The images, toggling between color and black-and-white, capture the vast hordes of mourners across the USSR, elucidating about the cult of personality enjoyed by an authoritarian leader who was responsible for the torture and death of millions of people. 

The deceiving machine behind Stalin and his regime praises him as the greatest genius of humanity with glorious deeds toward peace and ethnic integration. These misleading strategies are still employed by Russia today, brainwashing people and keeping them under rigid control. A weird feeling arises when you see a whole nation and its army crying for a mass murderer.

The Ukrainian director, whose penchant for desolation and violence was seen in powerful dramas like My Joy (2010) and In the Fog (2012), feels at home with the material, reconstructing the scenarios with the help of regular collaborator and editor Danielius Kokanauskis, who shortened 40 hours of footage to 135 minutes.

Packed with the faces of consternation and tears of despair, State Funeral is both remarkable and tedious.