The Blue Trail
Engrossing actors and an Amazon river setting lighten some heavy-handed social commentary about how the elderly are scandalously mistreated, in Gabriel Mascaro’s likable future dystopia, ‘The Blue Trail’.
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Author: Deborah Young
No Beast. So Fierce.
Burhan Qurbani’s madly original revamping of ‘Richard III’ is a riotous sensory experience of uninterrupted energy that pushes Shakespearian evil to the limit, in the story of two Arab gangster families.
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Living the Land
Set in 1991, Huo Meng’s sober and respectful ‘Living the Land’ is a bittersweet reflection on Chinese farmers, capturing the shared experiences of multiple generations who are threatened by mechanization and the urban siren song.
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The Things You Kill
More a psychological study than a thriller, ‘The Things You Kill’ explores the corruption and internalized violence of a patriarchal society, spiced with some bold narrative tricks from Alireza Khatami, co-director of the Iranian festival hit ‘Terrestrial Verses’.
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The Illusion
Filmmaker Roberto Andò combines a wary humanism with expert storytelling to expose the anti-heroic truth about Garibaldi’s 1860 invasion of Sicily to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy and unite Italy, though the comic subplots running through the film tend to be distracting and hard to digest.
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