BFI Flare: The Broken R (Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren, 2025)

Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren's documentary The Broken R (Spanish: Rotacismo), which screens on Saturday as part of BFI Flare, was made with the backing of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam's Bertha Fund (IBF).  The IBF should not be confused with IFF Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), even though both schemes serve much the same purpose: to support emerging filmmakers in territories—such as parts of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America—where local film infrastructure is lacking.  Receiving IBF funding precludes a project from benefitting from the HBF's support, and vice versa.

The Broken R is an intimate self-portrait of its Ecuadorian director, who, like his father, was born with Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS).  TCS is a rare genetic condition that affects the development of the bones and soft tissues of the face, often causing underdeveloped cheekbones, a small jaw and chin, downward‑slanting eyes, and abnormalities of the ears, sometimes with cleft palate and dental issues.  It commonly leads to conductive hearing loss, although intelligence is usually normal and life expectancy is typically not reduced.  Diagnosis is based on characteristic facial features, imaging, and sometimes genetic testing.

Treatment is tailored to the individual, which in Ricardo’s case has meant undergoing a number of gruelling surgeries, including complex dental procedures.  The film’s title refers to Ricardo’s longstanding difficulty in pronouncing the “r” sound (the blunter original title translates as “rhotacism”), which led him to avoid using words containing that letter and often resulted in others not catching his name correctly.  Speech therapy eventually resolved this issue for Ricardo, who notes that his father—also called Ricardo—is serenely accepting of life with TCS in a way that contrasts sharply with the filmmaker's outlook.

Which is not to say that TCS has got the better of Ricardo: he graduated from university in Ecuador before heading to Spain to undertake a master’s degree.  He's an honest, engaging narrator, and he is refreshingly open about his own perceived hang‑ups in the face of his parents’ pragmatism.  The Broken R highlights a generational divide, detailing the differing worldviews of Ricardo and his equally likeable father—a man who refuses to overthink life's problems.  Via a mix of film, digital, and VHS, Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren has created a deeply personal work, one whose impact is truly felt in the hours and days after viewing.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI / Festival Scope

BFI Flare: Mickey & Richard (R.A. White/A.P. Pickle, 2026)

Following last month's outing at International Film Festival Rotterdam—where it screened as one of the titles in Cinema Regained, an IFFR strand that offers new perspectives on film history—Ryan A. White and A.P. Pickle's documentary Mickey & Richard continues its journey on the festival circuit with two screenings at this year's BFI Flare, where it plays on Thursday and Friday as part of the festival's Bodies strand.  Mickey & Richard feels like a continuation of something that began with the same production company's esoteric 2021 film Raw! Uncut! Video!, an IFFR 2025 selection co-directed by White and Alex Clausen.

In Mickey & Richard, White and Pickle turn their attention to Richard Bernstein, who, under the stage name Mickey Squires, became a fixture of the 1980s adult film scene.  Now in his seventies and living a quiet life in the California sun, Bernstein comes across as a thoughtful, affable figure as he reflects on both his heyday in the industry and his wider life.  With seemingly unfettered access to the many films Bernstein starred in, the directors pepper their documentary with countless (and often explicit) clips of Mickey Squires in action, yet it’s always Bernstein’s sincere voiceover that commands the viewer’s attention.

This dissonance makes it hard to reconcile the sensitive older man with the unabashed icon seen in the excerpts.  It’s clear that Bernstein has always yearned for human connection—a trait that seemingly drew him to his chosen career—but has long recognised that physical intimacy doesn’t necessarily equate to emotional closeness.  It is no secret that the adult film industry has produced many casualties throughout its oft-murky history, and while Richard Bernstein—who generally looks back on his career with affection—has emerged with far fewer scars than most, there’s still a wistfulness to the way he reflects on his eventful past.

Given how erudite and engaging the Bernstein of today is, one criticism that might be levelled at White and Pickle’s illuminating film is that it focuses more on the professional than the personal—or rather, that it contains too much Mickey and not enough Richard.  Yet seeing how one informs the other is key to understanding both the film and its subject(s).  While the directors may at times rely a bit too heavily on the wealth of archival material at their disposal, this imbalance is offset by the sheer vitality of Richard’s personality, and the film’s heartfelt coda—centred on his recent major health issues—proves rather moving.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Kontinental '25 (Radu Jude, 2025)

The prolific and daring Romanian director Radu Jude's previous film, the coruscating documentary Eight Postcards from Utopia, was a sideways look at his country's rocky economic transition of the 90s, and his examination of post-Ceauşescu Romania continues with his new feature, the Rossellini-referencing Kontinental '25.  While this Luxembourgish co-production isn't quite on a par with Jude's last narrative effort, the outstanding Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, it is nonetheless another clever and absorbing tale from a filmmaker whose trademark irreverent wit seeps into virtually every frame.

Kontinental '25 follows Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), a Cluj-based bailiff of Hungarian extraction, who is tasked with evicting former Olympian Ion (Gabriel Spahiu) from the dank basement of an apartment building earmarked for redevelopment as a luxury hotel.  While Orsolya hopes this will be a routine affair, the eviction takes a tragic turn when the desperate Ion kills himself.  From this point on, Orsolya is consumed by guilt as as she tries to ascertain the extent of her responsibility for Ion's demise; she's also worried that a backlash may occur on account of her ethnicity (anti-foreigner sentiment is a recurring theme in Jude's work).

Like its predecessor, Kontinental '25 manages to be at once specifically Romanian and universal as it considers the impact of capitalism on national cultural identity—in Romania's case, this has meant navigating the complex economy that has developed in the 35-plus years since Ceauşescu's death.  But whereas Eight Postcards from Utopia was more concerned with the consumer habits of the Romanian population, Kontinental '25 sees Jude turn his gaze towards the property market, with the repurposing of the building in which Ion dies serving as a symbol of post-communist Romania's newfound taste for real estate.

It is no coincidence that the film is set in Cluj-Napoca, the Transylvanian city that changed hands from Romania to Hungary, then back to Romania, during WW2; in a sly inversion of the widespread Romanian nationalism on display here, Orsolya's Hungarian mother (Annamária Biluska) froths her way through an anti-Romanian tirade while championing Hungary's leader—much to her daughter's dismay.  Radu Jude remained in Transylvania for his other 2025 effort, Dracula, which has already screened at several film festivals; one wonders what this singular social chronicler will bring to Bram Stoker's much-loved story.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI