The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2025)

Given that her career spans nearly 40 years, it is hard to believe that, prior to her remarkable new film The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović had made just three feature films: Innocence (2004), Evolution (2015), and Earwig (2021).  In their respective years, all of these excellent Belgian co-productions played at the London Film Festival, and her latest film continued this trend with two screenings at the 2025 LFF.  But four features do not tell the whole story: in addition to making a few shorts, Hadžihalilović has produced several films directed by her partner and frequent collaborator Gaspar Noé—who has a notable acting role in The Ice Tower—including Lux Æterna, Vortex, and I Stand Alone, the last of which she also edited.

Earlier this year, the 70s-set The Ice Tower played as one of the silent screenings at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, which Hadžihalilović attended 20 years after Innocence was selected for the same event.  While the latter film has often been described as a dark fairy tale, Hadžihalilović’s latest effort is more directly inspired by the work of the master of the genre, Hans Christian Andersen.  As with all of her previous features, The Ice Tower focuses firmly on children, following runaway orphan Jeanne (Clara Pacini), who takes shelter in a film studio where an adaptation of Andersen’s 1844 short story "The Snow Queen"—starring the haughty Cristina (Marion Cotillard) in the title role—is in production.

Jeanne is fascinated by both the fairy story and the lead actress, and once the teenager’s presence in the studio becomes known, Cristina begins to reciprocate her attention.  It is by no means a symmetrical relationship—as one might expect, the imperious Cristina clearly calls the shots—but the two develop a strange bond as the film shoot progresses (a bewigged Noé is good value as the slightly seedy director of the film-within-the-film).  Just as Cristina is inhabiting a role, Jeanne—thanks to a stolen ID—also adopts a persona of her own, assuming the name Bianca.  The game between the pair is as engrossing as it is disconcerting, and newcomer Pacini impresses opposite the Oscar-winning Cotillard.

The Ice Tower (French: La tour de glace), true to its title, is glacially paced, but it is also a hypnotic, immersive, and deeply unsettling work.  As the film advances, the worlds inside and outside of "The Snow Queen" begin to overlap, eventually shifting back and forth so fluidly that they become almost impossible to separate.  Hadžihalilović's meticulous mise-en-scène is greatly enhanced by the work of Earwig’s returning cinematographer, Jonathan Ricquebourg (also DoP on the Larrieu brothers’ Tralala), who expertly captures the wintry light that envelops both realms featured here.  The Ice Tower feels like the ultimate refinement of what Lucile Hadžihalilović has been developing throughout her impeccable feature film career; this is a, ahem, towering piece of real cinema from a major filmmaker.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The North (Bart Schrijver, 2025)

The North, the new feature film from Dutch director-producer Bart Schrijver, has been shortlisted for the European Film Awards.  The film has received an incredible response in a very short space of time: this year alone, the film has enjoyed theatrical runs in Luxembourg, Belgium, and Schrijver’s native Netherlands—where the film has already been viewed by over 115,000 people, making it only the second Dutch film this year to achieve such viewing figures.  The film also hit the number one spot in the Dutch Arthouse Top 30 for seven weeks.  Alongside The North, the team created a documentary, True North.

A decade after being best friends and roommates, Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) set out on a 600-kilometre hike through the Scottish Highlands.  Following the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail, they spend 30 days together in nature, hoping to rekindle their once-powerful friendship.  But while Chris remains preoccupied with work and life back home, Lluis is determined to finish the trail to prove he can do it.  The solitude and silence of the Highlands forces them to confront harsh truths about themselves, their friendship, and what it truly means to stand still and listen.

Written and directed by Schrijver, who co-produced with Arnold Janssen and Tom Holscher, The North was made for a mere €75,000 with a cast and crew of only eight people.  The team at Tuesday Studio, the production company behind the film, originally planned to simply sell the film online on their own TVOD website; however, after a glowing four-star review from The Guardian, everything changed.  More glowing coverage followed, including a piece in De Standaard, and the ball kept rolling until it landed at the doorstep of the European Film Academy, who shortlisted the project in the Feature Film category.

Schrijver began his career while studying architecture.  Using his first short films as his film school, he directed five shorts in his first year as a fiction director.  Since making the leap from short films to feature-length projects proved challenging, he co-founded a new production company, Tuesday Studio, with Janssen and Holscher.  In 2022, he launched his first project with Tuesday Studio, Human Nature, a film based on his 700-kilometre hike in Arctic Norway.  Schrijver combines his love for nature with his passion for filmmaking; to date, he has created 12 films and has hiked more than 5000 kilometres.

Source/images: Polymath PR

Those Whom Death Refused (Flora Gomes, 1988)

Bissau-Guinean filmmaker Flora Gomes' Those Whom Death Refused (original title: Mortu Nega), which screens in a restored print on Saturday at the BFI London Film Festival, is an arresting portrait of independence and its aftermath.  This keystone of postcolonial African cinema blends documentary techniques with an almost Malick-like lyricism as it focuses on one woman’s ordeal, all the while prioritising mood over conventional narrative.  Set during the Guinea-Bissau war of independence against Portugal and the turbulent years that followed, the haunting Those Whom Death Refused expertly conveys the weight of history.

The 1970s-set film follows Diminga (Bia Gomes), who edges her way through war-ravaged landscapes to find her soldier husband Sako (Tunu Eugenio Almada).  Through Diminga's eyes, Flora Gomes deftly builds a story that examines the psychological burden of conflict on women, and, by bringing Diminga to the forefront of the film, neatly subverts our expectations of an 80s war movie.  Once the war has been won, drought and political instability provide a much-needed reminder that the struggle—albeit one of a very different kind—continues long after the colonial powers have left, as the new nation finds its feet.

The first half of the film is a lean, taut affair, one that underlines the asymmetrical nature of the guerrilla forces taking on the Portuguese, with the latter's helicopters raining down bullets on a makeshift army scampering across the ground.  While it's obvious that the budget for Guinea-Bissau's very first feature film is not particularly high, the action scenes are well mounted, and Gomes manages the tension with style.  The film loosens its grip once both the war and its combat scenes are over, with Gomes observing, with an at times near-ethnographic eye, a newly postcolonial country gingerly feeling its way into independence.

As the film gives way to this more contemplative tone, Gomes captures the landscape of post-war Guinea-Bissau as an almost stone tape-like vessel of memory, with sweeping shots of the countryside reflecting both the scars of war and the immutability of the land.  While Those Whom Death Refused runs to a relatively brief 93 minutes, the film is measured, at times slow, which might make the going tough for those unaccustomed to such cinematic grammar.  But this elliptical rhythm dictates the pace of the storytelling, carving out space for a stillness that acts as a most welcome counterpoint to the political Sturm und Drang.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI