Lady (Samuel Abrahams, 2025)

As the great ethnographic documentarian Jean Rouch once pointed out, people will always be affected by the presence of a camera, and the relationship between filmmaker and subject is at the heart of Samuel Abrahams' terrific mockumentary Lady, which was a late—but most welcome—addition to the 2025 London Film Festival.  Abrahams' film, which received its world premiere at the LFF, features a standout performance from Sian Clifford, hitherto best known as the older sister of the title character in BBC TV series Fleabag.  In Lady, Clifford plays fame-hungry aristocrat Lady Isabella Ravenhyde, who has invited filmmaker Sam (Laurie Kynaston) into her huge stately mansion for a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Once this setup is established, Lady shifts into unexpectedly surreal territory as Isabella notices that she is gradually becoming invisible.  As this strange affliction begins to consume more of her body, Isabella grows increasingly desperate—not so much because of her condition, which she seems largely resigned to, but because she wants to be seen and recognised for her creative talents before vanishing completely.  Isabella considers herself to be serious multidisciplinary artist, so for one final tilt at artistic validation, she decides to enter the annual talent contest she hosts for local children and, with Sam's dubious help, sets about planning a bizarre avant-garde dance sequence that she hopes will win first place.

Of course, as far as Sam is concerned, this is all grist to the mill, but his own professional and personal insecurities—neither of which are helped by Isabella's near-constant flirting—begin to bubble to the surface.  As both Lady and Sam's film progress, Isabella slowly changes from a caricature to a real, damaged person with a quite moving backstory, and she and Sam form a genuine closeness that seemed highly unlikely when the filmmaker—who one would assume is a proxy for Abrahams—first arrived at his idiosyncratic subject's door.  While there are no shortage of very funny moments in the film, it's underscored by a pathos that gradually comes to the fore as the suitably nightmarish children's talent show draws nearer.

Abrahams films the magnificent Somerleyton Hall, which stands in for Isabella's grand, sprawling home, Ravenhyde Hall, as a sad, gloomy and increasingly eerie place, one that seems to reflect the essential melancholy of its narcissistic owner.  Isabella seems oddly chained to the estate, and a scene in which she and Sam attempt to leave by car is initially played for laughs before unfolding into something more sinister; here, as in the entire film, the tonal shifts are handled quite superbly.  It is not difficult to equate the fortysomething Isabella's physical evaporation with society's firm emphasis on youth and beauty; but, like its wholly mesmerising title character, this fizzing, unique film very much demands to be seen.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Raindance 2026: Paul

The idiosyncratic Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté has carved out a singular place in contemporary cinema, building films that feel at once austere, playful, and quietly disarming.  Working largely from the margins of Québec's film industry, he gravitates toward characters who exist just outside the rhythms of ordinary life—hermits, drifters, workers, people whose inner worlds are more vivid than their surroundings.  His style is deceptively simple: long, patient takes; a wry sense of humour that never tips into mockery; and a fascination with the textures of everyday spaces.  Yet beneath that calm surface, his films pulse with curiosity about how people construct meaning when no one is watching.

Côté's work resists easy categorisation, but that’s precisely its appeal: each film feels like an invitation to observe, to linger, and to reconsider what a story can be.  His latest film, Paul—a documentary that screens on Wednesday and Thursday at this year's Raindance Film Festival—certainly adheres to this template as it follows the subject of the title, an introverted thirtysomething Montrealer doing all he can to change his life.  The bilingual Paul is looking to improve both his mental and physical wellbeing, and a large chunk of his week is spent deep-cleaning apartments, each invariably owned by a bossy woman who puts Paul through his paces as he scrubs away at the bathroom and kitchen until they shine.

Paul receives a great deal of pleasure from this work—but no payment.  It’s clear that the therapeutic benefits are what drive him, and he uploads videos of his vigorous cleaning sessions to Instagram, where he’s been gaining quite a following (which brings its own kind of anxiety).  We watch Paul’s films within Côté’s film, and as Paul unfolds we see its subject becoming increasingly adept at shooting and editing his reels—perhaps a result of spending time with a seasoned filmmaker?  The late nights he spends assembling these videos earn him a scolding from one particular maîtresse, who doesn’t seem to appreciate that a long day of cleaning leaves Paul only a few hours to catch up on his fledgling work as an influencer.

Early in the film, Paul openly admits to blocking out memories of much of his past life, and it’s as safe as it is sad to assume that he was often an object of ridicule.  Yet Côté’s approach is always non‑judgmental, and while he’s not afraid to sprinkle humour throughout, it is never at his subject’s expense.  As the film progresses, it does verge on the repetitive as Paul ricochets from one gruelling domme‑led cleaning assignment to the next, but for the most part this is a sensitive and absorbing portrait of someone navigating a daunting world, one in which he is more or less invisible.  Yet Paul is underscored by a growing sense of optimism, and Denis Côté expertly captures his subject’s hopeful longing for connection.

Darren Arnold

Images: Métropole Films

Raindance 2026: Modem / Gedoetjes

Tim James Brown's film Modem—which received its world premiere on Thursday at the Raindance Film Festival and will have an encore screening there on Wednesday—hangs its narrative on a digital detox holiday that sends a family to a remote house in the Swedish woods.  What could possibly go wrong?  Even if the bucolic setting didn't sound suitably apt for a horror film, consider the terrifying prospect of a trip away with a tech-free teen.  But Modem soon lets the digital world seep back into the family’s idyll when the hardware device of the title is discovered and plugged in; as you'd expect, it's a most nefarious piece of kit.

Once the modem connects to a nearby military comms tower, it triggers a chain of events in which the youngest child, Stig (Stig Lundström), vanishes from his cot while his dad, Michael (Josh Burdett), is supposed to be keeping an eye on him.  When Michael’s wife, Johanna (Amanda Renberg), and stepdaughter, Nora (Nika Tallroth), return from shopping, a frantic search begins, and Detective Bergman (Fredrik Gunnarson) soon arrives on the scene.  Bergman is familiar with the house—a well‑wrought prologue depicts a similar incident occurring 25 years earlier—but he decides to bring Michael in for questioning.

Michael's case isn't helped by the fact that he'd downed a few beers whilst on babysitting duty, and it's clear that both Nora and Johanna feel that Stig would still be here had Michael been more diligent.  Johanna thinks that a couple of passing backpackers (Tuva Alfredsson, Vanja Engström) may have abducted Stig, and the plot thickens when grisly footage of the hikers' apparent demise is found on Michael's laptop.  This is an admirable indie chiller, one whose brooding atmosphere owes much to the forest location, and Modem's reflections on the perils of new technology recall another Raindance 2026 title: the screenlife horror Serena.

Having recently screened in IFF Rotterdam's RTM strand, Dutch short Gedoetjes (English: Little Problems) returns to the big screen at Raindance, where it is showing tomorrow and on Tuesday alongside six other short films in the festival's Nova Express programme.  Chris de Krijger's impish film—which has a runtime of just 10 minutes—is made up of a series of vignettes, each depicting an everyday situation that soon develops into something far more absurd.  De Krijger always shoots the action from a distance, and this consistently funny, very human divertissement features some impressive wide-angled views of Rotterdam.

Darren Arnold

Images: Raindance / Festival Scope