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

100 Nights of Hero (Julia Jackman, 2025)

Canadian filmmaker Julia Jackman's follow-up to her hugely likeable debut feature Bonus Track is a feminist fable based on Isabel Greenberg's near-namesake graphic novel.  The result is a visually striking, if somewhat underpowered, medieval romance.  It feels like a film that's striving desperately for cult status, yet it all seems a little too thin and brittle to endure—despite a great central performance from Maika Monroe and the stunt casting of Charli XCX in a supporting role.  As their titles suggest, both the film and its source material owe much to the tale of the vizier's daughter Scheherazade, that most expert of storytellers.

Here, the title character, played by Emma Corrin, serves as maid to Monroe's noblewoman Cherry.  It falls to Hero to spin the yarns that both hold the narrative together and stall the advances of the louche Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine), who has made a wager with his friend—and Cherry's husband—Jerome (Amir El-Masry) that he can seduce Cherry while Jerome is away for a hundred days, as per the title.  All this unfolds within an absurd patriarchal society that worships Birdman (Richard E. Grant), a god who forbids women from reading or writing, yet still allows them to tell stories—a right Hero weaponises as she fights the power.

Hero’s ongoing epic tale centres on three sisters, the most prominent of whom, Rosa, is played effectively by Charli XCX, whose presence proves as distracting as the nightly instalments are disruptive to the film’s overall flow (a late cameo from Felicity Jones, who also serves as a producer, is equally intrusive).  Rather than drawing us deeper into the narrative, the story-within-the-story tends to break the spell cast by the crepuscular fairytale world inhabited by Cherry and the others.  As the erudite Hero, Emma Corrin is so compelling that there is little need for the illustrative sequences accompanying her stories.

Given that 100 Nights of Hero is based on a work that is itself an adaptation of another, its second-hand nature should be one of its greatest strengths; yet the film is self-conscious when it should be self-reflexive, jarring when it should be seamless.  The ending feels as predictable as it does unearned, reinforcing the sense that this is little more than a fantasy pastiche lacking the guile of, say, Alain Resnais' Life Is a Bed of Roses.  Still, there are aspects to admire in this uneven 90 minutes, with the appealing performances and meticulous mise-en-scène going some way to compensating for the film's structural shortcomings.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI