Balearic (Ion de Sosa, 2025)

Saint John’s Eve provides the backdrop for Basque director Ion de Sosa's Balearic, which screens tomorrow at the BFI London Film Festival.  La Noche de San Juan, as it's known in Spain, is a midsummer celebration held on the night of 23rd June.  It has arcane roots, fusing ancient pagan sun rituals that pay homage to the year's longest day with Christian traditions marking the birth of Saint John the Baptist.  Saint John’s Eve is especially popular in coastal areas, where revellers gather to light huge bonfires symbolising purification, prior to bathing in the sea, which represents both Jesus' baptism and the concept of renewal.

Balearic gets off to a strong start as four teenagers—three girls and one boy—wander into the grounds of an isolated, seemingly unoccupied mansion.  After some casual chatter, the group decide to take a dip in the villa’s pool, but their fun is cut short when three vicious guard dogs appear.  One of the girls, who happens to be out of the water when the dogs arrive, is savagely attacked and suffers severe injuries.  Although her friends manage to drag her back into the pool, the dogs—curiously unwilling to enter the water—block all available exits, leaving the teens stranded and terrified as one of them slowly bleeds out.

As we're waiting to see how the situation is resolved, the film abruptly cuts to another villa, seemingly not far from the first, where a group of adult friends have gathered to mark the holiday by eating, drinking, and talking.  These people—for whom the label "idle rich" seems wholly appropriate—appear curiously detached from the outside world and strangely indifferent to a wildfire that has started in a nearby forest; one surreal scene shows a firefighting helicopter replenishing its supplies by scooping water from the pool around which these partygoers are sitting.  Alas, if only it had visited another house to do this.

De Sosa's emphasis on both fire and water—two elements that feature so prominently in Saint John's Eve celebrations—forms the foundation of a social critique in which one generation sits pretty while the next is, quite literally, left to the dogs.  This is an intelligent, risky piece of filmmaking, one in which the bold decision to move from the teens' ordeal to something much more diffuse and elusive—the poolside scenes featuring the adults feel almost loose-limbed—might alienate some.  But this nagging, unsettling work, superbly shot on tactile 16mm by Cristina Neira, retains a peculiar grip throughout its brief running time.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Deal (Jean-Stéphane Bron, 2025)

The Deal is a six-part TV series that tells the story of the 2015 US-Iran nuclear negotiations, which took place in the very neutral state that is Switzerland.  Focusing on Geneva-based chief of protocol Alexandra Weiss (Belgian actress Veerle Baetens), the show—the first two episodes of which screen today at the BFI London Film Festival—provides an engrossing insight into these sensitive diplomatic talks.  The entire series is directed by Jean-Stéphane Bron, and this material feels a particularly good fit for a filmmaker who became known for his political documentaries—including L'expérience Blocher—before branching into fiction.

Weiss is a sort of diplomatic factotum, and the early stretches of the show focus on her seemingly endless duties as she attempts to smooth the ground for the negotiations.  She's serious, measured, and does her utmost to remain unruffled—even when being talked down to by Fenella Woolgar's ghastly EU delegate.  It is difficult to imagine the rather inscrutable Alexandra having any kind of private life, but this all changes with the introduction of her ex, Iranian scientist-engineer Payam Sanjabi (Arash Marandi), who has been released from prison so that he can play a role in the discussions; suddenly, we see a different side to her.

Sanjabi's arrival demonstrates how the series deftly combines the personal with the political, an aspect of the show that is underlined by a fraught telephone call between the US Secretary of State (Juliet Stevenson) and her aging, ailing mother.  The ever-dependable Stevenson is good value in the part, and her scenes with her Iranian counterpart (Anthony Azizi)—who doesn't consider her his equal—crackle and fizz in a way that adds real dramatic heft to the proceedings.  There's also a notable role for André Marcon, an actor perhaps best known for his work with Jacques Rivette, including the epic two-part film Joan the Maid.

But The Deal is glued together by Veerle Baetens, who excels as the put-upon Alexandra.  She's an assured, magnetic presence, and one suspects that her recent experience behind the camera—her directorial debut, the Belgian-Dutch co-production Het smelt, won Best Flemish Film at last year's Magritte Awards—has helped her further refine her technique as a performer.  Baetens carries the series with this complex character, one who must always remain impartial as the often bullish participants—who appear more concerned with not losing face than reaching an agreement—constantly threaten to derail the negotiations.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Sirāt (Óliver Laxe, 2025)

As with Galician director Óliver Laxe's previous film, Fire Will Come, his latest effort, Sirāt, will screen at the BFI IMAX as part of the BFI London Film Festival, where it plays on Monday in the Dare strand.  Following its outing on the UK's biggest screen, Sirāt will receive a second showing on Tuesday at the ICA.  The fact that both Fire Will Come and Sirāt have been programmed in the IMAX says much about Laxe's films, which are immersive, transportive experiences.  Yet this new work is quite a different beast from its predecessor: Fire Will Come exemplified slow cinema, whereas Sirāt possesses a tense, driving narrative.

In Sirāt, Sergi López delivers a knockout turn as Luis, a father desperately searching for his missing daughter, Mar.  Luis' quest has taken him and his young son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), from their native Spain to southern Morocco, where they attend an outdoor rave in the hope of learning something about Mar's whereabouts.  As the pair circulate through the party, handing out fliers and questioning indifferent attendees while blaring trance music hampers their efforts, the scene feels extremely familiar; it’s clear that everyone Luis approaches will barely glance at the photo before claiming never to have seen his daughter.

The missing person trope has been heavily overused in cinema, but here Laxe cleverly uses it to draw the viewer in.  After Luis notices a group of five people sequestered from the rest of the partygoers, he decides to ask them about Mar.  The answer is quite predictable, but there is mention of another rave that might be happening much deeper in the desert.  The group seems rather guarded when Luis asks if they’ll be attending, and the current event is abruptly broken up by soldiers declaring a state of emergency.  As all the vehicles line up, waiting to leave, the quintet flee the scene, and Luis, urged on by Esteban, follows them.

The father and son—accompanied by their very cute dog, Pipa—are in a small van that is not ideally equipped for the Moroccan desert, yet they generally manage to keep pace with the two much larger trucks as the caravan treks through increasingly inhospitable terrain.  As Laxe builds this strange, isolated world, it becomes easy to forget about the absent Mar—and you soon realise that the hunt for her is little more than a MacGuffin.  Shot on tactile Super 16mm stock, the shattering Sirāt is a quite brilliant piece of sensorial filmmaking, one punctuated by a couple of jaw-dropping moments that will shake you to your very core.

Darren Arnold

Images: Pyramide Films

John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (2025)

Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens' documentary John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, which was selected for this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, continues its run on the fest circuit with screenings at the BFI London Film Festival, where it plays today and tomorrow as part of the Debate strand.  It's now been more than 30 years since David Lynch stepped in to save the production of Almereyda's black-and-white vampire flick Nadja—Lynch funded the entire film after the initial financing fell through—a witty, highly stylised work that brought its director into the arthouse spotlight.

Since then, Almereyda has continued making narrative features, several of which—including his most recent effort, the biopic Tesla—have starred Ethan Hawke, but he's also no stranger to documentary, having directed the likes of This So-Called Disaster, William Eggleston in the Real World and Escapes.  John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, co-directed with Courtney Stephens (Invention, The American Sector), sees Almereyda once again embrace non-fiction as he and Stephens essay the strange tale of the dolphin-bothering neuroscientist of the title, whose work inspired a classic video game.

Lilly is best remembered for both his invention of the isolation tank and his attempts at establishing communication between humans and dolphins.  It is hard to say which of these projects was the more outlandish: the former has endured as a means for those seeking sensory deprivation, while the latter gained a lot of publicity yet yielded no notable legacy.  The received wisdom about dolphins is that they are highly intelligent mammals that possess advanced cognitive skills, but Lilly believed they were also capable of language acquisition, and conducted countless cruel experiments on these fine marine animals.

If floatation tanks and talking dolphins aren't sufficiently outré, also consider Lilly's LSD and ketamine-fuelled insistence that there was a cosmic entity—the Earth Coincidence Control Office, or ECCO, of the title—managing earth's inhabitants.  Lilly coasted through his life and career on the back of a seemingly bottomless trust fund, and died in 2001 at the age of 86.  What, if any, value can be placed on his crackpot theories is something Almereyda and Stephens appear to be on the fence about, yet this doesn't prevent John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office from being a hugely entertaining and engrossing 90 minutes.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

Fwends (Sophie Somerville, 2025)

Fwends, the debut feature from Australian filmmaker Sophie Somerville, follows twentysomething friends Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) and Jessie (Melissa Gan), who embark on an often surreal odyssey through Melbourne as they attempt to reconnect with each other over the course of a weekend.  Somerville's film—which screens tomorrow and Friday at the BFI London Film Festival as part of the Laugh strand—taps into the same vein as Mike Leigh's somewhat overlooked 1997 film Career Girls, a deeply profound exploration of two old college flatmates reuniting after six years of adult life has put their friendship on hold.

As with Leigh's a deceptively slight film—which also unfolds during a single weekend—Fwends, at least in its early stages, uses humour to mask the pathos.  The story begins with Jessie and Em searching for each other in a Melbourne Metro station; Em is visiting from Sydney, where she has a demanding job at a law firm, and Melburnian Jessie, who has spent several years travelling the world, is dealing with a difficult breakup from her boyfriend.  It soon transpires that Em has been experiencing sexual harassment at work, and she's unsure what—if anything—she should do about it, lest it derail the career she's built for herself.

Both women, it seems, could really use this break from their respective worries—although it's not clear what they'll do, as Jessie has not made any plans for the weekend, nor has she gone to the trouble of organising suitable bedding for her houseguest.  But the situation regarding the sleeping arrangements becomes moot once the pair, upon returning from dinner, find they are locked out of Jessie's apartment; Jessie thinks she's left her keys in the restaurant, which has now closed for the day, and while her ex still has a key to the flat, he's since relocated to Brisbane.  Cue an After Hours-style schlep around nocturnal Melbourne.

Gan and Mattana—both of whom are terrific in what is essentially a two-hander—are given writing credits alongside Somerville, and this alludes to the Leigh-like improvisational nature of the project.  But Fwends is no pale imitation; rather, Somerville's own cinematic voice is present here, and she's expertly captured the awkwardness that comes with seeing an old friend for the first time in years.  Somerville highlights both the silent gap that lies between these women and the painful inevitability of this time-induced schism, and her film is infused with a melancholy that makes the final shot almost unbearably poignant.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Sebastian (Mikko Mäkelä, 2024)

Directed by the Finnish-British filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä (A Moment in the Reeds), this uneven Belgian co-production depicts a budding novelist's often perilous journey through the underbelly of London, in the hope that he'll find both himself and the inspiration for his first book.  Set against the backdrop of the English capital's bustling streets, Sebastian follows the life of Max, impressively played by the Scots actor Ruaridh Mollica.  Max is a twentysomething magazine staff writer originally from Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh, to where he briefly returns in what might be viewed as one of the film's more poignant scenes.

Not that there are many such moments in Sebastian.  To describe Mäkelä's film as pitiless is perhaps something of a stretch, yet there's a cold, clinical feel to much of the movie, which is maybe understandable given the transactional nature of Max's double life as a sex worker.  This decision is driven not so much by his financial situation, but is rather rooted in the quest for authenticity in his writing.  For this research, Max uses the alias Sebastian, as per the title, and although he knows exactly where the line of demarcation is, he's still playing a dangerous game, one that could go very wrong should any of his clients discover the truth.

Max's approach is marked by both sensitivity and resolve, and the film offers a narrative that confronts the audience's views on morality and inspiration: who, if anyone, is doing the using?  There are no clear or easy answers to be had as we're presented with the uneasy sight of Max feverishly jotting down details of his encounters, sometimes just after they've happened.  Any given person's feelings about Max's practices are quite likely to line up with their opinion of Brooke Magnanti's blog-turned-book The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl—a work that, at least on a superficial level, has much in common with Sebastian.

The film's portrayal of sexuality is reasonably ambitious, offering a fresh perspective when it could very easily have been content to deal in familiar tropes.  Among Max's roster of almost invariably seedy clients is the gentle Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), an educated, older man more in need of companionship and intelligent conversation than the services Max typically provides.  Hyde is wonderfully sympathetic in this role, and it is through his scenes with Mollica that the mostly unpleasant Sebastian achieves some rare (and much-needed) moments of tenderness, which feel all the sweeter given the morass that surrounds them.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI 

The Weekend (Daniel Oriahi, 2024)

The Weekend played at last year's Slash Film Festival and has since enjoyed no less than three screenings at the 2024 London Film Festival, where it received its UK premiere as part of the LFF's Cult strand, which also featured the likes of Noémie Merlant's The Balconettes and Nic Cage-starrer The Surfer.  Directed by the prolific filmmaker Daniel Oriahi (Sylvia, Taxi Driver: Oko Ashewo, Zena), The Weekend is a Nollywood horror that has the potential to travel way beyond its domestic market and the festival circuit, and it showcases a genre that has been gradually establishing itself in Nigerian cinema, yet seldom with such focus.

Buoyed by its selection for the 2024 edition of New York's Tribeca Film Festival, The Weekend cleaned up at the local box office and secured a record 16 nominations for the Africa Movie Academy Awards, from which it won four prizes (Best Film, Best Nigerian Film, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography).  The film delves into the complex dynamics of in-law relationships as it focuses on Nikiya (Uzoamaka Aniunoh), an orphaned woman desperate to fill the void with the family of her fiancé Luc (Bucci Franklin), who, in contrast, wants to maintain the mysterious schism between himself and his parents.

Of course, there wouldn't be much of a film if the insistent Nikiya didn't get her way, and Luc eventually acquiesces to his fiancée's demands.  Opening in medias res, the story, as per the title, unfolds over the course of a weekend as Nikiya and Luc attend the celebrations for the latter's parents' wedding anniversary.  In addition to Luc's mother (Gloria Young) and father (Keppy Ekpenyong), the gathering includes his big sister Kama (Meg Otanwa) and her abusive boyfriend Zeido (James Gardiner), a self-proclaimed "man of substance" who seems a very unlikely candidate to survive the festivities once dark family secrets begin to emerge.

Solidly written by Freddie O. Anyaegbunam Jr., Vanessa Kanu and Egbemawei Dimiyei Sammy, The Weekend saw Oriahi board the project after the previous director dropped out.  Working with the biggest budget of his career to date, Oriahi shot the movie in just three weeks, and the result is generally impressive—although some judicious editing would have helped.  The film deals in familiar horror tropes, albeit ones reframed in a Nigerian setting, and while it's far from bloodless, gorehounds will have to look elsewhere for their fix.  Still, The Weekend's sly sense of humour ensures there's some ghoulish fun to be had here.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI 

Mother Vera (Cécile Embleton / Alys Tomlinson, 2024)

The legendary French director Robert Bresson had a profound relationship with spirituality that ran through his films, which often explored themes of redemption and hermeneutical struggle, all the while reflecting his Catholic upbringing and experiences as a prisoner of war.  Bresson's highly austere work conveyed a deep sense of faith and a near-pantheistic belief in the presence of God in nature; his singular cinematic style, which favoured minimalism and the use of non-professional actors, aimed to decode the mysteries behind quotidian life.  All of which feels very relevant when viewing the stark, ascetic documentary Mother Vera, which was mainly shot on the wintry outskirts of the Belarusian capital Minsk.

Mother Vera is a poignant, visually arresting work that follows the life of a young Orthodox nun, tracing her journey from a tumultuous past to an uncertain, if hopeful, future.  Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson's stately film opens in the thick snow of a Belarusian forest, an icy monochrome setting that immediately nails down the tone for the story of seclusion and redemption that follows; soon, we are introduced to the remote monastery that houses the Vera of the title.  A former addict once known as Olga, Vera has a keen affinity for horses, a calling which will eventually take her far from brumal Belarus to the sun-kissed Camargue, the southern French region known for its eponymous, striking equine breed.

The directors have crafted a documentary that frequently feels like a piece of narrative cinema, one whose Bressonian pace allows the audience to immerse themselves in the depiction of cloistered life.  The decision to shoot primarily in black and white lends an oneiric quality to the film, although a jarring coda in colour comes close to breaking the spell cast by what's preceded it.  Mother Vera is not just about Vera's inner world—it also explores the community that played a crucial role in her rehabilitation, and delves into the wider themes of recovery and the search for meaning.  The cinematography (by Embleton) is particularly impressive, with the camera often training on details such as a horse's hooves.

These stunning, sensorial shots help deepen our understanding of Vera's place in her environment (Bresson's spiritual heir Bruno Dumont pulled off a similar feat in his startling debut feature The Life of Jesus).  The influence of classic Soviet cinema is very much in evidence here, with the film's visual language echoing that of Tarkovsky; languid scenes allow the imagery to seep into the viewer's consciousness, creating a rhythm that dictates the pace of the storytelling.  Mother Vera is a meditative exploration of both the mysteries of faith and the depths of the human condition; this haunting film manages to be at once probing and reticent as it challenges the viewer to evaluate their own place in the world.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Row (Matthew Losasso, 2025)

Matthew Losasso’s feature debut Row received its world premiere at the 2025 Raindance Film Festival, where it proceeded to win the award for Best UK Feature, a category that offered some stiff competition from the likes of White Guilt, Breakwater, The Lonely Musketeer, and festival opener Heavyweight.  Row is a psychological thriller, one that wouldn't have looked out of place in Raindance 2025's packed horror strand, which included other edge-of-your-seat fare such as Slovenian three-hander Hole, Argento homage Saturnalia, Pett Kata Shaw sequel Dui Shaw, and Australian horror-comedy Snatchers.

Row opens in medias res, with barely-alive Megan (Bella Dayne) washing up on an Orkney beach in the wake of a catastrophic attempt at rowing the Atlantic.  Megan appears to be the sole survivor of this ill-fated venture, and she's cared for in a makeshift hospital on Hoy as DCI MacKelly (Tam Dean Burn) asks her to recall what happened on the open seas.  Via a series of flashbacks, we learn of the fraught dynamic between the crew members, which, Megan aside, include Lexi (Sophie Skelton), Daniel (Akshay Khanna), and late addition Mike (co-writer Nick Skaugen), who is subbing for Lexi's injured boyfriend Adam (Mark Strepan).

Megan's memory appears to be hazy at best, and as time goes on it becomes clear that MacKelly's attempts to ascertain what happened between Newfoundland and Scotland are informed by the suspicion that Megan may be the author of this small-scale maritime disaster.  Dayne, who received a nomination for Best Performance in a UK Feature at Raindance—the prize went to The Lonely Musketeer's Edward Hogg—is good value as the quite inscrutable Megan, while Burn brings a welcome gravitas to his role and overcomes initial fears that he may have been slightly miscast as the grim-faced police detective.

Yet to focus on the scenes that take place around Megan's sickbed is to rather miss the point of Row, whose raison d'être is to showcase a series of exhilarating set-pieces featuring a tiny vessel at the mercy of the ocean.  Losasso taps into the brutal, unforgiving nature of offshore waters, creating a real sense of isolation as the seascape continually threatens to overwhelm these sailors—none of whom appear psychologically equipped for such an undertaking.  With a runtime of nearly two hours, the audacious Row is a taut, engrossing thriller, one whose clever structure and well-wrought action sequences belie its status as a debut feature.

Darren Arnold

Images: Raindance

Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)

Almayer's Folly, directed by the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman and first released in 2011, is a highly atmospheric and contemplative film that examines, inter alia, the impact of colonialism.  Adapted from Joseph Conrad's eponymous debut novel, the film was Akerman's final narrative feature before her untimely death in 2015; during her lengthy career, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, 2000's austere The Captive, which was loosely based on Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière.  Akerman took a similarly liberal approach when it came to translating Conrad to the screen, although Francis Ford Coppola's much-discussed Apocalypse Now remains an even more outré stab at the author's work.

Just as Coppola transposed Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the 19th-century Belgian Congo to 20th-century Vietnam, Akerman updates the author's 1895 novel to the 1950s.  Although shot in Cambodia, Akerman's film is set in Malaysia, where it follows the story of Dutch trader Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) and his mixed-race daughter Nina (Aurora Marion).  Almayer, trapped in a loveless marriage to local woman Zahira (Sakhna Oum), is clinging to fading hopes of finding gold deposits in the land that surrounds his riverside home (this building, as explained in the book, is the "folly" of the title).  Moreover, Zahira's adoptive father Lingard (Marc Barbé) is busy burning through the wealth earmarked for Almayer.

With all else failing, Almayer focuses on securing his daughter's future.  After some vague talk of a trip involving visits to Paris and London, Nina is packed off to a colonial boarding school, where it is hoped she will become more in tune with her European heritage; her absence only compounds Almayer's misery.  Merhar, who also starred in the aforementioned The Captive, delivers a well-judged performance as Almayer, capturing the title character's slide into madness as he struggles with both his flailing business and the painful separation from his cherished daughter; Belgian actress Marion brings a beguiling intensity to her role, perfectly embodying the dichotomy of a girl caught between two hugely contrasting worlds.

Almayer's Folly requires patience, and it takes some time for its brilliance to emerge; this demanding film is both elliptical and highly reflective of its director's formally rigorous methods.  Yet it is not inapt to suggest that Almayer's Folly would form a fine double bill with Apocalypse Now—whose redux version features Akerman favourite Aurore Clément—with Akerman's ice providing a counterpoint to Coppola's fire.  Conrad, whose works often hinge on what is left unsaid, proves an ideal fit for Chantal Akerman, with the economy of his storytelling neatly dovetailing with her languid, minimalist approach.  This late masterpiece from Akerman is an exemplary meditation on the death rattle of colonialism.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000)

First released in 2000, Chantal Akerman's The Captive is an updating of Marcel Proust's The Prisoner, the fifth volume of his epic novel In Search of Lost Time.  This striking, formally rigorous film reframes Proust's study of obsessive control to great effect; perhaps surprisingly, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, her eponymous 2010 film of Joseph Conrad's debut novel Almayer's Folly.  The Captive is one of four of the late Belgian director's features—the others being Golden Eighties, Tomorrow We Move and De Afspraken van Anna—that have recently been restored in 4K by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.

The Captive follows Simon (Stanislas Merhar), a rich idler who becomes increasingly obsessed with his girlfriend Ariane (Sylvie Testud).  Simon dictates and monitors every aspect of Ariane's life, and is particularly interested in her friend Andrée (Olivia Bonamy), with whom he suspects she is having an affair; Ariane, for her part, is compliant yet inscrutable.  The long takes and attenuated pacing allow the audience to fully immerse themselves in the characters' fractured psychology, while the immaculate cinematography, by the Léopoldville-born Sabine Lancelin, lends an icy claustrophobia to the proceedings.

Merhar, who later played the title role in the beguiling Almayer's Folly, delivers a fine performance as Simon, deftly capturing the character's vanity and neuroses as he attempts to tighten his grip on Ariane.  Testud, who would also go on to reteam with Akerman (on Tomorrow We Move), is equally impressive, with her Ariane embodying an opaqueness that keeps her a mystery to Simon and the audience alike.  As the film presents the fraught dynamic between the ethereal Ariane and the controlling Simon, Akerman explores wildly contrasting ideas of love and the blurred lines that sit between devotion and possession.

It may well be that Ariane is as unknowable to Simon as Proust is to the non-francophone; it's been posited that English translations of In Search of Lost Time—of which there have been several—largely fail to illuminate the text.  There is also the challenge of another kind of translation: that of adapting Proust, who was openly dismissive of cinema, for the screen.  Prior to The Captive, filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff (Swann in Love) and Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained) grappled gamely with other volumes from the same novel, but it is perhaps Chantal Akerman's haunting effort that best captures the essence of Proust's magnum opus.

Darren Arnold

Image: BFI

South (Chantal Akerman, 1999)

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's documentary South, which premiered in 1999, centres on racial violence in the southern US.  The film examines the terrible aftermath of the brutal and senseless killing of James Byrd Jr., an African-American man who was murdered by a trio of white supremacists in Jasper, Texas, in 1998.  In South's early stages, Akerman's approach is near-Lynchian in its depiction of the horrors that lurk beneath the surface: the film opens with a series of tranquil and prosaic shots of Jasper, capturing quotidian life in the Deep South; however, as the narrative unspools, these images take on a different hue, reflecting the underlying racial tensions and historical weight of the region.

One of the film's most striking features is its use of long, static shots; Akerman largely allows the visuals to speak for themselves, creating a palpable sense of stillness.  The juxtaposition of the placid scenery with the horrific details of Byrd's death—he was dragged behind a truck for three miles, and his remains were recovered from 81 places—creates a queasy contrast that underlines the viciousness of the crime.  The film includes a number of interviews with local residents, police officials, and members of the wider African-American community, providing a varied perspective on the legacy of the murder.  While insightful, these sequences are eclipsed by poignant footage of Byrd's memorial service.

But South is not just about James Byrd's lynching: it is a broader statement on the embedded nature of racism, and the film's meditative tone invites the audience to consider hate crimes and their lasting impact on individuals, communities and society.  While South may be challenging for some viewers due to its deliberate pacing—despite being a mere 71 minutes long—and difficult subject matter, it is a profoundly moving and important work that grapples with a shameful episode in recent history.  Akerman's sensitive direction and the evocative imagery—the protracted final shot, as seen in the clip below, is gasp-inducing—make South a haunting and harrowing experience, one that lingers in the mind for days.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1986)

Set almost entirely within the premises of a shopping centre, the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's musical Golden Eighties follows the romantic entanglements of various mall staff as they attempt to juggle their professional and private lives.  Recently restored in 4K by Belgium's Cinematek, Akerman's film sees the director and Delphine Seyrig reunite more than a decade on from their collaboration on the incredible, shattering Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.  Whereas Seyrig commanded the screen for virtually all of Jeanne Dielman's three-plus hours, Golden Eighties features an ensemble cast in which she, playing another character named Jeanne, is joined by Myriam Boyer, Belgian pop icon Lio, Fanny Cottençon, Pascale Salkin and Charles Denner, among others.

The plot revolves around Boyer's Sylvie, a coffee shop proprietor longing for her boyfriend who is away seeking his fortune in Québec, and Eli (played by Boyer's real-life husband John Berry), an American former GI who, by chance, reconnects with clothing boutique owner Jeanne, a Jewish woman he looked after following her liberation from the death camps of WW2.  In a setup not unlike that of Alain Resnais' Muriel, in which Seyrig's Hélène receives a visit from an old flame looking to rekindle their past romance, Eli would like to restart his relationship with Jeanne, which ended with her sudden departure.  But Jeanne now has a husband (Denner) and son (Nicolas Tronc), the latter of whom has his own romantic problems as he can't choose between the flighty Lili (Cottençon) and the devoted Mado (Lio).

Golden Eighties is a most atypical film from Akerman, who is best known for her formally rigorous works, and it is easy—and reductive—to view it as her riff on the musical films of Jacques Demy (one of which, Peau d'âne, starred a customarily radiant Seyrig).  Certainly, its songs, pastel colour scheme and theme of idealised love (which eventually yields to more pragmatic needs) are a good fit for a Demy musical, yet there's a Resnaisian wistfulness present here, and Jeanne's past trauma means that the holocaust, not for the first or last time in Akerman's work, comes under consideration (the director's mother survived Auschwitz).  It says much about Akerman's skill that this weighty element can be added in such a way that the resulting film contains not so much as a hint of tonal uncertainty.

It is not inapt to suggest that Golden Eighties is a fine entry point for those unfamiliar with Akerman's oeuvre, and it is certainly the most accessible of her films; as such, it has sometimes been dismissed as one of the director's lesser efforts.  But anyone rejecting any project involving Akerman and Seyrig should do so at their peril, and indeed this film has much more depth than its frothy, cheerful veneer might suggest.  Perhaps the most striking aspect of Golden Eighties is that it was set and made in the middle of the decade of its weirdly prescient title—the film, especially in this restored version, has the look and feel of a fairly recent 80s parody—so the styles and fashions of the era are presented more or less as they were.  Akerman, it seems, was acutely tuned in to the moment she was living in.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1983)

Chantal Akerman's The Eighties, first released in 1983, is an experimental film that ostensibly offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Belgian director's 1986 musical Golden Eighties.  The film is an idiosyncratic blend of documentary and musical, and for the first of its two distinct halves it focuses on the casting and rehearsal processes involved in staging this elaborate production.  Shot on video, this footage is presented with neither context nor commentary, but it nonetheless highlights the gruelling efforts of the cast and crew as they make incremental progress.  As with Golden Eighties, the first thing glimpsed in The Eighties is a succession of purposefully scurrying women, shot from the knees down.

Given that it was purportedly a tin-rattling dry run for Golden Eighties, The Eighties manages to be a markedly different beast from the later, glossier film, which stands as arguably Akerman's most accessible feature (although a film she made in the same year as The Eighties, the sublime The Man with a Suitcase, is also a good entry point for those unfamiliar with the director's work).  Clearly, there is much that connects the two films, but where Golden Eighties is fluid and straightforward, The Eighties is choppy and fragmented; while Golden Eighties has received a lavish 4K restoration, it seems oddly apt that The Eighties has only recently made it past VHS, the rickety format du jour of its title decade.

After an hour has passed, the raw, freewheeling rehearsal videos give way to several fully-realised 35mm sequences; if indeed Akerman hoped this film would attract financers for Golden Eighties, these slick, polished numbers seem the most likely way to achieve such a goal—so it seems strange that this dazzling footage is relegated to the film's back half.  While the songs and general mise en scène are recognisable to anyone who's seen Golden Eighties, most of the actors are different: Aurore Clément and Magali Noël, both so prominent here, are nowhere to be found in the 1986 film, although Lio appears in both titles.  As such, Golden Eighties is a palimpsest in which faint traces of this phantom film are still visible.

Clément and Noël, who both starred in Akerman's The Meetings of Anna, give full-blooded performances that provide a tantalising glimpse of a production that went unfinished—or did it?  Such is The Eighties' slippery relationship to its near-namesake.  Certainly, it's a truly baffling experience for anyone who hasn't seen Golden Eighties—which would be everyone who saw The Eighties on its initial run in 1983.  This poignant, life-affirming film finds Chantal Akerman at her most mischievous, and she's also a notable presence in front of the camera: witness her joyful, enthusiastic conducting of professional singer Noël's performance in the recording studio, before she herself gamely steps up to the microphone.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI