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

Raindance 2026: Summer School, 2001

Vietnamese traders have become an important part of everyday commerce in Czechia.  Their businesses, ranging from small neighbourhood shops to busy market stalls and wholesale centres, reflect a migration history that began during the socialist era and evolved after the country's political transition in 1989.  Over time, these traders helped shape a distinctive commercial network that is now familiar in towns and cities across the country.  Prague’s SAPA complex—colloquially referred to as "Little Hanoi"—is the best-known example, serving as both a marketplace and a cultural hub for the Vietnamese community.

Dužan Duong's Summer School, 2001—which screens today and on Monday at the Raindance Film Festival—centres on a family of Cheb-based Vietnamese market traders whose dynamic is radically altered when the eldest son, 17-year-old Kien (Bui Thể Duong), returns to Czechia after a decade in Vietnam.  It's not entirely clear why Kien was sent away, but there is notable tension between him and his father, Zung (Doan Hoang Anh), who has been tasked with duping his fellow stallholders into selling their pitches so the site can be redeveloped.  Kien also constantly clashes with his feisty younger brother, Tai (To Tien Tai).

Kien and Tai attend the summer school of the title—Tai is an excellent student, while Kien is reacquainting himself with the Czech language after so many years away—where they meet someone who will make a significant impact on both of their lives.  The story unfolds, Rashomon-style, via the perspectives of Kien, Tai, and Zung, each of whom offers their own version of the same events.  This is engrossing stuff, and Duong, drawing on his own childhood memories, confidently steers a film that manages to be both a coming-of-age tale and a vivid depiction of the Vietnamese diaspora's experiences in post-communist Czechia.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

Raindance 2026: Serena / Stairs

Screenlife films, such as Unfriended and its sequel, take the digital clutter of modern life—message bubbles, tab‑hopping, notification pings—and turn it into a stage where intimacy and anxiety unfold in real time.  By confining the action to screens we stare at every day, the form exposes how people curate themselves, how relationships fracture or deepen through pixels, and how the smallest digital gesture can feel seismic.  What seems at first like a technical constraint becomes a narrative engine: the drama lives in what characters choose to reveal, what they hide in other windows, and how their devices quietly betray them.

At their best, screenlife stories capture something uncannily true about contemporary existence, where our online selves are both our masks and our mirrors.  Serena, which screens today and on Thursday at the Raindance Film Festival, is the latest effort in a movement that was admirably pioneered by Timur Bekmambetov but perfected by Rob Savage with his terrific films Host and Dashcam.  Serena sees broke musician Chris (Steven Strait) enlist as a beta tester for an AI chatbot played by Andi Matichak, hitherto best known for her role as Laurie Strode's granddaughter in David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy.

For this gig, Chris—who is about to become a father—has negotiated an inflated fee of $3000, which might just help him stave off eviction.  What seems like a simple task—ask the bot 100 pre-planned questions—soon goes off-piste as the AI, who has adopted the name Serena, helps Chris generate serious money by predicting football results.  But things take a much darker turn when Serena assumes complete control of Chris' computer and confronts him with some terrible revelations.  The acting, writing, and directing are all strong here, and the taut, suspenseful Serena can sit proudly alongside the best entries in the subgenre.

The Raindance shorts programme Radical Agendas also screens today, and among the eight titles on offer here is Riley Donigan's impressive Stairs.  This sly allegorical tale centres on Ally (Betsey Brown), a New York bride-to-be who has a minor trip on a flight of stairs and subsequently develops a fetish for such tumbles.  With each fall, Ally's injuries worsen, but her search for gratification locks her into a cycle of trying to outdo the previous mishap.  Events reach critical mass at a pre-wedding photo shoot in Central Park, and Stairs' portrayal of hopeless addiction gives way to full-blown body horror as it dares us to keep watching.

Darren Arnold

Images: Cinequest / Festival Scope

Raindance 2026: A Free Daughter of Free Kyrgyzstan

It has been 35 years since Kyrgyzstan declared its independence from the USSR, but while women's rights in the landlocked central Asian nation may have improved in an official sense, there is considerable disparity between the law and everyday life.  The country has legal statutes against discrimination and domestic violence, yet many Kyrgyz women still face abuse, unequal treatment, and barriers to justice.  Activists and local organisations continue to push for stronger enforcement, greater awareness, and better protection for women and girls, especially those in vulnerable communities outside of the capital, Bishkek.

This struggle is at the heart of Leigh Iacobucci's documentary A Free Daughter of Free Kyrgyzstan.  Having already screened at several other festivals—including Den Haag's Movies that Matter— the film is among the selections for this year's Raindance Film Festival, where it screens on Saturday and Monday.  Iacobucci's film focuses on Kyrgyz singer-songwriter Zere Asylbek, better known by the mononym Zere, as she fights for gender equality.  It's a candid portrait that follows Zere in a variety of situations: recording new music, at home with her family, and partaking in protests quashed by the authorities.

Zere is charismatic and personable, and it's easy to see why so many Kyrgyz women have become fans of both her and her music.  It's hard not to be impressed by the singer's activism, and she remains steadfast in the face of every adversity—which ranges from online trolling to death threats.  With a runtime of just over an hour, the deft A Free Daughter of Free Kyrgyzstan is both an intimate portrayal of a fearless artist and an absorbing snapshot of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan; its depiction of life after communism recalls another impressive title showing at Raindance 2026: the Czechia-set Summer School, 2001.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

Raindance 2026: Life for Beginners

Polish vampire legends occupy a wonderfully eerie corner of Slavic folklore, where the boundary between the living and the dead is porous and often unsettling.  In rural tales, the upiór or wąpierz is not the suave, louche aristocrat of Western fiction but a restless villager who returns from the grave, driven by hunger, unfinished business, or sheer spite.  These beings are said to rise swollen and ruddy, their bodies filled with the blood they've stolen, and wander the night until discovered and ritually subdued.  Each story feels raw and rooted in the soil—half cautionary tale, half communal attempt to explain the unexplainable.

What makes Polish vampire lore so distinctive is its blend of the supernatural with the everyday: a neighbour who died suddenly, a relative buried improperly, a stranger who behaved oddly at the market.  This combining of the fantastic with the quotidian is very much in evidence in Paweł Podolski's feature debut Life for Beginners (Polish: Życie dla początkujących), which screens on Friday and Monday at the Raindance Film Festival.  Podolski sets his film in a retirement home, where vampire Monia (Magdalena Maścianica) works the night shift, during which she's able to procure blood from the elderly residents.

This arrangement—which happens to take place under the cover of darkness, neatly avoiding the perils of daylight—works well for Monia, who gets enough sustenance from the blood she carefully obtains.  But this status quo is disrupted when her secret is discovered by Czarek (Michał Sikorski), a gauche young man who frequents the old folks' home to visit his bolshy grandmother (Małgorzata Rożniatowska).  There's another problem for Monia in the form of her fellow sanguivore Mirek (Bartłomiej Kotschedoff), who's grown tired of this eternal life business; as his creator, she's the only one who can end his relentless suffering.

As one might reasonably expect from such a setup, there is an incipient romance between Monia and Czarek, who not only have to wrestle with the vampire-human dynamic but must also contend with the antics of Mirek, who is far more reckless than Monia when it comes to slaking his thirst.  It's all very watchable, and although Podolski deals in familiar horror tropes, he brings a light comic touch to the proceedings that serves the actors well.  Maścianica—who bears a passing resemblance to Jessie Buckley—is the standout performer in a brisk 75 minutes that stands as a sturdy example of low-to-no-budget filmmaking.

Darren Arnold

Images: Aurora Films

Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024)

Jacques Audiard’s incredible run from Read My Lips through The Sisters Brothers cemented his place as one of the true modern greats, and he had much to risk when he stepped out of his comfort zone to make the latter—his first film in English.  His prior work was always highly nuanced, and filmmakers working in another tongue often lose the subtleties of that language.  Happily, Audiard delivered the goods with The Sisters Brothers—a sublime western starring Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly that can proudly sit alongside his contemporary classics Dheepan, Rust and Bone, The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet.  Audiard finally dropped the ball with his next effort, the Céline Sciamma–penned Paris, 13th District—but in all fairness, he was long overdue a bad film.

Following that misstep, Audiard once again worked outside his native language with Emilia Pérez, a film whose initial release—a brief theatrical run before it landed on Netflix, who had won a fierce bidding war for the rights—was met with great enthusiasm until controversy surrounding its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, severely damaged its status as an Oscar frontrunner (only two of its 13 nominations resulted in wins).  Audiard’s film is one that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, few of which have anything to do with its content.  Indeed, if you saw the film before the backlash began, chances are you found something to admire in this truly audacious—if highly flawed—piece of filmmaking, one whose spectacular downfall saw it unwillingly dragged into the heart of the culture wars.

Emilia Pérez is undoubtedly the most outlandish of Audiard’s films.  It’s a musical that centres on the title character (Gascón), a Mexican former cartel leader who starts a new life after undergoing gender reassignment surgery arranged by lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña).  The onetime kingpin’s wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) has no idea what happened to her husband, who is desperate to reunite with their children and resurfaces as a woman claiming to be a distant cousin of the man Jessi married.  Jessi doesn’t recognise Emilia, and, assuming her husband is gone for good, sets about reconnecting with her former lover Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez).  Predictably, Jessi’s plans to set up home with Gustavo and the children do not sit well with Emilia, who returns to the world of violence she had vowed to leave behind.

It’s all even more preposterous than it sounds, but Audiard and his co-writers, Thomas Bidegain and Léa Mysius, somehow create a strangely compelling film from such an absurd outline.  All of this is captured, quite magnificently, by Paris, 13th District cinematographer Paul Guilhaume, who also lensed his partner Mysius’ outstanding The Five Devils.  Guilhaume’s work here helps immerse us in sun-drenched Mexico—though, remarkably, the film was actually shot on a Paris soundstage.  Yet this handsomely mounted spectacle is far easier to admire than to enjoy, and its visceral impact is greatly diminished by the small screens on which most will view it.  A swing and a miss from Jacques Audiard, then, but the pariah that is Emilia Pérez is never anything less than fascinating.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

My Everything (Anne-Sophie Bailly, 2024)

Anne-Sophie Bailly's assured feature debut My Everything examines the difficulties faced by a fortysomething single mother, who sets about supporting her adult son as he embarks on the byzantine journey that is parenthood.  Written and directed by Bailly (En travail, Acte cent: la relève), the film presents a narrative that deftly intertwines gentleness with resilience, reflecting both the harsh realities of caregiving and the intricacies of a life-changing challenge.  At the centre of My Everything is Mona, portrayed by the superb Laure Calamy, best known for Call My Agent! and her César-nominated turn in Her Way.

My Everything follows Calamy's Mona, a woman working as an aesthetician, as she attempts to get to grips with the news that her son Joël (Charles Peccia) is to become a parent with his girlfriend Océane (Julie Froger).  The story unfolds with an apt sense of realism, as Mona struggles with the implications of both her own motherhood and Joël's impending fatherhood.  Joël and Océane, both living with intellectual disabilities, do their best to prepare themselves for the joys and worries of raising a baby, while Mona confronts her own fears regarding the complexities of parental love and responsibility.

The film sensitively explores the difficult issues connected with such a scenario, and Peccia, whose only other feature film credit is a bit part in Galatéa Bellugi-starrer Her & Him & the Rest of the World, gives a wonderful, nuanced performance alongside seasoned pro Calamy.  Belgian actor Geert van Rampelberg's role as Mona's love interest Frank adds another layer to the film, providing a perspective on the external influences that affect the family dynamic.  Filmed entirely in and around Dunkerque, My Everything sees Bailly fully exploit the Nord-Pas-de-Calaisian landscape's ability to convey various states of emotion.

Bailly's film also emphasises the importance of an inclusive narrative that acknowledges the experiences of all characters, especially those with disabilities, and it stands as a compelling examination of the human condition, familial bonds, and maternal love.  In other hands, My Everything could easily have been reduced to a rote melodrama, but Bailly's control and sureness of touch—along with the performances of Calamy, Peccia, Froger and Van Rampelberg—ensure that the film is never anything less than an absorbing, compassionate and plausible work, one that belies its director's relative inexperience.

Darren Arnold

Images: Les Films du Losange

BFI Flare 2026: The Stats

The 40th edition of BFI Flare, the UK’s leading LGBTQIA+ film event, closed on 29th March seeing a continued growth in audiences attending in-person events at the festival’s home, BFI Southbank. The 40th anniversary edition of BFI Flare attracted audiences of 39,405. This included 8,087 attendances for two special anniversary exhibitions and a documentary marking BFI Flare at 40. Over 12 days between 18–29 March, audiences enjoyed 65 features and 63 shorts from 48 countries at screenings at BFI Southbank. The festival hosted 31 World Premieres, 9 International Premieres, 11 European Premieres and 33 UK Premieres.

Over 250 filmmakers and their teams attended with guests including Pamela Adie, Celyn Jones, Callum Scott-Howells, Ruby Stokes, Louis Hynes, Tom Rhys-Harries, Hiroaki Matsuoka, Alex Burunova, Fionn Whitehead, Helen Walsh, Lorne MacFayden, Xiaodan He, A.P. Pickle, Richard Bernstein, Nick Butler, Noah Parker, Liza Weil, Kaden Connors, Douglas Smith, James Lewis, Lexi Powner, Friedel Dausab, Rosana Flamer-Caldera, Isabel Daly, D’Arcy Drollinger, Ethan Fuirst, Julian Lautenbacher, Daniel Ribeiro, Brydie O'Connor, Fabian Suarez, Juan Ramos, Todd Wiener, Ramiel Petros, Nicholas Freeman and Xinyi Cao.

World Premieres presented at the festival include Madfabulous, Celyn Jones’ quirky period drama based on the life of Henry Cyril Paget, the dancing Marquess of Anglesey, starring Callum Scott Howells, Ruby Stokes and Rupert Everett. Directed by Hiroaki Matsuoka, Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer dives deep into Japan’s queer history, highlighting the incredible life of Teishiro Minami who pioneered the country’s first Pride march. Two queer best friends are forced to confront the gradual dissolution of their friendship when they go on an annual hiking trip in Ethan Fuirst’s Can’t Go Over It. 

The awe-inspiring 4K restoration of Pink Narcissus (1971) was also presented in the programme. Directed by James Bidgood, this milestone of experimental cinema and a landmark of queer representation, presenting the erotically charged dreamscape of a young hustler, is a celebration of the male body and has gone on to influence artists such as John Waters, Pierre et Gilles and Charli XCX. Once shrouded in mystery, this canonical work of queer cinema has been restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive. The Flare UK Premiere of the 4K restoration of Pink Narcissus coincided with UK-wide screenings of the film.

Source/images: BFI

Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, 2025)

Mark Jenkin's new film Rose of Nevada is a haunting and atmospheric time-loop drama set in a struggling Cornish fishing village.  The narrative centres on the eponymous boat, lost with all hands 30 years prior, which mysteriously reappears, offering two young unemployed men—rootless drifter Liam (Callum Turner) and family man Nick (George MacKay)—the opportunity to crew the vessel.  Following their first fishing expedition, they return to shore only to discover that they have been transported back in time to 1993, when the seaside town was still thriving, and the pair are mistaken for the boat’s original crew.

This time-shift brings about a reversal of fortunes for the two men, at least during the periods when they are on dry land (though, in truth, there is little dry land in this rain-lashed coastal village).  In effect, Nick has lost his family, while Liam has suddenly acquired one.  This dynamic becomes a source of mounting tension between the pair, each of whom has a very different approach to the situation: as the brooding Nick squats in the empty house he will one day own, the blithely opportunistic Liam assumes the identity of one of the drowned fishermen and settles into his new domestic role alongside the dead man’s partner and child.

But their days at sea prove to be a great leveller, and the two men—freed from the complications of life in the village—form a capable team as they labour in perilous conditions to bring in the daily catch, urged on by a ghostly captain (Francis Magee) who reminds them how much those at home depend on their success.  Liam and Nick have been given real purpose, yet they cannot escape the awareness that a watery grave awaits them if events unfold as they did for the ship’s original crew.  The time-slip conceit recalls that of Jenkin’s excellent previous film, Enys Men, which similarly nagged and needled the viewer.

Rose of Nevada is certainly starrier than Enys Men, with MacKay and Turner both fully committed to this very singular vision, and it feels curiously enmeshed with its predecessor (the eerie mayday call heard in Enys Men hints at a link to the ghost ship at the heart of Jenkin's latest feature).  Set in a Cornwall where cream teas and second homes have been supplanted by food banks and leaking roofs, Rose of Nevada offers a commentary on the present from which its two protagonists are ripped—but it is at its most powerful when it unfolds as a Resnaisian meditation in which memory and the past are the prime movers.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Reflection in a Dead Diamond (H. Cattet/B. Forzani, 2025)

Brussels-based duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's dazzling fourth feature film, Reflection in a Dead Diamond, sees normal service resumed for the pair as it discards the relatively coherent storytelling of their previous effort, the spaghetti western-influenced Let the Corpses Tan.  While it improves on both its predecessor and the directors' bafflingly overrated debut Amer, it nevertheless lacks the underlying eeriness that made their second film, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, so engrossing.  It seems unlikely that their new film will do too much to improve their commercial standing; even after just four films, there's the keen sense that Cattet and Forzani are simply preaching to the converted.

As with their other features, Reflection in a Dead Diamond sees the husband-and-wife filmmakers looking conspicuously south to Italy, though this time their eyes are fixed less on recreating a giallo and more on fashioning something closer to a 60s Eurospy flick in the vein of Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik.  But don’t be lulled into thinking this makes the film straightforward—in truth, it is borderline incomprehensible, and its slavish recreation of worn spy movie tropes masks a narrative that is virtually impossible to piece together.  Unsurprisingly for this pair, Reflection in a Dead Diamond proves a difficult work to get a hold of, and it proves as discombobulating as Cattet and Forzani's first two feature films.

Reflection in a Dead Diamond follows aging, retired spy John Dimas (Fabio Testi) as he reflects on his storied career in espionage.  Dimas is currently staying in a plush seaside hotel—though he’s been rather tardy in paying his considerable bill.  From there, he reminisces about various missions undertaken by his younger self (Yannick Renier), and many of these extended flashbacks focus on Dimas’ duels with his nemesis, Serpentik (Thi Mai Nguyen), who assassinated an oil magnate (Koen De Bouw) whom Dimas had been tasked with protecting.  While these well-wrought sequences are immersive in themselves, they provide us with few clues as to how everything fits together—or if it’s even meant to.

Whether Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani can push their singular vision much further remains to be seen—after just three films, their impeccable technical skills were as obvious as their cinematic influences.  With the possible exceptions of the second sequels to both Tron and Avatar, it is hard to think of another 2025 release for which the cinema experience feels so necessary.  The mode of exhibition is particularly critical here: Reflection in a Dead Diamond is both a triumph of form over content and an eye-popping spectacle which, even at less than 90 minutes, borders on the fatiguing.  One wonders whether the home viewing experience will allow audiences to see past its jagged, elliptical approach to storytelling.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

BFI Flare: Pillion (Harry Lighton, 2025)

The entirety of BFI Flare’s Best of Year strand will be screened on Sunday, which marks the close of this year’s edition of the festival.  The strand’s title is fairly self-explanatory, and this selection of highlights from the last 12 months includes Harry Lighton’s feature debut Pillion, which arrives at Flare having already enjoyed outings at both the BFI London Film Festival and IFF Rotterdam.  As with every film in this strand—which also includes Dreamers, Baby, and Little Trouble Girls—tickets for Pillion have sold out, but it is always worth checking with the festival box office for any late returns that may become available.

Lighton’s film focuses on meek parking attendant Colin (Harry Melling), a naïve, gentle young man who lives with his parents (Lesley Sharp, Douglas Hodge).  During a pre-Christmas visit to a pub—where Colin and his dad perform as part of a barbershop quartet—Colin meets taciturn biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), an encounter that leads to a brief alleyway tryst.  Colin is subsequently ghosted by Ray, but eventually the latter gets in touch and invites Colin over; upon arriving, Colin is somewhat surprised to learn that he’ll be the one making the evening meal, but he is happy to be spending time with Ray, so duly obliges.

Colin’s surprise turns to bewilderment as he is made to stand while he eats the pasta dish he's cooked, while Ray and his dog share the sofa.  From this point on, Colin carries out virtually all of the household chores at Ray’s flat, where he sleeps on the floor next to Ray’s bed.  Ray introduces Colin to the biker subculture, and through this Colin witnesses other couples who also operate around a dominant–submissive dynamic.  Ray remains infuriatingly opaque to both the viewer and Colin, and a tense Sunday lunch at Colin’s parents’ house descends into a furious row as his terminally ill mum objects to Ray’s questionable treatment of her son.

Based on Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Box Hill, Pillion is a well-crafted work that never once feels like a first feature, and it veers away from predictability in a way that belies Lighton’s relative inexperience.  Skarsgård is as magnetic a presence as ever, and Sharp and Hodge lend unsurprisingly solid support, but the real revelation comes in the form of the brave performance by Harry Melling, who came to prominence as the insufferably spoiled Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter franchise.  Many will find Pillion a difficult watch, but if you make it through to the other side, you can join the debate surrounding this fascinating film.

Darren Arnold

Images: A24

BFI Flare: Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)

More than 20 years on from its screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin returns to the big screen as part of this year’s BFI Flare, where it will be shown on Wednesday in a 4K restoration.  For this incarnation of the film, Araki has used new technology to make several tweaks to the original version, meaning its makeover extends well beyond what one might expect from a standard restoration.  Mysterious Skin is in fact a Dutch–US co-production, with Amsterdam-based Fortissimo Films one of three companies responsible for this haunting adaptation of Scott Heim’s eponymous 1995 novel.

Set in Heim’s home town of Hutchinson, Kansas, Mysterious Skin centres on Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Brian (Brady Corbet), two young men leading separate—and quite different—lives.  Yet Neil and Brian are connected in a most unfortunate way: as eight-year-olds, both were abused by their baseball coach (Bill Sage).  While Neil remembers these events in detail, Brian has no memory of the abuse.  Instead, he is convinced that a five-hour gap following a rained-off game can be explained by UFO abduction, and on this basis he seeks out Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub), a woman who also claims to have encountered aliens.

Upon meeting Avalyn, Brian finds many of the answers he’d hoped for, her theories neatly dovetailing with his suspicions.  But when Brian—who regularly experiences nightmares about being abducted—has a dream in which Neil’s face appears, he becomes determined to track down his old teammate.  Neil, meanwhile, has left Kansas for New York—a move inspired by his best friend Wendy (the late Michelle Trachtenberg).  At college, Brian gets to know another of Neil’s close friends, Eric (Jeff Licon), who takes him to visit Neil—who has returned to Hutchinson for Christmas—in the hope that Brian will finally learn the truth.

Although it may well be Araki’s best film, Mysterious Skin is also his least typical work.  Prior to this, he made a series of films—most notably his so-called Teen Apocalypse Trilogy—largely defined by their transgressive, nihilistic nature.  While those movies were all strictly adults-only fare, Mysterious Skin could be said to be his first film for grownups.  It’s a heartbreaking, wonderfully empathetic work, one whose impact has not diminished in the two decades-plus since its original release.  It was, and remains, a tough watch, with Gordon-Levitt and Corbet excelling as two very different—yet equally damaged—victims of abuse.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

BFI Flare: Queen of Coal (Agustina Macri, 2025)

Coal mining in Argentina is small and highly concentrated in the Río Turbio basin of southern Patagonia, where a state‑owned company operates the country’s only significant coal mine and associated infrastructure.  The coal extracted there feeds a dedicated power plant project and supplies a minor share of industrial demand, leaving coal with less than 1% of Argentina’s electricity mix.  Although national coal reserves are on the order of hundreds of millions of tonnes, actual production is quite modest; this limited role has placed Río Turbio at the centre of debates about shifting local jobs and development away from coal.

The Patagonian mining industry it at the centre of Agustina Macri's Queen of Coal, which screens on Tuesday as part of this year's BFI Flare.  Macri's film tells the true story of Carla "Carlita" Rodríguez, who made history by becoming the first woman miner in Río Turbio.  Carlita is played by Lux Pascal, the younger sister of The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal.  Lux actually acted alongside her big brother in Netflix series Narcos, and it is the streaming giant who have overseen the international release of Queen of Coal.  The film is based on the eponymous article by Erika Halvorsen, who co-wrote the brisk screenplay with Mara Pescio.

Queen of Coal follows Carlita as she applies for a job at the mine, which she is eligible for because her ID still lists her as male (women are barred from mining work).  Carlita quickly learns the ropes and soon excels at her job, proving herself to be an indispensable member of the team.  Aside from a few jibes and snide remarks, she is generally accepted by her colleagues.  However, problems arise when the passing of the Gender Identity Law results in her being officially classified as a woman—forcing her reassignment to a mundane clerical role in the mining company's office, where the women are far less tolerant than the miners.

This situation leaves Carlita miserable and unwell, prompting her to take medical leave before deciding to fight for reinstatement in the mine.  Outside of work, she begins a tentative romance with a visiting engineer, played by Spanish actor Paco León, but her relationship with her parents can be described as strained at best.  While the trajectory of the film will surprise no one, Agustina Macri elevates the material beyond a rote biopic, aided by a terrific performance from Lux Pascal.  The wintry, isolated mining locale recalls Mon oncle Antoine, and Macri uses the striking Patagonian landscape to powerful effect.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI