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

BFI Flare: Love Letters (Alice Douard, 2025)

In 2021, France passed a major bioethics reform that opened IVF and other medically assisted reproduction to all adult women, including single women and those in same‑sex relationships.  The law also allowed elective egg freezing without a medical reason for women between the ages of 29 and 37.  Fertility treatments continued to be reimbursed by the public health insurance system, and from late 2021 lesbians and single women could start IVF in France instead of travelling to countries like neighbouring Belgium.  The reform also recognised a specific filiation procedure for two mothers in female couples.

These changes to the law are at the heart of Alice Douard’s feature debut, Love Letters (French: Des preuves d’amour), even though it is set in 2014, several years before the landmark ruling came into effect.  The film follows Céline (Ella Rumpf) and Nadia (Monia Chokri), a married couple on the brink of parenthood.  Nadia is six months pregnant (via a donor in Denmark), and as such her role is quite clearly defined.  But it’s not as simple for Céline, who, upon the birth, must begin a long and arduous legal process for which there is little precedent, given that the law allowing same-sex couples to adopt is less than a year old.

In order to legally become the child's mother, Céline must fulfil several requirements, one of which is to provide 15 separate testimonies from a range of close friends and relatives.  These written statements will serve, as suggested by the film’s original title, as proof of love between Céline and the baby.  Céline needs one of these letters to be written by her mother, Marguerite (Noémie Lvovsky), a famous concert pianist with whom she has long had an uneasy relationship.  Meanwhile, as they consider suitable candidates for the statements, the highly-stressed couple are also busy making the necessary arrangements for the birth.

Love Letters—which screens at BFI Flare on Saturday and Sunday—is a wonderfully assured debut feature, and Douard taps into Céline's immense frustrations as she, unlike Nadia, must jump through hoops to prove she’s qualified to be a mother.  Swiss actress Rumpf, previously best known for her starring role in Julia Ducournau’s Raw, gives a deeply nuanced performance, conveying how her character is gradually diminished in the eyes of others to the point of near invisibility.  But viewers who, like Céline, endure the knocks and crushing bureaucracy will ultimately be rewarded with a moment of transcendent beauty.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI / Tandem

BFI Flare: The Broken R (Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren, 2025)

Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren's documentary The Broken R (Spanish: Rotacismo), which screens on Saturday as part of BFI Flare, was made with the backing of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam's Bertha Fund (IBF).  The IBF should not be confused with IFF Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), even though both schemes serve much the same purpose: to support emerging filmmakers in territories—such as parts of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America—where local film infrastructure is lacking.  Receiving IBF funding precludes a project from benefitting from the HBF's support, and vice versa.

The Broken R is an intimate self-portrait of its Ecuadorian director, who, like his father, was born with Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS).  TCS is a rare genetic condition that affects the development of the bones and soft tissues of the face, often causing underdeveloped cheekbones, a small jaw and chin, downward‑slanting eyes, and abnormalities of the ears, sometimes with cleft palate and dental issues.  It commonly leads to conductive hearing loss, although intelligence is usually normal and life expectancy is typically not reduced.  Diagnosis is based on characteristic facial features, imaging, and sometimes genetic testing.

Treatment is tailored to the individual, which in Ricardo’s case has meant undergoing a number of gruelling surgeries, including complex dental procedures.  The film’s title refers to Ricardo’s longstanding difficulty in pronouncing the “r” sound (the blunter original title translates as “rhotacism”), which led him to avoid using words containing that letter and often resulted in others not catching his name correctly.  Speech therapy eventually resolved this issue for Ricardo, who notes that his father—also called Ricardo—is serenely accepting of life with TCS in a way that contrasts sharply with the filmmaker's outlook.

Which is not to say that TCS has got the better of Ricardo: he graduated from university in Ecuador before heading to Spain to undertake a master’s degree.  He's an honest, engaging narrator, and he is refreshingly open about his own perceived hang‑ups in the face of his parents’ pragmatism.  The Broken R highlights a generational divide, detailing the differing worldviews of Ricardo and his equally likeable father—a man who refuses to overthink life's problems.  Via a mix of film, digital, and VHS, Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren has created a deeply personal work, one whose impact is truly felt in the hours and days after viewing.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI / Festival Scope

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