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Festival coverage

Belfast Film Festival

2 November – 11 November 2023

The 2023 edition of the Belfast Film Festival opens with Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers and closes with Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things. Guests include John Sayles and Maggie Renzi.

We're still adding details to this page so don't forget to check for updates.

The festival runs from 2 to 11 November.

Other years (2)

Latest reviews

  • Goodbye Julia
    Review preview for Goodbye Julia

    Kordofani uses the greater intimacy offered by the camera to bring us close to the characters and reveal the complex layers of relationship developing between them.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Wracked by guilt after covering up a murder, Mona — a northern Sudanese retired singer in a tense marriage — tries to make amends by taking in the deceased’s southern Sudanese widow, Julia, and her son, Daniel, into her home.
  • Double Blind
    Review preview for Double Blind

    An effective little thriller.

    Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
    When an experimental drug trial goes horribly wrong, the surviving test subjects must fight off sleep, and each other, to stay alive.
  • Monster
    Review preview for Monster

    A beautifully constructed piece of work in which every detail serves the whole, putting the tools of the epic at the disposal of a story which is intimate and delicately realised.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A mother is shocked when she learns what a teacher has said to her son, but the truth is more complicated.
  • The Delinquents
    Review preview for The Delinquents

    Moreno isn’t shy about his use of symbolism...What this effects to disguise, however, is the degree to which [the men's] own thinking has been shaped by symbols and by the belief system which surrounds them.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Two bank staff rob their own establishment.
  • Eileen
    Review preview for Eileen

    There are so many shots through things, boundaries, borders, thresholds, that we are primed for other barriers crossed. Those transgressions are not light ones, but in them is an abject honesty.

    Andrew Robertson · 4.5 out of 5
    Set during a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen becomes enchanted by the glamorous new counsellor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.
  • All Of Us Strangers
    Review preview for All Of Us Strangers

    Protagonist Adam (Andrew Scott) lives in a neatly furnished home, no longer feels the need to hide his sexuality, and tells himself he’s fine, but the music says otherwise.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    A screenwriter embarks on a relationship with a neighbour at the same time as making a journey into his troubled past.
  • Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End of the World
    Review preview for Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End of the World

    Jude masterfully keeps the audience attached to the screen for almost three hours without relying on heightened tensions or conventional plot twists.

    Liza Alpaidze · 5 out of 5
    Overworked and underpaid, Angela drives around the city of Bucharest to film the casting for a 'safety at work video' commissioned by a multinational company. When one of the interviewees reveals the company’s liability in his accident, a scandal erupts.
  • Poor Things
    Review preview for Poor Things

    Lanthimos skillfully transforms this lustful carnival into a coming-of-age drama, emphasising the protagonist's mastery of sexuality as a connotation of her mental evolution.

    Levan Tskhovrebadze · 4.5 out of 5
    The story of a young woman who has been brought back to life.
  • Heaven Scent
    Review preview for Heaven Scent

    It’s cobbled together so haphazardly that one finds oneself wanting to hand out a badge for effort, because it’s not easy to make a feature film from nothing, yet whilst the team behind it ought to feel proud of themselves, it’s not very watchable.

    Jennie Kermode · 1 out of 5
    The mysterious poisoning of a detective friend leads Kent, a retired English teacher, on the search for a transforming perfume that could shape the political and religious stability of Northern Ireland.
  • Anatomy Of A Fall
    Review preview for Anatomy Of A Fall

    Hüller has always been an unfussy actress, who allows a character's flaws to shine out in interesting ways.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    A woman is accused of her husband's murder.

A–Z of Belfast Film Festival 2023 reviews

Features

  • In search of liberty
    Rodrigo Moreno on freedom and character development in The Delinquents
  • The dreamers
    Ian Hunt-Duffy and Pollyanna McIntosh discuss Irish horror and Double Blind
  • Always within her
    Elene Naveriani on the recognition of beauty and Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry
  • Truth and nail
    Christos Nikou on technology, love and Eighties synthpop in Fingernails
  • Winds of change
    Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir on depicting modern Mongolia and Shamanism onscreen in City Of Wind
  • 'We made magic'
    Lila Avilés on the meeting between the worlds of adults and children in Tótem