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Edinburgh International Film Festival · 2022

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2022

The Conversation

Programme

15 films · 11 reviews

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Black Mambas

Documentary about the first South African all-female anti-poaching group and the women who find economic independence through it.

(Country: Germany, France; Year: 2022; Director: Lena Karbe; Writer: Tristan Coloma, Lena Karbe)

Children Of The Mist

Review preview for Children Of The Mist

I have been discomfited watching films before but the anguish here is so genuinely and affectingly captured that it is almost unbearable.

Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
Documentary about the indigenous Hmong ethnic minority in Vietnam's northern mountainous region, focusing on a youngster who faces the prospect of an unsettling matrimonial custom.

(Country: Vietnam; Year: 2021; Director: Ha Le Diem)

Full review See: Diễm Hà Lệ in conversation on New Directors/New Films highlight Children Of The Mist

Clean

Review preview for Clean

There's so much here that, as with cleaning, it goes through the fabric, past the underling, to the structure, the joists, the soil.

Andrew Robertson · 3.5 out of 5
When illness forces her away from her beloved trauma cleaning business, Sandra faces up to her traumatic past and begins a search for her birth mother.

(Country: Australia; Year: 2022; Director: Lachlan McLeod)

Full review

Dos Estaciones

Review preview for Dos Estaciones

While the framing of cinematographer Gerardo Guerra has a steady calm, González uses every inch of it from side to side and top to bottom to such a consummate degree that even the subtitles have to make way at one point.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
In the bucolic hills of Mexico's Jalisco highlands, iron-willed businesswoman Maria Garcia fights the impending collapse of her tequila factory.

(Country: Mexico; Year: 2022; Director: Juan Pablo González; Writer: Ilana Coleman, Ana Isabel Fernández, Juan Pablo González; Stars: Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Teresa Sánchez, Tatín Vera, Rafaela Fuentes)

Full review See: Juan Pablo González on avoiding stereotypes and building character in Dos Estaciones , Juan Pablo González on the origins of Dos Estaciones and the move from fact to fiction

Electric Malady

Review preview for Electric Malady

Lidén isn’t interested in rehashing controversies which it’s easy to explore elsewhere. Her interest is in William’s lived experience of what is happening to him.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
An intimate portrait of a chronically ill man who ascribes his symptoms to electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome.

(Country: UK; Year: 2021; Director: Marie Liden)

Full review

Framing Agnes

Review preview for Framing Agnes

For such a studiously artificial work...it is profoundly moving.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
After discovering case files from a 1950s gender clinic, a cast of transgender actors turn a talk show inside out to confront the legacy of a young trans woman forced to choose between honesty and access.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2022; Director: Chase Joynt; Writer: Chase Joynt, Morgan M. Page; Stars: Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, Silas Howard, Zackary Drucker, Chase Joynt, Max Wolf Valerio, Stephen Ira Cohen)

Full review

It Is In Us All

Review preview for It Is In Us All

Jarvis' performance connects, or perhaps more accurately, carefully unhinges the dots of Hamish's unravelling.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A man and a teenager are find themselves unexpectedly conneceted by a car crash.

(Country: Ireland; Year: 2022; Director: Antonia Campbell-Hughes; Writer: Antonia Campbell-Hughes; Stars: Cosmo Jarvis, Rhys Mannion, Claes Bang, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Lalor Roddy)

Full review See: Antonia Campbell-Hughes on her debut It Is In Us All

Midwives

Review preview for Midwives

While it’s important to bring attention to the wider-spread government actions against the minority group, the film’s truly valuable observations are of how the prejudice impacts normal life.

Jeremy Mathews · 4 out of 5
Two midwives work side-by-side in a makeshift clinic in Myanmar.

(Country: Canada, Germany, Myanmar; Year: 2022; Director: Hnin Ei Hlaing)

Full review

Off The Rails

Review preview for Off The Rails

Even if you've never given parkour a second thought, Day will help you to see it through fresh eyes but, more importantly, to see the boys behind the bravado and the stunts, trying to make their way in the world just like everybody else.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Two urbex and parkour-obsessed teenagers face-up to reality following the death of their friend.

(Country: UK; Year: 2022; Director: Peter Day)

Full review See: Director Peter Day on his documentary Off The Rails

Still Working 9 To 5

Investigates how far the feminist movement has come in the four decades since the cult classic kickstarted a vital conversation around women’s rights within the workplace.

(Country: US; Year: 2022; Director: Camille Hardman, Gary Lane; Stars: Jane Fonda, Allison Janney, Rita Moreno, Lily Tomlin, Dabney Coleman, Dolly Parton, Megan Hilty, Bonnie Langford, Marc Kudisch, Caroline Sheen, Joe Mantello, Stephanie J. Block, Roxanna Bonilla-Giannini, Ann Roth, Arianna Huffington)

The Territory

Review preview for The Territory

The message is clear - the world needs to pay much closer attention to what is happening in Brazil, before it's too late.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
When a network of Brazilian farmers seizes a protected area of the Amazon rainforest, a young Indigenous leader and his mentor must fight back in defense of the land and an uncontacted group living deep within the forest.

(Country: Brazil, Denmark, US; Year: 2022; Director: Alex Pritz)

Full review

Until Tomorrow

A newly single mother in modern day Iran expecting an unplanned visit from her parents tries to hide evidence she's had a baby from them.

(Country: Iran, France, Qatar; Year: 2022; Director: Ali Asgari; Writer: Ali Asgari, Alireza Khatami; Stars: Sadaf Asgari, Ghazal Shojaei, Babak Karimi, Amirreza Ranjbaran, Nahal Dashti, Mohammad Heidari, Babak Karimi, Pardis Shiravani)

We, Students!

Filmmaker and economics undergraduate Rafiki Fariala turns his camera on himself and his three male friends, as they navigate the overcrowded classes, endemic bribery and corruption of an education system hardly designed to ease their passage through it.

(Country: France, Congo - Kinshasa, Central African Republic; Year: 2022; Director: Rafiki Fariala; Writer: Rafiki Fariala; Stars: Rafiki Fariala, Aaron Koyasukpengo, Nestor Ngbandi Ngouyou, Benjamin Kongbo Sombot)

Women Behind The Wheel

Review preview for Women Behind The Wheel

Television schedules seem to be crammed with middle-aged men taking train journeys or motorcycle rides, so the first thing that’s notable about Women Behind The Wheel is that it brings with it the freshness of a much younger demographic in addition to its female perspective.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
The directors become the first women to drive the entirety of Central Asia’s Pamir Highway.

(Country: UK; Year: 2022; Director: Hannah Congdon, Catherine Haigh; Stars: Hannah Congdon Catherine Haigh)

Full review See: Women Behind The Wheel - interview with Cat Haigh and Hannah Congdon