Locarno Film Festival

Latest reviews

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  Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash

  Review preview for Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash

  With characters coming and going continually, the film is wildly uneven in tone, sometimes broadly comic, sometimes painfully dark. In many ways this suits its efforts to address the chaotic nature of life.

  The tale of an impotent man who tries to assert his masculinity through fighting but cannot come to terms with his past.
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  Cop Secret

  Review preview for Cop Secret

  This film is nothing if not derivative. Except, therein lies its beauty.

  Mismatched buddy cop spoof.
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  The Sadness

  Review preview for The Sadness

  The sheer quantity of imitable violence in the film is likely to frighten censors around the world.

  After a year of combating a pandemic with relatively benign symptoms, a frustrated nation finally lets its guard down. This is when the virus spontaneously mutates, giving rise to a mind-altering plague. The streets erupt into violence and depravity.
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  The Story Of Southern Islet

  Review preview for The Story Of Southern Islet

  Although The Story Of Southern Islet undoubtedly attracts with its remarkable aesthetics, especially beautiful slow shots, emphasising the magical, mysterious atmosphere, it is an hermetic film.

  A woman who is travelling to see a shaman to seek help for her ailing husband endures strange encounters and unearthly experiences.
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  Walk With Angels

  Review preview for Walk With Angels

  Jeremaiah Marobyane is a guide on the winding roads of broken memory – courageously entering the heart of darkness deeper and deeper in a search of a girl who went missing a few years ago.

  Documentary follows a former child soldier who now helps families regain their stolen children in the economically deprived townships in South Africa.
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  Secret Name

  Review preview for Secret Name

  For Aurélia Georges, going back to 1914 in Secret Name is not only a pretext for a story about class emancipation, but, above all, female emancipation.

  Nelie escapes a miserable existence by becoming a frontline nurse in 1914 and goes on to discover emancipation can come with a price.
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  Soul Of A Beast

  Review preview for Soul Of A Beast

  Merz creates a space where emotions run riot, especially in the neon lights of night, the 4:3 aspect ratio letting each of the characters' faces fill the frame with an intensity that matches the colour scheme.

  Fantasy and reality meet in the emotional world of a teenage father.
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  Bucolic

  Review preview for Bucolic

  Bucolic is a film that demythologises the Polish, idyllic countryside.

  Danusia and her daughter Basia live far away from the modern world, in tune with the rhythm of nature, among animals and the spirits of the dead. Their enclave brings peace and a sense of security, but they feel a growing longing for contact with other people.
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  The Balcony Movie

  Review preview for The Balcony Movie

  Like the people in front of his balcony, the meaning of the film meets Lozinski in each subsequent interaction.

  Documentary composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment.
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  Mad God

  Review preview for Mad God

  At first glance, one can feel the enormous amount of work, heart and effort put into the completion of this epic animation.

  An epic journey through all the layers of hell.

A–Z of Locarno Film Festival 2021 reviews →

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