The way that director Lee Haven Jones frames male and female characters is intriguing, with classic gendered shots reversed.
Over an evening a wealthy family gathers for a sumptuous dinner with guests in their ostentatious house in the Welsh mountains. Served by a mysteriously disturbing young woman, the assembled party do not realise they are about to eat their last supper.
(Country: UK; Year: 2021; Director: Lee-Haven Jones; Writer: Roger Williams; Stars: Anne Elwy, Nia Roberts, Julian Lewis Jones, Steffan Cennydd, Sion Alun Davies, Lisa Palfrey, Rhodri Meilir)
This is the playground as a warzone, where the sandpit might, indeed, be as deep as the sea and hold dead bodies and where adult authority might only make things worse.
A little girl faces a moral dilemma after she sees her brother being bullied.
(Country: Belgium; Year: 2021; Director: Laura Wandel; Writer: Laura Wandel; Stars: Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Lena Girard Voss, Laura Verlinden, Karim Leklou)
It is impossible to deny the director's poetic and aesthetic talent, as well as her ability to offer a critical deconstruction of social relations through a seemingly simple story.
Italy, 1900. Young Agata’s baby is stillborn and so condemned to Limbo. Agata hears about a place in the mountains, where infants can be brought back to life for just one breath, to baptise them and save their soul. She undertakes a voyage with her daughter’s small body hidden in a box and meets Lynx, a solitary boy who offers to help her.
(Country: Italy, France, Slovenia; Year: 2021; Director: Laura Samani; Writer: Marco Borromei, Elisa Dondi, Laura Samani; Stars: Celeste Cescutti, Ondina Quadri)
