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London Film Festival · 2023

London Film Festival 2023

Documentary Competition

Programme

8 films · 2 reviews

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Bye Bye Tiberias (Bye Bye Tibériade)

Years after leaving her Palestinian village to pursue an acting career in France, Hiam Abbass returns home with her daughter, in this intimate documentary about four generations of women and their shared legacy of separation.

(Country: Palestine, Belgium, Qatar, France; Year: 2023; Director: Lina Soualem; Writer: Lina Soualem, Nadine Naous, Gladys Joujou; Stars: Hiam Abbass)

Celluloid Underground

Insight into the lives of those who fight to keep film culture alive in the face of oppression, centring on two maverick cinephiles from Iran.

(Country: UK; Year: 2023; Director: Ehsan Khoshbakht)

Chasing Chasing Amy

Review preview for Chasing Chasing Amy

A multi-layered journey into the filmmaking process.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
A documentary about the complex legacy of Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy for LGBTQ+ people and its life-saving impact on director Sav Rodgers.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Sav Rodgers; Writer: Sav Rodgers; Stars: Kevin Smith, Guinevere Turner, Joey Lauren Adams, Andrew Ahn, Trish Bendix)

Full review See: Interview with Sav Rodgers about Chasing Chasing Amy

A Common Sequence

An interconnected look at tradition, colonialism, property, faith, and science, as seen through labour practices that link an endangered salamander, mass-produced apples, and the evolving fields of genomics and machine learning.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Mary Helena Clark, Mike Gibisser)

Dancing On The Edge Of A Volcano

A catastrophic explosion in the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, in its wake a film crew face the choice of whether to continue with their dream project.

(Country: Lebanon, Germany; Year: 2023; Director: Cyril Aris; Writer: Cyril Aris)

The Klezmer Project (Adentro mío estoy bailando)

Argentinian cameraman Leandro makes a living from filming Jewish weddings. At one of his jobs, he falls in love with Paloma, the clarinetist of the wedding band. To seduce her he pretends to be shooting a documentary film about klezmer. What Leandro does not know is that his “fake” film project will take him on an unscripted journey throughout Eastern Europe.

(Country: Austria, Argentina; Year: 2023; Director: Leandro Koch, Paloma Schachmann; Stars: Leandro Koch, Paloma Schachmann)

Queendom

Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of Magadan, a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Gena is only 21. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism.

(Country: France, US; Year: 2023; Director: Agniia Galdanova)

The Taste Of Mango

Review preview for The Taste Of Mango

The brutality of the abuse is never played down or shied away from, but nor is it considered insurmountable.

Sunil Chauhan · 3.5 out of 5
Three generations, spanning London to Sri Lanka, weave together in this documentary considering a history of abuse.

(Country: US, UK; Year: 2023; Director: Chloe Abrahams; Writer: Chloe Abrahams)

Full review