New Directors/New Films

Latest reviews

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  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.

  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.
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  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.

  In the bucolic hills of Mexico's Jalisco highlands, iron-willed businesswoman Maria Garcia fights the impending collapse of her tequila factory.
• 
  The Innocents

  Review preview for The Innocents

  The subtlety Vogt employs as a director pays off in spades as he gets as much creepy mileage from the disturbance of soil and water as any amount of CGI could muster.

  During the bright Nordic summer, a group of children reveal their dark and mysterious powers when the adults aren't looking.
• 
  Onoda: 10,000 Nights In The Jungle

  Review preview for Onoda: 10,000 Nights In The Jungle

  Harari and his co-writers Bernard Cendron and Vincent Poymiro, show how the war propaganda becomes internalised in these men, so that even when they are given signs that the conflict may be over, they rationalise that it must be some sort of 'fake news' designed to trick them.

  It's the end of 1944. Japan is losing the war. Hiroo Onoda is sent to an island in the Philippines just before the American landing. The handful of soldiers that he takes with him into the jungle keep fighting, not realising the war is over.
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  Small, Slow But Steady

  Review preview for Small, Slow But Steady

  Transcendental is often a pretentious word, but Miyake’s cadenced, Ozu-reminiscent, directorial style has a talent for sensing tensions and charging shots with profound meaning and sereneness.

  A young Deaf boxer struggles to find the will to fight through the pandemic.
• 
  Happening

  Review preview for Happening

  Diwan lets the cold hard facts trickle in as weeks are marked off at the bottom of the screen.

  France, 1963. Anne is a bright young student with a promising future ahead of her. But when she falls pregnant, she sees the opportunity to finish her studies and escape the constraints of her social background disappearing.
• 
  Fire Of Love

  Review preview for Fire Of Love

  The force of nature comes to stunning, searing life thanks to the Kraffts' footage, whether it is rivers of magma or gouts of smoke, with the film gradually building the case that they knew exactly the impact of what they were committing to camera would be.

  Intrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unraveling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded. A doomed love triangle between Katia, Maurice and volcanoes, told through their archival footage.
• 
  Nanny

  Review preview for Nanny

  The lighting used by cinematographer Rina Yang is some of the best I can recall in an American independent film since Moonlight.

  Aisha is an undocumented nanny working for a privileged couple in New York City. As she prepares for the arrival of the son she left behind in Senegal, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.
• 
  Riotsville, USA

  Review preview for Riotsville, USA

  While Pettengill is fascinated by the archival content, she’s also not afraid to experiment with form, including digital distortions that identify the movie as a product of the present.

  Welcome to Riotsville, a fictional town built by the US military. Using footage shot by the media and government, the film explores the militarisation of the police and the reaction of a nation to the uprisings of the late Sixties, creating a counter-narrative to a critical moment in American history.
• 
  Pilgrims

  Review preview for Pilgrims

  Bareisa successfully contrasts the slow long takes and great blocking, making it a well-balanced watch that will engage you on multiple fronts despite its withholding of many common cinematic devices to facilitates its ambivalence.

  A pair of old friends revisit the scene of a crime with unexpected consequences.

A–Z of New Directors/New Films 2022 reviews →

Features

• Behind the facades
  Sierra Pettengill on the politics of policing revealed by Riotsville, USA
• Kicking out cliché
  Juan Pablo González on avoiding stereotypes and building character in Dos Estaciones
• From fact to fiction
  Juan Pablo González on moving from documentary work to his first feature and the origins of Dos Estaciones
• Childhood revisited
  Diễm Hà Lệ on connecting with Hmong culture and making Children Of The Mist
• The new lioness of French cinema
  Happening director Audrey Diwan on abortion, prizes, equality and truth
• The rhythms of Full Time
  Director Eric Gravel on finding the right pace and story for his single mum drama