Venice Film Festival — A–Z of films

Despite all of its shortcomings, 107 Mothers nonetheless, makes for quite a completing piece of filmmaking.

Nikki has a light touch with a script that is able to see the funny side of things but which doesn't make light of the medical and societal situations that Jaakko and Sirpa are facing.

Cassigoli and Kaufmann avoid major plot turns in favour of the more believable everyday things that many teenagers on the fringes encounter..

Tightly wrapped doesn't begin to cover it.

Corbucci's influence on Tarantino can be seen, heard - as can his passion.

It is pretty.

A film that is big on mood in general even if its structure and overall storytelling are weak by comparison.

While it's hard to say that Fabricius's film is completely fresh, it is undoubtedly up-to-date and effective.

Gravel cleverly works the tempo, so we feel the occasional moments when Julie almost gets to relax, but that keep being snatched from her, more acutely.

The multi-layered emotional consideration of themes, in particular the clash of cultural traditions and modernity - the building up of the city mirroring the destruction of the people within it and the natural landscape - are resonant and engaging.

The end result could do with less tangent and more of the gent himself.

There is an exercise in nostalgia from the fonts in the credits that seem serif-perfect to the liberal reapplication of Carpenter's original score.

A continually shifting style, with moments of brilliance and other scenes which feel structurally derivative, threatens to overwhelm the story.

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

Despite being rather on the nose in terms of his plot beats, del Paso has an eye for a strong image and a psychological feel for the insidious viewpoint of the adults, washing over the children like a bad benediction.

The group of speleologists in Il Buco are housed in the storage room of a church, a sublime decision by the filmmakers that gives Berta ample opportunity to visually connect the scientists of the early Sixties with the splendour of Renaissance paintings.

A fascinating study of a man whose talent was never really recognised by the mainstream.

It is cleverly animated, intelligent and full of passion. Unfortunately, its mingling of the repetitive musical style of Noh with modern metal riffs, whilst it seems to please some viewers, will leave others wanting to scream for all the wrong reasons.

This film bears strange and delightful fruit without affecting its sweetness, its surprise.

Servillo has spent much of the latter part of his career playing narcissistic characters, and he’s perfectly cast here.

Everyone involved here has done better elsewhere.

It’s a film which some viewers will find exhausting to watch, hammering home its emotive points rather than letting us explore on our own. Within this, however, there are some surprisingly delicate performances.

If Matuszyński’s film tends towards soap opera in places and could definitely do with a trim here and there, its long running time does allow the grind of what happens to play out in ways that emphasise the sheer slog of it.

The film comes into its own because of Gyllenhaal's non-judgemental perspective, even sympathy, for the small suffocations of motherhood.

The film also gets hung up on its two time-period structure, without greatly benefiting from it.

The juxtaposition of showing a woman who so carefully and artfully constructs every aspect of her life with the totally natural performances of the children, especially little Ninon, adds great dimension.

With impressive cinematography at every stage, the film hinges on two magnificent slow, circular sequences, one in the middle and one at the end, each of which resets the narrative.

These are easy targets although there’s a lot of enjoyment to be hand in seeing them hit so accurately.

Sengupta has created a colourful, multi-layered and rich work that can be read in many ways, despite its flaws.

The characters are beautifully drawn, the relationship between mother and son forming the bedrock of the film.

This is quite simply the best performance of the year, blowing everything else out of the water.

Beyond the enjoyably unpredictable narrative, you can feel Giménez's love of the possibilities of cinema more widely.

Milena Smit is a relative newcomer. This is only her second feature and she has real presence.

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.

Campion treats the material with such well-mannered reverence that you begin to wish that not just the characters, but she too, would loosen up a bit.

A potent rejoinder to the hypermasculine, explicitly transphobic values of the Bolsonaro regime.

If Kruithof’s main ambition with Promises is to make audiences debate and ponder over the relationships between politicians and the public then it is definitely succeeds in its efforts to bring these puzzling and interesting topics to light.

What Sentsov does really well here is to show us the humanity which lies within even the most monstrous of these men.

There are strong supporting performances from a relatively small cast, but they pale in comparison to Stewart.

It all seems to co-create a picture of a world of the emotional post-apocalypse.

Shot in square format, the film keeps us close, closed-in, forcing viewers into the same overwhelming intimacy that Kate is experiencing.

Both girls deliver exceptional performances in the powerful opening section, and if the film struggles to make the same impact afterwards, that serves to bring Hasna’s loss into sharp relief.

Pourfaraj is superb in the lead, his Massoud stiff-backed, primly moustached, yet achingly human.