Reviews by Mateusz Tarwacki

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Forever (2022)

  Review preview for Forever

  The seemingly warm family idyll becomes a cage in the face of the communication deficiencies between the characters.

  A family struggle to come to terms with the death of an adult son.
• 
  Concerned Citizen (2022)

  Review preview for Concerned Citizen

  Haguel inverts viewers' habits, breaking conventions like a trickster.

  Drama about the perils of gentrification
• 
  Yamabuki (2022)

  Review preview for Yamabuki

  The work by the Japanese director results in a lonely picture, but not devoid of a charming, melancholic sensitivity.

  A story of lost dreams and loved ones, longing for home and searching for one’s place in the world.
• 
  Forest For The Trees (2021)

  Review preview for Forest For The Trees

  There is a simple message from the film – only action can free us from the dark thoughts of hopelessness, inactivity, the impossibility of making a real change.

  War photographer Rita Leistner turns her expert lens onto a community of tree planters who overcome grueling conditions and emotional difficulties to bring back the forest one tree at a time.
• 
  The Stranger (2021)

  Review preview for The Stranger

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

  In a small village in the occupied Golan Heights, the life of a desperate unlicensed doctor, who is going through an existential crisis, takes another unlucky turn when he encounters a man wounded in the war in Syria.
• 
  Once Upon A Time In Calcutta (2021)

  Review preview for Once Upon A Time In Calcutta

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

  After the loss of her daughter, Ela not only loses her identity as a mother, but also the only reason to be with her husband. But she finds starting the new life she wants isn't easy.
• 
  Silent Land (2021)

  Review preview for Silent Land

  The young director not only manages to create a convincing critique of the bourgeoisie in general, but also points out more local, Polish problems.

  A couple find their relationship going south after a trip to an Italian holiday home begins to be fraught with problems.
• 
  Erasing Frank (2021)

  Review preview for Erasing Frank

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

  The singer of a banned punk band is taken to a psychiatric hospital in an attempt to silence him.
• 
  Luzifer (2021)

  Review preview for Luzifer

  Brunner not only confronts the sacred and the profane on the screen, but also boldly experiments with a real experience of faith.

  Johannes, a man with the heart of a child, lives secluded in an Alpine hut with his mother. Daily life is governed by prayer and rituals but a tourist development threatens to poison their paradise.
• 
  The Story Of Southern Islet (2020)

  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.
• 
  Walk With Angels (2021)

  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.
• 
  Secret Name (2021)

  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.
• 
  Bucolic (2021)

  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.
• 
  The Balcony Movie (2021)

  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.
• 
  Mad God (2021)

  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 Night Of Knowing Nothing (2021)

  Review preview for A Night Of Knowing Nothing

  An oneiric, sensory and imaginative journey documenting being young in contemporary India.

  A poetic record of the experience of being a young Indian in a land of violence.
• 
  Medusa (2021)

  Review preview for Medusa

  At the genre level, Medusa is failing. Simply put: it's not scary.

  A woman who is part of a gang who hunt those who transgress their religious ideals, finds her values changing dramatically after she is injured.
• 
  Small Body (2021)

  Review preview for Small Body

  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.
• 
  Lansky (2021)

  Review preview for Lansky

  Eytan Rockaway balances on a thin grey line between black and white, truth and lie, and between good and evil.

  A dramatisation of what happened when a legendary gangster asked a writer to pen his biography.
• 
  The Sound Of Identity (2020)

  Review preview for The Sound Of Identity

  A ritual of metamorphosis.

  In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the US.
• 
  Take Out Girl (2020)

  Review preview for Take Out Girl

  Take Out Girl delivers a simple and well-known lesson: taking a shortcut almost never pays off.

  To give her family a chance at a better life and save her family's failing restaurant, a young woman parlays her Chinese food delivery expertise into a profitable drug hustle.
• 
  At Night Comes Wolves (2021)

  Review preview for At Night Comes Wolves

  What is painfully lacking in the film is the agency of the main character and women in general.

  A woman escaping an unhappy relationship becomes involved with a cult.
• 
  My Father And Me (2019)

  Review preview for My Father And Me

  An intimate story of a relationship between a son and his father, a personal documentary, therapeutic session and a memento for British history.

  The filmmaker charts his relationship with his humanist-pacifist father, Maurice Broomfield, a factory worker turned photographer.
• 
  After The Murder Of Albert Lima (2019)

  Review preview for After The Murder Of Albert Lima

  Aengus James focuses on seemingly uninteresting moments, demythologising the cinematic imperative of searching for sensation.

  A man takes an unorthodox and dangerous path in order to seek justice for the murder of his father.
• 
  Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy (2021)

  Review preview for Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy

  The Japanese filmmaker guides his actors as if they were just learning emotions, creating an impression of awkwardness.

  An unexpected love triangle, a failed honey trap and an encounter that results from a misunderstanding are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.
• 
  District Terminal (2021)

  Review preview for District Terminal

  The daily routine of a simple junkie-dreamer-poet who slowly gets lost in all the layers and worlds of the film just becomes too chaotic.

  A narcotic dream reflecting Iranian national psychosis.
• 
  A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (2021)

  Review preview for A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces

  Shengze Zhu mixes the past, present and vision of the future in a new, strange, anti-social, empty world.

  A Wuhan-set documentary that focuses on the Yangtze River.
• 
  Bloodsuckers (2021)

  Review preview for Bloodsuckers

  The world presented by Radlmaier is a creation in which not only are the social relations absurd but the time is mixed up.

  A penniless Soviet refugee who dreams of making a career in Hollywood at the end of the 1920s falls in love with a wealthy young vampire spending the summer at the seaside with her awkward servant – with unforeseen consequences.
• 
  From The Wild Sea (2021)

  Review preview for From The Wild Sea

  Petré does not use filters, showing the world as it is – starkly beautiful on the eve of disaster.

  The director considers the critical relationship between humans and wild animals and the consequences of climate change.
• 
  Archipelago (2021)

  Review preview for Archipelago

  The feeling of incompatibility with reality is intensified by the animation itself, evoking associations with French cubism, and the oneiric-poetic, sleepy atmosphere is emphasized by disturbing ambient music.

  A true animated film about an invented archipelago. About an imaginary, linguistic, political territory. About a real or dreamed country, or something in between.
• 
  Savage (2019)

  Review preview for Savage

  Although as a genre cinema, Kelly's film fits into the current wave of new gangster cinema, one cannot help but feel that the creator wanted to put a little too much into his work.

  Hard-hitting drama tracks the three decades that shaped the feared leader of a biker gang.
• 
  Mother (2019)

  Review preview for Mother

  There is something extremely sad about the collision of two women with each other.

  In Thailand, Pomm takes care of Europeans with Alzheimer’s. Separated from her children, she helps Elisabeth during the final stages of her life, as a new patient arrives from Switzerland.
• 
  Museum Town (2019)

  Review preview for Museum Town

  It is not only a town that has become a museum, but also a town that learns how to rebuild itself by using crisis conditions to its advantage.

  A rural American town suffering economically from factory closures finds an unconventional route to recovery.
• 
  I Am Greta (2020)

  Review preview for I Am Greta

  The fight against climate change and the ossified political system are connected with her personal struggle with Asperger's syndrome and the search for one's place and acceptance in the world.

  Profile of the teenage Swedish climate activist.
• 
  This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection (2019)

  Review preview for This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection

  Mosese uses the structure of myth – the story repeated in language, culture and oral tradition.

  When her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to reservoir construction, an 80-year-old widow finds a new will to live and ignites the spirit of resilience within her community.