Film Festival
Tallinn Black Night Review: Quake
While we take it for granted, our memory is vital to every aspect of our daily lives. Our experiences and actions make us who we are, for better or worse. Even the most basic functions are hardwired into our brain. If that’s suddenly taken away then how is it possible to cope with the void …
IDFA Review: The Banality of Grief
How do you deal with grief? Everyone reacts in their own way, anywhere on the cycle from denial, anger, bargaining, depression to acceptance, at any given moment in time. There are no right or wrong answers. Whether someone withdraws into themselves or faces their loss head-on, it’s a difficult and traumatic journey. One which, despite …
Tallinn Black Nights Review: Erasing Frank
Rising from the ashes of numerous different movements and sounds, punk rock established itself as a major music genre in the 1970s. The main hubs were New York City and London, but it caught the imagination of a generation of disenfranchised youths all around the world. While much of the focus was on the US …
Tallinn Black Nights Review: A Vanishing Fog
The Sumapaz Páramo is the largest stretch of alpine tundra ecosystem in the world. This huge swath of Andean moorland is located in the Altiplano Cundiboyacense near the Columbian capital. It’s an ecologically rich and wonderfully biodiverse area which provides water for the inhabitant of Bogota. It’s considered to be a sacred place by the …
IDFA Review: Eskape
The Khmer Rouge, also known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. While their period in charge was brief, the impact they had on Cambodians can still be felt today. Led by Pol Pot, they carried out a systematic campaign to eradicate anyone with connections to the former regime, professionals …
IDFA Review: F@ck This Job
While Russia might claim to be a democracy, not even the most gullible person could seriously believe that there are fair and open elections in the country. Indeed, since he came to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin has gradually and systematically eroded freedoms of speech and protest. There is next to no official opposition in …
IDFA Review: Four Journeys
Towards the end of the 1970s, the Chinese authorities had a major problem. The population of the country was threatening to spiral out of control and while the birth rate had been in relative decline for decades life expectancy was shooting up. The measures they put in place failed to halt this seemingly inexorable rise, …
IDFA Review: 1970
The Cold War threw up many challenges but one of the strangest, in hindsight, was the lack of information about the daily lives of people living behind the Iron Curtain. While we got inundated with propaganda, there was very little fact. Indeed, even now, our knowledge about this period largely comes courtesy of film and …
IDFA Review: I’m So Sorry
The climate crisis is reaching a crunch point and there has never been as many people in positions of power wanting to change things for the better. Will the agreements struck in Paris and Glasgow be enough? Probably not, but there is at least, for once, a concerted effort to save the planet by the …
IDFA Review: Trenches
Due to advances in weaponry and military technology, trench warfare became prevalent in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. It started an age of martial attrition, where the defenders had the advantage and each metre of ground was gained through (often days and weeks of) blood, sweat and tears. With the arrival of …