London Film Festival
LFF Review: Evelyn
800,000 people take their own lives every year around the world. In the UK, over 5,000 suicides were registered in 2017. Whilst there have been great steps forward in publicly addressing issues around mental health, suicide and depression, they are still subjects which aren’t generally openly discussed and remain stigmatised. Even between friends and family. …
LFF Review: Young and Alive
It has become de rigueur within the popular media and modern journalism to castigate Millennials as stupid, fickle or vacuous (seemingly intent on ignoring the fact that it’s not the young who have caused this mess the world finds itself in today). What was noticeable after the horrendous attacks in Paris in 2015 was the …
LFF Review: Bisbee ’17
As the saying goes, history is written by the victors. When it comes to remembering the past, some events are more readily forgotten than others. Guilt and embarrassment can lead to atrocities being buried or approached from the standpoint of denial. Whilst there’s often a call to ‘move on’ or ‘forget the past’, this normally …
LFF Review: Cam
The internet has irrevocably changed how we relax, play, consume and work. The adult entertainment/sex industry has probably been transformed the most by new technologies and the myriad of weird and wonderful possibilities it holds. No longer reliant on classified ads or dingy establishments, a whole new market has sprung up. Turn your ad-blocker off, …
LFF Review: Too Late to Die Young
After a US sponsored coup d’état, Augusto Pinochet kept an iron grip on Chile between 1973 and 1990. After seizing power with the backing of the military, the dictator used his influence to amass a personal fortune and supress any dissenters. When he stepped down it marked a brave new dawn for the South American …
LFF Review: Cargo
To say the European fishing industry had been decimated over the past few decades, is a huge understatement. Fisherman, whose families have been eking-out a living from the sea for decades, have been almost completely wiped out by large industrial operations. However, the sea isn’t simply a way of making money for many, it’s more …
LFF Review: Wajib
There are few places in the world where ancient traditions are still so prevalent as Israel. On both sides of the conflict, young people struggle to escape severe religious prescripts of their parents and grandparents and enjoy the same freedoms they see in the Western world. In the shadow of oppression and infringements on personal …
LFF Review: The Nile Hilton Incident
To put it lightly, Egypt as a country is a complete and utter mess. There’s repression of free speech, media witch-hunts and the complete eradication of certain civil liberties. It’s not quite the paradise many hoped for after the uprising against Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Indeed, many are questioning whether they’re really better off now. …
LFF Review: The Ballad of Shirley Collins
There has been folk music in England since the Middle Ages. Whilst its popularity has ebbed and flowed over the decades and centuries, it underwent a revival after the end of World War II; with a network of folk clubs springing up across the country. This in turn brought a new generation of performers through. …
LFF Review: Araby
The global financial crisis destroyed lives, wrecked families and impacted on billions of people around the world. However, there is not group, as is always the case, that were harder hit than the poor. Whilst much of the media focus was on banks and multi-national corporations, scant regard was paid to the working-classes around the …