‘Robot Dreams’ Quietly Encourages You Not to Be Afraid
Pablo Berger’s animated Robot Dreams is a near-perfect marvel of silent cinema nearly a century after talkies ended the silent era.
bfi london film festival
David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ Is a Deadly Satire of the Corporate World
You can read David Fincher’s The Killer as a story about a murderer, or you can see it as the satire of our pathetic little existence that it really is.
BFI London Film Festival 2023: Critics’ Chat
BFI London Film Festival’s most impressionable films of the year, industry strikes, awards season, and the shoe-leather journalism of a film festival critic.
Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Shows Genocide Is (also) a Private Affair
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is another storytelling masterclass and examination of 20th-century American histories of greed and destruction.
Psychological Thriller ‘Saltburn’ Is a Feast for Depraved Eyes
To describe Saltburn as a sexed-up The Talented Mr. Ripley for millennials would be to reduce this aesthetically and symbolically complex film to a two-bit aphorism, but it’s a good start.
LFF’22: The Dardenne Brothers on the Life-Affirming Friendship in ‘Tori and Lokita’
The Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc discuss moving beyond the label of “unaccompanied immigrant” in their humanist immigration drama, Tori and Lokita.
BFI LFF: ‘Argentina, 1985’ Dir. Santiago Mitre on Dictatorship to Democracy
Director Santiago Mitre discusses how his fear for democracies worldwide motivated him to dramatise the Trial of the Juntas in the courtroom drama Argentina, 1985.
BFI LFF: ‘Boiling Point’ Turns the Heat Up on Work-Life Pressure
Director Philip Barantini’s one-take drama Boiling Point explores the tipping point the modern “rat race” is pushing us toward.
BFI LFF: Terence Davies’ ‘Benediction’ Sees a War-Haunted Generation Through a Poet’s Eyes
Terence Davies’ Benediction effectively evokes wartime suffering via British World War I poet and author Siegfried Sassoon’s story.
Masculinity Has No Meaning in Michel Franco’s ‘Sundown’
Michel Franco’s Sundown, which played in competition for Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival, is an exploration of masculinity in crisis. Or is it?
BFI LFF: Belgian Drama ‘Playground’ (Une Monde) Studies the Bullies
‘Playground’ (‘Une Monde’), winner of the Sutherland Award for Best First Film at BFI LFF 2021, approaches schoolyard bullies like a wildlife biologist.
BFI LFF: Family Drives Iranian Drama ‘Hit the Road’
In Hit the Road, which won Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival 2021, the silence between the family members carries the weight of their powerlessness.