Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i diament, Poland, 1958)

 Jonathan Rosenbaum makes the point that while this film is about the forties, it’s set on the day of the Nazi surrender, it’s overlayed by a fifties’ sensibility. This is evident through the James Dean-like Zbigniew Cybulski (though Rosenbaum cites Brando) but also in the European Art cinema style in which its shot. The ‘heavy’ [...]

Katalin Varga (Romania-UK, 2009)

This is an extraordinary film in that it’s the debut feature of British director Peter Strickland and a compelling vengeance-movie as the protagonist, expelled from her Transylvanian village, seeks the perpetrators of her misfortune. That Strickland had to go to Romania to make a debut feature is a poor reflection on the UK film industry, [...]

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile, Romania, 2007)

Otilia interrogates our gaze at the end of the film This film succeeds on many levels: as a portrayal of Romania in 1987; as a shocking, and gripping, narrative; as an exercise in directorial style (the camera is often static and not necessarily positioned in the ‘best’ place). The focuses on how Otilia deals with [...]

Since Otar Left… (Georgia-France, 2003)

I hadn’t seen a film set in Georgia so this was intriguing. Of course you can’t be sure that this snapshot is a wholly accurate representation of life in the post-Soviet republic and it only focuses on one family. But it clearly is trying to give a sense of family life in post-Soviet times and [...]