The Matrix Resurrections: Precision and poetry
Lana Wachowski’s solo Matrix effort is very uneven, but especially the first act is hugely impressive, marked by precision-point filmmaking and mirror poetry.
Sculpting Time: Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World
«The images, the sounds, and the emotions of this film are all in me, mind and body, and will stay with me, not just as a favourite among Trier’s films, but as a favourite film.»
Everything will be forgotten, but not Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st
Joachim Trier’s second film is more realistic and less playful than his debut Reprise. This exploration of the film’s form still reveals many memorable devices and discreet touches.
Touchstones – a guide to Joachim Trier’s cinematic universe
With The Worst Person in the World winning acclaim from critics and audiences, we welcome you to an image-based journey into the recurring visual motifs and devices in Joachim Trier’s cinema, with an emphasis on focus and gestures.
Adrian Dalen’s Baby fingers – just watch and learn! I’ve already said too much!
Movies on War 2021: Baby Fingers won the Nordic short-film competition in Elverum, squeezing out plenty of longer and more ‘weighty’ rivals, because it has the capacity to make us think and even to see ourselves with new eyes.
Céline Sciamma’s Petite maman: Portals to the past
Sciamma’s fifth feature film is immediately striking in its gentleness as well as emotional and visual beauty, but what lies beneath the apparent simplicity are rich layers of structural echoes and quiet metaphors.
This is war, goddammit, so if you can’t pick a side then at least take a stand!
«Movies on war may tell us much about war, but especially the exit plan, the path to a genuine peace.»
Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida?: The weakness of strangers
This heartbreaking, immersive film about the lead-up to the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia is a story of self-preservation and humiliation, with an epilogue that is a great work of art in itself.
‘Escape for the fun of it’: atypical vision of war in Jean Renoirs La Grande Illusion
Few films in world cinema history owe their existence to as many unlikely coincidences as Jean Renoir’s celebrated La Grande Illusion (1938). In fact, its story and survival may be said to be nothing short of a miracle.
‘It’s a pity – they take your entire life’: Jan Šikl recalls the bitter pill of oppression in Reconstruction of Occupation
KVIFF 2021: Jan Šikl’s Reconstruction of Occupation may represent a timely reminder of the caprices of power and their human costs and, perhaps above all, the costs of capitulation.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Old: Twelve against time
Although the framing story and twist are surprisingly prosaic, for long stretches of the main body Old conjures up a combination of tension, absurdity and chaos that few other films have achieved.
At last! Movies are back: Starting – naturally – with the silent variety
Tromsø International Film Festival’s Silent Film Days: It’s a postmodern pandemic and silent film, a century after its heyday, has never been more relevant. This is the perfect time to revisit the dawn of the cinematic age.