1. Lost Illusions – This is Xavier Giannoli’s almost perfect period retelling of a story for the ages based on a Honoré de Balzac novel. A provincial idealistic poet (Benjamin Voisin) moves to Paris and slowly becomes corrupted. Unlike many period films this one, at two-and-half hours, doesn’t detour into tangents and keeps a coherent and absorbing flow. It’s also a revelation of the early days of popular journalism, the antecedents of which – good and bad – are around us still.
2. There have been stories of men living double lives but in Madeline Collins (Antoine Barraud) we have Virginie Efira as a woman who has two families, constantly travelling, with made up excuses like business conferences, between them in Paris and Switzerland. Efira’s stunning performance is equal to the absorbing plot in this psychological thriller worthy of Hitchcock.
3. Another French firm, Zero Fucks Given (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre), is a highly realistic portrayal of flight attendants at a European discount airline. The focus is on one of them, Cassandre (Adèle Exarchopoulos – Blue is the Warmest Colour) whose daily life is at the whims of haphazard airline schedules and strict management rules with romance a sometimes sidebar.
4. Metronom – Romania, one of the most former authoritarian Stalinist regimes, in 1972, is not the place to flirt with anything Western, as these high school students find after having a party where they listened to, of all things, The Doors and Led Zeppelin. Ana (Mara Bugarin) tries to hold out against secret police pressure only to find that the only way to continue to exist is to succumb. Alexandru Belc is the director.
5. The Killing of a Journalist. This documentary by Matt Sarnecki tells a true story of an event that convulsed the Eastern European country of Slovakia in 2018, a major news event we never heard of. The intricately told story pieces together links that show how the Slovakian “Mafia” infiltrated the country’s government at the highest levels and murdered an investigative journalist who was in the forefront of exposing the links. His killing resulting in massive street demonstrations that brought down the regime.
6. Jennifer Tiexiera’s Subject is a documentary about the making of documentaries and raises ethical questions about what should be subject matter when filmmakers intrude into the personal lives of people (“subjects”) to make films about extraordinary events or people’s traumatic life stories. The probe really has wider implications for all forms of journalism.
7. Yann Gozlan’s Black Box was the most edge-of-your-seat thriller I saw. The French/Belgium collaborative is a whoodunit about a cover up of who was responsible for the downing of a passenger aircraft. Our hero, Matthieu (Pierre Niney) is the classic outsider, a nerd, part of the country’s civil aeronautics investigation agency, who’s accused of overthinking the case and taking a stand contrary to an official accident conclusion.
8. Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski), based on a 1966 Robert Bresson film, in turn based on a Dostoyevsky story, follows Eo, a donkey, on his life journey among various owners and situations, good and bad, of the human beings all around him. Isabelle Huppert makes a surprise appearance.
9. Rogue Agent (Declan Lawn, Adam Patterson), based on a true story, is a stylish British thriller about a sociopath who charmingly disarms his subjects while fleecing them of emotions as much as their money.
10. Two British faves – Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan, star in The Lost King, another film based on a true story in Stephen Frears's, perhaps Britain’s top filmmaker, latest. Hawkins as Philippa Langley becomes absorbed with the story of Richard III, long tarred, as per Shakespeare, as a villainous opportunist when numerous historical records show his altruistic character and benevolence, aiding the poor and bringing early judicial reform. The recovery of his bones under a municipal parking lot leads to his historical rehabilitation.
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