If there is one thing UK film-makers love, it’s a prison drama. They can’t get enough of making them, and dads across the country eat up every second. It’s a tired genre. Most films hit the same story beats and end without scratching the surface or offering any insight as to how these boys end […]

This film review contains spoilers Marie Madeline was my first watch at BFI London Film Festival 2026, and it did not disappoint. Director, writer and producer Gessica Généus stars in the titular role of Marie. The story follows the unlikely friendship between a sex worker and a dedicated preacher’s son, Joseph, in Jacmel, Haiti. The […]

From generation to generation, devastation from war, conflict, and colonial rule has forced wide-scale transformation, but down to the individuals, it festers a sense of hope and fear of a future that is unknown. That’s why Clarissa (2026), a retelling of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, works brilliantly in Nigeria, freshly after independence and amid political tension and […]

This movie is the antithesis of every Taylor Swift Documentary.  Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall was my first film at the BFI London Film Festival, and what a way to kick things off. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, this 71-minute film captures the Geese frontman performing a solo piano set at the legendary Carnegie Hall. […]

There is, in the current film landscape, a kind of contemporary thriller that mistakes intensity for tension. A kind of film that gives the audience a setting where every room seems to contain a secret, and every secret contains another secret, and hopes that by doing this, suspense will be birthed as a result. What […]

This year’s opening film at the London Film Festival, Elsinore tells the story of actor Ian Charleson who, at the height of the AIDS crisis, is handed his dream role of Hamlet at the National Theatre just as he finds out that he is HIV positive. The film documents Charleson, played by Irish actor Andrew […]

If you are familiar with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s work, then All of a Sudden probably won’t come as a surprise. The director of Drive My Car once again takes us on a slow, intimate journey alongside his characters, allowing us to spend an almost unusual amount of time with them. At three and a quarter hours, […]