film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Joel Fisher

  • S.A.M. – Review

    S.A.M. – Review

    Sam (Sam Retford) is a teenage boy having trouble with his mother, she always takes him for granted and makes him feel like he’s alone. Sam (George Webster) is a teenage boy with Down Syndrome who’s got the opposite problem, his family always make him feel like he can never be alone and always needs to be looked after just because of his disability.

    Then one day the two boys meet each other on a park swing and they find a common bond and enjoy spending time together, so much so that eventually the comfort of each other’s company turns into love.

    S.A.M. is a short film written and directed by Neil Ely and Lloyd Eyre-Morgan made in association with Mencap in order to raise awareness about the misconceptions about disabled people and their views on love and relationships. Having disabled people behind the scenes as well as in front of the camera helps to portray this unique tale of disability as it should be told – with authenticity and understanding.

    S.A.M. is indeed authentic and the portrayal of both of the main character’s lives may strike a chord with many, including disabled and non-disabled alike. The setting for the film is just as ordinary a place as you’d find anybody and so setting it in such an open place gives the audience a feeling that these kinds of stories are happening all over the country, even all over the world. The dialogue never feels forced and the situations that both Sams find themselves in feel like a part of the everyday rather than something made specifically to make a point.

    It’s good to go into S.A.M. knowing nothing about what happens, because that’s when the film may surprise people as it shows the relationship between the two characters evolving. There’s no inspirational message or forced moment of triumph, it just shows the characters as they are and that’s exactly as it should be. S.A.M. is a short film with a message, but the message should already be clear if audiences stopped thinking about the things they think they know about disabled people.

  • Undergods: Review

    Undergods: Review

    In a dystopian near future, two men travel in their van where they pick up dead bodies that they find. To pass the time they recall stories of people whose lives have been changed irreversibly and how one simple thing can happen to destroy everything that they have.

    Undergods is a film that compiles several stories with interweaving themes of sudden changes forcing their characters to lose it all and with characters that appear among those different stories.

    Filmed in several places in Europe including Sweden, Estonia and Serbia, Chino Moya has written and directed a film that has a grounded and all too familiar feel to its characters and settings, albeit with an unnerving undertone that something isn’t quite right.

    Stories of families being torn apart and people being undermined and losing everything feel like commentary on our lives today and perhaps not so much in the distant future.

    The first of the tales involves a couple who let a stranger stay the night after he’s locked out of his flat, only for him to outstay his welcome. Another tells about an inventor whose work is overlooked and decides to take matters into his own hands. Finally, a story about a man who’s ousted from his family due to a new arrival may feel fantastical at first, but it evokes feelings of loss, desperation and anger as lives spiral out of control.

    The look and feel of Undergods is visually striking, but with a gloomy coat of paint that dampens the spirits of all the characters and that may very well be what Moya may be trying to achieve. The fact that all the supposed victims in Moya’s stories are all middle-aged men may also be a comment on how change can affect those who think they have it all.

    Moya’s directorial debut is an ambitious and well thought out affair which talks about the world we live in now and where we may be heading, although most audiences may not realise the subtleties of the stories. However, although some of them may feel unfinished, the potential is there for Chino Moya to go on and make great stories.

  • Duty Free: Review

    Duty Free: Review

    Sian-Pierre Regis grew up with his mother and his little brother in an apartment that was only ever meant for one. Regis’s mother worked in the hotel that was in the same building that they called home and she’d been working there for over 30 years.

    Then one day she gets fired and her life is completely torn apart. Faced with the prospect of having to find a new job at 75 years old and still having to deal with bills and payments on her home, she was starting to feel like life was not worth living.

    Sian-Pierre had always been close to his mother and the idea that the most important person in his life was feeling so low made him decide to do something special.

    Asking her to draw up a bucket list, Regis then found a way to fund his mother’s wishes as they set out to do the things that she’s always wanted to do, but never had time.

    Duty Free is a documentary from journalist Sian-Pierre Regis which is about as feel good as it is close to home. What could have been an uplifting and life changing documentary instead turns into something more substantial as Regis talks to his mother about her life, her regrets and wishes and about how America treats its senior citizens.

    Looking back on her life, Regis’s mother talks about moving from Liverpool, England to America, marrying and divorcing the love of her life and raising her two boys, the youngest one which developed schizophrenia and having to help him out emotionally as well as financially. Not to mention revealing some parts of her life that she regrets the most.

    However, for all the ups and downs that Duty Free gives, the documentary is never patronising by giving an old lady the best time that she never had, nor does it allow itself to dwell too much on how her life got to the point where we meet her. Instead, Sian-Pierre Regis has given a loving portrayal from a loving son of a mother whose life has been well lived.

  • Servants: Review

    Servants: Review

    In 1980 Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule and the state were the ones that sanctioned every little detail of people’s lives. Michael and Juraj are two young men training to be priests while the seminarians are being changed in order to fit the rules and approval of the totalitarian control.

    This forces Michael (Samuel Skyva) and Juraj (Samuel Polakovic) to make a choice, to either carry on with their studies while things change around them or to become a collaborator for the regime. This causes tensions, not only between the church and the state, but between Michael and Juraj as their relationship gets split apart when one decides to work with the state.

    Servants is a dark and oppressive film fitting of the time from director Ivan Ostrochovský, co-written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Marek Lescák. The black and white film and aspect ratio of Servants only serves to draw the audience in further and makes them feel like the characters must feel under the oppressive regime and it works remarkably well.

    Gone are the widescreen, 4K crystal clear visuals and in its place is a world devoid of colour, with the 4:3 aspect ratio making Servants’ audience feel the claustrophobic confinement as the characters must comply with things out of their control.

    However, not only does the state bend and manipulate its main characters, but the church is seen to be doing the same thing albeit from a different angle. The strict Catholic training that the young men must go through are shown to be nothing more than a set of rules from a different place.

    Although, one that seems to be more loving and forgiving than the government. The trouble is that when Michael and Jaraj start to realise their division and what it’s done to them, it’s all too little too late.

    Visually unique not only in its colour and size, it seems that director Ostrochovský has set out to disorientate and confuse his audience with surprising camera angles and with a script as finely formed as the strict rules of religion and politics. Servants is uncomfortable to watch, but gives the audience a sharp insight into how people living at that time must have felt.

  • Knots: A Forced Marriage Story – Review

    Knots: A Forced Marriage Story – Review

    Knots: A Forced Marriage Story is an eye-opening documentary about the practice of forced marriage that still goes on to this day in America. There are certain preconceptions around forced marriage, there are ideas that forced marriages only occur in faith-based families and they come from some religious connotations based on archaic beliefs. There’s also the idea that it could be something that’s done in foreign countries that most people have never heard of, let alone identify on a map.

    There’s also the misconception that forced marriages only happen to adult women. Knots attempts to teach its audience about the truths surrounding forced marriages and reveals some startling facts, using three cases of women who have been forced into marriage.

    Fraidy Reiss grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community and was forced to marry a man she had barely even met who was much older than her. Nina Van Harn grew up in a Christian household and she had no choice when her father chose the person that she was to marry.

    Then there’s Sara Tasneem who at 15 years old was kidnapped by her father and forced to marry a man nearly twice her age. The stories of these three women are never meant to shock and appal its audience, instead they just simply state the facts of what happened and how they felt throughout their ordeals, in their own words.

    The documentary itself not only talks to these women, but also to experts and campaigners who put out the facts and figures surrounding forced marriage in America and the legal loopholes that are exploited. Stating these facts plainly and clearly, the statistics are shocking, especially knowing that this is still an issue up to the time of writing this review.

    Knots goes into great detail, not only highlighting the cases that give their first-person accounts, but also the ways in which families and communities can manipulate young women so that they feel that they don’t have a choice. Some even make them believe that the choice was entirely theirs when it wasn’t.

    An important documentary for those who think they know all they need about forced marriages, because it will show them that they probably don’t.