Leeds Film Festival 2026 - Day 6

Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition 2

Burn and Fade (Fra) - two elderly men sit in the middle of dense forest on an unauthorized holiday from their sterile nursing home.  They contemplate how they lived their lives now they near the end.  Told only in sign language, to accentuate both the natural ambience and their struggling breath, this was unexpectedly emotional and beautiful. 8/10

Nobody Barks  (Spa) - on her way to her young nephew, Cardela runs over his beloved dog.  As her sister struggles with the task of explaining, she makes up a lie on the spot, and as with many lies, it grows in order to survive, consuming her in the process. 7.5/10

Surface Tension (Phi) - as her sister prepares to marry, Bulet, visiting her old town from America, drifts through the typhoon-wrecked villa that she remembers from her childhood, recalling old memories feelings for both bride and groom as she goes.  Clever use of flipped images reflects Bulet's disoriented state of mind as the ground shifts beneath and above her. 7/10

As a Cure (Ch, UK) - two children play in the sand dunes on the edge of their city, burying themselves and hiding things in boxes in the sand.  Apparently she was meant to be trying to get a place in the opera, but her older self (was it her older self? I cant tell) was dressed more like an airline stewardess.  It was pretty hard to get a foothold on, a bit too artsy.  It didn't make a lot of sense to me, this one.  I think I was missing some cultural comprehension somewhere as well.  4/10

The Spectacular Death of Prisca (Ni) - a mother's I'll chosen words to her daughter as she readies for marriage, mixed with a cookie of dubious ingredient, cause a Nollywood style fever dream where she fights to save her daughter, whether she likes it or not. It was a bit rough around the edges but good fun. 7/10

Light Pillar (Ch) (imdb)

Lao Cha lives a pathetic, lonely existence, surviving the Chinese winter as a janitor on a run down film studio set in some depressing, detached future.  He spends his days keeping it just about in working order should someone wish to film there as the boss barks his orders through a microphone.  His co workers think little of him, and the cat-adjascent being he keeps as a pet is the only one to show him even a little warmth.  But when Lao acquires a virtual reality headset, things appear to change for the better; through it he meets a young woman of some beauty who convinces him to come with her on the Light Pillar space program and see what it's like out there. (light pillars are a thing BTW, which is something I learned today)

Light Pillar will win no awards for it's animation, which is pretty ropey in places, and not all of it makes sense.  But looks aren't everything.  Jingwei Xu's debut film is sweet, quirky, funny and told with heart.  Its mix of animation (for Lao's distopian existence), and with wobbly handicam live action sequences as the VR segments set in the modern day, suggesting that future beings will look back upon our time period as some relative paradise, I found this a clever touch. Extra points for a completely unexpected Robot Dreams cameo (the director is a big fan), and what must be the oddest credits sequence I've seen at a films end.  7/10

School for Defectors (S.Kor, US) (mubi)

Most people know of the split between North and South Korea, and that the lives of those in the south are much freer, happier and better lived in the southern democracy than the northern dictatorship.  But the contrast is never so stark as when northern Defectors are able to tell their stories, both of life in the north and their transition as one of the lucky few who make it to the south without being caught, which usually ends in slavery, or death.

South Korea has a dozen or so of these 'schools for defectors', and this film concentrates on the smallest one - Jangdaehyun, a boarding school which takes only 20 children from both North Korea and China, per year.

We follow the residents going through the system during 2025, interviewing both the children and their parents, sometimes hiding their faces for their own safety. Two things soon become clear: that the families that made it to the south were the lucky ones, many will have been captured and disappeared, and that when they did arrive, the ordeal was far from over, North and South Koreans are very different people both culturally and in their social conditioning.  The role of the school is as much to deprogram them and show how to live as a human being with rights and autonomy, as it is to give them an education.  Many families hide their northern heritage from shame, those who are found out in a standard school are often harshly bullied by South Koreans who see them as little more than weak willed scroungers.  Inter Korean racism is surprisingly rife.

A quietly affecting film that doesn't sensationalise, but just show a corner of the world with both it's cruelty and it's beauty, both at the hands of humans.  Many times in the film, it talked of reunification of the two halves, as if such a thing was just around the corner.  Perhaps it is, and thanks to schools such as this, the country and it's new generations will be ready for it. 8/10

Bagworm (US) (site)

Back in his collage days Carroll was well known.  He was the guy who did the crazy stuff, the guy who you would fully expect to be dead at 25 from a prank gone very wrong.  Somehow despite himself, he persists in the world.

But only just.  Jilted and living alone in a fire-damaged wreck of a home, and his crazy days left behind and replaced by 30-something backache. He makes just enough from the sale of dodgy Chinese knock-off tools to scrape a living, but a chance encounter with a nail in the foot starts off a chain of events bringing to the fore Carroll's complete inability to take care of himself, and the masculine cultural pressure to keep saying everything is fine, even when it clearly isn't.  As his infected foot turns all sorts of colours he must endure a night of raucous arsery in Vegas with his old college chums, who don't seem to be able to notice Carroll's increasingly putrid appearance.

As you may be able to tell, Bagworm is dark on humour and horror on body, and while it lacks a strong narrative flow - his descent into hell plays more of a set of unconnected incidents rather than a 3 act play, it's got a few surprises and good ideas.  Producer Zoe Rosenburg was present for a Q+A at the end and revealed that the cut we saw would never be screened again, due to a particular scene that Disney may have some legal problems with.

 

And, like Light Pillar and buses, we had a second credits sequence which did crazy things with the titles. 7/10

Leeds Film Festival 2026 - Day 6

Words of Love (Fra/US) (review)

Rejection at any age comes hard, as single mum Erika knows well.  Her young daughter has recently learned of her father's existence, and being the 6 year old headstrong force of nature her mother always feared she would be, here they are hammering on his door, asking for him to meet her.  Probably not for the first time.  For reasons her young mind cannot process, he doesn't even have the guts to come to the door.

So continues little Abi's struggle, which haunts her with disappointment through turn of the century France.  As her increasingly frazzled mother tries to spell things out whilst trying not to be the bad guy, Abi pulls further away, convinced that all of her father's avoidance is just a series of badly timed misses.

A look at the complications of one sided relationships of what should be the closest kind, Words of Love gently simmers away, never letting it's subject matter become a depressive experience.  It's peppered with welcome and subtle comedic relief in the shape of Abi's mischievous clutz of a half brother, and an adorable dog who steals every scene he is in.  7.5/10

Wolfram (US) (wiki)

Deep in the Australian outback during the early colonialism, young aboriginal strays Kid and Max mine the titular mineral for their slave owning master.  A bad encounter with a snake gives them chance to make a break for it, but not without running into Casey, a wild-eyed and short-fused stranger from out of town, looking for riches in the newfound mining village of Henry, accompanied his young sidekick Frank, who is quickly learning some of Casey's worst characteristics.  From the off, Casey and Frank look like trouble for both the kids and just about anyone else who crosses them, desperate to find the riches promised in the fly-infested lands.

Wolfram tries to be a high-stakes thriller where the boys escape the bad guys and come back to their mother's arms, but honestly it's a confusing mess.  The chess pieces move around the board erratically and it sometimes feels like an episode from a letter season of Heroes - and that's not a compliment.  The journey is messy and unfocused, and confusing directorial decisions, like having the film in four(?) parts but without a theme tying each part together, and having a supposed big reveal near the end that the two boys are actually girls, which has absolutely no bearing on the plot, the stakes, or the characters.  They just say it and move on.

It could have been a gritty thrill ride with some social commentary on slavery and the nature of relation between owner and slave but it did a lot of that in a ham-fisted way as well.  Casey is generic evil white guy with nothing to redeem him, the aboriginals and Chinese characters say things like 'the white guys are bad, mkay'.. a bit of nuance would have gone far, here.   And the kids just get batted from place to place and don’t really do anything.  I just couldn't find myself liking it much at all.  

 

And the flies.  Oh god the flies.  I get it's a rough existence but once you’ve made your point it becomes a distraction and pulls you out of the film - these poor actors had to endure swarms of the buggers and for what? A sub-par Aussie western that was in bad need of a rewrite. 5/10

Yorkshire Short Film Competition 

Practical Anarchy - members of Bradford's 1in12 club, a hub for collectives railing against the Thatcherite government of the 80s and the legacy beyond.  4 floors of music, education and support owned by it's members became a flourishing expression of counter culture. 7.5/10

Pay as You Go - a stressed man weighs up his meagre bank balance against the constant charges placed on him for the slightest action, made worse by a visit from the local rep, whose friendly demeanour masks little of her intent to charge more.  She has her own targets to meet. It felt like it could have had sharper teeth. 7/10

Wuthering Hearts - in a short but pleasingly energetic animation that lightly parodies the source of the title, Helena scrambles across the moors from her cloying mother to her goth beau, Bernard in the hope he will not put his foot in it with his well meaning complements this time.  The characters were funny and expressive, the animation was bouncy and fun.  At 3 minutes I wanted more of it, and there's scope here for expansion into something more substantial. 7.5/10

The Witches of Pool Bottom - as Rachel plucks up courage to go swimming with her friends, the demons of her physical self-doubts manifest into physical form, with a surreal comedy fight ensuing.  A very strange but effective way to highlight bodily self doubt. 7.5/10

Claw & Order - a positive mini documentary on the lobster fishermen of Whitby bay, who after witnessing a devastation of their stocks a few years back, have now joined with scientists to help restore the numbers.  It was enjoyable but it felt as if the film wanted to explore what caused the die-off but were gagged from going too far. 7.5/10

Nowt - an apparently headstrong teen hates her mother and stymies her at every attempt to get her back to a normal school routine.  Bailey has fallen for the older boy with his own shiny car and puffy jacket.  But Bailey's attitude is a shell; she's a child trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation and has no way out. Maddening the viewer, just as it should do.  8/10

Five Minute Brides - Cinderella's in Skipton is a bridal shop with a difference.  Twice a year for those who feel their opportunity has passed, or maybe just want to wear the dress, can come and be a bride for a short time.  Mandy and a handful of her customers tell their stories and the feelings this brief indulgence brings them.  7.5/10

Blue Hour - for the last night out before university beckons, Bea and her friends go up into God's own country with an old fashioned camcorder to capture their memories.  Waiting until the period just before night, they muse upon their lives together and the imminent transition to adulthood. 8/10

Leeds Film Festival 2026 - Day 4

Ben'Imana (RWA/Gab/Fra) (wiki)

22 years after the Rwandan genocide, the wheels of justice still turn slowly.  In a run down village near Kigali, Vénéranda lives quietly with her daughter and mother.  Their village still bears the scars of the attack, and families of both killer and killed share a space, old wounds never healing.

Faced with the impossible task of bringing her community back together in an act of joint forgiveness against the families of the aggressors, Vénéranda tries her best with little to help her.  But her positive words in public meetings sit awkwardly with those she has in private with her daughter, who has fallen pregnant to a young Tutsi boy out of marriage.

Winner of the Camera D'or for best first feature this year, Ben'Imana tells a difficult story wrapped in cultural traditions and deep open wounds.  Asking the question of what to do, and answering that nothing will work without both sides willing to move on.  I did struggle with some of the more subtle cultural themes but not enough for it to spoil things. 7/10

Mutter: The Diary of a Mother (Tky) (mubi)

As we join Gül, she's being transported at high speed through the forests of rural Turkey.  Cam**, her husband is barely capable of keeping them on the road to the hospital, and a collapsed tree blocking their path is the least of their problems.  It's clear there are complications with the imminent birth, and when cam hears the distinctly non-human screaming coming from the back of the transit van, he runs a mile.

Alone in the middle of nowhere, Gül somehow makes it back home, a rundown old shack with little to it's name; a series of bad decisions brought her to this point and now things are so much worse.  The octopus-like being attached painfully to the teet, and somehow, that's the most comforting thing in the moment.

Güls predicament doesn't get any better, and the film seems to want to punish her with setback after tragedy through to the end.  It's gritty horror with a smattering of social commentary, what a desperate woman has to lower herself to in a world where she is seen as meat.

 

But then it started to fall apart a bit - I was willing to suspend my disbelief with the strange mini-Cthulu child, but then the film took a leap with a scene where Gül finds out from a doctor that its all due to Chinobyl nuclear fallout creating a new substance wrapping around her internal organs, which came so far out of left-field that it made me laugh out loud; I suspect the intended audience reaction there was meant to be more empathetic to Gül's plight, but it just took the wind out of the last 20 minutes for me.

That notwithstanding, those looking for redemption at the conclusion may find themselves despairing and leaving their seats with an empty feeling in the pit of their stomach.  But if you like your body horror with a side order of sunken-eyed depression, this could be for you.  6/10

Leeds Film Festival 2026 - Day 3

Today's films, (perhaps deliberately by the festival) have the central theme of children, or child-like figures taking the centre stage.

The Meltdown (Chi/US) (wiki)

Little Inés has found herself, at the delicate age of nine, living with her Chilean grandparents in a ski resort high in the mountains.  It's the early 90s in post-dictatorship Chile, and families from all over come to ski, meet and have fun.

One such family arrives from Germany, a young skiing prodigy Hannah with her step-dad Alex.  Inés and Hannah quickly form a bond and go out into the wilderness together to get away from it all, but it's clear from the start Hannah is rebellious and looking for a release beyond the narrow perameters parents have set her.  When she discovers cousin Sebastien, a teen drifting through who takes a fancy to her, thats the last Inés sees of Hannah.  Overnight, she is gone.

A frantic search through snowy mountains ensues as mother Lina arrives on the scene and takes life into her hands, dragging young Inés along as a translator in the desperate hope of finding something.

Told entirely through the eyes of little Inés, a youngster observing and trying to understand why the older kids and the adults around her behave the way they do, and forever questioning herself; why her mother abandoned her in the middle of nowhere.  This perspective gives a fresh angle to the standard family tragedy and young star Maya O'Rourke plays it well, her dark eyed stare taking it all in as the grown ups say and do stuff beyond her comprehension.  And the ending, quite abrupt, shows what happens when you take anyone, even an innocent child, for granted.  7.5/10

Joybubbles (US) (wiki)

 

Young Joe Engressia was born blind in Richmond, Virginia.  Moving around a lot due to his fathers business, and bullied at his school, he was unable to make friends.  He turned to the telephone, which fascinated him; the abilty to talk to anyone with a line in the world, but also the technical side - the whirrs and clicks he heard when he was being transferred through.

 

One day, he did something you would normally expect to read in the Fortean Times; purely by accident he found that if he could whistle at precise pitches, he could control the machinery that routed calls.  Practicing his whistles until he was pitch perfect, he spent years honing his craft until he was able to make long-distance calls, for free, to anywhere he chose.  This at a time when calling long-distance was very expensive.

 

By the time he was at university he was an expert, and it won him friends with his peers, who would pay him a dollar to connect them to family and friends.  But it also caught the attention of the telephone companies themselves, who were rattled at the prospect of some university kid scraping off their billions in profits.  Engressia was convicted of fraud, and was lucky to get off with little more than a fine.

 

But it started something; Engressia is as an early Phone Phreak, a movement in America who were obsessive over the telephone system.  Many would exploit Engressia's discovery, but most were interested from a technical standpoint.  Some, including Steves Jobs and Wozniak, would hit the local electronics shops and cobble together what became known as blue boxes, little bundles of electronics that could fit in a cigarrette packet and produce dial tones, much like Engressia demonstrated himself, years earlier.  But as the movement grew, so did the reaction from the telephone companies, who took the situation increasingly seriously.  Engressia found himself in the spotlight again but with higher stakes.

As the film goes on, the technical angle disappears, and Engressia the person starts to come to the front.  A scarred but endearingly innocent character, wanting only for his own high-rise flat, and the connection to other people.  During the 80's he created the "Zzzzyzzerrific Funline", deliberately the last entry in the phone book to attract those with a curiosity for finding out what would be at the end of such a tome.  In it he would tell quirky, random, silly stories on audio tape and invited his audience at the end to call his real number.  Some did, and a network of friends slowly developed.

 

Joybubbles is a wrenchingly beautiful tale of an innocent soul making the best of the hand he was dealt.  Much of it told by the friends he made, but also by Engressia himself, via many audiotapes he made before his death.  "The child within is still there, just asleep."  8/10

Josephine (US) (wiki)

A sunny San Francisco, not yet 6am.  8yr old Josephine and her dad are out on a run in the park when Jo's enthusiasm puts her in harms way.  Streaking ahead she chances upon a woman being assaulted.  The assailant gets caught and arrested, and as little Jo waits in the police car with the victim, her mind races with the face of the man burned in her memory, and the world shaking experience with she has just bore witness.

Desperate for justice to be served, physically-minded father Damien, and more cerebral mother Claire begin to lock horns on whether Jo, as the only credible witness to the crime, should go through the stressful experience of testifying in court.  As obvious as it is the right thing to do, to take the best shot at locking away a scumbag, the mental scars on their little girl they know are a heavy price.  As tensions rise in the household and Jo attempts to process what is now a persistent presence in her life, she begins to hallucinate a malevolent ghoul in the shape of the man, infiltrating her home and her bedroom.  Her behaviour becomes more erratic as she struggles to come to terms with her new perspective on the world and who inhabits it.

An interesting companion piece to The Meltdown, both of which use the interpretation of the world through the eyes of a child while terrible events unfold, Josephine will tug particularly at the heartstrings of parents for obvious reasons.  Channing Tatum is solid as the a tough but sensitive father, while Mason Reeves makes a great introduction as Jo, her sparkling eyes displaying emotions with the slightest change of expression.  A troubling but satisfying drama that will stay in my mind for some days. 8/10

Leeds Film Festival 2026 - Day 2

The Red Hangar (Chi/Arg/Ita) (wiki)

 

During the intense, paranoid period of civil unrest of 1970s Chile, Captain Jorge Silva, once a celebrated name in the chilian air force, now works a relatively quiet job in the senior ranks of a military flying school.  Things hot up as the coup looms over the horizon, when Colonel Jahn - a rough-nosed, menacing figure - appears and takes over the running of the school, repurposing it as a holding centre for captured uprisers, many of which would be tortured and killed for what information they had.  

 

Silva, the darker aspects of his shrouded past only hinted upon, clearly had a hand in stalling Jahn's progress through the military, having had him kicked out for misdemeanours in the past, now finds himself under Jahns command, who has not forgotten the past.  As Jahn's actions become increasingly reckless towards his prisoners, Silva must choose between his adherance to military hierarchy, or stand against it.

 

Shot in saturated black and white, accentuating every character expression; the slow twisting of the rope around the necks of the main characters is demonstrated largely with words not action, and is no less tense for it.  It could be seen as a good companion piece to Wild Horse Nine, coincidentally also showing but I didnt manage to get a ticket, which is also set with the Chilean coup as its backdrop. 7.5/10

Variations on a Theme (SA) (review)

During the second world war, allied Europe enlisted thousands of South-Africans onto the front line.  For their service, while the white man was paid well, each one of these men returned with a pair of leather boots and a bicycle.

 

In the present day, Hettie - a daughter of one such soldier, now about to turn 80 herself, tends her goats on the hills above her small, poor village.  She lives thriftily and alone, but comfortably enough and has become used to her empty nest after her husband passed and the children left for the city.  But now, supposed government officials have been handing out blue forms, offering at last, proper compensation for the sacrifice of their ancestors.  Naturally Hettie, and all her neighbours quickly copper up their significant administration fees, and post them off.  Only a week or so, they said, and the money would come back.

 

Operating somewhere in the area between documentary and fiction, the silent Hettie is given voice by the narrator who weaves stories around the scenes of the village and its enhabitants as the wait, and wait; and gives thoughts and complexity to Hettie's silent existence, showing as that this quiet old woman is full of thoughts and feelings behind her subdued expression and painted smile.

The cyclical nature of the film, as it repeats the same static scenes one by one with subtle differences, could have got annoying, but with its short run time (just over an hour), they become a lyrical rhythm of this old lady's stoic existance.  Initially it seemed to be about the ease with which a community such as this could be hoodwinked - as they are - out of what little cash they had; but it became little more than a background detail as the more important themes of family and community, repitition and foundation, took to the front.  It was warmed over with beautiful music seemingly from deep within Hettie's distant past, and was a lovely way to spend a little time with her.  8/10

Ultimate Thunder (UK) (film site)

Few bands command such warmth from their audience as these guys, a group of men with various learning disabilities who came together in a Leeds warehouse to become, 'the most punk-rock band in the world'

Quite the claim, but here they make their case. These guys dont have a set list, they just play, jazz-style, whatever comes to mind, and the audience has to take it.  No two gigs are ever the same, and front man Matthew's improvised lyrics jump the tracks continually, from random, bizarre outbursts to profound inner feelings.  In that respect, their musical output is perhaps the purest form of expression.

Filmmaker Ben Brown became an unofficial band member for three years and followed them from humble jam sessions to their first gigs. Their popularity went large when their funding was cut and fellow bands spread the word of their crowdfunder which spread through word of mouth.

An easy film to love and I spent most of it with a big smile on my face.  Hyde park was packed out, clearly with a number of locals who know and love the band; plus the director and band members were among them; they got up on stage afterwards for a long Q+A session that unfortunately I had to miss a lot of.  I'll be looking out for these guys on posters around Leeds in the future.  8/10

The Third Man (UK) (wiki)

To round off the night, we have a fresh 4K remaster of the 1949 classic, oft cited as the greatest British film of all time, but one I had yet to experience.  My first and second choices for this slot had all sold out (you have to be quick at Leeds) so this was an opportunity to see it where it was meant to be experienced.

 

Holly Martins, an American writer of some limited fame arrives in a wrecked post-war Vienna, occupied in zones by the British, the Americans, the Germans and the Russians who somehow have managed to work something out, and uneasy peace exists amongst the rubble between the factions, although crime is still rife.  Somewhere in the city, Holly's friend Harry Limes has said he might have some much needed work.  

 

But without even being able to meet, Harry is killed in a car accident, and all Holly can manage is to catch the tail end of the burial, attended by a handful of unfamiliar and shifty faces.  Idle questions give nonsensical answers and Holly is drawn deeper into a detective mystery of the kind only his books would go near.  With the police seemingly uninterested in pursuit of these new developments, and a distraction in the form of Anna, a tragic femme fetale who loved harry for all his faults, can he get to the bottom of the loss of his friend?

Getting on now for 80 years old, The Third Man is still plenty watchable in its own right, and from a retrospective angle, represents an early example of what later thrillers would employ in terms of narrative twists and turns.  While I would not rush out to buy my own copy off the back of this, it was an entertaining, fascinating time capsule, both of the wreckage of a once beautiful city, and also a major milestone in film history. 7/10

Leeds Film Festival 2026 - Day 1

Its festival time once more!  

 

Love the new commissioned artwork. 

 

Before I start - go see Wildwood while you still can.  Its still on in the theatres and you need to see this on the big screen.  Show an original and genuinely astonishing film made painstakingly by hand some love, you wont regret it.  But.. don’t take little kids.. its not for kids.

 

Iron Boy (Fra) (wiki)

As the years pass, the feasibility of dragging the entire family along to the full bifta festival (no offence, LYFF) solidifies.  So it is that this year, with the lass and both seedlings in double figures, I tried to share with them some of the magic of the opening day experience.  Sure enough, an age appropriate family film was right there waiting for 4 seat reservations.  

 

Young Christophe learns he has a twisted spine at 10 years old, and we follow him through into his teens as he negotiates an unforgiving French landscape in the late 80s.  His father starts off aloof, and things don't improve when his son and aire dons the iron corset.  Feathers fly and Christoph starts to drift further from the family that already seems ambivalent towards him.   An unlikely distraction comes from a kindly organist at the church, who offers to channel his frustration with music, but with the farm in arrears and no money to fund his new hobby and little chance of Christoph helping on the farm any time soon with the corset on, there's little understanding from the head of the house.

It didn't sound great on paper. Young farmers boy wears an iron corset due to back problems and acquires a taste for church organ playing. Not a great premise, and less so when you factor in it's un-dubbed French language. It was, unfortunately, this or nothing. They aren't quite ready for Pans Labyrinth, which was playing on the other screen in an anniversary restoration. I booked my 4 expensive tickets and trusted my luck, that it's placement as an opening film meant it was something special.  

Iron Boy was indeed a good pick; the gorgeous loosely detailed style reminded me of the lovely Chicken for Linda, but detailed with a pastel watercolor style which suited the bawdy French summers during which most of the film is set, and the music, clearly a revelatory moment for Christophe who becomes entranced by this musical sensation, is equally so for the viewer, treated to the most beautiful of choir and organ music that only a spacious cathedral can provide.  Come for the story, stay for the experience.  9/10

Mouse (US) (wiki)

LIFF's official opening film was actually the second one.  As the century turns, Minnie is an ordinary teen, painfully so in her opinion.  A frustratingly average existence in a rural American town is made palatable by her best friend Callie, the prettier, more successful girl she has grown up with.  Minnie has been a satellite around her for years, and everything else in her life can be rubbish, so long as she is there.

A last sleepover before the end of term ends tragically, a car accident rips Callie from existence and throws everyone spinning and scrambling into orbit.  The shock is too much for her feeble social connections to handle and it's only Callies mother, Helen who seems able to understand the whirlwind of feelings inside.  Minnies birth mother by comparison is already out of touch and now feels like a stranger in her life, who as most mothers at this age can do nothing right, everything now feels amplified.

Mouse started out as a straightforward story of teenage friendships, but upon the tragedy matures nicely into a nuanced study of the different expressions grief and loss, how people adjust to fill the gaps and find new qualities in the people they thought they knew.  It never sank into the maudlin or became depressing, and was peppered with sly humour that didn't detract from the main theme.  The acting was heartfelt, especially Alex Thompson as Minnie who gave it her all, but also our own Sophie Okonedo as Helen, and David Hyde Pierce, a thousand leagues from Niles, as a care-worn drama teacher trying to get the best out of his students while doing his bit to stop them falling apart at the sight of an empty chair in class.  8.5/10

 

Rose (Aus/Ger) (wiki)

Sandra Hüller might not be a household name yet but soon could be.  Not long out of her woolly jumper kidnapping Eva Stratt in Project Hail Mary, and daughter Emma in the audience-splitting Digger, and the leading role in Fatherland, currently doing the rounds in the cinemas. and also this, as the titular Rose.  Mysteriously arriving in a poor and dilapidated Protestant village at the end of the Thirty Years War, under the identity as the benefactor of some of their farm houses and land, the simple folk are suspicious but eventually accepting of the new man and his claim.  Wanting only for peace from what was clearly a tough life, events work favourably to allow Rose to rise in their estimations.  But the comfortable existence brings a restlessness for more, and in doing so rose puts herself in harms way, especially as now she is expected to take a wife for land, and consummate the marriage.

Filmed in stark black and white to accentuate the harsh lives led in this place, Rose offers little comfort for the viewer and those hoping for a happy ending will find themselves badly out of pocket.  Rose, if nothing else is a bloodied eye staring into the wretched lives of those who lived during those times not that long ago, and a warning that intolerance is just below the surface, then and now.  8/10

Leeds Film Festival 2025 - Day 18

The Blue Trail (Bra/Mex/Ned/Chi) (wiki)

In a future Brazil, a decision was taken that the elderly have finished being useful to society and can be packed off to 'the colony', an obscure synthetic afterlife to which the film tells little.  Teresa, just hitting her late 70's and looking forward to a couple more years with her daughter is caught off guard as the qualifying age is dropped from 80 to 75.  No longer allowed to buy anything of substance without providing papers and getting content from her daughter, her attempts to flee rely on those willing to risk prosecution in giving her safe passage.  

Winning the Silver Bear grand jury prize at Berlin this year, and with similar themes to Calle Málaga, of the dehumanizing effect that the expectations of a younger generation on the elder; a disregarding of the possibility that the wrinkled exterior could hide a still beating heart full of expectation, anger and passion in the twilight years, The Blue Trail gives a voice to frustrations in the senior viewer, and a pause for thought in the rest of us. 7.5/10

The Love That Remains (Ice/Den/Swe/Fra) (wiki)

And so to the final film.  The Love that Remains was thought well enough of to have it playing simultaneously in three of the available screens.  A family living in a remote part of Iceland was once happy, but something has split Maggi, who works on an industrial fishing boat, and Anna, an artist struggling to find someone to buy her work.  What caused the rift is left as an exercise for the viewer, but sometimes these things just happen.  Maggi is clearly not over it, and Anna just wants to move on.  Not helping matters, is that Maggi regularly joins the family for meals and outdoor pursuits in the Icelandic countryside, so his heart, not to mention his groin, is constantly reminded of the life they used to have.  Anna, however is more annoyed that he thinks of his own woes and not how much work it is to run a house with three unruly kids and one less adult.

The director favours using symbolism over narrative to tell the story, and while this is quite benign at first, it becomes increasingly erratic as the film goes on, and unfortunately, it suffers as a result.  Characters seem dead, then living, on boats, then at home.  I'm certain there is a cohesive structure to what the director is trying to get across, and sometimes as with Blue Heron, this can work really well, and other times the film fails to provide the signposts for the viewer to navigate their way to a satisfying understanding.  For me at least, this film belongs in the latter camp.  

 

This made the final third difficult to pick apart, and assuming you can manage that in your head, I suspect you won't feel like it was worth the effort.  None of the characters particularly feel likeable, and things happen too randomly to allow the viewer to develop any sympathy towards them.  As the credits went up, I felt an uncomfortable silence in the audience - a perceptible difference that demarcates a group of people processing witness to work of art, from one where people were asking themselves, 'why did I come all the way here to see this?'

I enjoyed some of it; the framing shots highlighted the beautiful Icelandic vistas, along with the family dog, Panda, who made every scene his own, and the genuinely laugh-out-loud fever dream experienced by Maggi after killing a rooster almost made it worth the trip, but unfortunately, not quite.  5/10

Leeds Film Festival 2025 - Day 17

Rental Family (Jp/US) (wiki)

Getting an extra screening at LIFF usually means a film has been well received, and since I'd seen it advertised earlier in the festival but didn't manage to see it, I used up my Saturday morning spot.

Brendan Fraser, complete with a mawkish expression he can't seem to shift for the duration of the film, plays Phillip, a down on his luck actor scraping by in central Tokyo playing bit parts in advertisements and whatever else he can scavenge from his agent.  Luck, of sorts, comes his way when he lands an unusual job as a 'Sad American', playing a distant relation at a seizensō - an actual funeral for a person not actually dead.  Seeing potential, Shinji enlists Phillip in his company, Rental Family Inc, to play bit parts in the lives of those in need, often at the request of their nearest and dearest.  So one daughter hires him as a journalist to interview her elderly actor father to make him feel better about his acting legacy, while at the same time he's moonlighting as a found father to help a mother get 'his' daughter into a fancy school.

Predictably, Phillip gets too attached to the parts, and the well-meaning relatives end up getting more than what they wished for.  When Phillip is asked to back away and move onto the next job, he goes rogue.

Naturally, I was attracted to the film's location; the director clearly wanted to have the many sights and styles of Japanese culture to be one of the characters, and time was set aside to allow the viewer to appreciate the vibrant Tokyo landscape.  As a love letter to the country, it did elevate the film, although it had little in the way of surprises, and one of the two main plot-lines felt disappointing in it's resolution. 

It had some bits that skirted around something deep to say about the nature of relationships and the quirkiness of the Japanese way of dealing with mental health, but it didn't quite get to the point of actually having anything interesting to say on that subject.  It did however have just enough emotional pull to stop it sliding into the level of mawkishness written on Brendan Frasiers face,  7/10

Blue Heron (Hun/Can) (wiki) 

A Hungarian family with four children move house into a rural community in Vancouver Island, sometime in the nineties.  Most of the children seem well adjusted, but there is a source of disquiet.  Jeremy, the eldest and the child of a previous relationship, is beginning to show concerning behavioral problems.  The other kids are spooked when he does a turn, and the parents are quietly going out of their minds.  A lack of mental health support, apparently a feature of the time, means there is little hope for the family, and they clearly haven't acquired the skills from elsewhere.

Told with little exposition, requiring a little patience on the part of the viewer to get on the wavelength of the film.  To say much more would spoil the ingenuity in the approach to this film, so I won't. Blue Heron tells a familiar story from two perspectives and time periods in a way I haven't seen before, surprising the audience with a satisfying narrative that expects the viewers attention, and rewards it.  A surprisingly satisfactory film. 8/10

Calle Málaga (Mor/Fra/Spa/Ger/Bel) (wiki)

Maria Angeles, an elderly woman living on her own in the evening of her life, still maintains an active lifestyle in a market town in Tanzania, the street on which she lives gives the film its name.  Her daughter many years ago emigrated to Madrid, but suddenly returns after little in the way of contact.  Maria's joy is soon turned to devastated fury when she finds out why - Clara is broke from relationship troubles and needs money, and the apartment that Maria has lived in for 40-plus years - which her late father trustingly placed in Clara's name - needs to go up for sale to get her out of the hole.  A deep rift opens up between the two, but Maria has little say in the matter.  Faced with the choice between a care home and living in Spain with her now-horrible daughter, she opts for the former, though its not long before the bargain basement service provided makes Maria pine for her sumptuous apartment.

Horrible though Maria's situation is, the film is told with warmth and humour, a high point of the film has Maria sharing her woes with an old friend at the local convent.  Its message of finding perhaps something better when everything is seemingly lost is a positive one, although the film allows the viewer to decide for themselves what the resolution is, of which I was expecting one of a handful when the credits suddenly ran.  This abrupt ending may be a little disappointing for some who would wish for the resolution to be handed to them, but otherwise, it was clear why this got the audience award at Cannes this year. 8/10

Ghost Elephants (US) (wiki)

A new Werner Herzog documentary is almost a requirement to watch, although the last film of his I managed to catch (Cave of Forgotten Dreams from BIFF 2011) didn't set my hair as alight as I was hoping it would.

Ghost Elephants is a name used by the tribes-people of Angola to describe what may be a previously unrecorded species of Elephant, one which is significantly larger than the usual ones in Africa.  Thought to survive in the higher altitudes of the Angolan water tower - which feeds a good chunk of Africa from it's runoff - Dr. Steve Boyes has dedicated his life to finding and recording proof of these animals existence.  A single specimen, dubbed 'Henry' was shot in 1955 and brought to the Smithsonian institute where a model of him is on display to this day.

Herzog and crew accompany Boyes, along with a handful of others traveling into Africa, first to Namibia where they take on the talents of some of the last elephant trackers, and then a hundred or so miles into Angola; first with 4x4's, then when the tracks run out and it becomes too impassable, switching to bikes and finally on foot.  Along the way they contend with impassable terrain, poisonous snakes and spiders, and prey animals stalking them down.  

Whether they find the elephants is less the point than the journey and the subjects covered along the way.  Content warning: This is not a film for the squeamish.  Lots of animal carcases left from previous expeditions and hunts, and some of the stock footage from days when elephants and similar sized beasts were hunted for sport will not soon leave my mind.  If you can stomach it, Ghost Elephants is equal parts entertaining and sobering. 7.5/10

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (US) (wiki)

To round out a busy day, here is an unusual one.  Therapist Linda is in way over her head.  Husband Charles (played randomly by Christian Slater who is for most of the film a disembodied voice on the phone) is not around, her daughter needs nightly care that involves pumping gunk into her stomach by drip tube, and a water leak from the apartment above has just broken through, leaving a massive, ominous hole and lots of damage.  Her fellow therapist (played even more randomly by Conan O'Brien) is little use and more interested in his own stories than hers, and a steady stream of half-witted patients darken her door at regular intervals to tell them how bad their life is.  At rock bottom, she moves into a motel room while she fights helplessly with the landlord to get things fixed.

A person at absolute rock bottom with the entire world seemingly against them is going to have their perception of reality warped; and we are along for the ride.  The endless days melt into one another, the hole begins to take on a life of its own, and how Linda avoids a complete nervous breakdown is beyond me.

A study into the mind of a woman on the edge; getting little or no support from the people in her life, the perils of being a mother to a child in need, and the effect that mental slide into madness, seen from the eyes of a victim.  It's an odd, disconcerting film with a dark streak of humour, but with powerful images and a lot to say. 7.5/10

Leeds Film Festival 2025 - Day 10

Follies (Ca) (wiki)

Francois and Julie have been coasting for a while now.  Sixteen pretty good years under their belt and two adorable daughters, but somewhere under the calm, day to day waters, dissatisfaction stirs.

The touch paper is lit during a conversation which can only be described as 'frank and liberated' during a dinner with Francoir's younger and less embaggaged friend and his partner.  Stirring something within him, he makes a pitch for a more open relationship to try and get back the spark.

 

But choices are many and varied in this new world, and the rules carefully laid down at the start may end up biting him in the backside, safe word or not.

Follies is not for the faint hearted, sexytime-wise.  A lot of bare flesh (and not just in pairs) is on show as these guys explore their kinks, and they're far from alone in what appears to be a super-liberal suburb somewhere in French Canadia.  It would seem that North (North) America is quite the hot bed of people getting it on in all sorts of ways behind closed doors through into the small hours.  

 

The film explores this and it's relation to polygamy, and asks the question, if you were to let it all go, to really see what there is out there, so see what it is that got your juices fizzing, would you go for it, and what happens to that which went before?  Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go into a darkened room.  7.5/10

A Poet (Col/Ger/Swe) (wiki)

Oscar Restrepo is a child, stunted from without and within by his mother's willingness to do everything for him, and Oscar's own inability to do more than the absolute minimum otherwise needed to live.  He drinks to a stupor, has no job, and his ex-wife and daughter want nothing to do with him.

 

Things were not always this way, as his two published poetry books attest, but they were a long time ago, and Oscar is a shadow of the man that wrote them.  The rut he comfortably resides in while he perpetually promises the waiting world a third tome is deep, with cushioned edges.

But his sister who puts him up in the spare room has had enough. Use what little talent you have to teach poetry, or find somewhere else.

Reluctantly he accepts, but discovers amongst the disinterested faces a kindred spirit in Yurlady, a quiet young student with an aptitude for poetry.  Fired by his discovery, Oscar makes it his goal to nurture the talent, but his immaturity and impulsiveness to skip doing things by the books is about to land him in hot water.

A Poet is a tragedy with a dark comic edge.  Amateur actor Ubeimar Rios, seemingly plucked off the street and stuck in front of the camera, is a perfect fit as a man-child barely in control of his existence, bringing a lonely fragility to the part that felt written for him.   

It is a bit heavy on subtitles, especially when Oscar is drunkenly arguing his point with anyone who will listen, so it's a good idea not to sit too close to the screen, but beyond that, it's a fascinating portrait of a good man limited by his own inadequacies. 7.5/10

Leeds Film Festival 2025 - Day 8

Short film day!

 

Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition 3

Garan (Tur) - A farmer waits patiently at the border between two bickering states, waiting for his precious cows to be delivered to him, but as the border closes and the trucks depart, his delivery, on which his families livelihood depends, is still missing.  Desperately, he scours the dangers of the border in search of answers. 7.5 

Malicia (Gra/Col) - In rural Columbia, two youngsters take a bike ride to the scene of a previous shooting, where their friend, El Mono, perished. Death is around each corner and mourning is a luxury. 7 

Crumb (Ru) - An orphaned teen with learning difficulties works at a bakery in the hopes of one day breaking into society, but for the moment, his meager wage is spent with friends, buying clothes and trading nudie pictures.   A chance encounter with a female co-worker awakes something in him and his innocent attempts to try and woo her can't go unpunished in a cruel world where only crumbs come within reach 7

 

The End of the World (Peru/UK) - A strange, allegorical tale; the elderly Epifanio buries himself at the foot of the mountain whose avalanche killed so many of his village so many years ago.  Suddenly a child and back in the time of his parents, he spends what little time he has been given to reconnect and remember. 6

Honey, My Love, So Sweet (Phi)  - Two children begin to explore love, gender and the wider world in the shadow of their parents crumbling cinema.  It was a bit too cryptic for me. 5

Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition 4

Blue Heart (Hair/Fra) - While their son chases the American Dream half a world away, his father struggles with the care of his frail wife, who is recovering from a stroke.  They await a phone call to pep their spirits, but rarely do they get it.  A little abstract, it swings wildly between absurd Avant Garde and the quiet contemplation of love enduring all hurdles.  6

Ali (Ban/Phi) - A singing contest comes to a remote Bangladeshi town, and Ali can sing beautifully, but not in the 'right' way for his mother, whose imposed societal limitations force a perpetuation of in-grained self-persecution.  Ali wants to show the world who he is.  7

   

What if they Bomb Here Tonight? (Leb) - An unsettled night for a family in Lebanon; the father fixates on the glass in the windows above their bed, fearful of the planes overhead and the rolling news reports on the telly.  In the midst of this horrible situation, a darkly comedic tale appears. 8 

In Between Storms (PR) - Lost to a hurricane a year previous, Camplos lies in a coffin washed away by storms.  On the night before a new hurricane is about to hit Puerto Rico, Cheita, makes a desperate bid to retrieve the coffin from the rubble and bring it home safe.  A sobering tale of loss and resolution. 8

Cucumber (No/Jp) - A cute tale based upon a real Hikikomori - a term given to someone socially self-withdrawn - who on receiving a simple gift from a neighbour, spirals out of control thinking and overthinking about an appropriate response, armed with precisely zero social skills.  7.5

Dancing Pigeons (Swe/Fra) - Finally, a cautionary tale about a spiritualist, whose cocksure handling of a show at a local village goes out of control when a woman asks about a very specific person she lost.  Used to seeding the audience with vague hints to get a match, suddenly he needs to actually connect with a real soul or lose it all.  8

Fanomenon Short Film Competition 3

Grandma is Thirsty (UK) - Clearly channeling that episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, a bullied boy is taken into a house by Bronte and Benny, two creepy kids who promise him they will stop the bullies.  I mean, they do... But... Ugh.  8

Em & Selma go Griffin Hunting (US) - Em and her mother live in an alternate America where the Griffin is a real creature, and the women of the community sanctify their womanhood by slaying one.  When Em has second thoughts at pulling the trigger, she is forced into a choice between tradition and ostracisation.  It was a little heavy handed with its points but nonetheless powerful. 7.5

Night Whispers (UK) - A man gets more than he bargained for when the woman he beds suddenly starts acting posessed.  A quick kip in the afterglow of a conquest starts to go horribly wrong.  7.5

Stomach Bug (UK) - A Cambodian father tries to stay connected to his distant daughter, whilst having to contend with a seriously distended stomach.  The docs seem disinterested, and then things start moving inside.  A bit of an icky one but very well done 7.5

Checkout (UK) - Agnes just wants a quiet life but her neighbour likes Martine McCutcheon just a bit too much for her thin walls to take.  But his music tastes will soon be the least of her problems when a trip to the shops turns into a fight for her life.  7.5

Plastic Surgery (UK) - Heavily pregnant surgeon Dr. Terra is seeing out her last days in the hospital before maternity leave, but a series of increasingly bizarre 'foreign object' emergencies, each involving plastic embedded in the body, spirals out of control.  A tense, uncomfortable thriller with a powerful message underneath. 8

Crowded Out (USA) - Stressed from work and trying to find a parking space remotely close to home, Owen ends up picking up a hitch-hiker who wastes no time picking apart his imperfections.  More and more hitch-hikers appear and things just turn into the weirdest way to die.  7

Leeds Music Video Competition

Despite the name, it contained videos from across the globe.  A quick rundown of the ones I managed to catch:

Check your Face - Okay Kaya - Smooth, sensual vocals overlay a very odd film depicting a body warped by film and cut in half.  7

A Little More Action - Yoann Roussin - A french version of the Elvis Presley classic, playing to an animated clash between rival police gangs, seeing who can abuse the most protesters, as the rest of us look the other way. 8

Heute Ist Mein Tag - Hanningbarna - A company mandated training course accompanied by some angry screaming metal went better than you might think. 7

Julie - Horsegirl -  A really nice indie song using animated scenes of nature, let down a little by the repetitiveness of the visuals. 7.5

Avalanche - Monolink - Two revellers retrieve their clothing on their separate walks home after what was clearly a wild night. 6

Buddha Was a Rich Boy - That Handsome Devil - madness and anarchy await a pair of young children as they gatecrash a gig in a pub toilet helmed by a madman.  Over the top but fun. 7

 

Lost in Space - Foster the People - My personal favourite, a very 80's feel with elements of The Human League and Bryan Ferry to it.  Gonna find out more about these guys. 8

GOD SAVE THE PONY - BIG SPECIAL - The band members are ponies in an office space setting, which predictably descends into chaos. 7

At Dawn - Pit Pony - Irish rockers Pit Pony give us a fast-paced ballad about being the odd one out in a relationship. 7

Ruth - Nick Leng - A nice, slow ode to a love of a life with a nostalgic feel.  I can find the tune, but not the video. 7.5

 

Panic Shack - Girl Band Starter Pack - The band swap with a quartet of drag queens for a romp around the city streets. 7

Invincibility - Alabaster DePlume - Bit of a weepie as a dog is fatally injured and both mum and distraught daughter take it to the vet for the last time.  A melancholy tune accompanies the sad event.  7

ITS JUST LIFE - GANS - The humdrum of the daily work trudge.  Wake, work, repeat, played as a trippy hallucination and a nod to the post-punk of the early 80's. 7

Company Culture - Lambrini Girls - As with GANS, the Labbrini Girls are channeling The Divine Comedy's Office Politics, but with more chaos and destruction.  The girls let loose with anger at the abuse and perpetual glass ceilings all too familiar to women up and down the country. 7

The Deep Blue Okay - Self Esteem - Done in a single take, one woman describes passionately what it is to be a complicated, stressed, overworked woman in todays society, and how she manages to try again the next day.  Powerful.  8

That Summer In Paris (Fr) (wiki)

My only full-length film of the day.  Blandine, a thirty-something has taken time out from her quiet, seaside setting in Normandy, to travel to bustling, noisy Paris.  Bustlingier and noisier than usual, she is here to see the 2024 Olympics.  The plan was to see it with her girlfriend, but they split up just before, and she didn't want to waste the ticket, so here she is, with an oversized backpack for company.

It wouldn't be a film about finding ones self if there wasn't a cluster of mishaps, and poor Blandine can't catch a break.  Barred from using her swimming ticket due to her backpack, and kicked out of her 18-30 hostel for being a day too old, she finds herself at the doorstep of Julie, her half-sister.  They haven't seen each other for a long time, before their father died in fact, but taking pity on Blandine, Julie allows her to kip on the sofa rather than leave home early.

The film tells a warm-hearted story of one person's personal discovery about themselves, but not in the ways you might expect from such a film, which I found refreshing.  Blandine finds not companionship, but an understanding of herself and where she wants to be in the lives of others; an angle to this sort of film I haven't really seen before, and I found it satisfying that Blandine found what made her content. 7.5/10 

Leeds Film Festival 2025 - Day 4

Our Land (UK) (site)

The subject matter of Our Land is not something I had paid much attention to.  There is a movement in the England called Right to Roam, and it concerns the rights, or lack thereof, in this country for people to basically walk anywhere in the countryside, with a focus on the massive country estates, the properties owned for generations by families whose ancestors paid for the land using the wealth generated by colonial acquisitions centuries prior.  When the film began, this main argument I found a little weak - we have public footpaths, bridleways and rights of way criss-crossing the countryside; you can barely go five minutes down a road without seeing a public footpath sign - so why do we need to be able to tramp across bramble filled fields deep inside country estates risking being shot when we're 'mistaken' for a pheasant?

But the beauty of this film is that it has a slow, persuasive push towards a change of mind, or at least an openness to see the argument.  A tiny fraction - 8% - of land is publicly accessible in England and Wales, and 1% of the population owns a staggering half of the land.  This has been brewing for a thousand years or more, going back to William the Conqueror times, when the common land was carved up and attributed to the wealthier parts of society, giving us the patchwork quilt of walled property we have today.  But why does property ownership mean a right to exclude people from that land?  From experiencing the beauty and the calm, the nature and the restorative qualities therein that a single person owning many hectares has decided it is for his enjoyment alone?

I did not know for instance that in Scotland, the 2003 Land Reform Act among other things underlined the basic right for people to not be excluded from the land.  This right goes hand in hand with the requirement that people do so responsibly - close gates, pick up litter, dogs on leads etc as you might expect, and Right to Roam has campaigned for the same in England and Wales.

Our Land provides both sides with the opportunity to make their points, and I found myself sympathising with aspects of both the right to roam movement, and the owners of the estates that commendably agreed to be part of the film.  One in particular was almost comical in his caricature of an upper class twit looking down his nose at the prolls, coming onto his land and dropping litter, but even he was given the room to show a side for which I had some sympathy; indeed the landowners generally made a sensible enough point that some middle ground can be achieved.  However you interpret the argument, Our Land leaves the camera on the subjects to make, or fail to make their point, and the audience is left largely to decide. If nothing else, it is a celebration of something this country still can be proud of - it's beauty.  8/10

Dragonfly (UK) (wiki)

Out on a lonely council estate somewhere in Yorkshire, widowed pensioner Elsie (played by Brenda Blethyn, gaining a BAFTA for her part) sits quietly as the nurses come and go to her bungalow.  Next door, Colleen (a seriously chavved-up Andrea Riseborough) sits aimlessly watching the TV.  Jobless and on benefits, her oversized dog brings her what little meaning her life has, as she scours the internet for images of a better life.

 

Spotting an in, Colleen sees an opening to get closer to Elsie, who is less than attached to the rolling carousel of faces that come to make her tea and give her a shower; Colleen, once only a noise next door becomes a much needed constant in Elsie's life, perhaps even a replacement for her distant son.  But is Colleen purely there to lend a hand and be a good neighbour?

Dragonfly keeps things purposefully ambiguous, subverting the expectations we place on the character of Colleen and playing on the viewers' preconceptions of someone who 'looks like that'.  Colleen is no angel for sure, but is her malevolent intention clear cut?  The strength of the film is in this ambiguity which lasts in the mind long past the credits, leaving the viewer with questions of their own about how they see others. 8/10

The Thing With Feathers (UK) (wiki)

As we join Dad, an unnamed father to two young boys, he has returned from the cremation of his wife, who died suddenly and without warning.  It quickly becomes clear that while he was an artist and author, she was the mother and took care of the house.  Predictably, this results in a deterioration of the family routine.

But Dad also starts experiencing strange, malevolent things; crows crashing into the window, ominous messages on his phone.  Someone out there does not take pity on him, and wants him to know.  

 

This film had me pretty much from the start.  Having two sons of my own made me realize what I have and how much could be lost in an instant; and as a study in grief, despair and eventual acceptance, The Thing With Feathers takes you on an emotional hollowing out and reconstruction with some of the best film-making I've seen in a long time.  Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays Dad) should be on for some awards here, as he embodies the part of the troubled father struggling with the breakdown of his own mind, the viewer never quite sure where the reality ends and the hallucinations begin.  

Hands down the best film of the festival so far. 8.5/10

One of Us (FR) (leedsfilm)

Lille, France is the location of an unassuming little building.  Inside, a handful of volunteers from disparate backgrounds help with the asylum claims of LGBT people, fleeing persecution in any one of the many countries that still, explicitly or not, permit and even endorse the persecution and even execution of such people.

Gaining asylum isn't easy.  First you need to apply to OFPRA (the Office for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons), telling them via interview your experiences of persecution, the consequences you would face if you returned, and to prove to them, somehow, that your sexuality is what you claim it to be.  Should they be unconvinced, a second chance appeal with the CNDA (National Court of Asylum) provides a lifeline.  But all this is a challenge to someone who has just arrived often with minimal possessions and sometimes unable to speak French, which the application must be in.  These volunteers help to coach the applicants to give them the best chance at passing these tests.  As the film shows, they also provide a place of solace and safety, perhaps hitherto missing from their life.

Watching silently, this documentary follows several brave applicants who, after fleeing persecution and making it to France, agree to have their experiences laid out, not just for the OFPRA examiner, but for the film as well, many in the hope that they will help others by doing so.  Not all are successful in their application.

In an ideal world, this sort of film should be accessible to show people on the fence about asylum seekers, or gay people, to watch, and see, and put a human face to the faceless numbers we see in the news.  This film could do an awful lot of good if the right eyes saw it. 7.5/10

Dead Lover (CA/US) (wiki)

In a strange, dark nether-verse, a lonely gravedigger shovels the soil, and since she picks up the stink of every body she buries, she ain't so hot with the guys.  That is until a poet with a bit of a kink for that sort of thing comes along, and they fall in love; one that is tragically cut short by his drowning at sea, leaving her with only a severed finger to remember him by.  Cue a comedic variation on the Frankenstein story, where she uses her knowledge of plants and bodies to bring him back to life, of a sort.  

By coincidence, the two main leads of this ultra low-budget film are Grace Glowicki and Ben Petri, who also starred in Honey Bunch, a much more enjoyable experience which benefits from the extra time and money clearly missing from this one.  All parts are played by four actors, and everything is shot as if it were a Hammer knock-off from fifty years ago.  Garth Meringhi did it 20 years ago, and better.

That feels cruel.  The players put their all into the film, and it is clearly a passion project, albeit existing as it does on a shoestring that uses whatever props they could find (the moon is a piece of paper that retains the crease from where it was clearly folded to cut a semicircle for heavens sake).  I wanted to like it, and I did chuckle in a couple of places - Glowicki stands out with a committed if not especially funny turn as the gravedigger - but it just seemed to run out of steam as the third act kicked off and it kind of stumbled with little sense towards an unsatisfying conclusion.  Its a shame that the day that was full of cracking films, ended on one that was so fair-to-middling. 6/10

Leeds Film Festival 2025 - Day 3

The Girl Who Stole Time (CHI) (mubi)

The first far-eastern film of the festival is from China.  Though I enjoy films from the far east enormously, there are some pronounced differences in the way that a story is told in Chinese culture, compared to say, Japanese.  Since most of my experience of such output is from the latter, Chinese films can have elements that are a little jarring, culturally or otherwise.  This film is such an example.

The Girl Who Stole Time is, as the name would suggest, a time travel caper; Qian Xiao, a young girl gets mixed up in a search for the 'time dial', a macguffin that grants the wearer the ability to stop time.  Gaining the upper hand against Seventeen, a young gang member tasked with retrieving it, she can keep him at bay simply by stopping time and getting out of the way.  On agreement that she will give it back after a day, Seventeen plays along to help her have an unforgettable day in the city she's just rocked up on.

 

 

Though the core of the film sort of made sense, there were several instances where things were introduced, and then just abandoned.  For example, when Qiax Xiao stops time and moves something, the physicality of pushing an object 'stuck in time' means that when time is set in motion once more, a massive force is suddenly applied all at once to the object, which is then either significantly damaged, or goes flying across the room - delete as the plot requires.  But after the first altercation - a pretty cool double chase scene - this is pretty much forgotten about entirely.

The third act attempts to tie a lot of loose ends and explain some of the stranger goings on earlier, but its too saggy and gets bogged down in its own complexity, and trying desperately to suddenly change the dynamic between the leads from a germinating romance, to a full-on time-spanning romance.  It feels like we lost about 10 minutes of exposition somewhere.

It was good; although not the animation marvel we were led to believe it was.  Some goofy animation slip ups here and there, and while the character models were quite well detailed, they looked to inhabit a world of cookie-cutter low-detail buildings.  It could have been worse, but there was a lot to improve on here. 6/10

Redux Redux (US) (wiki)

From a refreshingly simple concept came a very enjoyable film with a sci-fi twist.  In a universe where humanity has discovered multiverse travel, albeit manifesting in a black market trade, Irene travels between multiverse s in a seeming neverending search for one where her daughter wasn't kidnapped and brutally murdered.  So far, she hasn't found one, and while she is there, murders, again and again, the bastard that did it, again and again.

 

In one universe, she encounters Mia, another kidnap victim who by chance hadn't yet been murdered.  Mia is a vagrant child, her parents dead and now batted between adoption centres, she was picked up on the run.  Distrusting and lashing out, she is initially a liability for an amateur assassin, but as Mia learns of the wider situation, it becomes clear they could both be each others saviour.

A tense and brooding film, shot on a shoestring budget, but able to hit well above its weight, Redux Redux was a satisfying watch and a nice take on the multiverse concept. 8/10

In Symbiosis (UK) (site)

The title of this documentary from new filmmakers Helena Berndl and Francesco Maria Gallo has been 8 years in the making, initially the germ of an idea when someone asked Helena about Aspartame, the sugar substitute used in foods.  As she looked further, Helena had more questions than answers about why such a substance ended up in our foods.

Food programs and films tend to be dizzying.  No sooner so we try and cut one thing from our diet (red meat, palm oil, ultra processed foods...) than another view comes along vilifying some other staple of our diets.  And In Symbiosis does this yet more, throwing its wide net around the practice of intensive farming, the way it does more harm than good, and the way it appears to be failing, due to a number of reasons, including the monocultures removing the diversity from the soil and environment, and removing the grounds ability to store nutrients and moisture, something that more organic farming methods are not suffering from.

 

In Symbiosis covers a lot of ground, and I mean, a lot.  It will take at least 2 viewings to get a good digestion of the subjects at hand here, and its deep dive into the subject, plus touching on various adjacent ones, may work against it when it comes to bringing the film to a wider, less detail tolerant audience.  But there is no doubt that this is one of the more urgent films to experience on the documentary circuit. 8/10

Hellcat (US) (review)

A girl wakes up in a moving trailer home, pulled through the night along bumpy, unfamiliar roads.  A bandage on her arm points to a mysterious injury, and it seems to be spreading something around her body.  The man at the wheel tells her via jerry rigged speaker to be calm; they will be at the hospital soon, he knows just who can treat her.  So far, so typical creepy kidnap movie.

 

But hellcat has surprises in store and not everything is as it seems.  Shot almost entirely in the claustrophobic, dirty interior of the trailer, the situation becomes darker and more obfuscated, as the horrors within its grimy walls are slowly discovered.  

Hellcat is a grimy, uncomfortable thriller with great lead performances and a toe-curling third act, marred only slightly with an ending which lost credibility with me just a touch.  However it wasn't enough to stop it being a strong recommendation, even if horror thrillers aren't your thing.  7.5/10

We Bury the Dead (AU) (wiki)

My third Day of the Dead screening for the day sees Daisy Ridley - not the first person you think of for this sort of thing - star in a variant on the Zombie apocalypse genre.  Eva wed her beau Mitch just before he went to a conference in Tasmania, which by unfortunate coincidence fell victim to a fatal accident where a US military base just offshore let loose an experimental weapon, annihilating the residents of the eastern half of the island with an electromagnetic pulse, killing everything that breathed.

 

Trying in desperation to get to her husband she volunteers as part of the body identification and cleanup routine, but quite quickly it becomes clear that not everyone is dead, or at least, some have reanimated themselves.  Breaking clear of the controlled zone border, she hitches a ride with Clay, a wayward fellow volunteer with few scruples who relishes the chance to give the bike he just liberated a test drive.

We Bury the Dead is gristly, nasty horror, if only for the zombies themselves who are largely in the shadows and dormant, but their tendency to grind their teeth until they crack give me serious ick, and if you come to a horror film to feel ick, then this is the one for you.

It did everything it should have done; creeped you out, kept you on edge and fearful of the next fright, but also with a grounding of humanity, the film careful not to stray away from the fact that days earlier, these were people, and families.  I'm no fan of horror films generally, but this was cerebral enough to keep me both fearful and entertained, and I'm glad I put it on the list.  7.5/10