THE DAVID PARKINSON FILM BLOG

(Reviews of The President's Cake; Looney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up; and Stitch Head) THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE. The winner of the Caméra d'or at Cannes for Best First Feature, Hasan Hadi's The President's Cake  is based on the director's own experience of life in the Mesopotamian marshes under Saddam Hussein. It numbers Chris Columbus and Marielle Heller among its executive producers. Yet, despite such Hollywood input, this feels to have more in common Iranian Majid Majidi'

(Reviews of Twinless; The Chronology of Water; and 100 Nights of Hero) TWINLESS. There was clearly something in the air during 2025, as there were an inordinate number of films about bereavement and grief. Following David Cronenberg's The Shrouds , we had Courtney Stephens's Invention , Jaume Collet-Serra's The Woman in the Yard , Alessandro Antonaci, Daniel Lascar, and Stefano Mandalà's The Grieving , Julia Max's T he Surrender , Nico Santucci's Sarogeto . Dylan Southern's T

(Reviews of Nouvelle Vague; and Saipan) NOUVELLE VAGUE. In Redoubtable  (2007), Michel Hazanavicius explored the relationship between Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) and actress Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) during the shooting of La Chinoise (1967). Now, in Nouvelle Vague , Richard Linklater goes back to the start of the auteur's remarkable, if sometimes contentious career to recall the making of his debut feature, À bout de souffle (aka Breathless , 1960). In Paris in 1959,

(Reviews of Heavyweight; and Another World) HEAVYWEIGHT. There have been a few boxing pictures lately. Alongside the biopics of George Foreman and Prince Naseem Hamed, George Tillman's Big George Foreman (2023) and Rowan Athale's Giant (2025), there have been grittier lower-rung sagas like Jack Huston's Day of the Fight (2023) and Sean Ellis's The Cut (2024), as well as women's boxing dramas like Halle Berry's Bruised (2020) and David Michôd's Christy (2025). Set in a s

(Reviews of State of Statelessness; and Miss Moxy) STATE OF STATELESSNESS. The portmanteau film has fallen into disrepute since its postwar heyday. It was mostly beloved of European producers, who corralled the biggest names in usually French and Italian cinema to direct segments in pictures linked by a particular author or theme. Nowadays, it's primarily the preserve of the horror genre. But the Drung Film-makers Collective has brought four Tibetans together to consider the

(Reviews of Becoming Victoria Wood; Still Pushing Pineapples; and Son of the Soil) BECOMING VICTORIA WOOD. Victoria Wood cropped up recently during research for an article on the 80th anniversary of David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945). In her 2000 Christmas show, Victoria Wood With All the Trimmings , she had pastiched the railway buffet sequences with a trademark mix of affection and acuity. Clever though the writing was, however, it was a surreal gag about a mince pie in t

(Reviews of Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros; and No Time For Goodbye) MENUS-PLAISIRS - LES TROISGROS. Fifty-nine years have passed since Frederick Wiseman made his first observational documentary, Titicut Follies (1967). Having examined various aspects of institutional and communal life in the United States, he relocated to France, where he has focussed more on matters creative than politics and the social fabric. Now, following La Comédie-Française ou l'Amour joué (1996), L

(A review of the film year) The year that culminates in cinema's 130th birthday has not been a vintage one. Even the usually reliable French film industry has had an unremarkable 12 months, while Hollywood seems stumped about what to do next because, after 50 years, the bottom finally seems to be dropping out of the blockbuster market. Indeed, 2025 ends with Paramount and Netflix competing to purchase Warner Bros. in a symbolic battle for the soul of cinema that casts doubt o

(Reviews of The Six Billion Dollar Man: Julian Assange Colossal Wreck; and the Price of Truth; and Odyssey) THE SIX BILLION DOLLAR MAN: JULIAN ASSANGE AND THE PRICE OF TRUTH. Eugene Jarecki established himself among America's finest documentarists with cannily cogent items like The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002), Why We Fight (2005), Reagan (2011), The House I Live In (2012), and The King (2017). It's been eight years since his last outing and he returns on uncompromis

(Reviews of Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases; Baby; Animalia; and Christmas, Again) SILENT SHERLOCK: THREE CLASSIC CASES. Christmas has come early for Holmesians, as the BFI has released Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases into cinemas to launch the roll out of the 45 shorts and two features that Eille Norwood made for Stoll Pictures in the 1920s. The entire catalogue has been painstakingly restored and this 73-minute package suggests that cinema lovers have a real treat

(Reviews of Un sacco bello; and Folktales) UN SACCO BELLO. CinemaItaliaUK ends its year with something of a treat, as it screens Carlo Verdone's debut feature, Un sacco bello/Fun Is Beautiful (1980) at the Regent Street Cinema on 7 December. Co-produced by Sergio Leone and scored by Ennio Morricone, this episodic comedy earned Verdone (who has, of course, gone on to be one of Italy's finest film-makers) a special David di Donatello Award and the Nastro d'Argento for Best New

(Reviews of Pillion; Game; and Fiume o Morte!) PILLION. Adam Mars-Jones's 2020 novel, Box Hill, provides the inspiration for Harry Lighton's Pillion. However, the first-time writer-director has moved the action from the 1970s to the present day and made a few cosmetic tweaks to put an unconventional spin on the romcom. Colin Smith (Harry Melling) is a gay traffic warden in Bromley. He lives with his parents, Peggy (Lesley Sharp) and Pete (Douglas Hodge), who encourage him to

(Reviews of The Carpenter’s Son; The Session Man; and Tony Foster: Painting At the Edge) THE CARPENTER’S SON. Born in Egypt and raised in London, Lotfy Nathan made a fine start to his directing career with the Tunisia-set drama, Harka  (2022). But he takes on a more provocative topic in his sophomore outing, The Carpenter’s Son . Taking the gnostic document, The Infancy Gospel of St Thomas , as his point of departure, Nathan seeks to fill in the gaps left in the New Testament

(Reviews of Alpha; and Paternal Leave) ALPHA. Before coming to prominence with Raw (2016) and the Palme d'or-winning Titane (2021), Julia Ducournau had been exploring what one might term `body horror' issues with her short, Junior (2011), and Mange (2012), a TV-movie that she co-directed with Virgile Bramly. Dealing respectively with cannibalism and self-image, Ducournau's features have been confrontationally controversial. However, the control that made its predecessors so d

(Review of Exhibition on Screen: Caravaggio) For film folk whose touchstone on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is Derek Jarman's stylised 1986 biopic, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky have a surprise in store in Caravaggio, the latest entry in the enduringly excellent Exhibition on Screen series, which took five years to complete. Aboard a ship sailing from Sicily to Rome in 1610, Caravaggio (Jack Bannell) rages against his fate. Once the artistic star of the

(Reviews of Dragonfly; and The Marbles) DRAGONFLY. It's hard to think that Paul Andrew Williams had been making features for two decades. His debut, London to Brighton (2006), feels like it was released yesterday, but he has since bolstered his reputation for springing surprises with The Cottage (2008), Cherry Tree Lane (2010), and Song For Marion (2012). He returned from a lengthy spell in television with the revenge thriller, Bull (2021), but changes tack completely with D

(Reviews of Palestine 36; and It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This) PARADISE 36. For some time now, Annemarie Jacir has been the most eloquent and considered voice in Palestinian cinema. Now, following on from Salt of the Sea (2007), When I Saw You (2012), and Wajib (2017), she has attempted her largest scale and most politically ambitious picture to date. Yet, for all its epic significance, Palestine 36, has an intimacy that makes it compel as a human drama, as well as impres

(Reviews of Sunlight; The House With Laughing Windows; and A Tooth Fairy Tale) SUNLIGHT. Although he directed a couple of plays for the stage, Tom Conti never got round to directing a feature film. Now, having cut her teeth with the documentary, His Master's Voice (2012), and the short, Living With Monkey (2014), ventriloquist-cum-actor daughter, Nina Conti, makes her feature bow behind the camera with Sunlight. When Roy Belvedere (Shenoah Allen) started dangling from a rope

(Reviews of Souleymane's Story; Madly; Good Boy; and Night of the Zoopocalypse) SOULEYMANE'S STORY. Following a series of documentary shorts inspired by his time in Vietnam, Boris Lojkine made his feature debut with Hope (2014), a docurealist drama about a Cameroonian boy and a Nigerian girl crossing the Sahara en route to Europe. Five years later, he produced Camille (2019), a biopic about photojournalist Camille Lepage, who was killed in 2014 while covering the civil war in

(An overview of the 69th BFI London Film Festival, 8-19 October 2025) WATCH THIS SPACE