Here you can find recommendations for some great recents that have not been given enough attention.
100.000.000.000.000 (Cent mille milliards)
The eye-catching title of Virgil Vernier’s Cent mille Millards is a number that the main character, Afine (Zakaria Bouti), a sex worker living in Monaco, counts to when he lies in bed at night. I find it pertinent that during his counting, the frame is fixated on a shot of construction sites – the promise…
A Prince
Nature manifests in two distinct orders that constantly entangle and untangle in Pierre Creton’s A Prince: first, of hortology, and second, of desire. Accompanying this journey is the wayward motion of time and the constant exchange of storytelling perspectives through alternating narrators. The protagonist is Pierre-Joseph, a taciturn student of horticulture who becomes involved in…
The Invisible Zoo
A boisterous rainforest in stillness, shrouded by the screeching of insects dominating the soundscape; a torrential rain intrudes upon the stasis and soon evanesces in the middle of the frame, bringing and taking away a temporary grace of sunlight. This opening spectacle in Ramuald Karmakar’s The Invisible Zoo assumes a non-intrusive position of observing a…
Invention – the emotional wavelength of inheritance
The first scene in Invention, co-directed by Courtney Stephen and its lead actress, Callie Hernandez, signals two key aspects that contribute to the overall tone and atmosphere of the entire film. First, the elliptical and free-wheeling sequencing of shots. We see a wide shot of an old man standing in profile, leaning slightly towards a…
The Periphery of the Base
In the opening sequence of The Periphery of the Base, director Zhou Tao’s camera steadily observes the desert landscape, with the horizon in the middle of the frame. The wind is constantly howling, and the weather is shifting capriciously as the shadows cast by the sun emerge and disappear within seconds. Given these strenuous physical…
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