2016
Starless Dreams
Mehrdad Oskouei’s unflinching and extremely personal documentary shot in a rehabilitation center for female juvenile delinquents in Tehran for 20 days leading up to New Year, will unquestionably be one of the saddest stories to hit our screens this year. It took the filmmaker seven years to persuade the Iranian authorities to allow him to film an imprisoned…
Silence
It took Martin Scorsese several decades to bring Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 celebrated epic novel Silence about religious persecution in 17th Century Japan to the screen, and this obvious project of passion is one of the filmmaker’s most visually stunning movies to date. Endō, a Japanese Roman Catholic, based his story on an historical figure Cristóvão Ferreira a Portuguese…
A Little Lust
The first time we catch sight of 16 year old Rocco (Andrea Amato), he is trying to lose his virginity with his best friend Maria (Carolina Pavone). Unfortunately he quickly loses his erection and starts to vex if it’s because Maria is like a sister to him, or the fact that he thinks his penis is…
Good Clean Fun in The Showers
Some commentators talk about ‘bromance’ as if it was a new phenomenon whereas the reality is that many ‘straight’ men have always enjoyed extremely close no-holds-barred camaraderie with each other for decades. There is nothing like a good old communal Army shower where naked men can indulge in some seemingly innocent horseplay which comes…
