David R. Walker

Archive for the ‘European Film Festival’ Category

Under the Volcano

Director: Damian Kocur

Cast: Roman Lutskyi, Anastasiya Karpenko, Sofia Berezovka

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Film Festival: European Film Festival

Language: Ukrainian with English Subtitles.

Polish director Damian Kocur’s film Under the Volcano explores the effect of the 2022 Russian Invasion of the Ukraine has on a blended Ukrainian family on holiday in the Canary Islands in Tenerife at the time of the invasion.

Kocur’s family drama focuses on a father Roma played by Ukrainian actor Roman Lutskyi and his new wife Nastia played by Anastassiya Karpenko, and their son Fedir aged 6 and Roma’s daughter from another marriage Sofia played by Sofia Berezovka.

The happy go lucky Ukrainian family are enjoying the sites of Tenerife and when their plan to return to Kyiv in the Ukraine is thwarted as they discover that Russia has invaded. Their flights are cancelled and the Spanish hotel manager says they can stay in Tenerife for as long as is required.

Their stranded situation in Tenerife is amplified when Sofia, the teenage girl meets an African immigrant who came to Tenerife by boat. Their stilted relationship reflects two people stranded in a geographic location in which they had no choice to be there and seemingly cannot escape from.

The main tension in this family drama comes from the strained relationship between husband and wife as Roma realizes that when he returns to the Ukraine he will have to join his friends in the military front lines. Nastia will have to remain in Warsaw as a refugee with her young son Fedir and her mother.

Unfortunately, Under the Volcano does not have a good script and many scenes are drawn out and just involve fighting. The pace of this film is very slow and there is no dimensionality to an otherwise fascinating topic – what do families do when they are away from their own country when it has been invaded?

Besides the beautiful settings of Tenerife, Under the Volcano could have been a much better film, but its narrative meanders pointlessly so that one crucial scene of the family getting lost on a mountainous hike sums up the efforts of a mediocre scriptwriter.

Director Damian Kocur’s film about refugees and war’s effect on the family needs to be sharpened in terms of pace and tone. While Under the Volcano is not a bad film, it could have been so much better. There was so much more to unpack on this subject and the director seem to hold back.

Under the Volcano gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10 and is a slow paced family drama about the effects of an ongoing European war which has reshaped that continent security concerns.

Unicorns

Directors: Sally El Hosaini & James Krishna Floyd

Cast: Ben Hardy, Kate Lindsey, Jason Patel, Sagar Radia, Ali Afzal, Taylor Sullivan

Running time: 1 hour and 59 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Festival: European Film Festival

PLEASE NOTE THIS FILM IS NOT FOR SENSITIVE VIEWERS

Unicorns is an odd mixture for a British film, at times fascination and other times, disturbing. From directing duo Sally El Hosaini & James Krishna Floyd, Unicorns explores the strange sexually charged relationship between a mechanic from Essex, the brawny Luke, superbly played by Ben Hardy (Bohemian Rhapsody, X-Men: Apocalypse) and Aysha, an Indian drag queen well played by Jason Patel.

Aysha also known as Ashiq actually comes from a conservative Muslim family in Manchester but when living in London he transforms himself into the flamboyant and radiant Aysha, a sparkling drag queen for the Gasian community also known as the Gay Asian community.

Luke is a single dad to a 5 year old boy played by Taylor Sullivan but has split from the mother of his child, Charlie, a confused young woman who abandons her son and lets Luke take charge.

Sexually, Luke is an enigma as initially in the film’s provocative opening shot he is having sex with a woman on an open field outside an east London housing estate.

Aysha is all glamour and attitude and her pronouns are Legend and Icon. The two meet when Luke mistakenly walks through the back room of an Indian restaurant into a secret Gasian disco complete with drag queens and muscle boys, one in particular is Faiz who is Aysha’s designated driver.

Let’s face it drag queens don’t drive themselves to parties. Faiz is played by Industry star Sagar Radia who was brilliant in the British TV version of Succession as the foul mouthed, coke sniffing gambler Rishi Ramdani who marries into WASP privilege in the smart London set.

At the heart of Unicorns is the complex story of two people from very different worlds who meet, fall in love and ultimately navigate a tricky world between conservative Indian culture and the non-descript world of a working class mechanic in Essex who is dazzled by Aysha, a fascinating drag queen whose identity as a cross dresser is ultimately threatened in a vicious queer subculture which is as much about making money as it is about cutting edge glamour.

As Luke becomes Aysha’s driver around England usurping the sulky Faiz, their relationship gradually transforms from transactional to emotional.

While some of the Gasian subculture scenes are very frenetic and overdone, it is really the performances of the two main actors who make this uniquely queer love story riveting, while transcending traditional social, cultural and religious conformities.

The fabulous but gritty Unicorns gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that enjoy queer love stories.

Le Mohican

Director: Frederic Farrucci

Cast: Alexis Manenti, Mara Taquin, Paul Garette, Marie-Pierre Nouveau

Running Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

Language: French with English subtitles

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Festival: The European Film Festival

French director Frederic Farucci combines the beauty of Corsica with a shadowy mafia in his new thriller Le Mohican (The Mohican) about a goat herder Joseph Cardelli who has a beautiful plot of land on the coast which greedy developers want to take from him and which he refuses to sell.

Cardelli well played by Alexis Manenti becomes a fugitive on the island and soon reaches folklore status after he accidentally kills the nephew of a Parisian crime boss, and subsequently goes on the run.

His tech savvy niece Vannina played by Mara Taquin makes Joseph an island hero on social media using the hashtag #LeMohican as he deftly evades the gangsters who also have the police on their payroll. Despite his efforts to escape to Sardinia, Joseph needs to confront the gangsters and protect his right to exist in an island which is beautiful yet increasingly becoming a target for crime, overdevelopment and urbanization.

Le Mohican had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and is worth watching with a strong narrative about a fugitive, a decent and honest goat herder who stands up for his rights to continue existing in a pastoral fashion and not give in to the greed and corruption of organized crime.

With exquisite cinematography by Jeanne Lapoirie, Le Mohican is a gripping action film about survival and resilience while the continual threat of being hunted takes its bloody toll on the hero Joseph Cardelli. The violence is systemic and shocking while the storyline is straightforward with sparse dialogue which could have been elaborated upon.

Like many islands in the Mediterranean, Corsica is in danger of being over commercialized and Le Mohican shines a light on this issue as greedy mobsters plan on developing land meant for farming.

Le Mohican focuses on the story of an ordinary man’s survival and his niece’s uncanny ability to turn him into a local hero with the nickname the Mohican, the last of the coastal goat herders.

With a beautiful backdrop, Le Mohican gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is recommended viewing as a genre action film about one ordinary man fighting the mafia in a storyline which is distinctly French and unassuming. Worth seeing.

The Peasants

Director: Dorota Kobiela Welchman and Hugh Welchman

Cast: Kamila Urzędowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Mirosław Baka, Sonia Mietielica, Cezary Łukaszewicz, Andrzej Konopka, Maciej Musiał

Running Time: 1 hour and 54 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Language: Polish with English Subtitles

Festivals: Toronto, European Film Festival

PLEASE NOTE THIS FILM IS ANIMATED.

Polish directors Dorota Kobiela Welchman and Hugh Welchman who previously brought viewers the adult animated Oscar nominated film Loving Vincent in 2017, have returned with a new film simply entitled The Peasants which takes place in a small Polish village Lipce at the beginning of the 20^th century and based on the novel by Władysław Reymont.

The gorgeous style of animation somehow amplifies the action and drama of this community story about the beautiful Jagna as she falls in love with a wealthy land owner’s son Antek.

Skilfully interwoven with polish folk songs, local gossip and conflict, The Peasants focuses on the bizarre love triangle of Jagna, a beautiful if slightly promiscuous young eligible lady who has an affair with Antek while in the process of marrying his recently widowed wealthy father Maciej Boryna. Antek is also married to Hanka. As the adulterous couple continue a scandalous relationship, the rest of the village soon discovers the ramifications of such an affair as a conflict with the landowner’s emissary soon exposes Maciej’s weakness and Jagna’s vulnerability.

Visually astounding and beautifully portrayed, The Peasants expertly uses a technique known as painted animation to tell the unbelievable story of the two lovers who defy a community and eventually ruin a family.

The directors use animation to soften the effects of such controversial themes as rape, humiliation and ostracism as they portray The Peasants as a lively yet gossip mongering group of villagers in a series of seasonal shifts depicting the gradual change in community relationships.

Interspersed with issues about land ownership, dowry negotiations and rural hardships, The Peasants has beautiful moments particularly the lavish wedding scene between Jagna and Maciej despite the controversial scandal which eventually unfolds.

Gossip becomes a weapon of exclusion in the case of Jagna who has to sacrifice her position in the village when all the secrets are revealed, exposing how little civil rights women had in rural Poland at the beginning of the 20^th century. Antek is revealed to be an angry farmer who is only after satisfying his sexual desires.

The Peasants proves to be a cinematic treat and a brilliant animated depiction of rural life in Poland incorporating all their customs, rituals and songs.

Dazzling and artfully executed, The Peasants gets a film rating of 8 out of 10. Recommended viewing for those that love quality animation and an imaginative folk tale.

Kneecap

Director: Rich Peppiatt

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Josie Walker, Jessica Reynolds, Simone Kirby, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, DJ Próvaí

Running Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Language: Irish with English Subtitles

Festivals: European Film Festival / Sundance Film Festival / South by South West Film Festival

Warning: This film has rude lyrics and portrays copious amounts of drug taking.

Director Rich Peppiatt’s first full length narrative film Kneecap which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 and is an official entry for Ireland’s submission for Best Foreign Language film at the 2025 Oscars is certainly worth seeing. A frenetic film about the rise of the influential and detrimental Irish hip hop band Kneecap in which the band members play themselves in this fast paced quirky film about the rise of Irish hip hop on the streets of Belfast and is almost like Trainspotting but set in Northern Ireland.

Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, DJ Próvaí all play themselves as the tyrannical trio who preach the significance of hip hop in the Irish language, a form of subversive behaviour against the British and general normative society.

Luckily the film’s band members are supported by screen actors including a superb appearance by Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave, Steve Jobs) as Arlo O Cairealláin, the mysterious father of Naoise. Simone Kirby plays the agoraphobic mother of Naoise, Dolores Ó Cairealláin who rallies her son’s interest through the hairdressing network in Belfast.

Set in West Belfast in the later 2010’s, Kneecap is an explosive and foul-mouthed portrayal of renegade lads whose drug induced rise to fame helped with huge doses of MDMA, ketamine along with other snorting substances.

Kneecap is anti-establishment and captured the zeitgeist of a generation of young Irish youths who wanted to stamp their own Irish identity on a country which is effectively still being governed by England.

Besides the misbehaviour and the rude lyrics, Kneecap is about the authentic rap music, which was always a style of music which was subversive, counter-culture and aimed at the underdog ready to attract the lunatic fringe.

With great performances by all the bandmembers and a stunning supporting role by Fassbender who is channelling all the Irish side of his German-Irish heritage, Kneecap is an insanely entertaining film about the rise of Irish language hip hop, the politicization of indigenous languages and how fame often immortalizes the miscreants of society.

Rich Peppiatt’s thoroughly entertaining and a visually impressive film, hugely inspired by Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, Kneecap is a must see film. Energetic and absolutely boisterous, Kneecap gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing.

The Other Way Around

Director: Jonas Trueba

Cast: Itsaso Arana, Vito Sanz, Fernando Trueba

Running Time: 112 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10  

Language: Spanish with English Subtitles

Festivals: Cannes Film Festival, European Film Festival

Madrid based film director Jonas Trueba presents an unconventional romantic drama The Other Way Around set in the Spanish capital. This slightly bizarre, self-reflexive film focuses on a hip young couple who work in the film industry who decide that it’s time to separate after being together for 15 years, a sort of conscious uncoupling, a term celebrity couple Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love) and Coldplay Lead singer Chris Martin used when they parted company.

The couple are Ale played by Itasso Arana and Alex played by Vito Sanz who not only tell all their family and friends that they are separating on the last day of the European summer, 22^nd September to be precise, but that in preparation for this event they are throwing a massive party. This would be an event celebrating their separation as opposed to them getting together.

Director Jonas Trueba presents a thoroughly bizarre comedy with lots of rapid fire Spanish dialogue in which both man and woman have almost an existential crisis in their relationship, the types of relationships so brilliantly portrayed in some of Woody Allen’s earlier films like Husbands and Wives.

While Ale and Alex prepare for their separation much to the horror of their friends and family, they inadvertently fall back in love with each other.

The Other Way Round is filled with European film references, however as a film which is nearly two hours long, the story doesn’t achieve any form of cathartic release and there is no sense of a neatly tied up plot, instead ending in a strange montage of what their separation party at Ale’s father’s house would have looked like.

Director Jonas Trueba’s film which was presented at the 2024 Cannes directors’ fortnight seems strange and slightly repetitive which was perhaps the point of the film, given the couple’s philosophical inclinations and their preoccupation with Danish philosopher Kierkegaard’s 1843 book Repetition.

The Other Way Around is a strange romantic comedy about how a couple decided sensibly to uncouple.

With a distinctly Spanish style, The Other Way Around is recommended viewing for those that like obscure European cinema.

The Other Way Around gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is a fascinating film, except when the self-reflexivity detracts from the narrative.

The Eight Mountains

Directors: Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch

Cast: Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Elisabetta Mazzullo, Filippo Timi  

Running Time: 2 hours and 27 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Language: Italian with English Subtitles

Festival: European Film Festival

Belgian directing duo Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch present the slightly long winded friendship film The Eight Mountains about two young boys who become friends in August 1984 and this film tracks their friendship as they grow into teenagers and eventually into adults.

Both boys are the only child of a family, Pietro Guasti and Bruno Guglielmina become firm friends as they spend the idyllic summers together in the Italian Alps. Pietro is a city boy from Turin with a strict father, Giovanni played by Filippo Timi while Bruno is a child of nature and literally the last child in the village, a remote place in the alps filled with beautiful mountains and stunning scenery but sparsely populated.

As the years go by, Pietro struggles to find his own identity as a man and has a fall out with his aging father although all the time attempting to be a writer and describe his experiences from mountain climbing to studying literature. Bruno just wants to remain in the same area and starts isolating emotionally as he attaches himself more to the natural environment.

Both men follow different dreams although as friends they unite to build a chalet in memory of Pietro’s father. This arduous task completed during the summer months cements their long-time friendship although soon love and self-exploration changes their dynamic. Bruno meets a lovely woman Lara played by Elisabetta Mazzullo and they have a child together, while he dreams of opening his own cheese making farm.

Pietro stretches his wings and travels to Nepal to climb the Himalayas and gain a perspective on his Italian childhood and the lost years that he can’t get back with his late father.

The Eight Mountains is a fascinating if slow moving story of the progression of a male friendship from boyhood until adulthood, all the highs and lows, the family tragedy and the complex relationships. Unfortunately with two directors, this film while interesting does suffer from a lack uniformity regarding cinematic vision.

With spectacular scenery and some insightful philosophical approaches to the fickle nature of human relationships, The Eight Mountains is a story of two men whose trajectories start the same but their destinies are vastly different.

Fortunately both Luca Marinelli (The Great Beauty) and Alessandro Borghi are excellent as the lifelong friends Pietro and Bruno. If audiences enjoy a slow burning tale of platonic friendship, then they will enjoy The Eight Mountains, an interesting story which needed to be edited properly and have a far superior soundtrack. This film’s soundtrack was completely incongruous with the narrative.

While the scenery is gorgeous, The Eight Mountains gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and the storyline needed more conflict to make this friendship narrative more exciting and humorous.

Anatomy of a Fall

Director: Justine Triet

Cast: Sandra Huller, Swann Arlaud, Samuel Theis, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Jehnny Beth, Camille Rutherford

Running Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Languages: English & French

Festival: European Film Festival

French director Justine Triet’s riveting courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall won the coveted Palm d’Or at the 2023 Festival de Cannes and is a complex dissection of a marriage after it has abruptly ended.

The scenario is set up more like a philosophical question which generates more inquiry than any form of closure.

A couple live in a remote chalet in the French Alps. They have a young son who is visually impaired. One fine day after the wife gives a brief interview to a literary student, the son goes for a walk with his guide dog and returns to discover his father dead on the snow, having fallen from the top floor of the attic window. Was the husband killed or did he commit suicide? If he was killed, there are only two suspects: the wife and the son.

Anatomy of a Fall is a skilfully directed family mystery, in which director Triet’s focus is exclusively on the portrayal of the relationship between mother and son and in particular the role of the mother and the wife, in this case Sandra Voyter superbly played by German actress Sandra Huller (I am Your Man) who actually deserves an Oscar nomination for this role.

Huller’s multi-layered performance in English and French is phenomenal as the less than conventional German mother who finds herself the chief suspect in her French husband’s murder as the criminal trial begins her entire life, her relationship with her husband and their son is dissected in a courtroom in Grenoble, France.

Justine Triet’s portrayal of the husband Samuel is clever and unique, he is almost entirely off-screen except for a key flashback scene in the middle of the film in which the court is played back an audio recording of a marital spate between Samuel and Sandra about six months before his fatal fall.

At the beginning of Anatomy of a Fall, audiences have to watch the opening scene extremely carefully. Unlike in American or even British films, Justine Triet refuses to guide the audience through this complex trial to a satisfactory conclusion, instead she plays with the viewers sympathies as they continually shift between Sandra and her son Daniel, while Sandra is flirting with her French lawyer, the eloquent and sympathetic Vincent Renzi played by Swann Arlaud.

Anatomy of a Fall is a psychological film about a marriage that has collapsed and a family racked with guilt, infidelity and tragedy. Triet also asks the audience to question perspective.

Is an event better to be seen from a male or female point of view? Philosophically speaking who was really responsible for the man falling to his death? Was it the wife or her son? What about motive?

Despite the second half being too long, Anatomy of a Fall is a fascinating film about gender relationships, possible murder and complex marriages.

If audiences enjoy a riveting contemporary courtroom drama, then watch Anatomy of a Fall, for the multi-dimensional performance by Sandra Huller and the intriguing direction of Justine Triet. Anatomy of a Fall gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is an intelligent courtroom drama, which will challenge viewers and offer a fresh almost unsettling cinematic perspective.

The Bohemian (Il Boemo)

Director: Petr Vaclav

Cast: Vojtech Dyk, Barbara Ronchi, Elena Radonicich, Lana Vlady, Salvatore Langella, Cristiano Donati

Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Languages: Czech, German & Italian with English subtitles

Festival: European Film Festival

Czech actor Vojtech Dyk plays the role of minor Baroque composer Josef Mysliveček, a Czech composer and precursor of the infamous Mozart in director Petr Vaclav’s lavish and entirely European film The Bohemian or Il Boemo in Italian. The Bohemian is set mainly in Italy at the decadent peak of the Baroque period in classical music in such illustrious centres of culture as Venice, Bologna and Naples.

Josef Mysliveček arrives in Italy to become a famous composer but unlike Mozart he does not rely on anyone royal patron but becomes a more contract composer for various emerging opera companies in Italy during the 1760’s and 1770’s.

Director Petr Vaclav cleverly captures with illumination the excess and drama of the Baroque Opera world in 18^th century Italy when wealthy nobleman had composers in their power while the noblewomen and Opera divas were all trying to seduce the composer amidst temptations of candlelit orgies and outrageous theatre antics.

For Mysliveček was truly captivated by the excessively emotional and decadent Italians especially the King of Naples. It was mainly the Opera divas that had the composer working furiously to please them and those wealthy patrons that kept him afloat in Italy after he abandons his family back in Prague. For a hard working Czech composer like Mysliveček in the 18^th century, Italy was seen as an illustrious and expensive country, complete with cruelty and dazzling splendour.

The divas in question are Caterina Gabrielli wonderfully played by Italian actress Barbara Ronchi and Anna Fracassati played by Lana Vlady who is utterly superb as an entirely temperamental opera singer that needs to be slapped before performing before the Royal entourage. There is a brilliant scene when the one diva throws herself out of one of the Opera boxes during the performance of an amazing concerto.

The Bohemian is a lavish film, utterly resplendent with beautiful costumes, complete with commedia del arte masks for the Venetian scenes and the operatic scenes are absolutely divine. While not as brilliant as the Oscar worthy film Amadeus, The Bohemian is as amusing and bizarre as director Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar winning film The Favourite.

Vojtech Dyk is excellent as the Bohemian composer whose life starts declining rapidly through promiscuity and gambling. Mysliveček watches helplessly as his most promising career as a classical composer slowly vanishes from recognition while the more talented and supremely famous Mozart rises from the ashes of classical Baroque music in a competitive and debauched European cultural world. Ironically like Mozart, Mysliveček also died destitute.

The Bohemian was the Czech Republic’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar for the 2023 Academy Awards but unfortunately did not make the cut.

If audiences enjoyed Amadeus or The Favourite then they will love The Bohemian which gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is especially suited for fans of Baroque Opera who will find this cinematic interpretation intriguing, shocking and dazzling.

The Old Oak

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Elba Mari, Dave Turner, Claire Rodgerson, Trevor Fox, Chris McGlade, Jordan Louis, Joe Armstrong, Debbie Honeywood, Neil Leiper

Running Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Language: English & Arabic

Festival: European Film Festival

With an authentic screenplay by Paul Laverty, The Old Oak is a brilliant social drama about two vastly different communities being forced to live together in Durham, Northern England in the new film by 87 year old British Neorealist film director Ken Loach who also brought the incredible films Land and Freedom and the Irish drama The Wind that Shakes the Barley starring Cillian Murphy.

After its well received premiere at the 2023 Festival de Cannes, The Old Oak has no film stars in it, but authentic people, both British and Syrian who are forced to live in close proximity with their only neutral space being The Old Oak, a traditional British pub run by TJ wonderfully played with compassion and sensitivity by Dave Turner.

When Yara, a budding photographer and Syrian refugee arrives in England with her family after escaping the cruelty and atrocities imposed on the Syrian population by the Assad regime, herself and fellow Syrians are treated with hostility by the local former mining community, working class people in Northern England who are at once ignorant but also slightly curious at these completely foreign people arriving and living in their once tight knit community.

Yara is wonderfully played by the beautiful Elba Mari who strikes up a friendship with the pub owner TJ who is desperately trying to hang onto his pub, while his regulars in perfect harmony denounce the arrival of the Syrians calling them names and bemoaning the fact that Westminster has decided to dump refugees in Durham and not in Chelsea or central London.

Ken Loach is known for making razor sharp social dramas dealing with current problems with the British working class and has always portrayed a more socialist viewpoint on the working class as they really are, often poverty stricken, weary of foreigners and salt of the earth people whose community bonds bind them together in mutual distrust of any outsiders.

Screenwriter Paul Laverty gets the pub banter down perfectly of the local regulars at The Old Oak especially conveying the significance of the traditional British pub as the centre of the community and an icon of British culture.

Yara keenly uses the lens of a beautiful camera, which her detained father gave her before they fled Syria to capture the significance of the Syrians arriving in Northern England in 2016.

Director Ken Loach, previous winner of the Palm d’Or for I, Daniel Blake and The Wind that Shakes the Barley is adept at providing a significant film The Old Oak about two different communities fighting to find a neutral space, a venue where they can eat together so that they can stay together.

Ironically, during his highly impressive film career, director Ken Loach has had a bigger following in Europe than in the UK, but his films are always worth watching as he awakens the viewer to social issues which often do not make entertaining film content: xenophobia, cruelty, impoverishment and bigotry.

As a fine example of British Neorealism, The Old Oak is an absorbing tale of two people that find common ground and in doing so draw their respective communities together despite the desperate situation both communities face.

Gritty and authentic, The Old Oak is a clever film, socially insightful and extremely well written and directed, it is worth seeing especially to glimpse a side of Britain which is not mainstream.

The Old Oak, one of Ken Loach’s more complex social dramas gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10. Highly recommended viewing.