Writer-director-star Shady Srour’s alternately funny and compassionate satire tackles a subject you rarely see onscreen—the lives of modern Arab Christians scraping by in Israel—and it does so in a wholly winning way. Adam (Srour), a gloomy, unsuccessful, 40-ish Arab-Christian businessman living in Nazareth with his pregnant wife, decides to bottle the ‘holy air’ from Mount Precipice and sell it to tourists. But there are a lot of people and circumstances—from gangsters demanding protection money to his dying father—standing in his way… Reminiscent of the work of Elia Suleiman and replete with inspired visual gags, Holy Air drolly captures the spirit of a very confusing place, where Muslim, Jew, and Christian are constantly either at odds with one another or competing for the tourist dollar…

‘A winningly satiric comedy that’s as tenderhearted as it is sly… Srour has a soulful sad-sack quality as his film’s central character, Adam, a Christian Arab Israeli who’s not quite ready for fatherhood or for the painful fading of his ailing father… The humour in Holy Air is inseparable from its poignancy, and every element of the film expresses that interconnection, from the performances to the spirited, melancholy-laced score by Habib Shehadeh Hanna.’—Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter

HOLY AIR IS NOW READY FOR ONLINE VIEWING: CLICK HERE

‘It is total anarchy. If you get used to it, you’ll survive.’ So says the eccentric Vova (a deadpan Viktor Zhdanov) to our hero, city-bred interpreter Lukas (Serhiy Stepansky), after the latter finds himself separated from his fellow OSCE security inspection team in Ukraine’s war-torn southern steppes. Things begin to get very strange very quickly for the clueless outsider: he is quickly relieved of his passport and money, and, with Vova and his beautiful daughter Marushka (Khrystyna Deilyk) doing their best to help, Lukas is led into a surreal pilgrim’s progress that would test anyone’s sanity… Roman Bondarchuk’s visually resplendent (kudos to cinematographer Vadym Ilkov for some truly stunning imagery) and very dark comedy charts one man’s descent into a world without rules, a world where a city boy might find himself thrown into a sun-baked pit for no reason—and maybe learn a thing or two, adapt, and even start to love his crazy surroundings…

‘A poetically surreal love letter to an untamed corner of the Wild East… [Bondarchuk’s film is a] mix of Kafka-esque road movie and contemporary Western, rich in sumptuous visuals and lyrical strangeness. There are hints of David Lynch’s macabre absurdism here, but also some agreeably carnivalesque interludes reminiscent of Federico Fellini [and] Emir Kusturica… A beautifully crafted work.’—Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter

Given its depth of feeling and precise visual style, it’s astounding to learn that Kwon Man-ki’s debut drama, Clean Up—which shared the Best Film award in the New Currents section of the prestigious Busan International Film Festival last year—was his graduation project from the Korean Academy of Fine Arts. There is no evidence whatsoever that this is a student work: the subtlety of Kwon’s narrative, the slow-build, tension-filled plot that twists and turns in exactly the right spots, and the committed performances of the film’s two leads suggest the work of a veteran filmmaker with an acute understanding of human psychology.

Jing-ju (Yoon Ji-hye, remarkable), a dour member of a cleaning team that handles everything from highway tunnels to blood-spattered crime scenes, is a loner who self-medicates to excess with soju every night. She is a woman with a dark secret that has left her as a shell of her former self. When 18-year-old ex-convict Min-gu (excellent newcomer Kim Dae-gun) joins the cleaning company, Jung-ju is horrified to recognise him and deeply afraid that he will recognise her. He doesn’t—at least, not at first… To say anything more would be to enter spoiler territory, but rest assured that what follows is both unpredictable and deeply affecting. ‘Impressive… Clean Up potently examines feelings of grief, guilt, and redemption…’—Richard Kuipers, Variety

CLEAN UP IS NOW READY FOR ONLINE VIEWING: CLICK HERE

Probably the best Canadian film of 2018, Philippe Lesage’s audacious, double-focused coming-of-age drama follows the differing trajectories of Salinger-reading 16-year-old Guillaume (Théodore Pellerin, riveting) and his older, more hedonistic half-sister Charlotte (Noée Abita), as both navigate the minefields of romance and sexual actualisation. Guillaume is struggling with his feelings for boarding-school classmate Nicolas, a jock-ish type, while Charlotte’s seemingly strong relationship with her boyfriend Maxime suffers a shock when he suggests that a lifetime is perhaps too long a time to stay together… Lesage and his strong cast bring rare intimacy and thrilling vibrancy to a sometimes emotionally harsh story, and the director caps it with a bold coda that brings the meaning of the title into clear focus. This is filmmaking of the first rank. (more…)

Subtle, funny, unpretentious, and completely charming, Florencia Percia’s debut is a warm comedy that starts from a basic premise and builds into a witty exploration of one woman’s desire for change. Clara (the deadpan Elisa Carricajo), a linguistics research fellow, moves into a new apartment in Buenos Aires with her older professor boyfriend, after which he promptly jets off to a conference in Bologna. A chance meeting with a female neighbour leads Clara along a path that will eventually see her overhaul her life…

The fun lies in the way Percia and lead actor Carricajo make this change come about. The visuals are sunny, unbusy, occasionally witty (as when a Tai-Chi session during a country retreat features a herd of oblivious cows in the background), and completely of a piece with the story—form and content mesh perfectly here—while running jokes, like the constant references to honey and mead, bring repeated smiles to one’s face. Finally, the film is so wonderfully, obviously made by a young woman wise beyond her years—the fact that Percia chooses to be gently mocking, instead of rancorous, when various males indulge in a little ‘mansplaining’ suggests her essentially humanist world view. Cetaceans is a real winner, and it announces a major new talent on the Argentine film scene.