EIFF25

Top 5 Must-See Movies of EIFF 2025

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After rejuvenating EIFF last year, the festival’s director Paul Ridd and producer Emma Boa are back with their sophomore effort. Critically acclaimed comedy drama Sorry, Baby is will open proceedings, kicking off an exciting and eclectic programme that boasts a variety of new releases, retrospective screenings, as well as the return of Midnight Madness; a strand that showcases six genre films to satisfy the night-owl cinephiles among us. I will be covering the events in my 11th year, and have handpicked five selections to keep an eye on…

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Berlin25 · DVD & Digital · Interviews

Late Shift Interview: Petra Volpe – ‘COVID came, everybody was clapping for nurses, and then we forgot’.

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Earlier this year I attended Berlin Film Festival and the final screening of my trip was the gripping Swiss-German drama Late Shift which follows an eventful day in the life of surgical nurse, Floria who is brilliantly portrayed by Leonie Benesch. It was one of my festival highlights and ahead of its UK release next month, I was fortunate to sit down with its writer and director Petra Volpe to discuss the film…

It feels like very important, especially post-pandemic, to focus a film on the experiences of a nurse. What drew you to tell this story initially?

Well, I had lived with a nurse for many years before COVID even, and I kind of observed how the conditions she worked under got worse and worse, and how it affected her deeply. I just always felt like the work I’m doing, at home writing screenplays, was so banal compared to what she encountered every day. It’s such an emotionally complex but also technically complex job.

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DVD & Digital

Film review: Superman

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 Over a decade has passed since writer and director James Gunn was called upon to add his filmmaking flair to the world-building of Marvel’s cinematic extended universe with the beloved Guardians of the Galaxy series. In more recent years, he jumped strip to reimagine DC’s Suicide Squad division and has now been tasked with rebooting their tale of arguably the world’s most iconic caped figure.

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DVD & Digital

Film review: 28 Years Later

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Their collaboration on 28 Days Later was credited with revitalising the zombie-horror subgenre for the 21stcentury, but director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland soon parted ways after falling out over the religious and philosophical themes in their sci-fi venture, Sunshine. It’s taken over two decades for them to reconcile their creative differences, and they have reunited to revive their post-apocalyptic franchise with thriller 28 Years Later.

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DVD & Digital

Film review: The Uninvited

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“I’ve never really been good at metaphors” says a drug-addled talent agent in The Uninvited, a comedy drama that takes a satirically sideways glance at ageing in modern-day Los Angeles. Written and directed by Nadia Conners, the plot centres around once-acclaimed stage actor Rose (Elisabeth Reaser) who has somewhat reluctantly fallen into a homemaker in the hills lifestyle since becoming a mother. While preparing to host a glamourous party with her husband Sammy (Walton Goggins) in order to impress their peers, an elderly woman named Helen (Lois Smith) arrives unannounced and claims that their house is in fact her own.

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DVD & Digital

Film review: Freaky Tales

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After a foray into the mega-budget mainstream with comic book movie Captain Marvel in 2019, writer and director duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have made a welcomed return to their indie roots for their latest piece Freaky Tales, an action-horror comedy anthology set in late ‘80s Oakland, California. As the paths of hitman Clint (Pedro Pascal), corrupt cop (Ben Mendelsohn), and basketball star Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) cross with punks, skinheads, and underground rappers, their interconnected stories are tied together by strange supernatural happenings and blood-soaked vengeance.

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DVD & Digital

Film review: Warfare

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Off the back of imagining fictional combat through a journalistic lens in dystopian thriller Civil War, filmmaker Alex Garland has turned his hand to a very real and recent conflict in his latest feature. Sharing the writing and directing credits on this picture is Ray Mendoza, the former U.S. Navy SEAL who has based the script on his own experience and the memories of his comrades. Set in 2006 Iraq, the plot recalls a mission carried out by platoon Alpha One which included Sam (Joseph Quinn), Erik (Will Poulter), Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis) and Mendoza himself, portrayed on-screen by  D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. As their plan is severely curtailed by a devastating explosion, they must pull together to survive.

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DVD & Digital

Film review: Death of a Unicorn

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 Since the release of whodunnit Knives Out in 2019, we’ve seen a flurry of glossy one-location productions with various genre twists on the format. Whether it’s in fine-dining terror The Menu, social satire slasher Bodies Bodies Bodies, or sci-fi thriller Companion, we’re quickly learning that whenever a group of individuals get together somewhere fancy for the weekend, things are going to get dark. Horror comedy Death of a Unicorn is the latest to fall into this category, marking the debut of writer and director Alex Scharfman. The plot follows lawyer Elliot (Paul Rudd) as he travels to the family estate of his billionaire boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), taking his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) along for the ride. On the way, they accidentally hit an animal on the road, and the fantastical fallout of the incident tests their fractured father-and-daughter relationship.

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Berlin25 · cinema

Film review: Köln 75

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 On 24th January 1975, American jazz musician Keith Jarrett performed to a sell-out crowd at Köln’s Opera House whilst playing a broken piano. The recording has since become the best-selling solo jazz album of all time, and the gig almost didn’t go ahead. Written and directed by Ido Fluk, period drama Köln 75 tells the amazing true story of how the evening came to be – the ‘scaffolding’ supporting the masterpiece as it is put in the film’s introduction.

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