German actor Franz Rogowski is a captivating on-screen presence and can impress with turns across many different languages, and his latest portrayal sees him take the lead in the feature debut from Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese. A war movie of sorts, Disco Boy is loosely inspired by real events and characters in the filmmaker’s life and tells the stories of troubled Foreign Legion combatant Aleksei (Rogowski) and fearless guerrilla warrior Jomo (Morr Ndiaye) as their paths intertwine by chance in battle.
Dutch writer/director Sacha Polak made her English-language debut in 2019 with Dirty God, a critically acclaimed drama in which newcomer Vicky Knight played an acid-attack victim undergoing treatment for her burns. Having struck up a close friendship, the filmmaker and actor have collaborated again, this time with a story partly inspired by Knight’s own life. The plot follows Franky (Knight), a nurse who forms a close connection with her troubled patient Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles) after a suicide attempt. Silver Haze premiered at Berlin last year and is now set to be released in UK cinemas. I was fortunate to sit down with Sacha Polak to discuss the film…
Writer and director Michael Mohan was somewhat ahead of the curve in discovering the talent of Sydney Sweeney, having worked with her on Netflix series in Everything Sucks in 2018 and then casting her in his thriller The Voyeurs a few years later. Since then she has shot to stardom in hit television shows Euphoria and The White Lotus and is enjoying a purple patch on the big screen too, with the exception of the critically panned comic book flick Madame Web. In psychological horror Immaculate the filmmaker is working with his muse yet again, with Sweeney also serving as a producer on the piece.
After collaborating on her English-language debut Dirty God a few years ago, director Sacha Polak has called upon actor Vicky Knight again to star in his latest feature and has loosely based the story on her lead’s own experience. A British-Dutch co-production, romantic drama Silver Haze follows young nurse Franky (Knight) who is restlessly seeking answers after a housefire left her with severe burns 15 years earlier. At the hospital where she works, she meets troubled teen Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles) who is recovering from a suicide attempt. Scarred both physically and psychologically by their pasts, the pair embark upon a relationship and help one another through their trauma.
British filmmaker Will Gilbey has taken his talents across the pond for survival thriller Jericho Ridge, marking his directorial debut after years in the industry as a screenwriter and editor. Set in a remote town within the mountainous landscape of Washington state, the plot follows Deputy Tabby Temple (Nikki Amuka-Bird) en route to start a graveyard shift at the local station with her teenage son Monty (Zack Morris) in tow.
Taking us into a not-so-distant future where unnatural deaths can be cancelled out by innovative back-up hardware, ambitious sci-fi thriller Restore Point comes from Czech director Robert Hloz. The action follows detective Em Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylová) as she investigates the suspicious deaths of the David Kurlstat (Matej Hádek), who happens to be the developer of this restorative science, and his wife. Meanwhile, a mysterious organisation known as the River of Life are rebelling against the new technology by committing heinous acts of terrorism to bring about natural order.
In the mid 1990s, Ewan McGregor burst onto the scene with iconic roles in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting and was the picture of fearless, reckless youth. Now, around thirty years on, his daughter Clara is following in his acting footsteps. In Bleeding Love, the feature debut from Dutch director Emma Westenberg, they star together as an estranged father and daughter en route to rehab after a near fatal overdose. Travelling through the American Southwest, they have various pitstops and attempt to mend their fractured relationship.
Have you ever had a bad experience when asking a celebrity for a selfie? Glasgow-based filmmaker Ciaran Lyons explores the dark side of this idea in his debut feature Tummy Monster, a psychological black comedy set entirely in a tattoo studio. Rising star Lorn Macdonald plays Tales who gets embroiled in a twisted game when a musician turns up at his parlour to get inked in the middle of the night.
Ahead of its World Premiere at Glasgow Film Festival 2024, I jumped at the opportunity to sit down with director Ciaran Lyons and actor Lorn Macdonald to discuss their inventive new film…
I note that you’re both credited with writing the screenplay along with Orlando Norman. What was your process around collaborating? I guess that there was some improv involved…?
CL – Yeah, it’s partly the improv element. I wrote the first draft and it was always my intention that it would be a very actor led piece. I really wanted to give both Lorn and Orlando scope to flesh out their characters and contribute to the script and they did. They both brought an awful lot to it and they crafted their roles into the characters you see on screen.
In the US, a legal guardian can be granted official authority to seize the assets of the elderly for their own self-interest. In the satirical comedy I Care A Lot, we saw this this law being exploited through the eyes of a manipulative swindler but the latest film from Canadian director Karl R. Hearne takes the pensioner’s point of view.
Cinema Perspective 