The image conjured in most people’s minds at the mention of the ‘Wild West’ is that of cowboys and gun-slinging outlaws – almost always white men. Cowboys, as the name suggests, were experts in herding and caring for cattle. Historians estimate that, at the height of their time, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/">1 in every 4 cowboys was Black</a>. Yet <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/ranchhouse/pop_blackcowboy.html">Black cowboys</a> are kept out of most of the narratives and lore of the American West today.
The appeal of the classic Western film for many people is the idea of justice. Westerns value honour, and the stories often depict one or several individuals seeking revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them. The justice systems of today operate around abstract laws that are often inherently unjust, contrasting to what we find in the world of the Western, where the ‘heroes’ take the law into their own hands.
In almost every way except for the actors we see on screen, <a href="https://platformonline.uk/posts/our-critics-picks-for-the-bfi-london-film-festival-2021">The Harder They Fall</a> is a typical Western. The film opens with the protagonist Nat Love’s (Jonathan Majors) origin story, setting the scene for the adventure that’s about to unfold. After witnessing the brutal murder of his parents at the hands of outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) and his gang, Nat Love makes it his mission to exact revenge. Along the way we encounter numerous impressive characters, especially Stagecoach Mary (Regina King), a strong woman in her own right who also serves as the ‘damsel in distress’, and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), infamous for his quick-draw abilities and calm demeanour, to name a few.

Nat Love is one of the most famous Black cowboys, thanks to a memoir he wrote which cemented his legacy. The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1907) describes how Love, born into slavery in Tennessee, headed West aged 14 and began working as a cowboy for large cattle operations in Texas and Arizona. Over the years he spent as a cowboy, Love drove cattle across the United States and down into Mexico. He writes about encountering a range of infamous figures of the old West on his travels (including Buffalo Bill and Jesse James) and stumbling into a number of thrilling situations, from being captured by Native Americans and escaping, to witnessing and participating in gunfights.
Though the veracity of some of the stories recounted in this memoir has been questioned by historians, it is one of the only first-hand accounts of a Black American cowboy from the late 19th century, thus incredibly valuable in recording the existence of Black Cowboys. Love quit the cowboy business in 1890 and his memoir was published in 1907. To this day, he remains a Black folk hero to many.
Director and co-writer Jaymes Samuel says the idea to make a Western came to him while strolling through Kilburn, London. Having grown up watching classic Westerns on the BBC, he became enamoured with the genre and wanted to tell a story that put Black cowboys at the forefront. In Samuel’s The Harder They Fall, Nat Love is described as an outlaw who targets other outlaws, and it becomes evident that he and the Nat Love of history share only a name and an era.

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The Harder They Fall succeeds as a Western. Accompanied by an exciting <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/3whjvbBxG7j2FfTImRdqBw?si=EcITQCqkQESH5cw4u64KUg">soundtrack</a> consisting of music from across the Black Diaspora, and filmed against stunning landscapes, the film is invigorating and seductive. I find myself unable to take my eyes off the screen. Having fallen for the allure of the old West myself earlier this year, it is fitting that the first proper Western film I see is one with all the visual energy I associate with the genre, but filled with faces like mine. I was engrossed by everything, from the range of distinct characters, to the costumes and the sharp-tongued dialogue. Everything about this film is enticing. Granted, the vastness of the story being told and the number of characters means that they are quite two-dimensional, though attempts are made to give some background and purpose to a few. The comic-book style of the action is, however, the main attraction. Though the pacing falls off slightly in the final third of the film, the meeting between Nat Love and Rufus Buck all but makes up for it, revealing a ‘truth’ which changes your perspective on the earlier events of the film.
Not a lot is known about the real Rufus Buck, other than that he and his gang went on a crime spree in 1895, attacking people indiscriminately on the Indian territory of the Arkansas and Oklahoma area. They were captured and hanged by law enforcement not long after. His character in the film is a notorious and ruthless outlaw with a dedicated gang. The story gives Buck two ‘shots’ at redemption, the first being early in the film when he and his gang take over a Black settlement and set their sights on buying it to give the citizens a fixed home, during a time when Black people were not allowed to settle anywhere for long. He attempts this with brutality and little mercy. Then there is his character&#8217;s origin story, only revealed in the final confrontation with Love.

This film would stand on two strong, Western legs even without using the names of real historical figures. The risk that audience members might confuse the story they see on screen with the lives these people lived is abated with a disclaimer before the film opens, but why use those names at all? Considering how the existence and contributions of Black cowboys is still mostly unknown, The Harder They Fall could bring these names into homes worldwide thanks to its Netflix distribution. The film will also introduce Black cowboys into the popular imagination, which is vital when too many of the Black stories told constrain us to a set of roles and particular narratives.
Nat Love’s first-hand account of life as a Black cowboy made him a hero to many, and his portrayal in The Harder They Fall will hopefully only extend this legacy and prompt more people to look into his vast and fascinating life. I enjoyed the fact that race was not the explicit point of the story, though there are subtle suggestions of its significance throughout. Films with majority Black casts and/or Black leads have become associated with narratives which centre racial trauma – as if joy, complexity and the full scope of life cannot be imagined for such characters. It is high time that this changes. In period films like The Harder They Fall, it is hard and disingenuous to dissociate entirely from race; but the film succeeds at acknowledging the history, without centring Black pain for the sake of it.
The Harder They Fall has everything that makes the Western genre so exciting: a compelling protagonist on a mission, beautiful imagery, exciting action, a sprinkling of romance and lots of music. An enthralling way to expand existing imaginations. In Westerns, justice is always served, a fantasy with never-ending appeal.

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An enthralling depiction of social justice and retribution in the Old West blows apart the typical narratives of the Western and brings new possibilities to life.

The Harder They Fall: Reimagining Westerns for the Netflix generation

This year was a truly classic edition of the London Film Festival, which returned to public screenings after last year’s online-only event. The winner of the Official Festival Competition was the excellent Hit the Road, an Iranian road movie that was also the debut film from Panah Panahi, son of Jafar Panahi, the veteran director whose satirical visions of contemporary Iran got him arrested and banned from filmmaking. Not that this has softened his son’s filmmaking, who directs a road movie about a chaotic family in what starts out as very funny and ends up as deeply moving, even fantastical by its end. The emotional range develops with the varied landscape they travel, as the family get further away from Tehran and end up near the mist-strewn border with Turkey. Perhaps also paying tribute to the fractious closeness of family, the six-year-old Rayan Sarlak gives one of the all-time greatest child performances in cinema as the family’s younger son. While this was a worthy winner amid a wonderful year’s array of films, we thought we’d give you the results from a few of our own categories.
<h5>Best artistic use of black and white</h5>
I’m still a little bit conflicted on whether this one should go to Belfast, a surprisingly touching drama directed by Kenneth Branagh set on a residential street in the Northern Irish capital amid the beginning of the Troubles. It’s more a family drama than an exhaustive political account, but no the worse for demonstrating how history determines even the most private situations. The black and white gives a retro quality that is less nostalgic than it is a reminder of what violence and pain take away.
But for sheer artistic brio the award must go to The Tragedy of Macbeth, the festival’s closing gala, and the first ever film made by Joel Coen without his brother Ethan in tow. Denzel Washington plays the title role and Joel’s wife Frances McDormand plays Lady Macbeth, perhaps an in-joke given the character’s classic role in driving her husband’s solo ambitions. The dialogue moves at quite a pace, but the swirling fog, the jet-black ravens and the air of violent fantasy in the monochrome film stock convey enough of the dramatic atmosphere for anyone not already familiar with Shakespeare’s play.
A special mention for the least artistic use of black and white goes to Paris, 13th District. This is a partnership between Jacques Audiard, whose role on films like A Prophet make him a worthy contender for France’s most macho filmmaker, and scriptwriter Celine Sciamma of Portrait of a Lady of Fire, whose Petite Maman also premiered at the festival and which extends her interest in the workings of female subjectivity. This partnership surely had great potential. But Paris, 13th District is never more than a plodding romantic drama with neither romance nor drama, which believes itself more edgy than it actually is. Its black and white is thus only a pointless stylistic flourish designed to mask these deficiencies.
<h5>Worst misuse of 20th century history</h5>
There were some fantastic period dramas in this year’s festival, with Spencer giving an intense glimpse into Christmas Day 1992 when Diana decided to divorce Charles, and Power of the Dog marking Jane Campion’s return to the cinema with an anti-western set in Montana in 1925. Then there was Munich – Edge of War, an attempted resuscitation of the reputation of Neville Chamberlain, the man who decided that appeasing Hitler would save Europe. This large production, based on the book by Robert Harris, begins promisingly enough, with George McKay a nervy but patriotic translator roped into an espionage plot to steal Hitler’s secret briefing papers and thereby halt the invasion of Europe. Unfortunately the spy drama never really gets anywhere, leaving us instead with a tribute to Neville Chamberlain, played in stolid costume-drama form by Jeremy Irons. A closing intertitle helpfully informs us that appeasement was part of a chain of events that ‘eventually’ led to Hitler’s defeat. I must have missed the intertitle reminding the viewer that this was only after the fall of mainland Europe and the Holocaust. I can only guess that the target market is anyone who finds arguments about Winston Churchill’s legacy so interesting that they want to move onto a more challenging recipient of their admiration.
<h5>Best &#8216;spooky season&#8217; picks for Halloween </h5>
Cannes festival winner Julia Ducournau comes in at a near-miss for this award with Titane. This blend of serial killer, body horror, sci-fi and art film would have been a sure-fire winner for an award for best sex scene with a car – not in a car, but with one. Yet in a film that is all about the difficulties of classification, what starts out as horror ends up as a love story. Even if it then blurs the line between sexual and familial love, by way of a fugitive killer breaking her own nose and hiding her own impregnation by a car – that is not a typo – to impersonate the missing child of a lonely firefighter.
And so our hands-down, guts out, scream-till-you-embarrass-the-person-next-to-you winner of this particular award is DASHCAM. It’s a sillier, bigger budget, somewhat less focused but still highly enjoyable follow up by Rob Savage to last year’s Host, which was set entirely within the 55 minutes of a deeply scary Zoom call. The premise behind DASHCAM is instead a livestream by freestyling rapper and online anti-masker controversialist Annie Hardy as she comes to Britain to visit a friend, steals his car and gives a ride to the wrong prematurely-aged stranger with a mystery disease. The limitations of the dashcam technology are used to exploit the fact that what we can’t see is often scarier than what we can. And the constant comment stream, although hard to follow alongside the action, is hilariously familiar to anyone who has ever participated in an online community. It will be interesting to see if this updating of the ‘found footage’ film (such as The Blair Witch Project) will offer filmmakers enough mileage to become a new subgenre of horror for the internet age. I’d say this gross-out, jump-scare film is definitely one to enjoy alongside a packed, groaning audience at the cinema, although I can’t help wondering if maybe the true authentic viewing experience would, for once, be a cracked iPhone with a dodgy connection.
The BFI London Film Festival took place <a href="https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp">6 to 17 October 2021</a>.

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Our film editor, Louis Bayman, tells us how the 65th BFI London Film Festival went down, including road movies and Halloween picks.

The Hits and Misses from the 2021 BFI London Film Festival

The online film festival ‘<a href="https://sites.google.com/brookes.ac.uk/cinemobility/home?authuser=0">Cine/Mobility</a> &#8211; Latin American cinema across borders’ has launched in the UK (5 October to 5 November), opening with a conversation with director Icíar Bollaín about her film Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story.
The new festival is dedicated to Latin American migrations, social movements and transatlantic exchanges. A feast for students, scholars and film lovers, the virtual festival showcases the work of filmmakers from Argentina, France, Spain, Chile, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, paying particular attention to women and LGBTQ issues.
A selection of four full-length films is accompanied by a programme of shorts with an activist spirit, introducing complex struggles and political movements animating today’s Latin America, on topics including migrant rights, the murder of Afro-Brazilian politician Marielle Franco, and the role of women in the rewriting of Chile’s constitution.
As well as screenings and Q&amp;As, the festival will host roundtable discussions with industry professionals with one session focusing on the impact of feminism on the Latin American and European film industries and another discussing the challenges of bringing Latin American cinema to UK and Catalan audiences.
Here’s my preview of the four full-length films featured in Cine/Mobility: 
<h5>Yuli/Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story 
Dir. Icíar Bollaín (Spain / Germany / UK, 2018) </h5>
Yuli is a touching biopic packed with dance sequences and Cuban history, based on the life of the Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta. After his training in Cuba, Carlos became one of the best dancers of his generation, and the first Black artist to dance Romeo in the Royal Ballet in London, where he forged a legendary career as a principal dancer for 17 years. Cuba is seen from the eyes of Carlos and his family, marked by experiences of migration and displacement. It is a film about passion, talent and nostalgia, which Bollaín directs with great attention to aesthetics and with affection for her characters.
<h5>El diablo es magnifico / The Devil is Magnificent 
Dir. Nicolás Videla (Chile, 2016)</h5>
Like its main character, Manu, El diablo es magnífico is one of a kind. Blending fiction and documentary, the film tells the story of a Chilean trans migrant, who struggles to see her future in Paris. Manu’s memories and distinct views on culture, art and life intersect with her experiences of love and sex, and her decision to stay or return. This film is a little gem, a unique take on migration which is also a wonderful example of queer cinema, done with passion and a subversive touch.
<h5>Miriam Miente / Miriam Lies 
Dir. Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada (Dominican Republic, 2017)</h5>
This is a fantastic coming-of-age film that deals with the complex intersections of race and class in contemporary Dominican Republic, from the perspective of a teenager and her everyday concerns. The film tells the story of Miriam, a mixed-race 14-year-old who meets her boyfriend on the internet. While her friends enthusiastically prepare the traditional quinceañera party, Miriam does not know how to explain to her family that her boyfriend is Black. Miriam’s character is memorable and is bound to leave an emotional impact on viewers.
<h5>Estoy Acá (Mangui Fi) / I am here 
Dir. Juan Manuel Bramuglia and Esteban Tabacznik (Argentina, 2017)</h5>
At its heart, this documentary is a story of friendship, and the complexities of relationships as we age and grow as individuals. The film follows Ababacar and Mbaye, two Senegalese migrants who met in Buenos Aires. We see their friendship grow and become stronger, until they decide to take different paths. With a delicate and close understanding of its characters, the film engages with a complex set of emotions, expectations and desires that fill Ababacar and Mbaye’s everyday life, offering an original and nuanced perspective on South-to-South migration. 
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The Cine/Mobility festival, hosted by Oxford Brookes University, runs from 5 October to 5 November 2021. It was created by Dalila Missero in collaboration with the film programmer Analía Fraser. All events and screenings are free (registration via <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cinemobility-on-line-film-festlatin-american-cinema-across-the-atlantic-tickets-158700652925">Eventbrite</a>) and the full schedule is available at the <a href="https://sites.google.com/brookes.ac.uk/cinemobility/home?authuser=0">Cine/Mobility website</a> and on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Cinemobility">Facebook</a>.
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New perspectives on Latin American migration and movements in the Cine/Mobility festival – catch it online now.

Cine/Mobility: The Latin American Film Festival Erasing Borders

In-person screenings and gala events are back at this year’s <a href="https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp">BFI London Film Festival</a> (6 to 17 October) after last year’s online event. This time, you can watch your festival picks at London’s South Bank and West End cinemas, with a number of viewings expanding across the country. Tickets are on sale now, and The Platform’s Louis Bayman and Halima Hassan are here to tell us what to look out for.
If you’re in the mood for a headliner, there are plenty of star-studded events each year at the festival, and here are four of the big releases we’re looking forward to:
<h5>THE FRENCH DISPATCH 
Dir. Wes Anderson (USA)</h5>
Described as a “star-studded homage to journalism and literary magazines”, The French Dispatch is also the name of a high-brow magazine that’s reached the end of its run. Sharp, weird and aesthetically pleasing is what I’ve come to expect from Wes Anderson – and from the trailer, it looks like this film will deliver. Granted, there are many ways Anderson’s films may not be for everyone, with odd storylines and unrepresentative casts leaving much to desire. But I don&#8217;t need representation all the time and fantasy is fun. – HH
<h5>SPENCER 
Dir. Pablo Larrain (UK / Germany)</h5>
Kristen Stewart stars in this drama about the late Diana Spencer, aka Princess of Wales. Director Pablo Larraìn’s previous films include explorations of Pinochet-era Chile and a recently widowed Jackie Kennedy. That promises to make this a thoughtful and politically astute contribution to the ‘90s nostalgia that has recently been gathering pace. – LB 
<h5>THE HARDER THEY FALL 
Dir. Jeymes Samuel (USA)</h5>
I have found myself enamoured with all things relating to the American West. Stories of outlaws and cowboys, operating in a lawless time so vastly different from our hyper-surveilled present. The Harder They Fall is inspired by the real-life stories of African-American cowboys and features an incredible cast (Idris Elba, Regina King, LaKeith Stanfield). I am expecting something epic and beautiful and satisfying. – HH
<h5>LAST NIGHT IN SOHO 
Dir. Diana Rigg (UK)</h5>
Although it played to a standing ovation by critics at the Venice Film Festival, I don’t quite know what this sci-fi/horror hybrid by Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright will hold in store. But it promises to get its audience high on style and atmosphere with a time-travel plot that travels back to the Soho clubs of London in 1966. The ensemble cast is worth the price of admission alone, starring Anya Taylor-Joy but also showcasing Rita Tushingham, Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg in her last ever role. – LB
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Last-Night-in-Soho

Away from the noise of the red carpet here, are a few personal critics’ choices:
<h5>RED ROCKET 
Dir: Sean Baker (USA)</h5>
Director/Writer Sean Baker’s third feature’s premise is an uncomfortable one but I’m hopeful considering how his debut (Tangerine) and sophomore (The Florida Project) films are some of my favourites. A once successful LA porn star goes back to his old ways and his ex-wife, and finds himself fixated on an underage girl who he decides should join him for his adult movie comeback. I’m curious to see what this film is about. – HH
<h5>IL BUCO 
Dir. Michelangelo Frammartino (Italy / Germany / France)</h5>
This film is in the official competition for an award for best film. While I would think a film about speleology – cave-mapping – is probably a bit too left-field to win, it offers a rhythmic, poetic view from the mountains of southern Italy. Director Michelangelo Frammartino last film, Le quattro volte, was similarly a tale of goat-herding mountain-dwellers that hovered somewhere between documentary and art installation with one single word – ‘grazie’ – in its hour and a half runtime. A bold filmmaker returning with a unique vision. – LB
<h5>ENCOUNTER 
Dir. Michael Pearce (USA / UK)</h5>
Science fiction x Riz Ahmed?! Sign me up. Something strange is afoot and Riz Ahmed’s character, a war-veteran, is in the know and desperate to warn his family of the danger (an impending alien invasion!). – HH
<h5>THE SOUVENIR II 
Dir. Joanna Hogg (UK)</h5>
An autobiographical tale of her own ‘80s art school experiences and a slow, almost plotless reverie on disappointment, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir wouldn’t really strike us as the typical film to make a franchise out of. The title sounds to me like deliberate provocation from a director whose scrutiny is always on the awkwardness of the deficiencies of the upper-middle classes. Hogg’s attention on the most privileged sections of British society is too narrow a perspective for some viewers, but she always succeeds in wreaking a devastation that is all the more effective for its quietness.  – LB

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THE HARDER THEY FALL

Last but not least, we’ve picked a few titles especially for The Platform’s readers. Here are some of the politically conscious films with a global reach at this year’s London Film Festival:
<h5>THE GRAVEDIGGER’S WIFE 
Dir. Khadar Ayderus Ahmed (Finland / France / Germany)</h5>
This film is directed by Somali filmmaker Khadar Ahmed and stars a Somali cast. It follows Guled, played by Omar Abdi, a gravedigger whose wife falls ill. To raise the money for her treatment, he is forced to leave his ailing wife in the care of their son to seek the help from his community. Filmed in Djibouti, I cannot wait to see this story set in East Africa, with East African leads. I think it’ll be an exciting and important addition to the African film canon. – HH
<h5>A HERO 
Dir. Asghar Farhadi (Iran / France)</h5>
Asghar Farhadi is already well known to international audiences, winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2011 with The Separation and then refusing to travel to the ceremony in 2017 for The Salesman in protest against Trump’s Muslim ban. He specialises in family dramas whose moments of acute personal crises still succeed in drawing a broader picture of contemporary Iranian society. This should particularly be the case in his latest film, where a man in debtors’ prison tries to confront his creditor. – LB
<h5>ALL THESE SONS 
Dir. Bing Liu and Joshua Altman (USA)</h5>
All These Sons is a documentary about two Chicago organisations, The Inner City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) and MAAFA, which recruit young Black men to get them off the streets and tackle gun violence. I’m interested in this documentary from a reform and prevention perspective. – HH
<h5>LEAVE NO TRACES 
Dir. Jan P. Matuszyński (France / Poland / Czechia)</h5>
This Polish film is set amid the military dictatorship in 1983 and concerns the killing of a student by security forces. This will be a new discovery for me, as I am not familiar with its cast and crew. However its historical investigation into not just one act of violence, but the whole system that sustains it, has brought comparisons with classic Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda and that’s enough to get me interested! – LB

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The_gravediggers_wife_ copy

The BFI London Film Festival takes place <a href="https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp">6 to 17 October 2021</a>. 
HH – Halima A. Hassan 
LB – Louis Bayman

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Louis Bayman and Halima Hassan preview the BFI London Film Festival of 2021 as it returns to cinemas this year.

Our Critics’ Picks for the BFI London Film Festival 2021

“Haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over and done with (slavery, for instance) or when their oppressive nature is denied…” Avery F Gordon 
African Apocalypse is not your regular feature film, and throughout its <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-african-apocalypse-2020-online">runtime of 88 minutes</a> it allows us to reflect and navigate the multifaceted space between documentary and historical drama in a way that is innovative, haunting and truly captivating.
The film itself is a non-fiction retelling of Joseph Conrad’s contentious novel Heart of Darkness and, like the book, the film highlights the brutal legacies of ‘civilised’ European expeditions during the height of colonial rule. I was fortunate enough to speak to both the director Rob Lemkin and the co-writer <a href="https://platformonline.uk/articles/author/femi-nylander/">Femi Nylander</a> shortly after the film’s release where we discussed the intricate plot and themes that are investigated throughout the film.
African Apocalypse starts off in Oxford as we are introduced to our narrator and guide, British-Nigerian activist and poet, Femi Nylander. Throughout the film we follow Femi and two other local guides on a personal and spiritual journey through the country of Niger to unearth the cruel legacy of the French imperial captain, Paul Voulet.
Voulet’s story begins in 1899 when he is tasked with securing the Chad Basin to unite all of the French territories in West Africa; however, whilst undertaking this mission, Voulet went rogue leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in his wake. Throughout Femi’s voyage across Niger, we encounter the Hausa people, who were deeply affected by the violence. The Hausa people are the largest ethnic group located throughout north-western Nigeria and Niger. They are well known for their agricultural practices and exquisite craftsmanship and a vast majority of the population can be found in rural locations. In order for Voulet to complete his excursion he had to cross their land and this is where things began to get worse. The story of Voulet and his destructive expedition may not be well known in the west, but the descendants of the Hausa people have not forgotten. They have not forgotten how Voulet and his men rounded up their families and committed unspeakable evils. They have not forgotten the stories of how Voulet decimated villages – and those of you who watch this film will surely not forget too.

What I found so astounding about the film was how effortlessly it explores a multitude of political issues, such as France using the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/07/macron-francafrique-170721190500965.html">Franco-African</a> policy to mine and export Uranium ore for over 40 years, as well as the economic and political fallout that follows the creation of borders, human rights, ecological destruction, and the generational trauma that looms over the afflicted communities. The themes that African Apocalypse explores are multi-faceted and complex, but what the film achieves is that it opens up a dialogue about the repercussions of colonial violence and gives the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hausa">Hausa people</a> a chance to tell their side of the story to the world.
In a strange way Rob and Femi’s work truly captivated me, particularly as I saw myself in Femi. As a Black British citizen with Jamaican heritage, my very existence within the British Isles is predicated on Britain’s colonial past, and the same applies to a large majority of us, as <a href="https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/">migration has played a huge role</a> in shaping Britain as we know it today. To be a Black person or person of colour, exploring the forgotten histories of colonialism that intersect with one’s own history repeatedly forces one to encounter a range of emotions – emotions that more often than not lead one to feel like they are being be split in two. This moment of fragmentation is elaborated by the late <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/">Frantz Fanon</a> in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, where he recalls a similar feeling of being torn asunder by the weight of the history of race: “I was responsible not only for my body but also for my race and my ancestors. I cast an objective gaze over myself, discovered my blackness, my ethnic features; deafened by cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism, racial stigmas, slave traders, and above all, yes, above all, the grinning Y a bon Banania.” Blackness and Britishness, or even Blackness and European identity are not always understood to be synonymous. Although this is not the core focus of the film, it is a theme that is explored rather naturally, and it is a feeling that many Black people, people of colour and those with dual heritage living in the west will be able to relate to.

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This feeling of being split in two is referred to as “double consciousness” by 20th-century thinker W. E. B.Du Bois (and, more recently, British historian Paul Gilroy). Du Bois writes in his book The Souls of Black Folk: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others… One ever feels his twoness, – an American, a N****; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
During our interview, I asked Femi how he felt the notion of double consciousness impacted him, and the way he interacted with those around him during the making of the film. “What I think is shown on screen is how transformative the experience was and that happened in such an accelerated way due to the filming process,” Femi remarked. “I became more and more comfortable, and was able to interact more naturally with the people of the region. And I think that process was made easier as being someone of West African heritage, of Nigerian heritage, so literally just from the neighbouring country. Being able to then integrate, learn more about the culture and sing with the people was much easier to do than if you’re coming in as a complete outsider.”
The fact that the film has emerged during such a pivotal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/britain-glorify-violent-past-defensive-empire-drug">political awakening</a> in our current moment is not insignificant – Femi himself was an organising member of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement in Oxford and we’ve seen this come full circle with the international <a href="https://www.the-platform.org.uk/2020/06/07/the-closing-credits-of-black-lives/">Black Lives Matter</a> protests of 2020 and the removal of statues of slaveowners beginning with <a href="https://gal-dem.com/i-didnt-think-2020-would-have-me-crying-tears-of-joy-at-the-death-of-a-statue-but-here-we-are/">Edward Colston</a> in Bristol. I asked both Rob and Femi whether they thought the film was a salute to the decolonisation of knowledge and a challenge to European accounts of history. Rob answered, “I think that the film has a two-fold impact… In so far as we&#8217;re letting Nigerians and the Hausa people tell their own story, and we&#8217;re giving them a platform to tell their stories. And secondly, because we&#8217;re telling the story of Europe, very critically, we&#8217;re saying, this is also a story about France, and it&#8217;s not a pretty one.”
African Apocalypse perfectly slots into the conversation of ongoing colonial violence in the global context. Speaking further about the film’s timing, Femi comments: “There have been a number of conversations about colonialism happening all over the world last summer and even before. Statues of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a17b87ec-207d-4aa7-a839-8e17153bcf51">Leopold of Belgium</a>, who is referenced in the film, have been coming down in Belgium, and colonialism has become a hot topic. If the film had come out at another time, then the idea would have been for the film to have sparked a conversation about colonialism. Whereas now, it kind of slides into an ongoing conversation, which I think is good.”
The non-fiction re-telling African Apocalypse takes us on a historical and emotive journey. It breaks down a number of topics that some may shy away from for being too academic or too violent to explore. The film opens up the conversation of colonialism and the lasting impact that it has on particular communities around the world. If you are ready to delve into the conversation, African Apocalypse is a must watch.
African Apocalypse is now streaming on <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-african-apocalypse-2020-online">BFI Player</a>.

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Crowd on hill

Femi abattoir

Our writer sits down with director Rob Lemkin and co-writer Femi Nylander to discuss their new film African Apocalypse which takes viewers on an emotive historical journey

Confronting the Heart of Darkness in New Film African Apocalypse

Farewell Amor is the debut feature from filmmaker Ekwa Msangi. The film explores how physical separation and the passing of time impacts people and relationships, as well as the tragedy of displacement and how to maintain a sense of self when, in order to survive, the best option might be to fit in.
Farewell Amor, directed and written by Msangi, begins with a family reuniting in the arrivals hall of a New York airport. After 17 years of separation, Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) is able to bring his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson) to New York City where he has been residing. The family became displaced at the end of a war (possibly the Angolan civil war though it’s never referred to by name). As Walter obtains asylum in the US, his family remains in Africa and seeks refuge in Tanzania. It takes almost two decades for the family to be reunited.

I speak with Msangi over Zoom in early December, the tail-end of an unexpectedly difficult year for many. The global pandemic may have overshadowed all other tragedies, but it has not diminished other global issues. More and more people globally are finding themselves displaced. Anti-immigrant sentiment remains a deplorable constant in the west. Farewell Amor touches on an aspect of immigration that isn’t given space in popular media, namely family separation and the lengthy ordeal that often precedes a reunion. “The reasons that [many displaced people’s] home countries are so unliveable has to do with a lot of [western] foreign policies to begin with,” Msangi states. “I don&#8217;t believe that there is any person anywhere in the world who would just prefer to leave their home and their loves and their families and everything they know, to go somewhere that&#8217;s cold and does not want them.”
Msangi tells me that the film is partly inspired by her aunt and uncle who married in Tanzania in the mid-90s. Soon after their wedding, Msangi’s uncle received a student visa for the US and left Tanzania with every intention of bringing his wife and, at that point, their five-month-old right after him. To this day, Msangi’s aunt and uncle have been stuck in an endless cycle of visa applications, lasting over two decades now. “I was inspired by this, ‘what if’ story,” Msangi recalls. “What if the visas are no longer the issue? I just had this image of my uncle at the arrivals hall at the airport, waiting for my aunt and my cousin. What would he say? What would he be thinking? Would he recognise them? How do you receive the love of your life, after all these years? And what would have changed in your life, too — what would you have to be sweeping away in order to make space for this family to arrive?”

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While viewing this film, I found myself reflecting on my family and our histories. I haven&#8217;t experienced exactly the type of separation we see in this film, though I&#8217;ve witnessed something similar in my extended family. My immediate family and I left Africa together. I have aunts, uncles and cousins that made the journey alone to different parts of the world where they&#8217;ve established themselves and a new life. Some family members are still unable to visit the homes they left for reasons that frustrate even the most patient. Immigration is an illogical phenomenon. Many rules and criteria change on the whims of anti-immigrant governments, while individuals wait for so long for the security and relief of certainty.
The longer you’re away, the harder it can be to go back. Perhaps it is easier to want to stay with the memory of “home” and family as it was, and to be hesitant about reuniting with a changed country and changed people. In Farewell Amor, we observe Walter adopt the customs of his new country and struggle to empathise with his wife Esther, who represents what he left behind. After being uprooted from her home and separated from her husband, Esther finds solace and community in the church. Her beliefs provide her with the security and safety she needs but are shown in moments to be at odds with her new adopted home and transformed husband.

People adapt and assimilate, maybe for survival or out of preference for a life different to the one they left. It is almost unavoidable, especially when many western countries enforce assimilation through law or make living difficult if you do not fit in. Culture and individuality are praised when used for entertainment or aesthetic reasons. But in the areas of life that impact livelihood like education and work, personal expression is often limited or punished. As people, we are naturally drawn to the path of least resistance; we can’t judge anyone for doing what they feel they need to do to survive.
Walter has changed in subtle ways, particularly in how he speaks and the food he prepares. Farewell Amor explores the very complex question of what happens when you’re reunited with a person whose memories of you ceased to change from the moment you left? Phone and video calls are too sporadic and distant to provide a complete picture of growth. When you’re not present for those changes a person undergoes with time, you cannot adapt to them. So the people you are reunited with are as familiar as they are strange.

How are strong bonds like those between husband and wife, child and parent impacted by physical separation? Especially when separation divides parties in different social and political environments that impact people’s outlook on life. Personal relationships are hard enough without the added obstacle of separation. Leaving for a life elsewhere is not as simple as raising the money and buying a ticket. Immigration officials and rules will see to that. Msangi points out that many people have approached her to say they did not know this before seeing the film. The formal processes for starting a new life elsewhere, or bringing family once you’ve successfully managed to obtain asylum, is a matter of producing a lot of paperwork and paying a lot of money. After all this, nothing is guaranteed. For many displaced people this formality isn&#8217;t an option. The need for safety is urgent. Many take dangerous and life-threatening routes to secure a better life.
Being a young person experiencing a move like the one in Farewell Amor in this day and age is particularly interesting. Sylvia is a hopeful character for me because she seems almost the most equipped to handle this big change, thanks to technology. The internet exposes and allows us to connect with cultures so different from our own via a few clicks. At best, we find ourselves engaging with art (particularly music) and customs or cultures we may never have interacted with otherwise. But if we do, we have the knowledge and insight to be respectful and participate. “I felt very connected to Sylvia&#8217;s character in terms of being in a new environment and the culture shock; of being a young person and trying to have your own voice, but not really knowing what your voice is yet,” Msangi explains. “For me [like Sylvia], dance and music was definitely a saving grace. It was a place where I could be really confident and be myself and show myself.”

In Farewell Amor, Msangi tells an important story about an African immigrant family. Despite the heavier implications of the film, it is hopeful and warm. The thing about family bonds, no matter what, is that people mostly find a way to reconnect regardless of the obstacles that may be in the way. “For me, it&#8217;s a pleasure to tell authentic stories about my people,” Msangi says. “The whole reason I became a filmmaker was because I grew up in a time on the African continent where I never got to see images of me or the people around me or anything that was familiar. It was all imported stories about other folks. And that didn&#8217;t make any kind of sense to me, because I was surrounded by fun, exciting, interesting, creative people all day long.”
“We&#8217;re more than just trials and tribulations. The idea of telling stories about our people, not just on the continent, but everywhere in the diaspora, to me is super interesting and exciting.”
Farewell Amor (2020) is available to stream online through <a href="https://mubi.com/films/farewell-amor?gclid=CjwKCAiA25v_BRBNEiwAZb4-ZfdHblijbIbdgBlUeOxLfYvDJIBKGArUM3T_FhQrEAjX2tB6GPfejBoCD7YQAvD_BwE">Mubi</a> and is also available on <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjYlLi82u7tAhX1uXEKHQk2BCUQFjAAegQIAhAC&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2Ftd-en%2Ftitle%2F81336593&amp;usg=AOvVaw2lJc7kuPOnaZm3n-JSCca7">Netflix</a> in Africa.
<pre>Photo Credit: IFC Films / Farewell Amor</pre>

farewell-amor

Our writer speaks to Ekwa Msangi about her debut feature Farewell Amor, which explores the pressure of immigration on families, including the loss of a sense of self and home.

Farewell Amor: Fitting In and Back Together Again

The release of the documentary film, Ultraviolence, is a timely one. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in early 2020 sparked worldwide protests and put a spotlight on the treatment of Black people at the hands of the police. Yet these killings and those that came before, in the US as well as the UK, are not new incidents. For the friends and families of the victims that have been murdered by the police it is a story that is familiar and sadly keeps on repeating.
Ken Fero speaks to me over a Zoom meeting, as is the custom in these coronavirus aware times: “I can see all the changes that are happening, I can see that obviously there are lots more schemes happening and mentoring schemes for Black people and equality in representation, decolonising the curriculum, all that stuff, that’s all good. It has to happen. But the issue around [deaths in] police custody, it’s almost like it’s been forgotten or ignored. That’s why the Black Lives Matter Movement started. So Ultraviolence is trying to remind people what this is all really about.”
Ultraviolence uses CCTV recordings and real footage to show us the cruel nature of the UK legal system that protects the police officers responsible for the deaths of the innocent. The film takes us through a number of murder cases and the legal processes surrounding them.
Christopher Alder, 37, an ex-paratrooper and computer skills student, was arrested on the night of the 1st of April 1998, for being aggressive toward hospital staff. Prior to this, on that same night, he received a severe blow to the head while at a nightclub, which is said to have caused his aggressiveness. After being arrested, he was hauled into the police station, handcuffed, and left on the floor, while police officers laughed and joked at the reception desk. Christopher died moments later on the floor of the station. This is all captured on CCTV.
Brian Douglas, 33, who on 2nd of May 1995, while driving through South London with his friend, was stopped and searched by police officers Mark Tuffey and Paul Harrison. During the incident both were assaulted by police officers using the then new long-handled baton. Brian’s friend, Stafford, received a broken wrist. Brian himself suffered a severe blow to the head giving him a fractured skull, injuries that led to his death in hospital shortly after.
The infamous case of Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes, who, on 22nd of July 2005, was shot in the head at Stockwell Underground Station by police officers who mistook him for a terror suspect. His murder came at the height of increased tension due to the July 7th bombings (7/7) which had happened two weeks previously.

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Ultraviolence Janet Alder (L) sister of Christopher Alder with Ken Fero UV film director S

Other cases that this film touches upon include Paul Coker, who died in August 2005 in a cell at Plumstead Police Station after being restrained by 10 officers. At the time he was suffering from excited delirium/acute behavioural disorder. Rather than assessing him and deciding he needed medical attention, police arrested him instead for creating a disturbance. Roger Sylvester died on 11th of January 1999 in a psychiatric hospital after police officers handcuffed him and held him down for twenty minutes. As a result, he suffered a heart attack, lapsed into a coma and died a week later. The list of victims is not confined to one race either. On 22nd of September 1999, Harry Stanley, a white Scottish painter and decorator, was shot in the head by police marksmen after they were misinformed that Mr Stanley had a sawn-off shotgun.
What all these murders have in common is that, to this day, none of the police officers responsible have been charged, dismissed from duty or held accountable for these deaths.
This film doesn’t simply tell us what a tragedy these incidents are. It goes much further in order to expose a system that is devoid of justice for those families who have had a loved one murdered while in custody.
Director Ken Faro tells me: “It&#8217;s about saying the names of the police officers. And that&#8217;s a big difference between what we do in our films and what everybody else does in this country, because no other filmmaker will go as far as we have in terms of actually naming and showing [the] police officers [responsible]. What we&#8217;re interested in is what these officers have done, and how come they&#8217;ve got away with it.”
Ken adds that the media is not dealing with the roots of racism in the police force. “What we wanted to do with this film is to challenge.” In fact, he does just that and throws out a challenge. “I would challenge [the mainstream media] to show Ultraviolence. The time seems to be now. Nobody could have given them this kind of film at the most perfect moment. But they won’t go for it. For me, they are just as responsible.”

He goes further still to extend this responsibility. “I think the people have got responsibility as well. Everybody in this country has got responsibility to actually challenge the brutality that is being done in their name. One of the strongest slogans during the summer was ‘silence is violence’. That was just everywhere and that&#8217;s true. So what this film is trying to do is break the silence in any way possible.”
In Ultraviolence, we also see the struggle that siblings of the victims, Janet Alder and Brenda Weinberg, sisters of Christopher Alder and Brian Douglas respectively, are faced with as they talk to the CPS and IPCC. They demand to know why nothing has been done to convict their brothers’ murderers. Instead, they receive the message that the police are above the law.
“[We] got fed up with victim stories,” Ken states. “That’s all the media does. And we said no, that can&#8217;t happen. Because there&#8217;s always resistance. And that&#8217;s why we started <a href="https://vimeo.com/migrantmedia">Migrant Media</a> [his film company]. That&#8217;s why this film is about people that fight back.”
Ken believes there will always be resistance. The families who campaign for justice are heroes. But all too soon we forget them, we move on to the next issue, and the problem will be allowed to continue.
“Where we are now with deaths in police custody, the state I think will protect [police] officers at any cost,” Ken says. “I think we could be having 200 or 300 deaths in custody, and nothing would happen from the government’s point of view. And that&#8217;s what worries me. Where we are right now, especially with this <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-intelligence-agents-crimes-undercover-b556205.html">Bill that Boris Johnson has just put through</a> [that will give new powers to public authorities, including the police and the Serious Fraud Office, to commit crimes while working undercover], which will allow anybody that works for the state to basically get away with murder.”
Director of human rights organisation Reprieve, Maya Foa, also <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-intelligence-agents-crimes-undercover-b556205.html">comments on this Bill</a> stating: “Our intelligence agencies do a vital job in keeping the country safe, but there must be common sense limits to their agents’ activities, and we hope MPs will ensure these limits are written into the legislation.”
Sadly, it looks like we will be saying the names of even more victims in the not-so-distant future, but when we do, we should also say the names of the police officers that committed the crimes and repeat those names until the legal system finally holds them accountable.
Stay updated on upcoming Ultraviolence film screenings via the website at <a href="http://www.ultraviolencefilm.com/">www.ultraviolencefilm.com</a> or on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/migrantmedia/">@migrantmedia</a>.
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<pre>Photo Credit: Migrant Media</pre>

Ultraviolence by Ken Fero &#8211; Brenda Weinberg (R) sister of Brian Douglas

An interview with Ken Fero, director of a new documentary film that seeks to uncover the names behind deaths in UK police custody

An Interview with Ken Fero: Spotlight on UK Deaths in Police Custody in Ultraviolence

Director Francis Lee attempts to explore the rawness of human connection in this British costume drama based on the life of historical figure Mary Anning, in a film that ends up falling just a little bit short of winning our hearts. Ammonite’s enticing cast and bold narrative themes meant that the groundwork for a deep love story was definitely there, its execution just failed to seize the intimacy and emotion that resided in its potential.
A beach cast in ashy hues of grey and blue is the birthplace of discovery for fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet). Set in the 1840s, she spends her days treading the rocks of Lyme Regis, with nothing but the wailing gales, tumbling waves and her mother, Molly (Gemma Jones), for company. She lives a solitary life pursuing palaeontology, but the sexism that plagues the industry expels Mary into the mundanity of selling seashell-encrusted trinkets to tourists.
When Roderick Murchison (James McArdle) arrives unannounced requesting to work alongside Mary and enrich his fossil hunting experience, she begrudgingly agrees knowing the disturbance this will bring to her gloomy yet contented life, imbued with routine and order. However, it is not the presence of Roderick that breaks the peace, it is his wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan).
Charlotte and Roderick’s relationship is void of intimacy. His controlling, abusive and oppressive manner sucks the life out of her. She is presented to us like an empty shell, much like the ones Mary collects and half-heartedly glues onto mirrors and jewellery boxes. Skin like paper and glassy-eyed, Charlotte is suffering from “a mild melancholia” according to Roderick, so he suggests that she stay with Mary in Lyme Regis as a form of therapy, the sea air her medicine and Mary her life support. The motif of fossils is used to represent Mary’s overdue unearthing of lesbian identity, buried by societal taboo and untold history.
Lee is no stranger to portraying queer love stories, with his debut God’s Own Country (2017) delving into male homosexuality with poignancy and sensitivity. This time, Ammonite’s two exceptional leads are what elevate the otherwise lacking story. Ronan plays Charlotte with a lovable grace; our hearts ache at her lows and soar at her highs. Winslet is unrecognisable as Mary, one which will likely be viewed as the best in her career. We can relate to her character even though her story is so detached from our realities, and understand her with very little dialogue.
It would be expected that two brilliant performances would make for an impactful chemistry. However, there is an air of unbelievability to the pair’s dynamic. Their romance is like a wave crashing to the shore, slow-building and over all too quickly. It felt like the narrative was rushed as the physical side of their relationship didn’t appear until halfway through the film; the build-up was certainly there but it can only go so far as a form of storytelling.
At times, the choreography of homoeroticism seems to feed into an unrealistic portrayal of female pleasure. If more time was devoted to the women growing to understand each other’s bodies and letting us linger in the intimacy, their chemistry would have felt more authentic.
Ammonite’s devotion to exploring the beauty of human connection makes erotic display all the more fundamental and it’s a shame it didn’t have the same impact as other scenes. Idyllic shots of iridescence as the pair frolic in the ocean depicts one of the rare instances where the colour palette warms and Mary’s face does too. Ammonite could have benefitted from more scenes like this, giving the sex scenes more of an emotional purpose, and moving away from voyeurism and closer to meaning.
The buzz around this film was partly due to it baring similarities to Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire released earlier this year. Although this conjured excitement, it may also have led to Ammonite’s downfall. Intimacy is something Sciamma depicts beautifully within a sensory experience, and although Lee tries to explore this using a similar technique, it doesn’t quite create the same immersion due to the importance he places on guesswork and tension. Yet both films effectively use a lack of dialogue to pay homage to a history of people forced to repress their sexuality and hide their stories. Living in silence, but still living nonetheless.
In this light, Mary Anning was a real palaeontologist and her sexuality remains ambiguous. There is no proof that she shared such a relationship with real-life geologist Charlotte Murchison but creative treatment is a wonderful thing. Using Mary’s story as a vessel for a homosexual romance between two interesting and intelligent women, set during a time when this would have been taboo, remains important for queer representation.
Ammonite is an example of a film’s on-screen talent upstaging the narrative. Without Winslet and Ronan dedicating themselves to the roles, the film would sadly be painfully average. Lee’s thought-provoking characters promise a crucial journey of discovery but its fixation on build-up and lack of affection stands in the way of us truly falling in love with the union. In the same way Mary digs through pebbles and mud to find something of significance, Ammonite needed to dig a little deeper.
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<pre>Photo Credit: Ammonite </pre>

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Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan put on a great performance in Ammonite, but their love story lacks intimacy.

Ammonite: A Stony Forbidden Love

We reported <a href="https://www.the-platform.org.uk/2020/10/06/the-platform-preview-to-the-bfi-london-film-festival-2020/">earlier this month</a> that the London Film Festival would be a more intimate affair than usual, much of it at home, with no gala performances and a smaller selection of films.
Of course, the festival did still have its headline acts. Ammonite, its closing finale, was a touching tale of love set in 1840s Lyme Regis (which we will review at greater length soon), with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as its leads. It was an effective if conventional choice, like the festival opener, Steve McQueen’s historical recreation Mangrove. Personally, I found McQueen’s other entry to the festival, Lovers Rock, more interesting, although a minor film and a kind of ‘B-side’ to Mangrove. McQueen’s genius is more for establishing a certain setting than in plot and it is put to especially good use in this almost non-narrative film of a Ladbroke Grove house party thrown at some point in the 1980s.
In the absence of an official competition the online audience picked the festival winner, awarding the prize to Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, about a group of schoolteachers who realise that their job is more fun if they drink every day. While there’s no arguing with taste I found this somewhat moralistic film a rather white, male and middle-aged choice compared to the diversity that the festival had put effort into displaying elsewhere.
The clear winner for me of the more crowd-pleasing films was the gorgeous, touching, One Night in Miami. Based on a stage play by first-time director Regina King, it imagines a meeting in a Miami hotel room between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, as they each contemplate a life changing decision: Clay to join the Muslim Brotherhood and Malcolm to leave it, Cooke to address social change in his music and Brown to depart the NFL to try a career in Hollywood. The decisions are as personal as they are political, and its central question – what does black success mean in a white society – is made to resound with a contemporary relevance despite the retro setting.
However, the festival is a chance to see films which won’t ever get the red carpet treatment. So here’s my list of six of the best to look out for beyond the big releases:

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one night in miami

<h5>UNDINE 
Dir. Christian Petzold (Germany/France)</h5>
Undine turns the conventional romance of a random city encounter into an absorbing and ultimately disquieting tale of love and pain. It will be familiar territory for viewers already acquainted with director Christian Petzold and lead actress Paula Beer, but it develops his concern with Europe’s historical scars in a more allegorical direction. Its lead character, Undine, is a guide to the architectural history of Berlin and is named after a water nymph of ancient legend. She becomes a figure who skirts the enigmatic realms of fantasy and disappointment, memory and myth.
<h5>NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN 
Dir. Małgorzata Szumowska, Michael Englert (Poland/Germany)</h5>
Another film that holds a delicate balance between social commentary and fantasy is this film about a Ukranian masseur who accrues a cult following in a wealthy Polish suburb. Born in Pripyat in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, masseur Zhenia seems at first like he might have arrived as part of a moral lesson about migrant labour for the privileged members of the gated community, who simultaneously depend upon and look down on him. But as they fetishise the healing power of his tender strength, the near-wordless presence of this mysterious outsider comes to take on an altogether different, almost magical-realist quality, as the possibly sacred emissary of some cosmic power.
<h5>THE INTRUDER 
Dir. Natalia Meta (Argentina/Mexico)</h5>
This Argentine film takes its enigmas in a creepier direction. Starting out in comic vein as a woman realises that she doesn’t actually like the man she has gone on holiday with, his death soon after their arrival paradoxically makes him someone she can never truly be rid of. Meanwhile, she becomes the subject of the rather insistent attentions of an admirer she meets in the church where she sings, and, in a further inconvenience, her mother randomly decides to move in indefinitely. As a voiceover artist for horror films, this film is also part of a sub-genre of thrillers about a sound recordist, along with Blow Out, The Conversation and Berberian Sound Studio, that explore the eerily disembodied nature of the voice. The intruder of the title could thus be any one of a number of uncomfortably close beings, including her relationship to her own physical self.
<h5>A COMMON CRIME 
Dir. Francisco Márquez (Argentina)</h5>
This second Argentine thriller is another imaginative recreation of the slow falling apart of the boundaries, and the sanity, of its central female protagonist, but the dissolution here reveals a series of uncomfortable truths about social class. Cecilia is a university lecturer, happily able to quote Althusser and Gramsci on bourgeois ideology. But when her maid’s son knocks on her door, her refusal to help him has fateful consequences. While showing up her conformity to the ultimately brutal logic that it is her day job to critique, this is also the first film I have ever seen that manages to find dramatic material in a dissertation supervision session, and a superb combination of psychological and political insight.
<h5>AFTER LOVE 
Dir. Aleem Khan (UK)</h5>
The success of this deeply moving British drama owes in large part to the central performance of Joana Scanlan, who plays Mary Husain, a resident of Dover whose ferry-captain husband Husain dies unexpectedly in the opening sequence, only for her to find out that he had a secret life just over the border in Calais. The film follows her as she works her way into the household of his secret mistress and son. While such a plot would in less capable hands be barely credible, the quiet brilliance of Scanlan’s performance means that the themes of betrayal, race, death and mourning are played with intelligent subtlety and heart-breaking conviction.
<h5>LIMBO 
Dir. Ben Sharrock (UK)</h5>
It was a good year for British features, as shown by this comedy-drama about refugees seeking asylum in Scotland. What begins as a deadpan, rather absurdist culture-clash comedy turns to an intense portrait of the tragedies of dislocation. The humour’s absurdism is a nice way to show up both the awkwardness of cultural awareness and the bureaucratic cruelty of the exile situation. But it reaches real emotional depth in its second half as it probes the travails of Omar, a gifted young musician and Syrian refugee who must contend with the family he has left behind, the war he has fled and the music he may never play again.

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Limbo Film 2020

<pre>Featured: LIMBO by Ben Sharrock</pre>

After Love Film 2020 cropped

A Chernobyl-born cult leader, a hypocritical university lecturer, and a Syrian musician turned refugee are some of the memorable characters in our selection from this year’s London Film Festival.

Six of the Best from the BFI London Film Festival, 2020

What does a film festival do when festivity is banned?
It is often said that crises lead to change, but the changes we make when in crisis mode reveal our essential natures more than any planned or premeditated actions do. In the classic 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, when the US suburbs are infected by a zombie apocalypse, the mindless hordes continue to perform the one habitual ability they have left: they go to the mall. In times of coronavirus, when the higher functions of sociability are denied and even the malls close down, we go en masse online.
Lockdown has been a boom time for streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, whose captive global audience is of a scale that dwarfs the ‘Major Studios’ of Hollywood yore. But while film may be thriving as entertainment, cinema as an institution is in grave peril, its production halted; and theatrical exhibition trickled to a socially-distanced minimum.
The Cannes Festival <a href="https://ew.com/movies/film-festivals/cannes-2020-special-event-october/">cancelled</a> all its offline events as a response to the first wave of the pandemic back in June. If our autumn heralds a grim sequel to those early summer times, the BFI London Film Festival’s hybrid programme seeks to avoid such disruption, balancing online and in-person activity in a way that is neither lockdown nor normality. Tickets are on sale to reduced-capacity auditoriums over the festival. Around 100 fewer feature films are being exhibited this year, with only 58 titles to choose from and no Official Competition category. While film production was halted internationally this year, this slow-down will only really be apparent at next year’s festival. This year, one can assume that the larger distribution companies have decided to scale back their involvement, given that there are far fewer A-list titles than usual. Presumably the expense involved in shipping over the big stars and movie talent, plus all of the other promotional activities that the big companies usually devote to a festival, must not seem like a great investment when you’re playing to limited audiences, with no red carpet or gala events.
The withdrawal of the big-money releases leaves a more intimate and perhaps more diverse festival, which will play across the country both in cinemas and on streaming services. The festival opens with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen’s Mangrove, an appropriate choice to coincide with Black History Month, centring on the landmark true-life battle of Black activists <a href="https://platformonline.uk/articles/frank-crichlow-and-the-mangrove">&#8216;The Mangrove Nine&#8217;</a> against police racism. It ends with Ammonite, about palaeontologist Mary Anning, played by Kate Winslet (co-starring Saoirse Ronan). Both of these films indicate the continuing importance of historical drama to prestige British cinema.
The big festival-circuit hit playing this year is Nomadland, a chronicle of recession-era America starring Frances McDormand, winner of both the Toronto and Venice festivals this summer. In a historical what-if, Regina King’s One Night in Miami puts Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, James Brown and Sam Cooke together for in a hotel room one evening in 1964. An artistic partnership we eagerly anticipate is Spike Lee’s direction of Talking Heads singer David Byrne in American Utopia, a film of the Broadway musical. Meanwhile Supernova promises a two-hander between Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, both of whom advance previews report to be on top form.
Riz Ahmed stars as a British-Pakistani rapper who suffers a life-threatening illness in Mogul Mowgli. I also look forward to Relic, the directorial debut for Natalie Erika James and another entry into the increasingly rich body of contemporary horror cinema directed by women. Bad Tales promises a cynical take on human nature amid a group of family dramas set over one summer, a film made up of episodes and, thus, a format which seems to be making a comeback after films like Wild Tales, Certain Women and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I am also hoping it will provide a sighting of that <a>increasingly rare animal</a>, a modern Italian film worth getting excited about.
No contemporary director is better at bearing the continuing scars of Europe’s unhappy past than Christian Petzold, and so we are keen to watch Undine, a Berlin-set romance whose title refers to a mythic water nymph. Never Gonna Snow Again appears to be an intriguing Polish-German social satire on migration. Farewell Amor promises a more earnest, heartrending tale of exile as an Angolan man is reunited with his wife and daughter in New York.
From the still images I’ve seen, the Irish animation Wolfwalkers seems to be a beautifully inventive rendition of myth and legend in a time of colonialism. The festival also features a restoration of the banned and once presumed lost 1976 Iranian gothic film Chess of the Wind.
Perhaps the escapism of cinema and its grand picture palaces was always a historically limited model, destined one day inevitably to lose ground to the individualised, private sphere of the home. With video-on-demand already being the major way in which we watch films, driving the continuing proliferation of screen media into our homes, on our laps and our mobile devices, we were already a long way from the larger-than-life communal experience of the picture palace well before Covid-19 hit. The hybrid events at the festival, its nationwide reach and its more intimate roster suggest that even crisis can be a spur to new experiences and continued invention. We shall be back with our verdicts after a few weeks of assiduous home viewing.
The BFI London Film Festival takes place <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/strands/feature-films" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/strands/feature-films&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1602061595870000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGioY1LUoVY_lvsmJtNPPihA-QLhA">7 to 18 October 2020</a>. 
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<pre>Photo Credit: Nomadland</pre>

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Our film editor Dr Louis Bayman previews the selection at this year’s online version of the BFI London Film Festival.