33 x Around the Sun

In this barren epoch for genuinely independent film – independent in production, form and content – it’s a real pleasure to welcome this new London feature into the frame, eccentric kin to the hybrid dérives of Andrew Kötting and Ben Hopkins. Starring Lars Rudolph (the compelling presence at the heart of Bela Tarr’s ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’), Hardwick’s lo-budget, hi-ambition vision quest is a one-of-a-kind take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a descent into the underworld (here reconfigured as the East End) in search of one’s love, that encounters a Brick Lane Sunday market’s-worth of chancers, street denizens and plodding coppers, not to mention a film crew on one jaded shoot too many. Made for next to nothing, ‘33X’ is a maverick movie looking leftfield in all-too-mainstream times; a strange, personal message in a bottle, thrown out to those longed-for friendly shores.