Kaleem Aftab

What makes a filmmaker cool? In the heyday of the studio system it might have been about creative autonomy, an office on the lot and the studio barman knowing how to mix your Martini. In the heady, revolutionary days of the ’60s and ’70s, a devil-may-care attitude, radical new stories to tell, and ideally a beard of some description might have marked you out as the hipster’s auteur of choice. Times have changed, though. The moviemaking world has fewer boundaries, more entry points and finally, slowly but surely, more hunger to share stories by women and people of colour.  There’s a long way to go but we wanted to celebrate a time of gradual change by singling out the filmmakers who are genuinely moving the dial. The ones swinging for the fences in their choice of material and the way they’re bringing it to the screen. They’re not all new names – you’ll find some old stalwarts on here – but they all have in common a restless urge to do something different, exciting, bold. They come from across the planet and reflect all genres, and every kind of movie and moviemaking style. To take it a step further, we’ve asked a few of them – Rian Johnson, Barry Jenkins and Lynne Ramsay, among others – to share what makes them tick as movie lovers: the scenes that make them laugh hardest, the cinemas they stan for, the cities that inspire them, and the movies that have left them cowering in the back row. Even the posters that they had up on their bedroom walls growing up. Turns out that a lo

How do we know that we are in love? That’s the question at the heart of the melancholic romantic comedy Fingernails, in which a superb Jessie Buckley plays ex-teacher Anna, who has to decide whether loving someone is the same as being in love.  Some may argue that Anna is in a win-win situation because she has to choose between staying with her dependable long-term beau, Ryan, played by The Bear hunk Jeremy Allen White, or acting on a crush she has on new colleague Amir, essayed by the equally dashing Riz Ahmed. The decision is made all the more complex because Ryan and Amir have similar vibes, and she lives in a world where a microwave oven can reliably tell if you're in love with your partner by analysing your ripped-off fingernail. Ouch! It's not just because of Anna’s dyed reddish hair that summon to mind Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry’s classic, which revolves around a machine that purports to make you forget about your ex. Fingernails is directed by Greek director Christos Nikou, whose brilliant debut, Apples, featured a character who probably wished he had Gondry’s machine as he tries to forget about a former love during a memory pandemic. In his beguiling follow-up Nikou takes his musings on love even further. It’s a rebuke to anyone who thinks algorithms are the answer to human problems The timeless quality of the compatibility question – one that has fired up philosophers, poets and dinner chatter since Adam and Eve – is demonstrated by Fingerna

British-Nigerian playwright Adura Onashile (‘Expensive Shit’) transitions to the big screen with a first film that’s based on her own experiences growing up with her single mum in a Glaswegian block of flats in the 1980s. She’s updated the story with relevant contemporary references, including the Grenfell fire. It feels zeitgeisty, although never journalistic or campaigning. Almost uniquely, this tale of African immigrants in social housing isn’t an exercise in miserablism; instead, Onashile crafts a sympathetic, poetic and empathetic portrait of a relationship between mother and daughter, with the emphasis on love and protection. But as we discover through snippets of flashbacks, there is also trauma. It arises as African immigrant Grace (Dèborah Lukumuena, the César-winning find from 2016’s excellent Divines) walks the city streets. Every loud noise, lit cigarette, or raucous group of locals creates anxiety. Grace is a cleaner who works night shifts, forced to navigate the city despite only feeling safe behind closed doors. Everyone is untrustworthy, even those showing genuine warmth and sympathy. The psychological scars are deep. Almost uniquely, this tale of African immigrants isn’t an exercise in miserablism Eleven-year-old Ama (newcomer Le’Shantey Bonsu) is the eponymous ‘girl’. She's been skipping school, which has sparked social services into action, with the mother and daughter hiding whenever they hear a dreaded knock on the door. When Ama is forced back into the

Joyland has been a breakthrough movie from the moment it became the first Pakistani film to play at Cannes. Its Queer Palm win, for the fest’s best LGTBQ+ movie, owed plenty to its perception-busting power – not just of gender normative behaviour, but also of the types of story told in this part of the world. Those expecting music, dance numbers, and the OTT acting associated with an increasingly out-of-date western idea of Bollywood are in for a big surprise. This is a movie full of nuance, where it pays to look out for the small gestures.  The movie’s successes to date – it’s also on the long list for an Oscar nomination – are down to the skilful storytelling of director Saim Sadiq. Born in Lahore, he studied screenwriting at New York's Columbia Film School and his short film, Darling, set in the world of trans dancers, was an eye-catching intro to his talents. There’s a trans dancer at the heart of Joyland too, but before we meet Biba (Alina Khan), Sadiq introduces us to what on the surface seems like a traditional Pakistani family, but it’s one where patriarchy is already in crisis.  That frequently wrathful patriarch (Salmaan Peerzada) is in a wheelchair but still feared by his children and grandchildren. However, the world he presides over is already shifted away from traditional roles. He's aghast that his daughter-in-law Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), a make-up artist, is the chief breadwinner, while his son, her husband Haider (Ali Junejo), is responsible for looking after t

You won’t see many more visceral and incredible opening sequences than the one that kicks off Romain Gavras’s Athena. It’s an 11-minute one-take tracking shot that takes us through a Parisian estate under siege. The hand-to-hand combat feels like The Raid, the camera trickery is is Children of Men-esque, and the lighting is at least partly provided by exploding Molotov cocktails. It starts with a teenager’s death at the hands of cops on an edgy banlieue – the 13-year-old brother of Abdel (No Time to Die’s Bali Benssalah) – and from there rides shotgun with characters in the middle of the carnage. The admittedly thin plot is straight out of La Haine and Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables (perhaps unsurprising in Ly’s case as he serves as co-writer on this). Modelled on a Greek tragedy (Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare), the lack of dialogue for exposition is maddeningly confusing. But Gavras wants the audience to feel like the protagonists, unable to find a safe footing, exposed to the war zone atmosphere, and unsure about what will happen next. Athena is a highbrow action film where the plot about three brothers responding to the unfolding events with different selfish motivations reveals itself flittingly.  Anyone who loves their cinema to be a rollercoaster ride will soak it up And those bursts of action double down impressively on the type of bravura filmmaking that is Gavras’s stock-in-trade. His list of riotous (in both senses) music videos includes MIA’s ‘Born Fr

The courtroom is one of the most fascinating spaces in cinema. On the one hand, it's an environment where protagonists can relay their thoughts and actions without their words feeling like forced exposition; on the other, the questioning and answering can feel stagey and dialogue-heavy, where the audience is hearing rather than seeing the action. They are challenging to get right. The best ones, like Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, will give some insight into the human condition, with the director using the courtroom high jinks to ask whether it should be society on trial. Saint Omer was the richly deserved winner of the Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival’s runner-up prize. It builds on Diop’s sharply-drawn work as a documentarian – her most recent, Nous (2021), took an empathetic look at Paris’s underclass.  And she uses that same documentary nous to full effect in Saint Omer. The story's based on the real-life trial of Fabienne Kabou in 2015, a Senegalese immigrant accused of murdering her 15-month-old baby. Diop attended the trial and took copious notes, with dialogue from the trial making its way into the text of the screenplay. Her fictionalisation of the events contextualise the prosecution within the borders of immigration, motherhood and colonialism. It does this by witnessing the events through her on-screen surrogate Rama (Kayije Kagame), a successful novelist and academic we first see teaching a uni class about the impact of the shaven-headed women in the Marguerite Duras-

Back to the Future first introduced the idea to mainstream cinema audiences that if you go back in time and interact at an event, a new future will be created – and not necessarily for the better. In a nutshell, that's the conceit of Irish director Andrew Legge’s debut feature film LOLA, even if it arrives at this ‘science’ in a somewhat convoluted manner. An intertitle explains that in a house in Sussex, some movie reels were found dating from 1941. How very Blair Witch Project. But, with its counterfactual twists, this is more like Robert Harris's ‘Fatherland’. In 1938, two female inventors, Martha (Stefanie Martini) and Thomasina (Emma Appleton), switch on LOLA, a machine that sees future British TV transmissions. Rather delightfully, the duo care more about pop stars David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Nina Simone than they do about the heinous societal structures that informed their music. They steal music from the future to pass off as their own and bet on the horses to make a living. Twenty-three wins on the spin mean they don’t have to work again. Gee-whizz. Aesthetically, it’s as stylised as Darren Aronofsky’s monochrome Pi. Cinematographer Oona Menges's black-and-white images are overlaid with designer scratches and the archive TV footage grainy. As we learn about the machine, it promises to be joyous and entertaining, but it’s a false dawn. Before you can say ‘blitzkrieg’, soldiers arrive and it turns into a standard ‘save England from the Nazis’ caper. The premise’s limita

The Toy Story franchise is the spine of the Pixar universe. When Andy was first given Woody and Buzz Lightyear back in 1995, Pixar announced itself as a studio that could make CGI animated films beloved by kids and adults in equal measure. From Andy's house on 234 Elm Street, Pixar became synonymous with mixing great drama with killer jokes and sly visual wit. And who hasn’t casually dropped the phrase ‘to infinity and beyond’ into conversation? So what’s gone so wrong with Lightyear? Pixar has done a raft of successful sequels, so it’s not that. In recent years, when fans started to fret that the studio had finally run out of great original ideas, they pulled out Soul and Turning Red. But a spin-off? It’s the hellish land after infinity and beyond.  The basic idea is solid, which only makes the execution even more disappointing. We learn that when Andy got his Lightyear toy, it was a figurine from his favourite movie – and this is that movie. But perhaps true to form, the favourite film of a seven-year-old kid is… not that great. Pixar is meta, but surely not so meta as to purposely make a dodgy sci-fi blockbuster to fit the early ’90s kids’ movie vibe?  Lightyear, the film within a film, starts with Buzz on a mission and narrating his life story to mission control. To distinguish Toy Story Buzz from the (younger) movie Buzz, Chris Evans replaces Tim Allen as the voice. And he brings some subtle points of difference, most notably in dialing down the glee in that old ‘Infinit

The American Dream is more like the American Scream in the cinematic world of Sean Baker, whose movies Tangerine and The Florida Project mark him out as one of the most exciting auteurs working today. His latest once again immerses us in an America full of juxtapositions, sex work and donuts. Red Rocket is an engrossing state-of-the-nation comedy designed to make us feel so dirty that no amount of washing will remove the sweat from our nether parts. Did we really just feel affection for manchild Saber (Simon Rex) grooming 17-year-old Strawberry (Suzanna Son) to be a porn star, his ticket out of terrible Texas and back to Hollywood? Does it make a difference that she's savvy and wants to take advantage of the fact that sex sells, as it’s better than working in a donut shop? Is sell-ebrity the only way to get ahead in an Insta world?  It’s 2016, and on the television set Trump is battling Hillary on the campaign trail. Man versus woman. Good versus evil. Or a contest where no matter the victor, not much will change for the poor. And poor is one thing down-on-his-luck former award-winning porn star Saber doesn't want to be. Yet here he is, begging his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and mother-in-law (Brenda Deiss) for a spot on the couch, promising to get a job and pay some rent. Red Rocket immerses us in an America full of juxtapositions, sex work and donuts It’s soon apparent that promises are not something that narcissist Saber keeps. A fantasist, everything in his life re

British writer ​Alex Wheatle has published 15 ​novels since his debut, Brixton Rock, in 1999 and he was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008. His books aimed at young adults are remarkable in chronicling British life from a Black perspective. The writing is rhythmic and sharp. Despite the acclaim and awards, ​the ​chances are you haven’t heard of him​: B​eing a Black British author is a niche living, no matter your level of success. Hopefully, the name recognition should change now that he has become the title character of ​a Steve McQueen film.  For Alex Wheatle, McQueen and ​his ​co-writer Alastair Siddons have taken a leaf out of Brixton Rock and told the story of the 1981 Brixton uprising, through the real-life experience of the author​. Wheatle was amongst the 82 people arrested following days of demonstrations and resistance by Afro-Caribbean residents against police failings, violence and discrimination. However, it's first and foremost a teenage coming-of-age tale​, 65 electric minutes​ ​packed with financial hardship, racial demonisation and reggae.  The film focuses on ​the writer’s formative years, judiciously avoiding​ ​​explaining how and​ why he became a great novelist. ​In fact, until the​ ​credit​s roll​, the uninitiated ​would have no idea that ​he's a ​fledgeling author​ at all​. ​In the early days of Thatcher’s Britain, it was the emerging reggae scene that was Wheatle’s passion​. H​e went by the DJ ​name Yardman Ire​ and was ​a founding member

Brit director Sally Potter (‘Orlando’, ‘The Party’) utilises the star power of Javier Bardem, Elle Fanning and Laura Linney in a dementia drama that promises a lot but is ultimately empty-headed. Bardem is Leo, a man living with frontotemporal dementia who revels in having a bedroom window that looks right out onto a busy New York train track. When we first meet him is lying prostrate on his bed, his clothes strewn across the floor. He’s a wreck, which explains the panicked phone calls and concern of his twenty-something daughter Molly (Fanning). She decides to take the morning off work to get him checked out. The narrative jumps back and forth in time, reflecting how Leo looks at the world. Each moment delivers a tiny bit of a puzzle explaining who he is, more often than not to questions no one is asking. For example, why is Molly so blonde when Leo is so dark-haired and the love of his life, Dolores, is played by Salma Hayek? Leo’s an author haunted by his ghosts, the decisions he hasn’t made, or couldn’t make, hence the title of the movie. The drama is full of empty promises, with an unsatisfying end, which is forewarned in a laughable scene taking place in Greece when Bardem chats to two young ladies. There are several car crashes; most notably, the decision to tackle and lambast Trump’s treatment of Mexican immigrants comes out of nowhere. It isn’t a total write-off, though. Bardem’s commanding performance echoes his Cannes best-actor winning turn in ‘Biutiful’ and Fanni

Finnish maverick J-P Valkeapää’s third film has everything: a terrific title, a death in the family, a time jump, teenage angst, adult angst, lousy parenting, hallucinations, remorse, guilt, a dog eating human discards and a whole lot of BDSM. It also knows that any self-respecting movie in which a dominatrix’s whip unleashes emotional healing should liberally use reds taken from the palette of Nagisa Oshima’s notorious take on sexual experimentation, ‘In the Realm of the Senses’. Every five-year-old knows red means danger, but forlorn widower Juha (Pekka Strang, best known for the title role in ‘Tom of Finland’) forgets this when he stumbles into a torture chamber and gets taken down by Mona (Krista Kosonen, Finland’s most prominent star) with fight moves that would make the Bride in ‘Kill Bill’ proud. Mona’s futuristic bondage wear – costume designer Sari Suominen nods to ‘Blade Runner’ – also gives good visual. The numerous club scenes look like ’80s pop videos by way of Nicolas Winding Refn, which is code for saying cinematographer Pietari Peltola does a neon-tastic job. It’s all very kinky kitsch. It’s through this happenstance meeting that Juha discovers asphyxiation makes him recall his wife who drowned in an accident some years before, for which he blames himself. Now he’s looking after his tongue-piercing teenage daughter, whose growing pains make her embarrassed about square dad. That turns to befuddlement when he starts coming home with his face looking like a Pica

日本人映画監督の是枝裕和は昨年、カンヌ国際映画祭パルムドール賞を受賞した傑作『万引き家族』を世に送り出した。表面上は、捨てられた子どもを見つけた万引き犯がその子どもを家に連れ帰り、実の親が接していたよりも家族らしく扱うというストーリーだ。是枝の新作『真実』は第76回ベネチア国際映画祭のコンペティション部門で上映され、金獅子賞を競っている（2019年10月現在、映画『ジョーカー』が受賞）。本作では、家族の関係が『万引き家族』よりも一層率直に描かれている。しかし子に与える親のダメージは同じように重要である。もし是枝の新作というだけではワクワクできなくても、母娘を演じるのがカトリーヌ・ドヌーブとジュリエット・ビノシュという豪華な出演陣ということを知ったら胸が高鳴るかもしれない。しかし残念ながら、是枝もこの伝説のスターたちに影響を受けてしまったようだ。いつもの支配と統制が本作では表れていない。俳優たちは自分のペースでふるまい、結果はニュアンスに富んだというよりも、派手さを感じる演技となっている。「真実」をテーマとした本作に、スーパースターをキャスティングしたのにはそれなりの理由がある。是枝はドヌーヴとビノシュ、アルコール依存症の夫を演じるイーサン・ホークのスターの名声を用いて、分かる人には分かるジョークを所々に挟んでいるのだ。映画『8人の女たち』と『しあわせの雨傘』でフランソワ・オゾンは、ドヌーブが自身を模倣するのを鑑賞する面白さを教えてくれた。 本作での冒頭の面白さを占めるのは、ドヌーブの演技によるものである。冒頭部分で、ジャーナリストがドヌーブにインタビューする際、彼女が演じているのは自分なのか架空の役割なのか、最初ははっきりしない。監督たちと寝たことや、映画業界の指導者となったことなど、ドヌーブの答えは自身の経歴に着想を得たもののようだった。架空の映画や女優たちの名前を挙げた時、ようやくドヌーブは登場人物のファビエンヌを演じていることが明らかになるのだ。ファビエンヌは自叙伝を書き、ニューヨークを拠点としているシナリオライターである娘のリュミール（ビノシュ）を招待し、パリでの出版記念イベントに出席する。娘とその家族はインタビューの最中に到着し、そこでファビエンヌは、ホーク演じる夫が「俳優」を名乗っていることをあざける。ホークはこのささるような冗談に耐えることでノリの良さをアピールするが、これはいかにも彼らしい。しかし残念ながら、映画のユーモアは軽いからかいを超えることはない。本作が脱線するのは、是枝監督が物語にペーソスを加えるために、ビノシュ演じるリュミールを舞台の中心に据えるときである。リュミールはいくつかの感傷的な発見をする。彼女の母は実はひどく残忍ではなく、おそらく彼女自身の記憶がゆがんでいるといった発見である。幸福感にあふれたトーンが鑑賞する側の神経に触る。映画界の権威ある賞の何が素晴らしい監督に、自然な得意分野を捨て、審査員が好む傑作を作ろうとさせるのだろうか。たいてい、彼らは失敗に終わる。映画『別離』でオスカーを受賞し、その後の『ある過去の行方』がカンヌで酷評を受けたアスガル・ファルハーディがその好例だ。是枝の『真実』は、少なくともある一定の水準は満たしているだけ、まだ良いと言える。原文：  Kaleem Aftab2019年10月11日（金）TOHOシネマズ 日比谷ほか全国公開公式サイトはこちら

By now you have seen Barbie (and if you haven’t stop, reading and go to the cinema now) and delighted in the fact that director Greta Gerwig has created a film that not only has a brilliant plot but is full of amazing pop cultural references. Fans will be searching for Easter Eggs for years. Here are ten of our favourite cultural moments we spotted from the movie, from amazing costumes to movie references, and then the more political subtexts including digs at incel culture, the fragility of men and world politics.  Photograph: Warner Bros. Barbie toy history The film is full of costumes and characters that have been released in the Barbie range since the doll first appeared in 1959. The first costume we see is the original Barbie swimsuit. Discontinued toys such as Midge, a discontinued pregnant Barbie played by Emerald Fennell, Tanner the Golden Retriever, Growing up Skipper (Barbie’s sister), who went through puberty and grew breasts in 1975 is rectified, as is Barbie’s short lived little sister Tutti, and Video Girl Barbie with a hidden camera. Barbie aficionados will have a field day.  That controversial map of China  Barbie was banned in Vietnam and caused much controversy with some Republican politicians because of a hand drawn map depicting the world supporting disputed Chinese territorial claims to the South China Sea. The fact that this map was in Barbie Land is in fact an incredibly sly reference to many of the dolls being ‘Made in China’. Photograph: Warner Br

The red carpet has been rolled up, the movie stars have jetted away, and the party victims have been swept off the Croisette. Yes, the Cannes Film Festival is done and dusted for another year, after 12 days providing festivalgoers with its usual mix of lovely surprises (Close, Aftersun), aching disappointments (Three Thousand Years of Longing), diverting oddities (Crimes of the Future) and Hollywood behemoths (Elvis). The festival, of course, has its own awards ceremony, but we’ve dug a bit deeper to celebrate the actors, scenes, dialogue, parties, and even the dogs who, for better or worse, helped make Cannes what it was. Without this lot, it would have been 150 percent duller. Weirdest sex scene: Crimes of the Future Last year’s Cannes was famous for boasting some outré sex scenes – including one film, Titane, that had its protagonist getting jiggy with a car. This Cannes was a milder effort, but David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future did keep the flame alive with a scene in which Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux go at each other with surgical equipment. Who said romance is dead? Most epic barf-athon: Triangle of Sadness Crimes of the Future wasn’t the only film unleashing the inside stuff on the outside world. Delivering a scene to rival cinema’s great puke – Stand by Me, The Meaning of Life, etc – was the outbreak of projectile vomiting in Triangle of Sadness. Director Ruben Östlund spoiled us (and our lunches) with the ribald sight of a handful of seasick capitalists red

The Long Goodbye, a short film produced and co-written by British superstar Riz Ahmed, just won the Best Live Action Short Film Oscar. You may have missed the win on the news, not just because of ‘the slap’ but because it was one of the awards controversially handed out in the pre-recorded section of the American Academy Awards.  When Ahmed picked up the Oscar, the 39-year-old voiced the importance of togetherness in divided times. ‘We believe that the role of the story is to remind us there is no us and them,’ he said. ‘There’s just us.’ Behind Ahmed on stage was co-writer and director Aneil Karia, best known for directing Surge. Karim’s debut film saw Ben Whishaw put in a Sundance award-winning performance as an airport security guard who has a mental breakdown. Here’s everything you need to know about the pair’s award-winning collaboration. Photograph: Michael Baker / A.M.P.A.S.Riz Ahmed with ‘The Long Goodbye’ director Aneil Karia at the Oscars What is The Long Goodbye about? Twelve minutes long, The Long Goodbye is divided into three acts. The first part sees an Asian family at home, in a house not unlike the one Ahmed grew up in Wembley, London.  Ahmed’s character is at the heart of a busy household. We meet him having a dance-off with a younger brother, criticising another sibling for not doing the washing up, and arguing with his dad over whether it’s worth watching the news. Upstairs, a gaggle of girls are preparing for a wedding, with the bride admitting she fanci