The first professional trip out of Bristol since March last year was to London to catch up on films. I have been eager to re-engage with festivals; so decided London Film Festival would be my first tentative re-emerging steps. 

After 18 months living in the grip of covid, which changed everything for everyone, we are only now beginning to enter back into the streams of society: with similar apprehension and uncertainty, but at least with more knowledge and a couple of jabs.

So it was that I stood in the all too familiar queue; circa 7.30 am off Leicester Square for my first press screening. Jane Campion’s The Power of The Dog is an impressive revisionist western exploring alternative cowboy masculinity with assured attention to the poetry of the cinematic image. 

It took me half an hour to get over Benedict Cumberbatch’s rough hewn outback western persona but there is a reason to his casting which reveals its true purpose by the end. 

The film’s themes fit perfectly with Watershed and UWE MA Curation student Lola McKinnon’s project New Fontiers: Myth and Masculinity. McKinnon will also be screening Lucrecia Martel’s Zama and Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow. Three films by three female directors from three different continents exploring origin myths of masculinity… coming very soon.

Netflix release, short theatrical window via Altitude opening 19th November. 

This was followed by Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero (Ghahreman) which played in competition in Cannes. Set in Iran, Farhadi’s film explores deceptively complex moral questions in a deceptively simple premise of a prisoner’s attempts to rescue his fortunes whilst on parole.

The sense of place and people is beautifully realised as Farhadi is on more comfortable and confident home ground than his French outings. Positive reviews are anticipated for this engaging moral maze through which we watch Rahim navigate.

Amazon Release, Date TBC at time of writing

Having been an advocate of her 2016 debut shocker Raw  – cannibalism on the campus – I was very much looking forward to Julie Ducornau’s Titane and I was most certainly not disappointed. 

Not for the faint-hearted, Titane will outrage and entertain with equal measure. Ducornau’s combination of body horror and fetishism wrapped up in an unorthodox love story is clear-eyed in its intention to shake and rattle cinematic complacencies. 

Lead actress Agathe Rousselle gives an extraordinary physical performance as Adriene, a woman who cannot but give herself over to her extreme often violent impulses – yet manages to retain not only our interest but our sympathy – as she slowly begins to connect with a middle-aged steroid addicted fireman (Vincent Lindon). 

What starts as an outrageous horror ends in outrageous love. Brilliant visionary filmmaking and will set the new year in with a bang when it opens on December 31^st 2022.

Released by Altitude, 31st December

Other highlights were Eva Husson’s Mothering Sunday which is in the literary adaptation vein of The Remains of The Day or Sense of An Ending with all their quality production and cast. However, Husson inflects a more poetic visual style in this elliptical female-centred story. The attention to period detail – set largely in 1924 – is given real charge with Sandy Powell’s excellent outfits.  

Clio Barnard revisits the working class Bradford of The Arbor with Ali & Ava for a quietly uplifting film of the relationship between a middle aged white working class grandmother Ava and Ali – as soon to be divorced 30 something Asian landlord.  Barnard surprises with the gentleness and very human connections between the two amidst subtle and not so subtle familial and community disapproval. Ava & Ali is a much needed tonic in these often fraught times.

Ali & Ava, Released by Altitude on 4th Feb 2022

A Hero, Released by Amazon TBC at time of writing

Mark Cosgrove, is Cinema Curator at Watershed, the Film Hub Lead Organisation forthe South West. Mark plays a Cultural Leadership role for Film Hub South West with a focus on Cinema Curation and Talent Development. He co-curates Filmic, a festival dedicated to the various creative connections across music and film, and set up Cinema Rediscovered, a new festival dedicated to bringing the finest new digital restorations, contemporary classics and film print rarities from across the globe back to cinemas. He is also Director of Film Culture at University of West of England (UWE).