Learning to Breathe: A Conversation with Joanna Hogg Leonardo Goi April 2020 Conversations with Filmmakers Across the Globe Issue 94 “She hasn’t had anything since breakfast,” a publicist warns me, nodding at the lady nibbling on a salad and chatting with a journalist a few tables across from mine. “And she has to run to her Q&A...
A Festival is a Space in Time: the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival Leonardo Goi April 2020 Festival Reports Issue 94 As I type these words, a few months after leaving the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF), I don’t exactly know when the next fest will be. Stranded in quarantine in the north of Italy as...
The Year of the (Re-)Discovery: A Conversation with Luis López Carrasco Leonardo Goi April 2020 Conversations with Filmmakers Across the Globe Issue 94 “I think cinema has helped me turn sadness into anger. But this is not an angry picture.” From the third floor of de Doelen, Luis López Carrasco stares at the floor to ceiling windows shielding us from a...
A Simple Life: Arun Karthick on Nasir Leonardo Goi April 2020 Conversations with Filmmakers Across the Globe Issue 94 At the young age of 27, Tamil cineaste Arun Karthick has already taken Rotterdam twice. In 2016, his debut feature The Strange Case of Shiva found a slot in the festival’s Bright Future sidebar, and followed...
This Is the Way the World Ends: The 10th Odesa Film Festival Leonardo Goi October 2019 Festival Reports Issue 92 Midway through my second year at the Odesa International Film Festival (OIFF), a curious feeling began to emerge from my screenings. To the extent that films festivals can hope to sponge up something of the...
“You don’t get to hate it unless you love it”: Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails on The Last Black Man in San Francisco Leonardo Goi October 2019 Interviews Issue 92 Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails met when they were kids. Legend has it that it happened in a fight, and Fails watched his soon-to-be best friend clash with some teens by the San Francisco projects he’d recently...
Islands in the Current: The 16th IndieLisboa Film Festival Leonardo Goi July 2019 Festival Reports Issue 91 I am flicking through the notes of my second year at IndieLisboa, and sensing a pattern. Writing from Portugal a year ago, I remember praising a handful of documentaries, hailing one (Donal Foreman’s The...
Youth in motion: the 18th Transilvania International Film Festival Leonardo Goi July 2019 Festival Reports Issue 91 It took an open-air screening of Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy - held in the courtyard of an abandoned castle in the middle of Transylvania, and with lead actor and megastar Nicolas Cage in attendance - to make me...
The God of the Camera is a Coloniser: An Interview with RaMell Ross Leonardo Goi July 2019 Interviews Issue 91 Sitting in the dim-lit bar of Berlin’s most iconic theatre, the Volksbühne (a slab of concrete of modernist grandeur located in the heart of the former East Berlin, the Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz), RaMell Ross...
Back to the Wolf Pack: the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival Leonardo Goi March 2019 Festival Reports Issue 90 “You’ve come prepared,” a member of the guest management team from the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF, in its Estonian acronym) giggled at my extra-large winter jacket as I stepped out of the...
All the Feels: The 48th International Film Festival Rotterdam Leonardo Goi March 2019 Festival Reports Issue 90 The tote bag I picked up at the headquarters of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) had four fluorescent words printed on it, one for each feeling the festival’s 48th edition promised to make me...
New Stars, Old Dreams: The 75th Venice Film Festival Leonardo Goi December 2018 Festival Reports Issue 89 In the weeks leading up to the 75th Venice film festival, buzz around the festival had less to do with its stellar lineup (arguably the most promising in recent years) and more to do with the festival’s...
