A Northern Cinema’s London Film Festival 2023 Lowdown
All Of Us Strangers
This haunting, achingly beautiful queer masterpiece from acclaimed director Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Weekend) is a ghostly story of love and loss for the ages.
The wondrous Andrew Scott (Fleabag, Sherlock) is Adam, a writer living in solitude in an apartment complex on the outskirts of London. Facing writer’s block, his life is transformed after a fleeting meeting with his young neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal, Aftersun). As the two fall for one another and open up about their unresolved traumas, Adam begins to reconcile with his emotionally loaded past – taking him on a journey back to his childhood home, face to face with his late parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), somehow still as they were when he was just 12 years old…
This affecting, heartbreaking study of loneliness, of grappling with grief and of the transformative power of love is a truly unmissable, ethereal tearjerker which cements Andrew Haigh as one of the most vital voices in British cinema, and Andrew Scott as one of the finest actors working today.
The Zone of Interest
10 years after the sci-fi genius of Under the Skin, revered auteur Jonathan Glazer returns with his latest artistically visionary feature.
A gut-wrenching, indescribably powerful study of The Holocaust, The Zone of Interest is framed from the sickening perspective of the commandant of Auschwitz – who lives in luxury with his family on the borders of the concentration camp. Following the everyday life and routine of Rudolf (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller) and their children as he climbs the ladder of military command, the film hauntingly observes the billowing smoke of the chimneys and of the arriving trains on the peripheries of their unthinkably untroubled existence.
Conjuring deeply affecting horror from what is left unseen, The Zone of Interest is a film that will stay long in the memory – a masterpiece which bears witness to the atrocities of evil from its terrifying outskirts, aided by a spine-chilling score by Mica Levi.
The Killer
David Fincher doesn’t miss. The acclaimed director of Fight Club and Seven goes back-to-basics with this electric, pulse-pounding thriller studying the ruthlessly precise life of a master assassin – and its dangerous unravelling.
When a routine job goes awry, Michael Fassbender’s meticulous marksman – known only as ‘The Killer’ – is forced to go on the run. But after sinister forces break into his home and put his beloved girlfriend in the hospital, he takes up a fearless pursuit mission of revenge.
With a propulsive pace and a fittingly killer soundtrack by Fincher stalwarts Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (interweaving hits by The Smiths), this ice-cool character study actioner is a breathless showcase for a career-best Michael Fassbender, with scene-stealing support from Tilda Swinton.