Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Summer Tale
(Cuento de Verano)

Director – Matías Szulanski – 2025 – Argentina – 78m

*****

A moneylender’s difficulties getting money owed back from clients on time cause his heart to play up – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

It’s a lovely Summer day. Jorge (Fabián Arenillas) is out on the street, getting up again, gathering his briefcase. What happened? A blackout? A heart attack? 

The camera follows him from behind as he enters a modern building. In the hairdresser’s, the owner asks him to come back later as he’s busy with a client. A cigarette on the go, stopping for a glass of Coke, he makes his next call. When the door opens, it’s the client’s son, who turns out not to have nearly enough money to make a significant payment. 

He returns to the hairdresser’s, where one of the customers heaps abuse on him. If what he had at the start was a heart attack, it’s not hard to see why. Jorge leads a highly stressful life. 

Wherever he goes, he seems to want to extract money from people. A phone call to Diana (Tamara Leschner) leads to a quick meeting where he picks up $124 000 and gives her an invoice.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Finding Angel
(Cheonsaneun Baileoseu,
천사는 바이러스)

Director – Kim Seong-jun – 2021 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 114m

****

Who is the mysterious so-called ‘Angel’ who every Christmas delivers a box containing a large sum of money to a needy local resident of a small, rural town? – out in cinemas on Friday, November 26th

For the last seventeen years at Christmas, the ‘Faceless Angel’ has visited the town of Rohsong in Jeonju City, South Korea to leave a box containing money for a local person in need. Last year, an old woman received the money she needed for a knee operation. Who this person might actually be has remained a mystery, but the locals are glad the Angel is there doing what he or she is doing.

Wishing to solve the mystery and with the journalist’s scent of a good story, newspaperman Kim Ji-hoon (Park Sung-il from Samjin Company English Class, Lee Jong-pil, 2020) arrives in the town in December as the temperature plummets. He makes enquiries at the town office but the girl on the front desk (Lee Ga-kyung) stonewalls him. His attempts at talking to the townspeople don’t get him very far until he talks to old Miss Ok-bun (Moon Sook) about renting a room and she promptly puts him up in her freezing upstairs bedroom.… Read the rest