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Features Live Action Movies

Great Sertão
(Grande Sertão)

Director – Guel Arraes – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 114m

*****

The constantly shifting relationship between a man and his friend constantly shifts against the backdrop of a war between a street gang protecting their turf and an army trying to impose law and order – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Riobaldo (Caio Blat) tells his story. As a young boy in the urban jungle of Brazil’s Sertao, he bonds with fearless kid his own age Diadorim, who shows him how to scale brutalist towers and scare off predatory adults with an effective flick of the knife.

By the time Riobaldo has grown up to become a teacher, this concrete sprawl has become the battleground for a struggle between a gang led by local, criminal warlord Joca Ramiro (Rodrigo Lombardi) and forces under the command of Colonel Zé Bebelo (Luis Miranda) determined to restore law and order to the country. They may trade in violence, but both leaders are honourable men.

Not so one of Joca’s lieutenants Hermógenes (played with great relish by the ingratiating Eduardo Sterblitch), a seemingly unstoppable force of nature who has sold his soul to the devil to advance his own ends.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Free Chol Soo Lee

Directors – Julia Ha, Eugene Yi – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 83m

****

Imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, Korean American Chol Soo Lee became a figurehead for a protest movement, something he felt unable to live up to – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 19th

In San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1973, Korean loner Chol Soo Lee was arrested and subsequently convicted for a gang murder. While it’s true he had foolishly borrowed a gun off a work colleague a few days previously and accidentally discharged it into his apartment wall giving himself a police record, he was not the murderer. He was identified on the flimsiest of premises by unreliable witnesses, possibly not helped by white cops who wanted to convict a felon for the crime and consign the case to history.

On what was to be his last journey through the outside world before many years in prison, he heard the Tower of Power song “You’re still a young man” on a car radio crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. It resonated. As the years passed in prison, his mother abandoned him. He had fallen for a Japanese American girl he’d met Jean Ranko who subsequently told him in a letter that she had no romantic interest in him.… Read the rest