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Ashes And Diamonds
(Popiół I Diament)

Director – Andrzej Wajda – 1958 – Poland – Cert. 12 – 103m

*****

Two resistance fighters attempt to assassinate a Communist Party official on the last day of the Second World War – plays at the Phoenix Cinema East Finchley in conjunction with the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival at 18:00 on Sunday, March 19th, also on Blu-ray as part of Wajda’s War Trilogy

Made over a decade after not only the historical setting for the events it depicts in 1945 but also the Jerzy Andrzejewski novel on which it is based which was written in 1947 and published in 1948, this condenses that novel’s two weeks into a mere – 24 hours the last day of the Second World War and the evening and night of the victory celebrations that follow plus the subsequent early dawn.

The war is over and the Nazis defeated, but Poland still finds itself the subject of conflict as opposing factions vie for power. On the one hand is the official Party trying to get everything working again and on the other members of the resistance determined to stop them.

The older Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) and the younger Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) carry out an ordered assassination on Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzeżyński).… Read the rest

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The House Of Us
(Woori-Jip,
우리집)

Director – Yoon Ge-eun – 2019 – South Korea – 92m

***1/2

Prepubescent girl forms a surrogate family, as she watches the relationship between her parents collapse – plays in Korean Film Nights (KFN) Summer Nights at the Korean Cultural Centre (KCCUK) on Thursday, June 9th – free admission

Eleven-year-old Lee Hana (Kim Na-yeon) watches her mum and dad argue. The family should be having breakfast, but instead mum finds ways to berate dad every time he opens his mouth. She has a brother, but doesn’t get on with him especially well. When she gets to school, Hana is as surprised as anyone else that she’s won the Good Classmate Award. Her dad is really pleased. But what she really wants is for her parents to get their relationship back on track. To this end, throughout the narrative, she keeps proposing a family trip to the seaside. But her mum is way too busy with her demanding job to spare a weekend any time soon.

One day in the supermarket, Hana observes nine-year-old Yoo-mi (Kim Shi-a) and her seven-year-old younger sister Yoo-jin (Joo Ye-rim). They seem to be happy as sisters: perhaps their family life is better than hers.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Compartment
No. 6
(Hytti Nro 6)

Director – Juho Kuosmanen – 2021 – Finland – Cert. 15 – 107m

*****

A student taking a long, sleeper train from Moscow to the Arctic finds herself sharing a compartment with a drunken male slob – out in cinemas on Friday, April 8th

Finnish archaeology student Laura (Seidi Haarla) lives in Moscow with her life of the party, professor lover Irina (Dinara Druckerova) in the latter’s Moscow flat where life is a constant round of social gatherings and parties. Irina’s busy schedule causes her to drop out of a proposed visit to Murmansk to see the petroglyphs, so Laura takes the Artika train (Artic train) alone and finds herself sharing her first class, two person sleeper cabin with Lhoja (Yuriy Borisov from Petrov’s Flu, Kirill Serebrennikov, 2021) who knocks back the vodka and leaves half-eaten packets of food all over the shared table. She takes an immediate dislike to him.

And that’s the setup of the film: not so much a road movie as a rail movie, the bulk of what follows taking place on the train (a fascinating location in itself) with off-train episodes at various stops en route including St. Petersburg (which places the year at 1991 or after when the city was renamed from Leningrad) and a finale in Murmansk.… Read the rest