Cambridge Film Festival In Review
The Cambridge Film Festival has come to an end for another year, with the 41st edition of the festival closing its doors with the fantastical biopic THE SILENT TWINS on Thursday night. A lot of the award-winning features from the major festivals more than lived up to lofty expectations, while we got totally swept up in the melancholic haze and childhood nostalgia of Charlotte Well’s mesmerising AFTERSUN. A festival highlight for sure and we look forward to revisiting that when it gets its UK release on 18th November. Beyond the films that are already attracting significant festival buzz, we wanted to highlight three picks from the festival that we think deserve your attention if and when they get released in the coming months.
Sick of Myself
Kristoffer Borgli 95 mins
Provocative writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s first major feature explores the self-obsession and narcissism of millennials through a detestable couple who push the concept of ‘attention-seeking’ to new extremes.
Jealously overcomes twenty-something Signe when her boyfriend starts making waves in the contemporary art scene and she feels drastic measures must be taken to divert attention back in her direction. The choices made to achieve this means the film goes to uncomfortable places that could be interpreted as darkly comic or as nauseating horror depending on the viewer’s personal tolerance towards the levels of unpleasantness on screen.
While Signe’s attention-seeking methods are extreme – a self-inflicted skin disease causes severe facial disfigurement – her desire for validation is still somehow relatable, and her wildly optimistic fantasies about the potential consequences of her shocking actions speak to a basic human yearning for acceptance.
Sick of Myself is due for release in the UK in March 2023 by Modern Films.
Blue Jean
Georgia Oakley 97 mins
A powerful performance from lead actress Rosy McEwen is at the heart of this poignant piece of queer cinema from filmmaker Georgia Oakley. Set in Thatcher-era Britain, the film takes place at a time when the government is introducing Section 28, legislation that prohibits the ‘promotion of homosexuality’.
McEwen plays the titular Jean, a gay PE teacher in 80s Newcastle who is not yet comfortable laying bare her sexual identity when homophobia is so deeply sewn that Jean herself is inhibited by a sense of shame. With Section 28 forthcoming and a new student spotting her at a gay bar, Jean feels the security of her job is under threat, and juggling her respectable teacher life with her closet lesbian life becomes an impossible balancing act.
Oakley’s film manages to maintain restraint in not becoming too heavy-handed with its messaging and instead focuses on the quiet authenticity of a lesbian living in 80s Britain and the very personal, inner turmoil that Jean struggles against in the face of silent discrimination.
Blue Jean is set for a theatrical release in 2023
A Life on the Farm
Oscar Harding 75 mins
One of the most unique films screened at this year’s festival was this peculiar found-footage documentary from Oscar Harding. When Harding revisited a long-lost videotape made by Charles Carson, an aging farmer from Somerset, he felt that he stumbled across something special that needed to be shared.
The first VHS-recorded clips we’re introduced to are quirky but harmless as Carson enthusiastically welcomes us to observe his farm and its inhabitants but it isn’t long until things take a turn for the macabre and the film itself likens the images to the notorious US serial killer Ed Gein, such is the disturbing nature of some of the footage. But as the film progresses it evolves into something more wholesome as Carson demonstrates his creative, almost innovative filmmaking talents that serve as a distraction from the loneliness and loss that will ultimately overcome him.
Talking heads ranging from Carson’s neighbours to found footage enthusiasts fill the rest of the runtime, as Harding’s film looks to examine both the footage and the eccentric man at its center. While the interviews themselves are considerably less compelling than Carson’s own home videos, the film remains a fascinating watch due to Carson’s extraordinary home videos that delight and fright in equal measure.
A Life on the Farm is currently on tour with no theatrical release yet confirmed