‘Dear Jassi’ Review: Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s Tender Story Of Star-Crossed Lovers Lands A Killer Blow – London Film Festival

There’s a soaring ambition but only a modest intent in Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya’s sober debut The Kitchen, a visually impressive depiction of things to come that simmers with all manner of protest but never hits boiling point. On the one hand, it’s a shame, ending on a quiet moment of understanding just as all hell is about to break loose. But on the other, it’s refreshing to see two young filmmakers trying to hone their storytelling skills rather than pour everything into a spectacular calling card. If Attack the Block hadn’t been so slavish in trying to siphon inspiration from much better cult movies to become a cult movie in its own right, it might have looked like this: a genuine vision of a nightmarish, dystopian future that will ring alarm bells for any city-dweller familiar with the depressing effects of gentrification.

Since first arriving on our screens back in March 2021, EastEnders star James Farrar has captured the heart of the nation with his portrayal of Zack Hudson in the iconic BBC soap. The 36 year old actor has delighted audiences at home with Zack’s antics over the years, which have included a selection of very rocky romances with everyone from Nancy Carter to Sam Mitchell, Janine Butcher and most recently Whitney Dean.

Devery Jacobs is sharing her thoughts on Martin Scorsese‘s new movie Killers of the Flower Moon, which recounts the murders of indigenous Osage tribe members in 1920s Oklahoma.

Sophie Khan Levy enjoyed her EastEnders debut yesterday as one of Walford's latest characters, Priya Nandra-Hart.The actor burst onto our screens during last night's episode, and instantly caused drama for current Albert Square resident, Ravi.To recap, viewers saw Ravi follow Suki and her abusive husband, Nish to a flat in London, where he discovered his son Nugget had been hiding out after he fled from Walford. During a heated moment where Ravi demanded he return to the square with him, Ravi's ex Priya entered the room, and proceeded to let viewers know that she was in fact Nugget's mum.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Cinema has been a little duller for the eight-year absence of Tarsem Singh Dhandwar, the Indian-born auteur whose flamboyant formal style carried over from the music video realm into a distinctively sensuous strain of mainstream fantasy filmmaking — halted by the relative disappointment of 2015’s lackluster Ryan Reynolds vehicle “Self/less.” That makes Singh Dhandwar’s return with “Dear Jassi” something of an event, even before considering the film’s surprising expansion of his repertoire: Leaving behind Hollywood, genre cinema and his trademark maximalist mise-en-scène for his first film made in his homeland, the director keeps things simple but stately in this fact-based tale of young, star-crossed love in India’s Punjab region. The result is sometimes slack but incrementally powerful, marked by a palpable sense of renewed purpose on the part of its helmer.

Ellise Shafer Daniel Kaluuya world premiered his feature directorial debut, “The Kitchen,” at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night, calling it “one of the best days of my life.” Kaluuya was on hand alongside his co-director Kibwe Tavares, producer Daniel Emmerson and several of the film’s actors, including “Top Boy” star Kane Robinson and newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman. Set in a dystopian London where all social housing has been banned, the film follows the residents of a community called the Kitchen who must fight to save their home. Speaking before the premiere, Kaluuya and Tavares explained that it’s taken nearly a decade to bring the Netflix film to the screen.

Ellise Shafer Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist” was named the best film in the official competition at this year’s BFI London Film Festival Awards. “Paradise Is Burning” by Mika Gustafson received the Sutherland Award in the first feature competition, while Lina Soualem’s “Bye Bye Tiberias” took home the Grierson Award in the documentary competition and “The Archive: Queer Nigerians” directed by Simisolaoluwa Akande won the short film competition. The jury presidents for this year’s awards included Amat Escalante (official competition), Raine Allen-Miller (first feature competition), Rubika Shah (documentary competition) and Charlotte Regan (short film competition).

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi has clinched the best film award in the main official competition of the 67th London Film Festival with his latest feature, Evil Does Not Exist. 

EXCLUSIVE: The BFI London Film Festival closes Sunday with the world premiere of The Kitchen, a movie set in a dystopian London where an impoverished community is forced to fend for themselves in ramshackle apartment blocks. It marks the feature directorial debut of Oscar- winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and architect-turned-filmmaker Kibwe Tavares.

Kit Connor is enjoying a movie screening in London!

By any metric, 23 years is a long time to wait for a sequel to Chicken Run, even when you factor in the fiendishly slow gestation of Aardman Animations’ meticulous stop-motion process. Surprisingly, it still feels fresh, not just because of the spring-clean of the core voice cast — Mel Gibson being the highest-profile casualty, lopped off as the “lone free-ranger” Rocky — but because, in the hands of director Sam Fell and his writing team, Dawn of The Nugget delivers a cleverly modern kind of family entertainment that, while it works to a formula, never feels written by committee.

Todd Haynes tells me that May December, his gripping melodrama starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, “aggressively disturbs our moral moorings.”

EXCLUSIVE: The London Film School (LFS) has been hit with a new round of senior managerial exits. 

It’s not every day that a filmmaker will rise up during an interview and recite Old Testament tales and sing out their favorite hymn. Well, hallelujah, brother Jeymes Samuel for spreading the gospel’s good news.

Cailee Spaeny dazzles while promoting her new film Priscilla at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival on Monday (October 9).

After a World Premiere at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and its North American Premiere over the weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival, Noah Pritzker’s (Quitters) second film goes for a mix of Woody Allen, John Cassavetes, Paul Mazursky, Noah Baumbach and other white male filmmakers, past and present, who enjoy basking in the midlife marital crisis in which many guys find themselves trapped. While not on the level of those acclaimed filmmakers, in this case though Pritzker manages to cast his net wider into an early, mid, and late life crisis over three generations of the men in the Pearce clan. The result is an engaging indie exercise that in an age of highlighting diversity in films puts the focus solely on its white male central characters and their personal woes, thus oddly taking what was once common Hollywood storytelling into a bit of an anomaly in 2023. It is for sale to any distributor who finds promise in a premise that might be a tough sell for mainstream buyers despite a game cast that lifts it up a notch or two. Art Houses would seem to be its theatrical future, if not PVOD.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger reunited nearly three decades after filming the 1994 movie.The actress and former California governor, 76, took a selfie as they attended a charity event for the nonprofit After-School All-Stars on Saturday.“‘Ya, my name is Ingeborg, I’m from Stuttgart.’ I LOVE the way my friends suit up and show up for the causes that move their souls and hearts,” Curtis wrote via Instagram after the pair crossed paths.

Jessica Kiang For us dazzled foreigners, it’s easy to forget that South Korea — land of superfast internet, glossy K-Pop, state-of-the-art foldable phones and “Squid Game” — is not in every respect the utopia of hypermodernity its recent global cultural boom might lead one to suspect. The nation actually lags some way behind other developed democracies in terms of LGBTQ rights, a fact that drives Lee Mirang’s supple, sincere feature debut, “Concerning My Daughter,” which locates its conflict in the fraught relationship between a gay woman and her uncomprehending parent, but finds its heart in a subtle, radiant performance by Oh Minae as the anguished mother.

The first week of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) London Film Festival wrapped this evening with a rapturous onstage Q&A session with writer-director Greta Gerwig.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall irrupted into a flurry of cheers this afternoon as filmmaker Martin Scorsese strolled on stage to take part in a career Q&A at the London Film Festival.