As the world burns, you’d be daft not to be disillusioned with political leaders who often pay mere lip service to solving the issues plaguing society. This is especially true for the ones who make up the G7: an annual political and economic forum of the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies (plus representatives from the European Union), where they discuss matters such as international security and climate change.

For a certain generation, it can seem like the G7’s only discernible impact was inspiring Bob Geldof to redo Live Aid again in 2005 with Live 8 (back when Russia was still in the G8), a series of benefit concerts in support of pressuring the G8 to increase aid to eliminate poverty. While a pledge was made to up financial aid, the disparity between the rhetoric and the demonstrable efforts to reduce global poverty afterwards made it seem a public relations stunt at best. The G8’s words had less lingering impact than haunting memories of Pete Doherty and Elton John butchering T.Rex’s “Children of the Revolution”.

All that brings us to the absurdist comedy-horror Rumours, ostensibly the most mainstream film that Canadian experimentalist Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) has ever made, here co-directing with Evan and Galen Johnson. Their film presents a delicious premise for anyone rightly dissatisfied with the world’s most ‘powerful’ political figures: what if all the ineffectual members of the G7 got lost in the woods and had an awful time? And that’s before they come into contact with zombie-like creatures that violently masturbate.

We have the president of the United States (Charles Dance). We have the chancellor of Germany (Cate Blanchett). We have the British prime minister, brilliantly played by Nikki Amuka-Bird. We have the president of France (Denis Ménochet). We have the Canadian (Roy Dupuis), Italian (Rolando Ravello) and Japanese prime ministers (Takehiro Hira). We have all these characters. And partway through, they stumble upon Alicia Vikander as the secretary-general of the European Commission, who rambles prophecies in Swedish beside a giant brain right out of Futurama.

Before encountering an apocalyptic event as they attempt to escape their woodland retreat, the leaders are tasked with drafting a provisional statement to address a recent crisis affecting the world. The specifics of what exactly they’re meant to blandly reassure the global populace about are concealed so as to plausibly represent anything, though one of the funnier elements of this political pastiche is how Maddin and the Johnsons repeatedly pull the rug out from under themselves – whenever a coherent satirical ‘message’ seems to emerge from their surrealist vignettes, it’s quickly derailed for a goofy gag.

There’s a sense to which Rumours is a one-joke movie, that joke being turning the supposed adults in the room into distracted, clueless kids. But if some viewers can still cling onto The West Wing as a comfort watch even now, there’s something to be said for the appeal of a text offering the total flip side in its portrayal of centrism’s capabilities, especially one as full of punkish spirit as this.

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Already on his third feature since his first in 2020, director Wei Shujun is one of the most compelling Chinese filmmakers to emerge in recent years, though his latest film, Only the River Flows, already presents a distinct departure from what preceded it – at least on the surface. Striding Into the Wind and Ripples of Life are both dramas concerned with film crews struggling to get movies finished. As such, a murder mystery thriller could seem like a calculated play for more mainstream recognition. Yet this complex, riveting detective tale is far from a predictable noir riff, and ends up being just as preoccupied with the frustration and puzzling distractions inherent to wrapping up any project in a timely fashion.

Superiors don’t necessarily want a perfectionist to address every nagging doubt or loose end. They just want a succinct answer that requires the least expenditure of resources, one that confirms the workforce’s ability to deliver something that a majority of the populace can find satisfying. Determining who has killed someone and why isn’t a creative process, but it is a form of storytelling.

Adapted from Yu Hua’s novella ‘Mistakes by the River’, the film is set in a rural Chinese town in the mid-1990s. When an old woman’s body is found by the river, respected detective (and expectant father) Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) is assigned to lead the investigation, operating out of a recently closed cinema the chief of police wants to permanently acquire. The case seems straightforward: everyone suspects the victim’s adult ward, who has implied disabilities and is referred to as “the madman”.

An arrest of the easy scapegoat is made after the murder weapon is found, but various clues and missing links captivate Ma. When he thinks that perhaps the police have rushed to their conclusion, he’s explicitly instructed by his boss to hurry up with signing of the paperwork and move on, for the sake of PR. But in fighting back against too neat explanations, Ma’s inquiries and interrogations – which take him beyond the town’s borders – not only complicate his assignment but seem to trigger additional tragedies, by exposing tangentially-connected people’s vulnerabilities, some related to societal prejudices. Witnesses and interviewees start dropping dead, through both further murders and apparent suicide. And an ethical crisis concerning his unborn child’s health prospects only exacerbates Ma’s increasingly fragile mental state.

A rarity for modern Chinese cinema in being shot on film, Only the River Flows looks and feels like a ’90s artefact rather than just a finely detailed period piece, its specific muted visual palette recalling several Chinese-language milestones from the decade – elsewhere, select soundscapes used curiously recall Howard Shore’s score for David Cronenberg’s Crash. Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s later Memories of Murder is an obvious comparison point, for its similar mix of incomplete mysteries and probing of institutional mechanisms. But Wei maintains a highly individual, slippery and fascinating artistic sensibility all his own.

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At the tail end of 2023, the untimely death of South Korean star Lee Sun-kyun shocked the world. Best known as one of the stars of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, Lee had been one of his generation’s most acclaimed actors, starring in local mainstream and arthouse films. Among the latter were several collaborations with director Hong Sang-soo, many of which paired him with actor Jung Yu-mi (Oki’s Movie, Our Sunhi). In what ended up being Lee’s final film to premiere while he was still alive, the two stars are reunited for a spooky tale that showcases both their respective talents.

Sleep is the electric debut of writer-director Jason Yu. Lee plays Hyun-su, a jobbing actor stuck with two-line roles, who lives in an apartment with his pregnant wife, Soo-jin (Jung), who has an office job. Theirs is a sweet relationship. They greet and hype up each other as “Mr. Oscar Winner” and “Ms. Executive”. Their framed wedding photo features them with their Pomeranian, Pepper, wearing a bowtie. A plaque saying ‘Together We Can Overcome Anything’ decorates their living room. That’ll soon be put to the test.

One night, Hyun-su says the words, “Someone’s inside,” in his sleep. Over the next few nights, he not only starts walking but also self-harming while asleep. Tests reveal that Hyun-su has a sleep behaviour disorder, meaning that lifestyle adjustments must be made as the couple wait for his medication to start working.

Sleep’s narrative is divided into three chapters. Given that Soo-jin’s pregnancy is very far along, it’s no spoiler to say that the second chapter tracks how the birth of their child only worsens anxieties concerning Hyun-su’s mysterious condition. This stretch is also where Sleep begins flirting with a specific horror subgenre, though additional unease comes via Soo-jin’s postnatal depression. As her own dreams compound the fear that Hyun-su will unwittingly harm their newborn daughter during an episode, paranoid Soo-jin is drawn to supernatural solutions over the scientific ones that aren’t producing a cure.

This is one of those horror films where the exploration of genuinely unsettling ideas is skilfully done throughout, even if specific scare sequences never quite provoke jolts as clearly intended. Unlike Jang Jae-hyun’s excellent Exhuma from this year (which also features possession), Sleep is lacking in really ghastly images that sear onto the brain. That’s alright, though, when the overall film is so consistently entertaining, with such confident direction and protagonists so endearing.

Despite sleepiness being part of its premise, the pacing of Yu’s film is propulsive, and the deft detours into dark comedy – especially a reveal involving PowerPoint slides – are a highlight. But it’s Jung and Lee’s work that lingers the most, their thoroughly charming, lively performances enhancing the tragedy and dread of something awful happening to them. They at least luck out with one of the quieter newborns in horror history, though the baby’s relative lack of crying is unnerving in its own way.

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While not all of Hollywood’s recent theatrically-released romantic comedies have performed well, the breakout commercial success of several – most notably, Ticket to Paradise (grossing nearly $169 million worldwide) and Anyone but You (almost $220 million) – does still suggest a renewed appetite for a type of movie that was formerly a reliable staple of the release calendar. Yet despite shooting in scenic locations, those cited success stories never actually look especially good. The world of a film being carefully lensed and feeling lived-in isn’t the sole reason why something like Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally endures, but it’s a crucial ingredient in the mix.

Writer-director Monia Chokri’s The Nature of Love taps into what so many of the recent Hollywood romcoms have been missing. Overseen by cinematographer André Turpin, the film’s camera is sometimes as horny for the film’s characters as they are for one another. Playful in its blocking and heavy on Altmanesque zooms, the movie’s textured visual language complements the script’s comedic and dramatic concerns, enhancing their impact rather than being an excessive distraction.

The Nature of Love is rich in the cultural specificity of its settings which allows it to wittily interrogate the universal concepts of love, lust, stagnation, cynicism and self-worth. A teacher of philosophy for mature students in Montreal, 40- year-old Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau), has been in a stable relationship with fellow middle-class intellectual Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume) for a decade. While affection remains, things are now passionless, highlighted by their sleeping in separate beds and Xavier speculating that too-frequent sex is the reason for two of their friends’ constant fights.

Staying at the couple’s lakeside holiday chalet as it’s assessed for renovation, Sophia spends a night socialising with the burly, blue-collar local handyman, Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), who’s come to both advise on her plumbing and upend her life. Their legitimately sexy hookup leads to an all-consuming affair. But Sophia’s new lease on life soon faces challenges when factors outside the relationship itself begin piercing the love bubble.

While leaning into cartoonish moments at times, Chokri – who also co-stars as Sophia’s friend – is careful not to make this a simplistic tale of a bourgeois mid-life crisis being resolved by bonding with someone from a so-called ‘modest’ background. Sophia and Sylvain’s very different social circumstances are not caricatured and their connection is made to feel genuine, but nor are the pressures of class, family and friends on a relationship’s evolution downplayed. Chokri’s film is both sharp and sensual in its comedic exploration of fucking around and finding out.

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When a familiar actor switches to directing, there is the temptation to look for parallels with the films of directors they’ve worked with, particularly when there have been numerous collaborations. With British character actor favourite Neil Maskell, his debut feature as writer and director actively invites comparisons to Ben Wheatley’s early work to a small extent, given that Wheatley has an executive producer credit (Maskell is perhaps best known for his breakthrough lead role in Wheatley’s hitman horror Kill List).

But while Klokkenluider features a similar tension to Wheatley’s films in its combination of bleak comedy, deceptively mundane settings and the potential for kneejerk violence, Maskell’s speedy film displays a distinctive, eccentric voice of its own, even while bearing clear DNA from the likes of Harold Pinter plays and conspiracy thriller classics. Were it not for the occasional detours to other locales, it would near enough be a chamber piece, and it’s easy to imagine this material being transferred to the stage with some success, but a stagey feel is avoided through clever editing and blocking tricks.

Onscreen text places the film’s start on the specific date of February 6th 2014, in Maarkedal, East Flanders, Belgium. At a big isolated house there, rented under the cover story of hosting a 40th birthday party, a nervous British man (Amit Shah) and his wife (Sura Dohnke) hide under aliases while awaiting in-person contact with a major newspaper journalist who will record the details of the man’s accidental findings from a government official’s computer – the film’s title is the Dutch word for ‘whistleblower’.

Hardly calming their nerves is the presence of wandering soldiers at nearby shops, nor the arrival of two armed close protection officers (Tom Burke and Roger Evans) sent to guard them. This mismatched pair of heavies bicker more than the stressed married couple, their rapport providing much of the film’s confident comedy. Burke brings some of his droll casual cruelty from The Souvenir to the context of constantly chiding Evans’ somewhat dim alcoholic, the latter blowing his own alias almost immediately.

Unlike Pinter’s Godot, the journalist does eventually arrive. Played by Jenna Coleman, she’s not what anyone’s expecting, not least because she’s not the established name the couple were told was coming. Coleman’s belligerent freelancer amusingly cites slashed print budgets as to why a senior staff journalist isn’t driving all the way to Belgium for a tip-off that might not be of any real national security concern. But more importantly, it might not be of any use in shifting enough copies to satisfy advertisers.

Coleman delivers her rapid-fire lines well, and the addition of a confrontational new player to proceedings is welcome, but there’s something slightly jarring in how the dialogue so quickly shifts into a largely monologue-based mode. And the nature of a scene in which a stranger to the group arrives to effectively rant about how rubbish everyone present is while swearing like a sailor, plays a little like Alec Baldwin’s opening cameo in Glengarry Glen Ross, if it was moved from the start and placed over two thirds into the runtime instead.

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A few years back, Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal depicted the difficult adjustment of a drummer to life without hearing, leaving behind an artistic field so dependent on sound and sight working together in unison. A more modest offering in many respects, though similarly striking with its own amplified sound design and near-total lack of music, Japanese drama Small, Slow but Steady presents something of an athletic counterpart to that American movie: the story of someone born with a hearing impairment, operating within a sporting field where deafness might seem an inherent impediment to participation.

Director Shô Miyake’s calm and collected film is rooted in some truth. It’s loosely based on ‘Makenaide’, the autobiography of Keiko Ogasawara, the first hearing-impaired professional woman boxer in Japan. One might expect the film to be a fairly standard adaptation of the book, but crucial artistic licenses are taken right off the bat. One is that the main character, beautifully played by Yukino Kishii, is more of a fictionalised stand-in for Ogasawara, instead named Keiko Ogawa in early onscreen text. The other key change is that Keiko’s story has been moved to the COVID era, the film beginning in Tokyo in December 2020.

The explicit pandemic-era setting could plausibly have been, in part, to minimise the shoot’s cast and also avoid fussing with accurate period details. But the script is smart about incorporating the pandemic on plotting and emotional levels. Given that Keiko has no hearing in either ear, she’s reliant on reading lips to understand most people. As such, this period presents new obstacles when navigating public spaces.

One such memorable encounter comes at night when ostensibly well-meaning policemen stop this young woman lingering on her own in an isolated area. She has prominent wounds on her face from a very recent boxing match, but they think she’s been attacked. Keiko is able to explain as best she can, but the cops, following public health guidance, never remove their face masks to allow her to decipher what they’re saying.

Elsewhere, restrictions on gatherings make for a particularly absorbing fight with almost no spectators, while the pandemic’s decimation of small businesses plays a part in Keiko’s gym’s likely closure. Free of traditional sports biopic trappings, the drama instead concerns Keiko’s wavering mental health and confidence in figuring out why to continue fighting at all, especially as external factors intensify the temptation to quit.

Speaking on Keiko’s burgeoning success, the gym’s chairman (Tomokazu Miura) posits that she’s able to overcome her “dangerous” disadvantage in the ring thanks to her intently watching eyes. And much of the pleasure of this film comes from us doing the same towards Keiko. Cinematographer Yûta Tsukinaga’s tactile 16mm work consistently frames Kishii as Keiko in such ways as to always perfectly document every gradual change in her eyes and face. You can fully understand her developing melancholy even while she never articulates it to loved ones. The approach also means her rare beaming smiles deliver knockout hits to the heart.

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Few recent examples of opening narration have laid out so foreboding a mission statement for the film that follows as that which starts Tunisian drama Harka. Over various establishing shots, a young woman’s voice tells a tale passed on to her by her brother. Way out in the desert, a lake apparently appeared out of nowhere one morning. Producing crystal clear water, its seemingly perfect qualities attracted visitors from far away just to see or swim in it. No one questioned the apparent miracle, as the locals, we’re told, believe in the possibility of magic.

The stage is set for a story with a possible bent of magical realism. But the narrator quickly dispels that notion. Months on from the miracle spot’s beginnings as a tourist attraction, someone learned it was in fact a sinkhole filled up with run-off from a nearby phosphate mine. Despite this revelation, people still came; still swam. But then the water turned black, finally making people understand the full extent to which they were wallowing in poison. Cut to opening credits.

One way to interpret this short story is as an encapsulation of refusing to let go of faith in the outwardly positive mirage of change, even when learning of negative underpinnings. Another is as an example of how people can refuse to properly acknowledge a rot in their society until an absolute worst-case scenario is staring them right in the face.

Both seem applicable to the wider narrative of Harka, which explicitly takes place a decade on from the Arab Spring. It grapples with a generation’s frustration at its failed promise, while also drawing several parallels with the fate of Mohamed Bouazizi. In December 2010, his self-immolation, in response to the confiscation of his wares and harassment from authorities, became one of the catalysts for the Tunisian Revolution and wider Arab Spring.

Harka chronicles what sort of burning despair might drive someone to become a burning martyr, with a blend of claustrophobic character study and sociopolitical thriller – Eli Keszler’s thrashing percussive score helps considerably with the latter. At the centre is a remarkable powder-keg performance from Adam Bessa as Ali, a young man who barely makes a living selling contraband petrol on street corners, spending his nights in an abandoned building site.

Saving cash to move to Europe, he’s forced to abandon his plans when his father dies and his young sisters back home need a guardian. And with the gaining of the patriarch’s responsibilities also comes the passing on of his various debts. All of Ali’s attempts at progression, both legitimate and increasingly criminal, are impeded at every turn. Virtually no person of higher social status seems unwilling to rob a man at his lowest; be it of the minimal coins in his pocket or the last traces of his hope.

Writer-director Lotfy Nathan’s both electrifying and truly sad fiction feature debut is quite clearly never leading to a happy resolution. But the rightful rage of its commentary is articulated with such clarity and specificity that it circumvents any accusations of ‘misery porn’.

When it comes to the International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards, the somewhat archaic submission process involves a country nominating just one feature from the year’s filmmaking output. Regarding eligibility criteria, international co-productions are in a tricky spot, whereby factors such as how much funding came from a specific country, or what per cent of the dialogue is in a certain language, determine which nation can most justifiably claim it as their own in the pursuit of an Oscar.

Awards season rumours suggest director Hlynur Pálmason’s darkly comic epic Godland fell victim to those eligibility debates. While some funding came from France and Sweden, the film was also backed by Icelandic and Danish production companies, is set mainly in Iceland after a Denmark-set prologue, and follows a Danish character’s attempted assimilation in Iceland. There’s a roughly even split between Icelandic and Danish dialogue, but in the end, neither territory submitted the film.

Godland may have been not Icelandic enough, but also not Danish enough. But then, this is a quite fitting outside-the-film circumstance for a story in which cultural clash and notions of societal belonging are explicitly part of the text; a film that includes separate title cards in both Icelandic and Danish at its open and close.

In the late 19th-century, Danish Lutheran priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) is tasked with traveling to Iceland – then a remote Danish territory – to build a church at a Danish settlement. He brings a camera, intending to document the land and its people, and travels by boat with Icelandic labourers and a translator (Hilmar Guðjónsson), whom he befriends and is his only connection to the rest of the party.

When they arrive, their guide, Ragnar (star of Pálmason’s brilliant 2019 film, A White, White Day, Ingvar Sigurðsson), distrusts this Danish interloper, though Lucas is hardly the friendliest or most tolerant traveller himself. It’s Lucas’ own act of hubris that leads to the translator’s departure from the journey, and is partly responsible for his own injuries during the final approaches towards the settlement.

It’s no spoiler to say that the group eventually makes it to the destination of the future church, as it’s on the Danish settlement that much of the film takes place, and where rural conditions and conflicts in understanding only further exacerbate the priest’s crisis of faith and miscomprehension of reality. As the church’s construction slowly goes ahead, he finds potential connection with Danish-born local Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne), much to the disapproval of her father.

If that first hour or so is where the film resembles debilitating wilderness trek tales such as Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff or Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (in both content and quality), the claustrophobic second half is where valid comparisons to something like Shūsaku Endō’s Silence – though especially Martin Scorsese’s 2016 screen adaptation – come to the fore; where colonial arrogance and perceived enlightenment make for combustible mix ready to blow at the slightest provocation.

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In a new series, we’re celebrating the films we loved that aren’t likely to dominate the awards race. Over the new few weeks, our writers make passionate arguments for the performances and craft that stood out to them, from blockbusters to arthouse and everything in between.

When it comes to costume design prizes and the Academy Awards, the choice will almost always be between history or fantasy. The Oscar nominations generally favour period pieces, or the odd ‘prestige’ genre movie that’s also found love in other categories – Mad Max: Fury Road or Black Panther, for example.

On very rare occasions where non-fantastical features set in the present enter Oscar conversations for costuming, it’s usually for films where contemporary fashion is explicitly prominent in the story, such as The Devil Wears Prada. Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, set just a few years before its 2011 nomination, also falls under this umbrella, in following very wealthy characters who can afford runway fashion on the regular.

With this in mind, there’s a far less showy contemporary contender that was overlooked with this year’s nominees, but is no less crucial in reflecting the characters and narrative of the respective film. The tale of a married Busan-based detective getting too close to a suspect under his surveillance, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave most immediately stands out in costuming terms with the sumptuous outfits worn by Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei), the wife of a murdered man, who’s being interrogated by inspector Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il).

Her brightly-coloured skirts, shirts, dresses, jackets and sweaters are regularly the most eye-catching element in the film’s spaces as she interacts with others, while at her home she blends in more with the surrounding interiors – costume designer Kwak Jung-ae, in production notes, has cited the chameleonic quality as intentional on director Park’s part.

In the twisty film’s back half, Seo-rae begins favouring more ostentatious apparel, seemingly informed by greater desire to catch Hae-joon’s attention. One of her most striking outfits in this section becomes a key piece of evidence: a dress that appears either blue or green, depending on the light, leading to different recollections from those who’ve been in its presence. The costume is the perfect expression of how she’s perceived through different people’s perspectives.

While many of the film’s clever costuming decisions can be found with Seo-rae’s presentation, the thoughtful choices aren’t relegated to one major character. Indeed, while Hae-joon is mostly in his detective work clothing for much of the runtime, the details of the deceptively simple designs do actually convey considerable character information, as do subtle changes to his attire across the film.

In contrast to the more casual wear of his younger partner, Soo-wan (Go Kyung-Pyo), Hae-joon opts for a suit and tie for all occasions while on duty in public spaces. Even during a stakeout attempt to catch a long-pursued murder suspect who’s sure to flee, Soo-wan dons a brown leather jacket and what seems to be dark jeans, while Hae-joon maintains a freshly-pressed suited look. Despite knowledge of a likely violent encounter and chase, Hae-joon still wears what he basically would to the office, with the exception of shoes better suited to running, though these are still plain black.

This is all keeping with how he presents his own character to people. He sees himself as a civil servant and component in an organisation. For Hae-joon, wearing a suit and tie is simply the bare minimum way to show respect to citizens as a representative of law and order. Purely for reasons of practicality, an undone top button is the closest thing to scruffiness in his public presentation while on duty.

Footwear is an aspect of costuming that can go overlooked, but rewatches of Decision to Leave highlight imbued meaning in Hae-joon’s shoes. On a weekend date of sorts to a Buddhist temple with Seo-rae, the camera lingers in close-up on the reveal he’s switched from smart shoes to sneakers – admittedly still black, but with sharp white midsoles and tight laces that look never loosened before, as if the shoes were just bought new for this trip. And in a later scene, that Hae-joon has left brown hiking-appropriate footwear by the entrance of Seo-rae’s apartment is an immediate hint to the observant woman, as she arrives home, that he’s enacted further investigation into her previously airtight alibi.

That temple date sequence additionally features the most unique item of clothing Hae-joon wears the entire film: a tan jacket. Outside of this scene, cool blues and various shades of grey are as adventurous as his clothing colours get, even in the context of domestic scenes with his wife, Jeong-ahn (Lee Jung-hyun).

It’s this sequence that also fully underlines deliberate meaning in his sartorial style. “Twelve on the jacket, six on my pants,” he says of his pocket count, when Seo-rae is exploring the contents on him. “Custom-made at my tailor. I solved a case for him once, so I get a discount. I have to go at once when they call, so I wear these even on days off. People don’t stop murdering on the weekends. But it’s not the same set of clothes. I have several pairs. I’m… clean.”

Among his pockets’ contents are hand cream, lip balm, sunglasses, wipes, mints, and, as shown in an earlier scene, a single chainmail glove for defensive purposes. He’s ready for anything, though, notably for a screen detective, he doesn’t carry a firearm in any of those pockets. The fact that he doesn’t keep a weapon on him perhaps plays a factor in how the two key women in his life interact with his attire.

As he stores so many practical items on his person, both Seo-rae and Jeong-ahn casually reach into his clothes when they want something, usually without permission, as though he’s their personal walking vending machine or sentient handbag. Yes, part of this is down to the performances in those moments, but this only speaks to how pivotal the costume design is to the wider storytelling. In a murder mystery that’s all about recontextualisation of details and subtleties in communication, the clothes frequently speak as loud as words.

Produced by A24, The Inspection is the fiction feature debut of writer-director Elegance Bratton, who previously earned acclaim for Pier Kids, a documentary on young queer and trans New Yorkers coping with homelessness. A fictionalised depiction of Bratton’s own experiences, The Inspection is set in 2005, and follows Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), a young Black man who’s been living on the streets for roughly a decade, after being kicked out of his New Jersey home in his teens for being gay. With few options for his future, and partly in an attempt to reconnect with his homophobic mother (played by Gabrielle Union), he decides to join the Marines amidst the peak of the US military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era, which prohibited serving LGBTQ+ individuals from disclosing their sexuality from 1994 until 2011.

Bratton got his own pre-college filmmaking start in the marines, thanks to an eventual videographer role, though The Inspection – a recent Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award nominee – largely sticks to his onscreen surrogate’s time navigating a tough South Carolina boot camp.

LWLies: How have you found the transition from documentaries and shorts to fiction features?

It’s been a real eye-opening experience. First of all, I don’t see a difference between documentary and fiction filmmaking. They’re two divergent processes to end up with the same goal, which is a movie. Particularly in my film, which is autobiographical yet at the same time fictionalised, right there I’m in this nebulous area between what’s real and what’s imagined. I think all of us deal in that area.

But then once you’re in the industry, it’s a huge difference. I think a lot of the time when we talk about questions of diversity, and people are like, “Well, why are movies like this? And why isn’t my filmmaker over there like that?” It’s because it’s an industry of precedent. I didn’t realise how different my work and image as a director would be received after a fiction film. I thought I knew what I was walking into after Pier Kids. I made that for duct tape and five bucks. So, this is really eye-opening. I go to the [Golden] Globes now, and Angela Bassett knows my name. It’s just very different.

Documentarians are like monks. You make movies for nothing; about things most people don’t really want to know about. You’re in this little collective of people who do things for no money. And then you get to the Hollywood side: everybody’s rich, impossibly beautiful, so poised. It’s very different, but very fun.

Was Angela Bassett your most exciting encounter at the Golden Globes?

I’m a weirdo. Certain people just do it for me. Like Jennifer Coolidge. I met her the week before actually, shopping in L.A. We were at the same store and she was giving Inspector Gadget realness: big fedora, huge mask, collared jacket. Of course, I saw her and was like, “That’s Jennifer Coolidge!” When I was at the Globes and I introduced myself again, she was like, “Oh, yeah, you’re the guy who bought the jewelry.” That was pretty starstruck. And later, I was talking to my agent and Rihanna walked up behind me to introduce herself to me and my husband. She was so sweet and A$AP [Rocky] looked so handsome. Tilda Swinton returns my texts. And Jamie Lee Curtis loved my outfit. She looked me up and down and she went, “Yes.”

Why this autobiographical story for your fiction debut?

The first draft was written in 2017, right after I sold my show, My House, to Viceland. I finally had a bit of money in the account and realised I would never not need a real job for six months ever again, so I’d better write a script. I wrote three and The Inspection was one. I then went to my husband, producer of this film, Chester Algernal Gordon. To him, my biggest strength as a storyteller is bringing the audience to places they could never go without me. I needed to do something personal that would really introduce who I am as an artist and human being, so that, hopefully, I can build an audience relationship.

I came to the Marine Corps at the lowest moment in my life, after being homeless for 10 years. I felt my life really had no meaning, value or purpose. And then I was fortunate enough to have a drill instructor remind me that my life was valuable because I had a responsibility to protect the person to my left and to my right. In these polarised times, I felt it was important to share that message that you don’t have to agree about everything. And that, honestly, it’s the dynamic interpersonal relationships between people that change things, not institutions. It’s grassroots up, not top down. That’s what I learned in the Marine Corps and I was hoping people could watch this movie and get a piece of that.

There are moments in the film where we take the view of other Marine recruits objecting to their own treatment. Were those additional perspectives based on people you knew directly?

The War on Terror era is essentially, for me, the [defining] moment of Islamophobia in my country. I’m from New Jersey, and the town I was staying in at the time is very much a Middle Eastern town. And after 9/11 happened, literally every storefront had an American flag on it, because they didn’t want non-Middle Eastern Americans to attack them. Fast forward: I’m in bootcamp, there’s Islamic recruits there and they’re being called the Taliban. They’re being called Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. They’re being abused in front of my face, ridiculed and broken down. And in bootcamp, you don’t really get a chance to speak up for yourself, let alone other people.

Those stories stayed with me. Each of these characters is a composite of people who made an impact on me; who I felt I had something in common with. When French goes to the Marine Corps, he goes in thinking he’s the weakest person because he’s gay, that his effeminacy is going to somehow render him useless to the mission. And then he discovers that every man in bootcamp is given an impossible proposition, which is to be the perfect marine, to be a real man. And then, he uses what I like to call strategic kindness: radical defiant empathy in order to find that common ground.

But mind you, that empathy is what he’s learned from his queer life. So, it’s really understanding that difference is [itself] different and maybe the way you get there, whether it’s through your race or sexuality, is specific to you. But at the end of the day, those of us who are different have more in common than those of us who are ‘normal’.

Why Jeremy Pope to play ‘you’?

For me, it was really important that the character that’s based on me be an out Black actor. I’m not one of those people who says you have to be the thing to play the thing all the time. But growing up, I never saw any Black queer heroes in movies. Most of the time, if they’re actually out and gay, they’re an accessory to the lead character and whatever they’re going through. And as a Black gay man, I needed that representation.

Jeremy and I would talk often about what it would’ve meant to us to have this film as teenagers. I wanted to shrink a bit of the work for future audiences. As a Black gay man, I’m a cobbled together identity of RuPaul-isms, voguing, Karl Lagerfeld and random bits of gay stuff that I see in the world that resonates with me. I take it on and it becomes me. We wanted to make a movie where people don’t have to do that. They can just press play, see themselves as the hero and be inspired.

Could you also speak on casting Gabrielle Union as your mother?

My mom was killed about three days after the movie was greenlit. It changed the whole tone of everything we were doing on set. I’m really grateful to Gabrielle Union for helping to bring my mother back to life. When it comes down to it, my mother was a really beautiful woman. She was a smart woman, and she was a tough woman. She was an orphan at age 10. I needed someone who had that quality of strength and beauty, but also who could contain the contradictions of a woman.

My mom was the first person to ever love me completely. She’s also the first person to ever reject me wholly. Gabrielle was able to make herself into a vessel and allow me to talk about all of this.

Why ‘The Inspection’ for the film’s title?

I’m a big feminist reader and trying to be the best feminist I can, as a man. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, says that one is not born a woman, that one becomes a woman. And I think the same thing is true for men, that we’re not born men. We learn how to be men. And how we test the limits of that knowledge, of gaining that mastery of masculinity in the Marine Corps is through the inspection.

Whenever you’re in the presence of someone in a higher rank than you, there’s an inspection going on. That person above you is supposed to look at you and determine if you’re up to military standard. Now granted, once we’re in the fleet, actually in service, most people are not making demerits. But if you do anything that varies too much out of the mold of how we’re supposed to be, then somebody’s going to reprimand you for that and try to get you back into the mold. So, ‘The Inspection’, to me, is a metaphor for the ways in which masculinity is constructed, interrogated and, hopefully, dismantled.

How did you settle on the name, Ellis French, that you gave your onscreen surrogate?

I’ve been a Francophile since I was seven or eight. For one of my first big projects in what I think you call primary school, we had to pick a country and for a week tell the whole class about it. France was mine, so I brought in baguettes. We couldn’t drink red wine, so I brought in Kool-Aid. And Ellis is my nickname at home, so ‘Ellis French’. It was also my old Grindr name… no, I’m just kidding.