I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming review – brilliant bulletin from Ukrainian frontline dives deep into culture war

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Locarno film festival A couple attempting to leave Ukraine when the war encounter gender identity issues in this bold and challenging film A movie’s themes could hardly be more urgent and contemporary than those on offer in this entirely absorbing film from German director Isabelle Stever and Ukrainian critic turned screenwriter Anna Melikova. It’s a bulletin from the frontline of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and from the culture war too. It is about identity and choices made in peacetime when less was at stake. There is a bold and brilliant premise that may at first look artificially satirical but is actually inspired. When Russia begins its attack, the crisis is very specific for a scared young Ukrainian couple, recently engaged: Olya (Tania Myronyshena) and Oleh (Markus Bright). As bombs rain down, they head west in the cramped car of Olya’s elderly mum and dad – with Olya grumpily objecting to her dad’s sexist comments from behind the wheel about female drivers – to stay with Olya’s si...
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Fear, fangs and frying pans: here’s what I learned by watching 13 horror movies in 48 hours

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London’s Frightfest shows everything from slasher flicks to arty experiments, though I wasn’t prepared for the number of deaths by kitchen utensils

I’m not sure at what point I realised I was losing my grip. Perhaps it was the moment in existential French psychodrama Pandemonium where a recently deceased motorist finds himself being introduced to hell by a 7ft-tall mega-demon; or it could have been the copious vomiting scene in Cobwebs, which was the third copious vomiting scene I’d witnessed in 24 hours. Either way, by the time I got to the third day of Frightfest, I realised it was time to go home – even though, for the crowds of gore devotees gathered outside the cinema behind me, this was just the halfway point.

Now in its 24th year, Frightfest offers both new movies (often getting their world premiere) and classic chillers, taking in the whole gamut of the genre from straight-up slasher flicks to bizarre artsy experiments. Over five days more than 70 films are shown on several screens, and there is a wonderful community feel: people dressed in Evil Dead and Cannibal Holocaust T-shirts mix amiably with cos-players decked out as mad scientists and vampires.

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