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

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...

‘I want to make movies for my people’: Jane Schoenbrun on making a soon-to-be cult classic

The writer-director’s film I Saw the TV Glow brings together themes of fandom, pop culture obsession and trans identity

For the writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, making their highly anticipated follow-up to the breakout indie horror We’re All Going to the World’s Fair was a starkly different process. While their debut cost about $100,000 to make and felt like the result of 10 people running wild in the woods somewhere, far off the grid, I Saw the TV Glow was something else entirely: a budget larger than anything they had worked with before, a giant machine where everything had to move in careful synchronization.

“It was so different that it was almost like working in a different medium,” Schoenbrun said. “I really tried to take advantage of that with this film. I tried to make something that could be like almost painted. So many images in this film were so labored over.”

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