The Teacher

Set in Bratislava in the 1980s, The Teacher could be subtitled "portrait of a bully and a blackmailer" because the protagonist, Maria Drazdechova, is indubitably both, and the practiced ease with which she performs those two additional roles while working as a teacher is quite startling.

Her routine is this; at the beginning of the school year, Maria introduces herself to the class and gets the pupils to introduce themselves and state what their parents do for a living while she makes careful notes.  As the term progresses she asks the parents for favours when the favour is received she tells them what the children should be studying for the next class. Those children receive good marks in class and the children whose parents don't give favours don't, whether they've got to grips with what they're learning or not. She's the school Communist party representative, which gives her extra clout.

Things start to come unstuck when it becomes apparent that three of the ablest students have parents who are the least able to do useful favours for Maria. Their consistently poor marks at school prompt those parents to make a formal complaint about Maria and there's a meeting at the school for all the parents and the head teacher. Naturally, the parents of children who are doing well, don't want to rock the boat. The meeting is the dramatic centrepiece of the film, and to our surprise [ spoiler alert ] the complaint against the teacher is upheld. Sadly for Czechoslovakian school kids, the consequence for the teacher is like that of paedophile priests last century - she gets transferred rather than disciplined.

The acting in The Teacher is superb. Zuzana Maurery who plays Maria is completely convincing and her character never misses a beat. She appears completely without conscience and feigns ignorance of her manipulative and unkind behaviour. She devotes every evening to making phone calls to parents and continuing to feather her nest. The anxious parents are also very convincing.

The drawback with this film is that it's slightly too straight and slightly too dark. While Maria's lack of self-awareness and her indefatigability is somewhat humourous, the suffering she causes isn't. The Teacher lacks the warmth of Jan Hrebejk's other films, especially Divided We Fall.

Anne's rating 3/5 Ian's rating 3/5

The Love Witch

The Love Witch opens with a glamorous young woman driving a red Mustang convertible up the Californian coast, and in voice over she tells some of her back story. The background is obviously being projected on a screen behind the car. That, the aspect ratio, the blue eye shadow and prominent cigarette unsubtly suggest the 1960s or early 1970s. The perfect make-up, the dialog and acting scream old day-time soap opera. But we are being taken for a ride here. Satire is the name of the game and a number of film and TV genres and tropes get sent up, along with renaissance fairs, harps and cake.

Elaine, the self proclaimed Love Witch is escaping from San Francisco to a sleepy small northern California with luggage that matches her coat, shoes, lipstick and car. She is looking for love, she is not into internet dating. She finds that her stare is enough to attract a man, but uses a love potion to make sure they stay attracted. Like commercial drugs there are unfortunate side effects. But Elaine is relentlessly positive and never mopes over her failures. Time to put on a new outfit and move on the the next victim man.

The plot doesn't make sense, there isn't a clear message, but it is an over the top visual feast that you'd expect from Ant Timpson's Incredibly Strange section. And it does have the best line so far in this year's film festival:

Tampons aren't gross. Women bleed and that's a beautiful thing. Do you know that most men have never even seen a used tampon?

Ian's rating 3/5

Sami Blood

What? Those wonderful Swedes are racist? Well when it comes to the Sami people, otherwise known as Laplanders, that live across the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the adjacent part of Russia, they suffered racism across all 4 countries.

Sami Blood is a film inspired by the director's grandmother's life story and expands on an earlier short film on the subject called Stoerre Vaerie (Northern Great Mountain). Bookended by modern segments about an old woman going to her sister's funeral, the bulk of the film is set in the 1930s and is about Ella-Marja a bright and stubborn teenage Sami girl who outgrows her one room school and decides to cross the divide between Sami life and Swedish life. While not illegal, her decision is considered wrong by both her family and almost every Swede she meets.

Ella-Marja's determination and the condescension and hostility she meets among the Swedes are the defining themes of the film. This could have been a depressing film but as none of the characters are completely good (even our heroine) and the scenes of her trying to fit in are played with gentle humour (as is the sex scene), it is on the balance an upbeat film, which should make you a little bit angry.

Ian's rating 3/5

Risk

Risk is a documentary about Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It consists of interviews with Julian Assange and some of his associates plus some fly-on-the-wall footage of Julian and others at work and it is punctuated with bits of history of Wikileaks and voice over of the film maker's views of Julian. 7 years of filming Wikileaks is condensed into 93 minutes. Because the film is covering such a long period of time it doesn't cover any aspect in detail.

The title of the film comes from a conversation where Julian Assange gives his views on the risks various people are prepared to take to try and right wrongs and go up against the powers that be. He declares that he takes a pragmatic view of what risks to take and understands if people are willing to take more risks or fewer risks than he is. The film does a good job of showing his level of paranoia and justifying it.

Hanging over the whole film is the Swedish sexual assault allegations. While there is no detail on what happened in Sweden there are some glimpses into Julian Assange's attitude to the complainants.

While Assange is the main focus of the film Sarah Harrison (who seems to act as his personal assistant) gets almost as much time in front of the camera. The other thing that gets a lot of focus is Julian's hair (which itself is almost a trademark for Wikileaks).

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Tragedy Girls

In any horror film, you need a good premise for all the blood and mayhem. Often American films only seem to require a country location and an old house but Tragedy Girls is a little more imaginative and gives a high school movie (with the requisite corridors lined with lockers, cheerleaders and a prom)  more than a touch of blood and guts. Teenagers are renowned for being self-centred, and more obsessed with social media than the rest of the planet and the central characters of  the movie (McKayla and Sadie) take these characteristics to sociopathic levels. A couple of grisly murders in their small town inspires them to start a blog called Tragedy Girls but soon they feel compelled to create more fodder for their blog - firstly by capturing the murderer and putting him to work, and later committing some murders themselves. Improbably, they don't get caught and neither do they appear to have any twinges of conscience.

As you'll have guessed, this isn't a movie that wants to be taken seriously, and the makers have played with (and added to) some classic movie tropes. There's a particularly imaginative murder in the school workshop, with circular saws and hoist chains that bring James Bond movies to mind. The girl who discovers the body drops her takeaway coffee and the coffee mixes artistically with the blood on the floor. Another murder takes place in the gym where Mykayla manages to kill one of the town s firefighters who's at least twice her size.

At one point, Sadie starts dating the local sheriff's son, and it seems like she might be putting him first and giving up her evil ways, but her relationship with Mykayla wins out and the boyfriend and most of their high school class comes to a grisly end. Watch the film, and find out how.

Anne's rating 3/5 Ian's rating 3/5