JoEllen Marsh, Jerry Rothwell and Danielle Pagano at the Tribeca premiere of Donor Unknown.

Jerry Rothwell has previously brought us such critically acclaimed documentaries as Heavy Load and Deep Water. His new documentary looks at donor conception through the quest JoEllen Marsh initiates to find out about her donor, known to her as Donor 150. Along the way she discovers a website which connects her  to 13 siblings from the same donor across America, the first connection resulting in a  New York Times article. An article their unconventional donor, Jeffrey Harrison- a hippy living on Venice beach in a dilapidated RV with his coterie of animals- sees and which prompts him to give up his anonymity and forge new relationships with his biological children. The result is a film that highlights contemporary issues of genetics, identity, family and the ethics of sperm donation, and is genuinely insightful, funny and touching. Don’t Panic talks to director Jerry Rothwell  about the issues the film raises and his approach  to the story.

What first drew you to filming this story?

I’m  always looking for a very specific situation but one which might throw light on much bigger issues. What I was really interested in was a how a group of people were trying to find a new set of relationships, brought about by technology-the ability to contact each other over the internet, but also by the technology of reproduction. There’s a very a tight story around wonder and the offspring that come about because of [Jeffrey’s] donations.

 How did you convince the producer, Hilary Durman, that it could be made as a film when it was originally going to be a radio documentary?

I think the difficultly she worried about is the issue of privacy and the question of whose story is it? The story probably belongs to about 30 people, and how do you get consent from all those people for a film to be made, which gets into some quite private issues. Then we started talking to the different families and they started talking to each-other  and then that was the really the way we got it going.

What were the siblings reactions to having a documentary made about them?

They’d  done a certain amount of media before because, they did the New York Times article. And I think  JoEllen’s motivation for doing it was to raise awareness about donor conception, that her story is like a lot of other people’s stories and to encourage people to look for their donor if they wanted  too, that it was possible and it wasn’t necessarily scary.

The film raises a lot of questions about identity, which is a theme in your previous documentary Heavy Load as well, is this a theme that particularly interests you?

Yeah, the question of how people define themselves is maybe something I’m interested in, and I think the thing they have in common also is something about masculinity which interests me. It’s not that I sit down and think that that’s the kind of issues that I want to do, it’s more that if someone tells me a story the things I see in it are not going to be the same things that someone-else sees.  You have to go with the things you’re interested in and I was interested in Jeffrey as much as I was interested in the children. I was more interested in this man who’d run as far away from family as you could go, who was suddenly confronted by  a kind of family and what that meant.

 Having got a lot of Jeffrey’s story in the film, how much do you identify with Jeffrey and how much do you hope the audience will identify with Jeffrey?

 [laughs] Well I think every-one must identify at some level with getting into a van and heading off to the west coast! There’s certainly things about Jeffrey’s experience that I like and I recognise and I think a lot of people recognise, and I think his kids really recognise themselves in him. I think the task of a documentary is interesting because you can both portray someone from the outside but you can also portray to a certain extent their thoughts and what motivates them. So you’re seeing them how others see them,  but you’re also trying to see them as they see themselves and in Jeffrey those two things play off each other, because other people have strong opinions about him. You hopefully in the film get to learn more about him and understand and emphasise with him.

Do you think there’s a danger of some people writing him off as an eccentric old hippie and loner for example, or do you think most people can see past that like JoEllen does?

 People respond to him differently, some people are really irritated by him at least at the beginning of the film. I think there was one review that said ‘if you don’t like Californian feelings-speak, vast swathes of this film are going to turn you off.” I think what’s interesting  is I’m not agreeing with Jeffrey necessarily about his view on the world, but I’m trying to show it in a way which gives him enough credit to explain it as possible.

He comes across as an essentially decent person.

 Yeah I think he is.

Editing places quite a big role in the tone of the film, for example when JoEllen talks about imagining her dad as an actor etc then you cut to the reality of Jeffrey living in a broken down RV which is both funny & sad, how important is editing to you?

I think documentaries are selective. You’re using real sounds and images of events that aren’t set up for the camera, but then you’re combining them into a context that set off thought processes in an audience or are part of a story.  And especially in a film where’s there’s no narration, one of the ways you make meaning is by banging against each other, juxtaposing things that are really different. Also I think it was a film that because Jeffrey’s sperm made its way to lots of different corners of America, it gave itself to cross-cutting between different experiences that were quite similar. But just the fact of the number of different experiences is part of what the film’s about, so that’s why the cross-cutting and the editing happens.

Were you aware of trying to keep a balance between the humorous and serious in the tone of the film?

Yeah it’s not something I plot out in advance, I don’t think ‘now we need a funny moment’ but it’s more that certain scenes have certain characteristics. And I think humour is definitely important, it’s one way in which an audience can engage with the film, when you watch a film the moment when a whole audience laughs there’s a connection.

Do you think a film like The Kids Are Alright has opened the way to making people more interested in contemporary biological issues and so more interested in a film like yours?

 I haven’t seen The Kids Are Alright partly just because I try to avoid watching something about the same subject as what I’m making in case I end up copying them [laughs]. But I think biomedical science is the thing that’s most going to change our world in our lifetimes, what’s happening in biology is so much bigger then what’s happening in social media. But I think what’s happening in biology is really going to change our sense of who we are. So I think there is going to be much more discussion about what that means, because our understanding of it really lags behind the science, our ability to society to think through the ethical issues of it are way behind the science of it.

The film seems to question the morality of what companies like the Cryobank are doing in terms of making profits from getting as much sperm out as possible without regard to the consequences, do you think there should be more regulations in place and if so what?

 I think the situation in the UK is really different, it’s much more regulated. America being America it’s much more left up to commercial forces. I think the California Cryobank is pretty responsible in what it does on the whole but it’s primary concern, as Wendy from the Donor Sibling Registry [website] pointed out, is not children. It’s primary concern is about enabling people to get pregnant, so inevitably it’s not necessarily prioritise the  needs of the kids once they’re born and I think that is a problem. The way the UK has gone, which is to say that if you donate sperm or an egg you need to be willing to be contacted by your offspring, I think is the right way of going.

 How has being a British filmmaker impacted this documentary which is set in the US?

 Partly it’s quite difficult. The film I made before, Heavy Load, was about a bunch of people who lived ten miles away from me, this film they live 4,000 miles away which means a really different kind of filming. You’re trying to get to know someone really quickly on the same day that your filming with them and especially an intimate story like this that gets quite difficult. But at the same time to be filming a story about the states it’s interesting to be an outsider, because you see things that people within the culture don’t see because you notice them in a way that they don’t notice them anymore. So in some ways  it positions you in a good place to make a film, in some ways it is a film about America, and it’s about American ideas about family and connections.

Without the internet these relationships could never have been made, how do you feel about the role of the internet in forging these new connections?

 I think there’s a convergence of two types of technology [in the film], there’s the technology of reproduction and there’s the  technology that enables people to get in contact with each other. Without either one of them the situation in the film wouldn’t happen. I think the idea of anonymity  these days is a difficult, if you got somebody’s birthday and the state they were born in you can probably trace them, so that scenario is definitely changing .

What were you thoughts and on the relationships of the siblings and their uncanny common characteristics?

 Yeah, obviously physically they’re quite similar but there were these little traits-like there’s a moment in the film where one of them says ‘the way we do this’ [tucks hair back] so I just started looking through the rushes to find moments when they brush their hair across their ear, and there were loads of them so I cut them together. And I’d say there are similarities in character between them all.

How hard was it to film all the siblings living in different parts of the US?

It  just meant that we didn’t get a lot of time because your budget’s limited so I would’ve liked to have spent more time with Rochelle’s story, the film can only take a certain amount of characters and places anyway. I think once I knew that JoEllen wanted to meet Jeffrey and was willing to have that filmed her story became the centre of the film. Before that we spent quite a lot of time going to the different families in Memphis and Colorado.

Do you think you’ll ever be persuaded to make a feature film or is documentary the only genre you want to work in?

I love making documentaries, because I like the fact that you’re not just making your a film, the film has an impact. This film generates a lot of discussions about donor conception that are really interesting  and lots of people come up and say ‘I’m now going to look for my donor ‘ or ‘it’s made me think about IVF differently.’ So I like that aspect of documentary that’s working with real people’s lives and telling their stories. But I would also be interested in working on a film that had a documentary feel .

What is it about documentaries, any that particularly inspired you ?  

I watch a lot of docs and the people whose docs are like at the moment, there’s some British filmmakers like Morgan Matthews, Daisy Athgar, Mark Isaacs whose films are really like , I’ve got a very broad taste in films.

What’s your next projects?

Well it’s about a village in Ethiopia that has produced a lot of world champion long distance runners, it’s about two girls in that village who at the start of the film are 13 and who want to  be runners and I’ve been filming them since 2008, it’s now three years later and the film takes them through that process of trying to become runners. So it’s really a film about an Ethiopian childhood or adolescence seen through the lens of running.

Bàrbara Goenaga as the vulnerable and beautiful Joana who suffers from the rare condition of agnosia, leaving her virtually blind, and Eduardo Noriega as her dutiful and protective fiancé Carles.

Rating: 5/10

Directed by Eugenio Mira and co-written by The Devil’s Backbone writer Antonio Trashorras, this period gothic romance/thriller is an intriguing genre-defying prospect . Set in Spain in the early 1900s, it tells the story of  Joana Prats (Bàrbara Goenaga) a woman suffering from a rare condition, agnosia, which impairs her sensory input, leaving her severely visually impaired (which we see frequently through manipulated and distorted point of view shots).

Her father Artur (Sergi Mateu) is a lens-maker who early on in the film creates a magnifying lens which is powerfully accurate when used in rifles. However he decides to abandon it when he realises just how dangerous it’s use is. This leads to him being ruthlessly pursued by another rival lens maker, the determined Prevert (Martina Gedeck of The Lives Of Others and Baader-Meinhof Complex fame) who will do anything to get the formula for the lucrative lens. Wherein comes the espionage thriller element of the film, but what of the gothic romance part? Well, after Artur dies Joana is the vulnerable vehicle through which Prevert decides to get the formula and she uses Vicent (Félix Gómez ) (as well as other devices, but I won’t reveal them here), a doppelganger to Joana’s fiancé Carles (Eduardo Noriega) to infiltrate Joana’s fortress-like home.

The result is that Joana gradually falls in love with Vicent , who is more passionate and romantic than Carles who finds it difficult to be passionate with the disabled Joana, and instead has sex with prostitutes who look like Joana. A large part of the film is then taken up with a fairly interesting   thematic play on identities and the easy confusion of fantasy with reality.

The film is filled with decor and grand shots that heighten the murky gothic atmosphere, the period detail particularly opulent and theatrical. There are many memorable scenes such as when Vicent brings to Joana-cocooned in a room swathed in black to help her condition-a lantern  which recreates a starry sky (the only thing she can see clearly). Or in the grand tragic Visconti-style ending  that takes place on suitably gothic cathedral steps amidst snow falling. Goenaga, meanwhile, steals the show with her believable portrayal of Joana’s fragility and emerging  sexual desires.

But while the film is engaging in these aspects, it is not enough to make it completely satisfying.  The different plot-lines don’t always work; the elaborate machinations for a lens seems far-fetched and the ending while visually beautiful is rather too melodramatic. Supporting characters such as Prevert also seem two-dimensional and only there to keep the plot going. But you can’t fault Mira for trying, even if he does try too hard.

Oliver (Craig Roberts) and Jordana (Yasmin paige) experience growing pains in a small town in South Wales.

Richard ‘Moss’ Ayoade  directing and writing his first film could go either way: self indulgent vanity project or quirky off-beat gem. Thankfully this film is the latter. Submarine, based on the book by Joe Dunthorne, charts the story of 15 year-old Oliver Tate (19 year-old Craig Roberts), a geeky loner growing up in South Wales in the 80s. Oliver falls desperately in love with a girl at his school, the cynical and disdainful Jordana (Yasmin Paige), and plots to charm her into bed with him (losing your virginity, as countless films show, being the most important thing for any teenage boy). He also has to deal with the problems of his very middle-class and prudish parents Jill and Lloyd (Sally Hawkins-who is unrecognisable from previous roles -and Noah Taylor). Lloyd, a marine biologist, suffers from manic depression and often sits staring into space; while Jill, a frustrated office administrator, is having an affair with their next door neighbour Graham (Paddy Considine), an arrogant spiritual guru with one of the most ridiculous mullets in cinema’s history. An affair which Oliver suspects and brings upon himself to investigate.

The cast are brilliant without exception, and the film is peopled with great and memorable characters. Roberts as Oliver portrays well the insular melodramatic angst of an unpopular teenager trying his best fit in and find an identity for himself, which involves things like phases of only listening to French singers. His rushed breathless recitation of facts also suggesting autistic tendencies. His awkward and nervous attempts at seducing Jordana, including taking Jordana to an industrial site after she tells him how much she dislikes romance, are touching and funny. As are his desperate and obvious attempts to keep his parents together by such methods as inventing  a seductive letter from Lloyd. Jordana, meanwhile, could’ve been a very dislikeable character, she is sarcastic and joins in bullying an overweight girl at school; but there is a vulnerability underneath her casual carelessness, and her behaviour is made clear when we learn her mother has a terminal illness. The scene where we witness Jordana’s disappointment as she realises Oliver is not going to come to see her mother in hospital (Oliver still investigating with her is particularly poignant.

The parents are particularly hilarious in their misjudged attempts to help Oliver. The scenes where Lloyd gives Oliver mix tapes for the beginning and ‘inevitable end’ of his relationship, and Jill matter of factly admits to giving Graham a hand job, are hilarious. Considine is equally funny as the intense Graham, a character which expertly satirises New Age nonsense with his talk of light prisms.

The visuals, brilliant for a first film, are also worth commenting on as Ayoade often uses slo-mo effectively to emphasise the drama of certain moments, such as when the bullied overweight girl falls into a pond and Oliver realises how horrible it was of him to join in the bullying. His editing technique also heightens the humour in the film, such as when Oliver challenges and approaches a school bully to win back Jordana and in the next shot we see him dazed and confused with a bruised face.

This is a film then which is not only visually striking  but also genuinely insightful, highlighting the cruelty of adolescents to each other and the massive impact parents have on their children, as well as just how earth-shatteringly dramatic and tragic-comic it is when you first fall in love. British cinema needs more films like this, and I can’t wait for Mr. Ayoade’s next film.

Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, as shop workers Klara and Alfred, are a perfect pairing.

Rating: 10/10

So this is what they mean by the Lubitsch touch. This masterpiece leaves me wondering why rom-coms are just bloody awful nowadays, especially when compared to the classics of the 30′s and 40′s (maybe all the possibly interesting story-lines have been done too well already). The remake of this film the dreadful You’ve Got Mail (how dated it already seems) is a case in point.

This film set in  depression era Budapest, follows the workers of a leather goods shop the Matuschek and Company store, and is based a lot on Lubitsch’s own personal knowledge of the family-run retail business having come from a family that ran a tailor’s shop which he had helped out in.  The engaging cast of characters include the lonely and authoritarian shop owner Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan aka the wizard in Wizard of Oz), the hard working, cultured and intelligent salesman and bachelor Alfred (the wonderful James Stewart) who has slowly worked his way up the shop’s hierarch. Then there is the humble, knowing and affable clerk Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut) who acts as Alfred’s confidante, the pretentious, obsequious and manipulative Pirovitch who slyly solicits favour from Matuschek’s wife and the wisecracking, savvy and ambitious errands boy Pepi (William Tracy).Finally there’s Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), the love interest and ambitious and clever saleswoman who is at first Alfred’s arch nemesis. Little do Klara and Alfred that they while they are exchanging witty barbs (such as this brilliant perfectly-timed exchange: Alfred Kralik: There might be a lot we don’t know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth. Klara Novak (Miss Novak): Well I really wouldn’t care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I’d find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter… which doesn’t work.) they are falling in love with each other via anonymous correspondence.

The chemistry between Sullavan and Stewart is a marvel to behold (which is undoubtedly why they made , and it is a delight to hear them try to continually top each other while writing florid and sentimental letters to each other. While Stewart’s looks of knowing smugness that comes as he realises that his love is in fact Klara and so starts to play games with her such as turning up at a rendezvous and waiting with her while her ideal lover doesn’t appear; or when he gets Klara to read aloud the letter  in which he has written himself in as a ‘a handsome man’, are also what makes the comedy so potent. Sullavan, meanwhile, is up there with Rosalind Russell, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, Irene Dunne and Jean Arthur in her ability to hold her own in quick-witted exchanges.

What great about this film also is the satiric depiction of hierarchy in the shop, with comic motifs such as Vadas scuttling up the stairs every time Mr. Matuscheck  asks for an opinion.  While exchanges of dialogue such as the one between Pepi and Mr. Matuschek’s psychiatrist after Mr. Matuscheck has a breakdown, (Pepi Katona: Well Doctor, I would say it’s a nervous breakdown. What do you think? Doctor: It appears to be an acute epileptoid manifestation and a pan phobic melancholiac with indication of a neurasthenia cordus.Pepi Katona: Is that more expensive than a nervous breakdown?), show that  the writers Samuel Raphealson and an uncredited Ben ‘His Girl Friday’ Hecht were able to squeeze comedy out of even the most dark moments, and take a swipe at the craze for psychobabble, rife at the time.

This is a film to enjoy again and again, which is more than can be said for many films. So take my advice and ignore the Meg Ryan/Sandra Bullock/Katherine Heigl/Ashton Kutcher ad infinitum dross and watch instead a rom-com that engages the heart and brain, and is actually funny.

I was very saddened and shocked to hear of such a great actor’s demise, having not even known he was ill, he apparently kept it from a lot of people. He was an excellent Shakespearian and character  actor (and with such a memorable unusual face how could you forget his roles), able to really own his large variety of characters, imbuing his roles with pathos, humour and intelligence. I really have to see more of his films now but here of some of my fave performances out of the ones I have seen. RIP Pete:

1. The Usual Suspects (1994)

2. Romeo + Juliet  (1996)

3. Brassed Off  (1996)

4. The Constant Gardener (2005)

5. Criminal Justice (TV) (2008)

6. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

7. Amistad (1997)

Films I must see of his:

1. In The Name of the Father (1993)

2. Last of the Mohicans (1992)

3. The Town (2010)

4. Killing Bono (2011)

Tom (Jim Broadbent), Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Joe (Oliver Maltman), the model middle-class family.

Rating: 9/10

Definitely one of my favourite films of the year, and up there with Topsy Turvy and Happy Go-lucky as one of my favourite Mike Leigh films so far (have yet to see his other renowned films such as Secrets & Lies or Vera Drake). The film follows the lives, through the seasons, of happy middle-class married couple Tom, an engineer,  and Gerri, a therapist,  played by Leigh veterans Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. They live a contented and model  life attending to their allotment and catching up with their equally contented son Joe, (Oliver Maltman), a solicitor.

But they are anchors in a storm that surrounds them (let’s face it something had to disrupt their lives otherwise it would all be boring and undramatic) as their comfortable life is frequently disrupted by friends and family, such as Gerri’s co-worker Mary (Lesley Manville), who is a seething torrent of emotion, insecurity and neediness; a middle-aged woman, unlucky in love, who feels desperately lonely,  and clings onto Tom and Mary for respite and solace. Or the overweight  and also lonely Ken (Peter Wright) who like Mary is prone to bouts of depression after one too many drinks, and makes desperate passes at Mary, obviously sensing her loneliness. And then there’s Tom’s brother the monosyllabic Ronnie (David Bradley) who is lost and lonely (yes that word again) and when his wife die and who comes to stay with Tom and Gerri to recuperate.  He also has to deal with an ungrateful, rude and angry son (Martin Savage).

Mary who is used to dealing with depressed people in her job nevertheless has a trying time dealing with Mary’s behaviour, as she flirts desperately with Joe and then behaves like a petulant teenager when he brings home his new girlfriend Katie (Karina Fernandez). She is a movingly sad character one who brings disaster with her wherever she goes, and for whom hardly anything seems to work out the close-ups on her mournful face as she listens to Joe and Katie’s romantic getaway plans (something she’s always hoped for) are heart-rending.

The acting as to be expected in a Leigh film, is note perfect and is naturalistic and engrossing, this is a film that works on how true to life it is, everyone probably knows someone like Mary, or Tom and Gerri, (and as Mary says, “everyone needs someone to talk to”) and it’s all the more rewarding for that.  One of the only faults of the film was that Joe’s girlfriend Katie was rather irritating with her ‘quirky’ constantly upbeat attitude, which made you wonder why Joe would want to be with her. The only other fault was that film ended too early, I really wanted to find out what would happen to Mary. As the best films do Another Year leaves you wondering about the characters long after the film is finished, having embraced the characters as if they real. A moving and insightful film.

Rating: 6/10

This highly-researched feature debut  from British director Brian Welsh examines the effects of post-traumatic stress on female soldier Suzy (Joanne Froggatt). When Suzy returns home to Newcastle to rejoin her husband Mark  (Mel Raido), also a soldier, and eight year-old daughter Cass (Chloe Jayne Wilkinson) after having served a tour of duty  in Iraq, she struggles to adjust to civilian life and her family notice how distant she is. This particularly frustrates Mark (an alpha-male if there ever was one) who begins to suspect that Suzy has cheated on him with Paul (Andrew Knott), a soldier in her company, when she refuses to have sex with him.

As the film progresses Suzy  starts to becomes increasingly paranoid at perceived dangers around her, and anyone hanging around her home becomes a threat.  She is also plagued with flashbacks  (shown in grainy out-of-focus sequences mirroring Suzy’s sense of dislocation) of an Iraqi girl she indirectly caused the death of, and she starts to associate Cass with the dead girl.  She eventually goes  to the lengths of stealing a gun from her barracks (an aspect of the story based on news reports of soldiers Welsh had read). After her husband gets into an racist argument with a Muslim taxi driver (who angers Mark by emphasising with the Taliban’s actions)  they get dog faeces shoved through their door and derogatory graffiti sprayed on  their home.  This triggers an alarming  series of events, and their house becomes a virtual war zone, with Suzy putting barb wire round their house. It culminates in the increasingly aggressive Mark  viciously attacking the taxi driver with some friends.  And when Suzy finds some horrifying photos of Mark on duty, it prompts Suzy to run away with Cass-taking her gun with her- to retreat into a forest, ultimately putting Cass into more potential danger.

Usually with films about soldier’s experiences, they focus on what they are like on duty, whether that be in the midst of battles, mucking about with fellow soldiers or dealing with the locals; and they are almost exclusively male. So to see a film that focuses solely on what it’s like after being on duty, and what that experience is like for a mother in a domestic setting is refreshing. (Not that there haven’t been good films that focus on a soldier’s post-traumatic experience, Taxi Driver and Regeneration come to mind, but these again focus on men without such close family ties). It also effectively brings light to the lack of support that soldiers can suffer after being on duty. Welsh’s direction and Sam Care’s cinematography also captures well how dangerous an urban environment can become as seen through Suzy’s paranoid mindset; with the camera focusing on run-down houses that looked like they’ve been bombed and threatening features like the broken glass on top of a wall.

Joanne Froggatt puts in a great committed performance too, which shows how hard it is for soldier’s to get rid of what Americans call their ‘war-heads’. As Suzy she is nervy, withdrawn and emotional, her body movements and facial expressions showing that she is on constant alert. This is shown from the start at her welcome party when a party popper makes her jump and wince as if a bomb had gone off. Chloe Jayne Wilkinson is perfect as the impressionable and sensitive Cass who realises straight away that something’s wrong with her mother, and who disturbingly play-acts being like a soldier herself. Mel Raido is suitably frightening, whilst remaining a caring father at the same time, but is the weakest most unbelievable character  (more on that later).

On the negative side the film was unremittingly bleak until the very end, and this could prove too heavy-going for some who like a bit of humour and lightness with their dramas. It was also sometimes hard to see why Suzy stayed such a long time with such a twisted and violent man as Mark (though this could be explained by their long absences away from each-other while on duty). Mark as a character is also drawn rather broadly and seems rather cartoonish in his angry macho posturing. Whilst the scene in which Suzy addresses a primary school classroom on her role as a soldier seemed contrived (what kind of teacher would subject young children to that anyway?), and only there as a plot device to cause Suzy’s breakdown. Nonetheless, the film takes a worthy subject and tells a story that should be told, even if it can be hard to watch.

Brian Welsh started off working in Glasgow as an editor on social documentaries, and then trained as an editor at The National Film and Television School. He wrote and directed his first micro-budget feature film Kin-about a guy who is separated from his family and is looked after by a care worker-between projects. His second feature In Our Name explores the plight of a female soldier Suzy, who returns home to her family mentally scarred from what she has witnessed during her time in Iraq.

Did working on documentaries  with social issues, did this inform the way you conceived of In Our Name?

I worked up in Glasgow as an editor with a company called Autonomi cutting a lot of films about things that were going on in the city, like we made a film [Good Cop] about a Race Relations copper and gang fighting problems. The film’s [also] about the Choker murder inquiry which was Glasgow’s Stephen Lawrence, if you like, with this young Sikh guy being killed. I’ve always been interested in films and stories about real people as opposed to mindless escapism, you know, cinema that really has something to say about the world around us and society. So that was my editing background and that overspilled into the stories I wanted to tell when it came to writing my own scripts.

How difficult was it to make that transition from editing documentaries to directing a feature film?

I was very fortunate, because I’d studied editing at The National Film School and the types of films or projects that I was excited about becoming involved in- the main reason for coming down there- weren’t really materialising. So I decided that given the fact that I had all of these resources and all of these very talented people I met, that it would be  a great idea to try my hand at directing something that I wanted to talk about. So I made a really low-budget film there, and luckily that was seen by Artificial Eye, and then they asked me if I’d like to submit a script for this new scheme that they were running, and that was In Our Name.

So it wasn’t too difficult to find funding for In Our Name?

Well, it wasn’t easy. Initially they set up a scheme where they wanted to make  a film that was like London to Brighton, so we always knew it was going to be quite low budget. And we needed some more money but luckily our producer, Michelle Eastwood, came on board at this point to help get more money. She fought for that, and we managed to get a pre-sale with BBC Films so they brought the extra bit of cash that we needed to put the wheels in motion and get the mechanics of the thing going.

You do read  a lot about how difficult it is to find funding for independent  British films.

Yes, of course, it is really difficult and a lot of the people I went to film school with are really           struggling to get a foot in the door.

A lot of people have compared you to social realist directors like Ken Loach, and I was    wondering how you felt about that?

[laughs] Yeah, it’s difficult because I think people initially want to know what  box they can put you in, and in some ways that’s a good thing because people know what they’re getting.. But for me in some ways it kind of stifles creative thought, because immediately it lends itself to a formatting of things. So, yes, I do make films about real people, but equally I think cinema should be an explanation of what’s going on beneath the surface as well. So I find these genre tags slightly frustrating. And in other European countries I don’t think it’s as much a problem as it is in England and in the States.

What would you consider to be your main influences?

Well, I like a lot of social realist films [laughs]. But films that have been really important in my life, Nil By Mouth was a really important film for me. I like a lot of Paul Greengrass’ early stuff, Dardenne brothers, and I’m just crazy about [Jacques] Audiard’s stuff. I’m just completely obssessed with his stuff at the moment.

What inspired you to tell the story of In Our Name was there any personal significance in the story?

I was reading a lot of testimonies both in the States and here and some quite severe cases of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder]. Also the time when we started writing the script there was very little support in place, and it was like a breaking of the military covenant. Also I’m interested in stories where problems with the mind itself can create stumbling blocks for people.  And obviously with PTSD and working with the soldier’s desire to reintegrate into society, and then with these very severe psychological symptoms becoming a real stumbling block to getting  back into society, I saw that that could be quite a compelling conflict for a drama. So that was really what drew me to it initially.

The focus on a female soldier’s experience is quite unusual for films about soldiers, what motivated that choice?

There was a few things time and time again children were a real trigger for the onset of post traumatic stress symptoms  in the stories I was reading  and the people I was talking to and, obviously, quite often being the victims of knowing what it’s like to see some horrific things that can happen to children in a war zone. And having your own children and having maternal instincts and what’s it like to be a mother and come back to your own kids afterwards, after seeing the suffering of children in other countries.

How early on in the process of putting the film together did you realise that Joanne should play Suzy?

She’s [Joanne] is like one of the first few people I wanted to see, and I’d seen her in some ITV drama and I just thought she was outstanding and hadn’t done any film work. But unfortunately  we got knocked back initially, so I saw a lot of actresses and  eventually I said to the producer let’s just try again and see if she’d be interested. By that  point she’d actually read the script and coincidentally she was at the same point  hoping to set up a meeting, and so she came in and read for it, and as soon as she read for it I was like, ‘God this it, she’s perfect!’ She embodied the kind of raw honesty that we needed to carry it off.

And how did you find the rest of the main cast-Mel Raido who plays Suzy’s soldier husband Mark and Chloe Jayne-Wilkinson who play s their daughter?

Mel was the first guy that came in and he just had this energy and he’s wonderful at improvising.  He’s quite a quite dude in real life but as soon as he switches he’s just freefalls through things and there’s a real honesty to the way he works as well. It was difficult to find an actress that could top him, she had to be a very strong character too have made the decision she made in her life, and to be quite an empowered woman. I had to find someone to put him in his place, because I sort of fell in love with Mel when I saw him. For Cass, we did a lot of casting up in Newcastle for financial and acting reasons and we saw loads of kids from drama schools up there.  Luckily Chloe had just started at drama school and she was the last kid that we saw, and she came in she just had great character and when we put the three of them together, the family unit, it really gelled. We spent ten days before the shoot improvising as the family, so doing these defining moments in their life up until the script started. So by the time we started the shoot they were a real family unit.

I do think Chloe is really good in it, very assured for her age.

She is, she’s amazing she’s such a cool little character.  She came to the first audition dressed as Michael Jackson not to try and impress us in any way, but just because she’s completely obsessed with Michael Jackson [laughs]. She sort of moonwalked into the room.

I read that Chloe’s parents are soldiers themselves,  did they have  a lot of input in the film?

They did, when you’re working with kids you need a chaperone all the time and when we found out that they were both squaddies it  was just like, ‘God this is meant to be!’ Also it was great for us because it meant that they were always on set and were always able to back up things, or  for example something always come up with soldier’s uniforms, some soldiers  the way that they wear their beret [is important], and having someone there who was actually a soldier they could say, ‘that’s the right angle.’  And Mel spent a lot of time with Chloe’s dad talking about what motivated him as a person but also trying to pick up his accent.

How did you come up with the character of Mark. Because he’s quite an aggressive and often shocking character. Was he based on real people?

Yeah, from doing my research  I drew out these three characters which was Mark, Paul and Suzy and saw them as three facets of how you deal with your war experiences. Paul is able to contextualise his experiences and move on; Mark, he’s been programmed for violence he’s been commended on reacting in a violent manner to any perceived threat, so he’s like robotic. And in Suzy’s case the emotional scars are so big that she can’t psychologically deal with them. So that was idea, bring out three facets. The thing about Mark, because a lot of people are like, ‘God. He’s such a bastard!’ For me I can understand in some cases why he is like that because that’s how he’s being paid, to react to perceived threats.

How did you find the location of Suzy’s hometown? And was there a particular reason for choosing Newcastle?

I  initially wanted to shoot in Middlesborough, because I knew Middlesborough quite well and it seemed quite apt for this idea of her estate becoming the new war zone, and Middleborough [laughs] for some reason  seemed to fit that idea. For financial reasons we had to relocate to Newcastle due to lack of filmic infrastructure in Middlesborough, so we spent a couple of weeks looking for a location in the North East area, and then we find some of these streets in Newcastle. One street in particular that you  see in a long tracking shot, that looks like it’s been bombed was perfect for the visualisation in the script.

That leads me onto my next question, the way you filmed the location and your use of sound is very effective in conveying Suzy’s mental state, how did you decide on how to portray this mental state?

That’s a good point and I think a good point as well with this idea of observational social realism. Because I was very conscious that the film was naturalistic, but we also had to voyage into her head and feel the world she comes home to the way she feels it. So I knew that sound a very integral part in creating this so the idea, so the  idea is that you hear and feel the environment the way that she does. It was again that idea of her estate becoming the new war zone.

How did you go about filming the flashback sequences?

That’s an interesting one as well, I was fighting with the idea of keeping flashbacks in the film, at first I didn’t want to do it. And then gradually as people were reading the story , and thinking about doing the script analysis of the story, I started realising that we really had to have a visual representation of what it is that’s inside her head, even if it’s just something very short. So I actually shot stuff for the film on super 8 on holiday in Turkey with a young girl who I met out there.

Was it  a deliberate decision not to include any battle sequences?

It was a deliberate decision and I thought if we started putting battle sequences in it would become quite televisual , and I wanted it to be much more about  what it’s like to come home then I did about what it’s like to be there.

The film raises questions about the treatment of soldiers after they’ve been on duty,  do you hope this film will raise awareness about the need for more support, and what personally do you think could be improved?

Well we’ve worked very closely with [the military charity] Combat Stress throughout the whole research for the script all the way through to the shooting, was a very important part of the research. And I hope that the film does help to  raise awareness for them, I’ve been plugging them on my website. There’s been some new initiatives by the Tory party that have increased what the previous government had pledged. But it seems to me that there should be some more mandatory psychological profiling  upon returning home, which doesn’t take the form of a questionnaire like ‘rate your happiness from one to five’ kind of thing, it should be much more detailed. [With] the stigma that’s attached to exposing emotional scars and mental issues that a soldier can have,  it can be very, very difficult for them to reach out to superiors, not least because their careers are at stake. So I think in cases where soldiers have seen a lot of action or seen some horrific incidents there needs to be more detailed profiling.

The ending  is quite open-ended, I read that the original ending was more conclusive what prompted you to change it?

I think that the [mental] condition itself is cyclical in nature and I think in most cases it can take…in fact the average is that it takes 14 years for someone to seek out support. So for me at the start of the film she’s  returning from one battle and the end of the film she’s on another journey returning from another battle inside her head. And for me I get the impression that there could be another battle when she gets back from this one, so because I felt this condition was cyclical I didn’t want to tie it up. I also feel that it implicates the audience in some way and elevates the story from just being this one woman story which you engage with,  so seeing something bigger about the issue and the fact that this is happening around us all the time.

I read that your now working on another project how far are you into that?

I’ve just been in Scotland for a few weeks I had something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, it’s about people looking for spirituality in their lives. And I’ve written masses of stuff which I haven’t really read [laughs] since I’ve got back, so it’s early stages but in the new year I hope to get some development money and to continue writing.

Ji-won (Dong Won-kan) and Han-kyu (Kang Ho-Song) form a tense but later rewarding partnership.

Rating: 8.5/10

Hun Jang’s second film is a detective film which combines comedy with social commentary on the ongoing tensions between North and South Korea. The film pairs a South Korean ex-police detective turned private detective Lee Han-kyu (Kang-ho Song recognisable from his roles in the excellent Thirst (2009) and Memories Of Murder (2003)) with North Korean spy and hit-man Song Ji-won (Dong-won Kang).

The film starts off as a serious action thriller detailing a North Korean operation, involving Ji-won under the command of the ruthless assassin Shadow (Gook-hwan Jeon), to track down and kill North Korean defectors. When Song refuses to kill a child he is named a traitor and banished to South Korea, meanwhile Han-kyu starts a deadly gun battle with the spies and is fired as a result.

Fast forward six years and Ji-won and Han-kyu meet again. Han-kyu now deals in the shady business of finding runaway foreign brides and their pimps, and Ji-won moonlighting as a construction worker comes to his rescue on a botched investigation. Han-kyu seeing the opportunity to reinstate himself by gathering information on Ji-won, plots to hire him as a detective, while Ji-won seeing the same opportunity for himself agrees to join his firm. What ensues is a clashing of methods and styles (Han-kyu is aggressive, while Ji-won is sensitive in a reversal of perceived sterotypes) , which is gradually replaced by a growing mutual acceptance which is increasingly at odds with their political allegiances. So that what starts off as an action-thriller turns into a buddy cop film in the mould of Lethal Weapon or Life On Mars.

What could’ve been an odd transition is deftly achieved here, and Song is great as the crude, untidy and bumbling recently divorced bachelor (his ex-wife and daughter having emigrated to England), whose tough exterior hides a lonely frustrated man. And his comic expressions and displays of clumsiness are pure entertainment (a scene in which he accidently hand-cuffs himself to a pipe in his flat while pretending to take on Ji-won is particularly hilarious). While Kang is good is as a cooly efficient spy, determined to go back to his family in North Korea at almost any cost.

A highly enjoyable film which doesn’t pander to North/South stereotypes but instead presents the two characters as equally flawed and equally sympathetic.

Rating: 4/10

Shungu is the first feature documentary by Saki Mafundikwa; a renowned Zimbabwean graphic designer and educator. The film came out of frustration with Zimbabwe’s terrible economic situation and a desire to show the world what exactly is happening in Zimbabwe, now that the mainstream media seems to have lost interest. Thus the film sets out to show the aftermath of the long queues for bread, empty shelves and political violence, and show Zimbabwe’s long term suffering.

This is done by focusing on the stories of people in Zimababwe who represent the struggle, frustration and determination of the Zimbabwean people, embodying the title Shungu which means all these things. So we learn about the lives of a 30-something metalsmith and opposition supporter trying to keep his business going amidst government supporters attacking and threatening him and his family, and people stealing his equipment or not paying him.

There is also a middle-aged widower, who is trying to manage a run-down farm (empty from looters) she took over from a white owner, but struggling with a lack of resources such as seed and fertilizer, promised by the government. An anaesthetist trying to maintain her middle-class lifestyle in the wake of the healthcare system collapsing, and particularly painful to watch, a 25 year-old girl suffering from AIDs related Kaposi’s Sarcoma without basic medical treatment.

The stories are well-chosen and really illustrate Zimbabwe’s dire situation where there is 90 per cent unemployment and widespread poverty and crime. However I found that how these stories were presented was where it fell short. Mafundikwa’s continuous narration could get pedantic and extraneous, and seemed to be coming from the basis that people didn’t know anything about Zimbabwe. He also kept repeating the same points, for example constantly pointing out the contrast between Zimbabwe as the ‘bread basket’ of Africa and what it is now, which was unnecessary. Sometimes it’s best when the stories just speak for themselves.