SINGING WINGS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

SINGING WINGS is the absolutely delightful debut feature doc from director Hemen Khaledi.  It features the warm and spiky seventy-something matriarch Khadijeh, living with her family in contemporary Iran. She cares for her elderly husband, goes fishing with her grandkids, and stumbles upon caring for an injured stork that cannot join its mates on the great migration.  A local vet gives her advice on her to bring it back to health.  Meanwhile, in a rather on the nose comparison, Khadijah's daughter is trying to migrate too. 

I cannot put a finger on why this film transfixed me so.  Maybe because it's so rare to get a glimpse into contemporary rural life in Iran, as opposed to the cosmopolitan urban life of Tehran. For sure, there was something in the way Khadijah reminds me of my old Asian aunties, even in the way she dresses and cooks. I love the scenes with her husband, alternatively bickering and caring. Despite being so old, Khadijah has a real energy to her, and her need to see the stork migrate is really touching and weirdly involving.  Finally, the lensing is beautiful.  Wherever this film is set, the landscape, mountains and wide expansive skies are quite lovely.

Overall SINGING WINGS is a really affecting, surprising and impactful documentary. I note that all of its BFI London Film Festival screenings are already sold out. I hope it gets a distributor. 

SINGING WINGS has a running time of 73 minutes. It will play the BFI London Film Festival and is competition for the Grierson Award.

ONLY ON EARTH** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

Danish environmental documentarian Robin Petre follows up FROM THE WIDE SEA, with her study of wildfire prone Spain in ONLY ON EARTH, in competition for the Grierson Documentary prize at the year's BFI London Film Festival.

I can see why it was nominated. She beautifully captures the stunning Galician landscape and has an eye for framing the almost alien wind turbines that now  grace its ridges. It is ironic that these interlopers, no doubt earnestly erected to save the environment, have become monstrous invasions of a delicate ecosystem that had for centuries protected Spain from wildfires.  There are lots of shots where we see them looming over the landscape, utterly out of scale with the wild horses beneath, scored with an eery metallic droning audio design.   

The real focus of the documentary is the beautiful wild horses, uniquely designed to feast on the tough gorse of this region, becoming rarer as their inhabit is made more inhospitable. And with no-one to eat the gorse, and climate change creating more and more extreme heat, the area is now prone to the wildfires shown in the stunning photograph above.

Petre tells her story by centring the animals - but also showing us the people who try to live with them and in this environment, whether firefighters, veterinarians or aspiring cowboys.  It feels rather hopeless. The investigative firefighter warns of what is happening and is utterly unsurprised when the fires start. This gives the film a melancholy tone.  But I must admit to have being rather bored during the running time.  How many shots of ominous wind turbines can we see?  I think I would rather have had the stunning visuals as photographs.

ONLY ON EARTH has a running time of 93 minutes. It played the Berlinale. Tickets are still available for all three screenings at the BFI London Film Festival.

LOVE, BROOKLYN** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

LOVE, BROOKLYN is a gentle earnest romantic dramedy with a side order of social commentary about gentrification. The positives: the film contains three great central performances, and some lovely lensing of a pandemic-emptied Brooklyn from DP Martim Vian. The negatives: the film moves way too slowly, and its insights are way too trite, for it to be either memorable or engaging.  

LOVE, BROOKLYN is the debut feature from director Rachael Holder and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman, and maybe that shows in its pacing. Or maybe it was a choice. But my word, for a 97 minute film I really was looking at my watch and wondering why we had not progressed. 

The film stars Andre Holland (MOONLIGHT) as Roger - a likeable thirtysomethibng journo who spends his time cycling around his beloved Brooklyn lamenting its evolution and wrestling with whether he is still in love with his ex- or ready to take on a deeper commitment with the single mum he had a one night stand with.  The ex is played by Nicole Beharie, currently on screen in Apple TV's The Morning Show.  She is fantastic as art gallerist Casey - all wit and vitality and zip.  Holland and Beharie have such on-screen chemistry we wonder why they broke up in the first place. And then we have DeWanda Wise as the more mature, centred and calm single mother Nicole, and I loved the scenes with her precocious young daughter Ally.  Nicole gently coaxes Roger into having more interaction with Ally and gives him the confidence to see a future together.  All three are good earnest people trying to live a good life. There's no actual dramatic tension.  There is, however,  some lovely gentle comedy provided by The Daily Show's Roy Wood Jr., as Alan, Roger's best friend.

There's some trite stuff at the end tying in the need to move forward, both in relationships to people and our urban homes.  The film washed over me like a warm breeze. Inconsequential and forgettable but not entirely unpleasant. 

LOVE, BROOKLYN has a running time of 97 minutes. It was released in the USA in September.