Thailand0:00/326.9761× There are two types of writers. (Okay, there are far more than two, but for the purposes of what we’re about to discuss there are two.) There are iterative writers, those who draft and re-draft and then re-draft again, then there are generative
Batches 18 and 190:00/268.4373331× And now the fun can really begin. With one or two exceptions, I have done the easy titles. There's a page here which details the final 20 countries I need to acquire. I'll also put up a page for
Egypt0:00/482.4533331× Sometimes people set a film in one location because the makers had a brilliant concept and wanted to make the most of it. (Exam; Phone Booth; ATM are all great examples of this.) The trouble is that they then can’t actually come up with much
Vietnam0:00/463.2533331× Warning: this review contains spoilers. And by "spoilers" I mean I am going to give away the end of the film. It's more of a "ruiner" than a "spoiler". If you're likely to watch a spooky
UAE0:00/320.2346671× I was frustrated by City of Life. Not because the film wasn't any good, quite the reverse; but it wasn't as good as it deserved to be. The idea of having three parallel stories which run through the film before the three
Lebanon0:00/530.3253331× I haven’t applied any particularly formula to how I acquire films. I’ve used AI to help narrow down the available titles, and then I’ve gone by genre where possible. For many places there’s been only one easily-purchased title. That means that
North Korea0:00/355.9041× The story behind Pulgasari is possibly far more interesting than the film itself, and surprisingly little known. Popular South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee was abducted by North Korea in 1978. When her ex-husband, director Shin Sang-ok, started looking for her he too
Venezuela0:00/379.3706671× I go in to these films as blind as possible. If you're reading this, and you have any intention at all of watching The House at the End of Time, stop reading now. You don't want spoilers. You don't even
China0:00/352.2346671× I do sometimes wonder how much I'm missing from these films. Take this Chinese film, for example. Now, I'm not Chinese. I don't speak Chinese (although I am aware that Mandarin and Cantonese are different languages). I've never
Jordan0:00/379.1146671× "They don't make films like this any more" is a rather pithy epithet thrown around all too easily (because obviously they still do make films like this or you wouldn't be able to make the comment in the first place)
Ecuador0:00/412.8213331× I try to watch these films with no foreknowledge. I may have an awareness of genre, and I can't help seeing the cover of each film, but generally I'm not aware of what the film is about. Sometimes that works for the
Andorra0:00/338.4106671× I have a cold. Being a man, that makes it a very serious illness, and I’m therefore feeling incredibly sorry for myself. I mention this not for sympathy, but because I spent much of the running time of The Devil’s Kiss wondering what the
Acquisition
Batches 16 170:00/230.3786671× There are several titles here which should raise eyebrows. I'll discuss them in detail when I finally get round to watching them, but for Bahrain, Palau, Saint Kitts and South Sudan I have had to...bend my rules. By breaking them. Palau
Review
Bulgaria0:00/440.2133331× Folklore is a powerful thing. It lays clear our deepest fears. It’s primal in its intensity. It’s revealing. Except here. Roseville manages the unusually impressive feat of presenting unusually elaborate folklore while remaining utterly vague and incomprehensible. There’s a tree which is old
Review
Slovenia0:00/294.0373331× Last time I mentioned three kinds of horror films. The second kind, films made not for any artistic merit but because they're fun, most definitely applies to the silliest film I've seen since we left Pakistan. The film opens with an extremely
Review
Hungary0:00/351.8933331× The next three reviews were never planned as such (now that I've have a decent backlog of films for this project I'm watching them in acquisition order), but together they form a genuinely good overview of several distinct kinds of films. I&
Review
Romania0:00/336.4481× I struggled with The Whistlers, a Romanian film, and for reasons it’s taken me some time to understand. Obviously most of the films watched for this blog will be in other languages. I expect that. And I don’t mind watching a film that’s
Review
Georgia0:00/390.5493331× Before watching And Then We Danced I knew only three things about Georgia: they take dance very seriously (the Georgian State Dancers are globally famous – the movement of the original Daleks was based on them because they were seen as so memorable); they’re a former
Review
Ukraine0:00/335.0826671× I really struggled with this, and the reasons for it fascinate me. The Tribe is a film from Ukraine about a group of students at a residential institute for the deaf. (They may also be unable to talk – the film is ambiguous on that point. It’
Review
Colombia0:00/385.5146671× Twenty minutes into The Squad I found myself thinking this seems very familiar. There’s an unusual phenomenon in which very similar films are often made at the same time. This is sometimes due to smaller studios cashing in on a big studio film (The Asylum
Review
Mauritania0:00/373.2266671× It’s haunting when a film is made so beautifully yet the subject matter is so harrowing. Timbuktu, my Mauritanian entry from 2014, concerns the jihadist takeover of the city by Islamic extremist group Ansar Dine in 2012. Timbuktu itself is in Mauritania’s neighbour Mali,
Acquisition
Batches 14 150:00/480.5761× I have completed the easy part: the titles I can acquire quickly. The final 50 will be more difficult. The frustrating thing - for someone that values physical media above all else - is that I know Botswana is making films. Most of them are on
Review
Marshall Islands0:00/276.0321× I mentioned this film many posts back as the kind of thing I was hoping for from each country; the people of the Marshall Islands were unhappy that they hadn’t been represented on film. There were many things they could have done, but they
Review
Iran0:00/290.4533331× There are two films here. The first is an astonishing technical tour de force, a 135 minute film shot in a single take, complete with flashbacks. How you can manage flashbacks within an uninterrupted take is something I never thought possible, but it’s done here,