The International Film Festival is currently taking place at the Rialto Cinema (see p42 for more details) so I thought this week we'd take advantage of the many recent Arthouse films released on DVD and design a little home film festival to be enjoyed in the comfort of your own lounge.

You, The Living (****) is possibly the strangest film I have seen all year, unique, funny and oddly haunting. From Swedish director Roy Andersson it is composed of a series of static tableaux from a city where everything is a grey-green pastel colour. The camera rarely moves and each scene is presented in a single still shot. Some link to tell small stories, and there is a pervading sense of bleakly humorous melancholy. Though characters move and talk, it is like watching a series of immaculately arranged still lifes. Throughout, touches of the surreal abound and characters occasionally appear to address the camera directly. Those with a corresponding sense of humour will find parts hilarious and there is a broader philosophical agenda underlined by the oft-repeated phrase 'tomorrow is another day.”

The world of bullying and teen suicide is explored in most unusual fashion in Dutch film Ben X (****), not to be mistaken for kid's show Ben 10. Ben is a troubled autistic teenager, dreadfully treated at school, whose only retreat is to immerse himself as a character in online role-playing game Archlord. Much of the film is shown from Ben's perspective – a stunning performance from Greg Timmermans - with brilliant visuals and sound editing, and, disturbing though it is to watch as Ben is tormented at school, humanity shines through and the film's unexpected resolution is surprisingly uplifting.

Back to English (or more accurately Irish) there's the brutal, harrowing, and brilliantly-made Hunger (****), from artist and first time director Steve McQueen. It follows IRA militant Bobbie Sands and the infamous 1981 hunger strikes in Maze prison. It is not an easy film to watch. The first third details other protests in the prison and the routine beatings and humiliations that are meted out to IRA prisoners. The final third follows Sands on the 66 day hunger strike that led to his death. Both sections are virtually wordless and intensely detailed, showing a full range of human reaction to the extreme conditions and taking in the killings of prison guards by the IRA.
But central is the twenty minute joining scene, a conversation between Sands and the prison priest. It is an intense discussion of morality and motivation as the priest tries to stop the impending fatal protest. Shot in one take, that one scene it is truly remarkable, deserving of acting honours for both Michael Fassbender (Sands, and now in the new Tarantino film) and Laim Cunningham (the priest). Uncompromising and extraordinary.

In the wake of Brazil's City of God and Elite Squad, South Africa has its own ghetto gangster film
Jerusalema (****) which, although a little looser than those movies, is still a shot of real-life adrenalin as we follow one man's rise from well-meaning youth to petty criminal and finally Johannesburg gang lord. Though breaking no new ground in gangster movie terms this is invigorating stuff, with great use of music, natural performances and wild outbreaks of sudden violence. (Note: despite the 'subtitled” sticker two thirds of the film is in English.)

And why not finish with some low-budget sci-fi? Both Timecrimes (****) and Suspension (***) are sci-fi morality tales, offering warning about tampering with the natural order of things. The superior Timecrimes is Spanish and shows the unfortunate ramifications when a man stumbles across a time machine able to send him an hour back in time. This sends his life spiralling towards chaos as he attempts to control events that he knows too little about. Suspension (American) posits that, after a car crash killing his wife and son, a man finds himself able to stop time. He tries to help another woman injured in the accident but his fragile mental state results in creating more harm than good, and slow slide into inevitable tragedy.