Although it received a muted response at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts is another audacious, discursive, surprising and exhilarating effort from one of the most exciting filmmakers currently working in French cinema. I was delighted to have the opportunity to dive back into his world recently when Arrow asked me to write a new essay on the film for inclusion in the upcoming blu-ray release. Ismael’s Ghosts will be released in the UK on September 24th and you can pre-order it here.
Lek and the Dogs opens on a desolate landscape, completely empty except for the naked figure we see scrambling across the ground on all fours. Is he man or beast? At this point in Lek’s life, he doesn’t seem to to fit comfortably in either world. This new film by British maverick Andrew Kötting is a loose adaptation of the acclaimed play Ivan and the Dogs by Hattie Naylor, which was inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov. In 1996, four-year-old Ivan walked out of his family home in Moscow, away from the clutches of his mother’s drunken and abusive boyfriend. He lived on the streets for the next two years, befriending a pack of wild dogs with whom he could scavenge and sleep. These animals offered him a greater sense of companionship and protection than he had ever experienced with his family, and he would flee with them whenever the police attempted to bring him back to the human world. Read the rest of my review at Little White Lies
