London 2007

"Unrelated" by Joanna Hogg

With over 300 films on 20 screens and admissions estimated at 110,000, the 2007 edition of the London Film Festival — sponsored in its 51st year by "The Times" and the British Film Institute — reaffirmed the event as England's premiere showcase for world cinema.
    Less concerned with world premieres than with collecting the most prestigious films from festivals as diverse as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto — "the best of everything", as one organizer declared — London exists to celebrate cinema from all walks of life, and the selection assembled for the FIPRESCI jury reflected that laudable desire.
    From the American Gothic formalism of Jeff Nichols' Shotgun Stories to the shamelessly commercial energy of Garth Jennings' Son of Rambow; from Sarah Gavron's nationally relevant Brick Lane to the mournful cloud that hung over Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin' (Endless) (California Dreamin' — Nesfarsit), our jury was offered glimpses of strange rivalries and opaque cultures; of twisting psyches and uncomplicated innocence.
    Ultimately, we chose to honor a local film: Joanna Hogg's Unrelated, a piercing look at a woman struggling to come to terms with an unexpected life change while on holiday with a friend's family. Simple in its construction but endlessly complex in its psychology, Unrelated marks the arrival of a filmmaker whose talent seems as boundless as her compassion for her characters. (Norman Wilner)

FIPRESCI-Prize: Unrelated by Joanna Hogg (UK) Details
London Film Festival, October 17 — November 1, 2007, www.lff.org.uk

Reports

A New Kind of British Film. "Joanna Hogg's outstanding feature film Unrelated has a fluency and a freshness which is quite uncommon in a British film nowadays", writes British critic Roger Clarke in his review of the FIPRESCI Prize winner. "This low-budget small-scale project, using both professional and non-professional actors is headlined by brilliant performances from Kathryn Worth and Tom Hiddlestone."
Debuts and Stereotypes. Ingeborg Bratoeva reviews Joanna Hogg's Unrelated in the context of first feature films included in the London program. "Starting from an autobiographical script," she writes, "Hogg has succeeded in building vital characters, creating lifelike dialogue and setting the course of her narrative beyond her own story, addressing a whole generation of apparently self-confident women."
Keep Her Steady. Norman Wilner remarks that digital cinema allows an impressive level of intimacy and identification, even if the films themselves are ultimately rather generic efforts. Digital cinema, he writes, "doesn't have to be a gimmick; it's just as valid a storytelling tool — and as intimate — as celluloid."

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