Join­ing host Leila Latif are Lau­ra Ven­ning and Yas­mine Kandil.

Truth & Movies is the pod­cast from the film experts at Lit­tle White Lies, where along with select­ed col­leagues and friends, they dis­cuss the lat­est movie releas­es. Truth & Movies has all your film needs cov­ered, review­ing the lat­est releas­es big and small, talk­ing to some of the most excit­ing film­mak­ers, keep­ing you across impor­tant indus­try news, and reassess­ing great films from days gone by with the Truth & Movies Film Club.

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In his 2011 film Two Years at Sea, artist/filmmaker Ben Rivers decamped to Scottish wilds with his hand-cranked 16mm camera and hung out with a bearded loner named Jake Williams. The film did little more than capture the everyday minutiae of a man who had chosen to partition himself from urban society and the company of others, yet the resulting film played more like a pastoral post-apocalyptic riff on something like The Omega Man. It’s over a decade later and we’re back in the woods with Jake, still eking out a happy existence in his tumbledown shack and drinking in the pleasures of the rugged and serene landscape.

The key difference with this new film, Bogancloch, is that there is more interaction with other people, with Jake now presented as someone slowly reintegrating with a primitive form of society – but strictly on his own terms. There’s a sequence where he’s shown with a group of intrigued highschoolers as he demonstrates the working of the cosmos with use of a wilting pub parasol and some old bits of string. Later on, he’s seen leading a nighttime sing-along of thematically fecund Scottish folk music. There’s something enlivening and hopeful in Jake’s world this time, where he sees potential and companionship in other people, even if for very short and sweet bursts.

The material is elevated by Rivers’ typically-fastidious formal approach, where high contrast black-and-white film is processed in a way to leave glitches and blemishes in the frame, like the film itself is a relic that’s been dug up from underneath a trees tump. Indeed, all of Rivers’ films contain some element of this “found” quality to them, and in this instance you’re made to feel as if Jake himself would have concocted this thing from old ends of film reels discovered in a ditch. The film and landscape are as one, with the visual degradation echoed in the moss, rust and grime we see on the screen.

With so little context given about Jake’s situation and how he came to be out there alone, the film allows you instead to impose your own backstories and psychological justifications. There’s one sequence in which he starts rifling through a box of old music tapes and giving a couple of them a listen; the crackling music sounds like it’s from Asia somewhere, maybe India. You begin to wonder if Jake had been there and kept these tapes. Or maybe he was once married to an Indian woman way back when and we’re suddenly party to his own little trip down memory lane. It’s refreshing that Rivers and Williams have an understanding that, just because the camera is pointing at you, it doesn’t mean you need to narrate your actions and speak to the audience down the lens.

And yet, there are elements of performance in the film, where scenes have been pre-agreed and set up for show. In the climactic shot of Two Years at Sea, Jake is seen floating slowly across a lake. In this film, he warms up the water in an old tin bath and just marinates there, this time the camera itself floating away like a bubble caught on the breeze, leaving us with another vision of blissful contentment.

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Bi Gan’s Resurrection opens with a title card that sets the scene for his third feature: we’re in a future where the secret to eternal life has been discovered. It’s simple – don’t dream! Humans who give up dreaming can live forever. But there are some hold-outs who choose to dream in secret at the risk of having shorter lives and going mad in the process. These ‘fantasmers’ are assisted by ‘Big Others’ who wake the dreamers, keeping them from being lost to the dream realm forever. The life of one fantasmer plays out across five chapters in Gan’s film (co-written with Bai Xue), a sensory odyssey spanning the history of cinema, with more references than it’s possible to comprehend in a single viewing.

Since he began his filmmaking career in 2015 with Kalil Blues Bi Gan has been establishing quite a reputation for himself on the global film stage – in 2018, when his second feature Long Day’s Journey Into Night premiered at Cannes, the audiences arrived to find 3D glasses placed upon their seats, to be used half-way through the film. It’s quite astounding that at just 35 years old Bi Gan is operating at such a level of ambition and scale – in Resurrection he doubles down, condensing a century of film history into a 160-minute epic. It’s obvious from the start that ‘dreams’ here are representative of ‘films’ – the ‘fantasmers’ are the wily, reckless visionaries who think them up – but Gan does help out the clueless with a late mention of the ‘forgotten language of cinematography’ which feels like a cheeky sideswipe at the content mill mindset of the modern film industry.

Gan traces the life of one fantasmer – a monster made in the image of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu or Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari played by young heartthrob and skilled physical performer Jackson Yee – across five dreams, from a wartime noir to a vampire nightclub at the dawn of the new millennium, each with its own distinct visual identity. The fantasmer, played by Yee, takes on a different identity each time, but there is inevitably some conflict that plays out. He’s a wanted murderer in one dream; then a thief confronting the Spirit of Bitterness; a card shark teaching a young girl the art of the con in another; a young punk who falls in love with a vampire in the stunning 40-minute one-take finale. (Resurrection operates with such a deluge of ideas and themes it’s quite baffling that Cannes chose to programme the film in a 10pm slot at the end of festival when audiences were already jonesing for a decent’s night’s sleep.) He is looked after by his Big Other, played by the seemingly ageless Millennium Mambo star Shu Qi (the casting of veteran Shu Qi and newcomer Yee feels like another Bi Gan easter egg) who develops an almost maternal tenderness towards him as the film progresses, promising the fantasmer a gentle death as he lives out his final handful of dreams.

As well as the vastly different tonal and narrative beats Resurrection hits, Gan encorporates different styles, from the silent-era style of the film’s opening with its paper puppetry and title cards displaying dialogue through to the bold and brash neons of the final Y2K segment, where he delivers some solid camera wizardry in a ‘single take’ cribbing from his own Long Day’s Journey playbook. It’s a staggering feast for the senses (each segment revolves around one of them) but even more so a true love letter to cinema written bold and brilliant. Despite its inconsistencies – the noir section in particular feels incomplete, as though it was shaved down to meet a mandated runtime – Resurrection has to be seen to be believed, and Bi Gan continues to ascend in both his imaginative and filmmaking capabilities. It’s as thrilling to watch Resurrection as it is to imagine what the director might do next.

Death seems to be an omni­scient spec­tre and peren­ni­al fas­ci­na­tion for promis­ing film­mak­er Chie Hayakawa. In her debut Plan 75, Japan’s elder­ly are encour­aged to sign up for a euthani­sa­tion pro­gramme in an attempt to curb the country’s aging pop­u­la­tion. Dying is sold and com­mod­i­fied, and is as nor­malised as gro­ceries. Though not remote­ly as dystopi­an, there’s a through­line to Hayakawa’s fol­low-up in its rela­tion­ship with mor­tal­i­ty: that death has become so embed­ded in every­day life that it’s almost unremarkable.

For 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzu­ki), she’s lack­ing the road map for grief when time is run­ning out for her ter­mi­nal­ly ill father (a lit­tle-seen but always dev­as­tat­ing Lily Franky). Her moth­er (Hikari Ishi­da) is so occu­pied with her busy career dur­ing 1980s Japan’s eco­nom­ic boom that she approach­es funer­al arrange­ments with the casu­al­ness of a busi­ness call. In one qui­et­ly dev­as­tat­ing scene, Fuki’s father turns on the light of a clos­et to see mourn­ing clothes hang­ing by the door­way. It’s as if his fam­i­ly is already so pre­pared for his immi­nent pass­ing that he’s already gone.

Cru­cial­ly, Renoir is framed through Fuki’s per­spec­tive, car­ried by the rev­e­la­to­ry new­com­er Suzu­ki. Grief is a dif­fi­cult feel­ing to process, espe­cial­ly for a young child, and with­out any­one to lean on, she retreats to her own fan­tasies. Dreams col­lide with real­i­ty so fre­quent­ly that it’s hard to parse what’s real in Fuki’s world – and Hayakawa’s restrained mode of film­mak­ing doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the two either. Inspired by a magi­cian on TV, Fuki even begins test­ing her abil­i­ties in telepa­thy and hyp­no­tism: per­haps mag­ic can make sense of her situation.

Fuki’s own feel­ings about death seem almost apa­thet­ic – her teacher alerts her moth­er that she’s writ­ten an essay titled ​“I Want to be an Orphan” – but even then, she doesn’t want to expe­ri­ence it alone. Left to her own devices almost every­day, Fuki search­es for con­nec­tion in ways that swing from inno­cent to dan­ger­ous. She looks to class­mates, neigh­bours, and art from the tit­u­lar French impres­sion­ist. Lat­er, she strikes up a con­ver­sa­tion with a groomer over a dat­ing phone line. Hayakawa treats it all with such a del­i­cate hand that it can verge on becom­ing too light a touch. The film’s heavy ideas can feel like they’re not being giv­en the weight they need, always keep­ing the emo­tion at a distance.

Still, few films have depict­ed com­ing of age quite like this. The first pro­mo­tion­al stills released in the lead-up to Cannes are a clever mis­di­rect: one fea­tures Fuki smil­ing and danc­ing against a clear blue sky, and you’d be for­giv­en for believ­ing you’re in for a sweet jour­ney of self dis­cov­ery. Renoir does retain that sum­mery bright colour palette, cre­at­ing a star­tling con­trast to the core dark­ness that per­me­ates Fuki’s iso­la­tion. It’s a strange and often­times bru­tal por­trait of a sin­gu­lar­ly curi­ous child, left to wres­tle with grief in her imag­i­na­tion when real life can’t pro­vide the answers.

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To stand out as a teenag­er is to make your­self a tar­get. The pack men­tal­i­ty that dom­i­nates most group set­tings for chil­dren ren­ders con­for­mi­ty a sur­vival imper­a­tive; Ben (Everett Blunck) under­stands this as a recent Boston trans­plant attend­ing the Tom Lern­er Water Polo Acad­e­my for the first time. He instant­ly notices that the ram­bunc­tious Jake (Kayo Mar­tin) is the ring­leader in their small all-male cohort, and the qui­et Eli (Ken­ny Ras­mussen) is the des­ig­nat­ed punch­ing bag. Owing to a skin con­di­tion, Jake and his cronies have start­ed a rumour that Eli has a con­ta­gious plague and con­tin­u­al­ly ostracise him, yet Eli, at least on the sur­face, appears strange­ly unboth­ered by their bul­ly­ing. Is his appar­ent placid­i­ty a symp­tom of his ill­ness? Jake and co cer­tain­ly believe so, while their well-mean­ing coach (a mas­ter­ful per­for­mance of inef­fec­tu­al­ness by Joel Edger­ton) remains rel­a­tive­ly igno­rant to the bar­bar­ic inter­per­son­al dynam­ics of his young wards.

Char­lie Polinger’s fea­ture debut deft­ly nav­i­gates the excru­ci­at­ing ten­sions of pre­teen­dom, but The Plague also cap­tures some­thing less overt­ly explored in cin­e­ma: the dif­fi­cul­ty of nav­i­gat­ing the world as a neu­ro­di­ver­gent indi­vid­ual. Eli’s exclu­sion from the group due to his per­ceived dif­fer­ence is the more obvi­ous part of this nar­ra­tive, but Jake’s frus­tra­tion at (and per­haps envy of) Eli’s refusal to con­form is key to the story’s fresh­ness. This illu­mi­nates a rarely dis­cussed part of the neu­ro­di­ver­gent expe­ri­ence, reveal­ing the com­plex inter­sec­tion of low­er and high­er sup­port needs, yet this speci­fici­ty is not exclu­so­ry; any­one who has expe­ri­enced or indeed observed the social peck­ing order of child­hood will like­ly recog­nise some ele­ment of The Plague, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the stel­lar per­for­mances Polinger has cap­tured from his young cast.

Tak­ing a few cues from Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade with a shade of Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Made­line in its fran­tic, breathy sound design, a palette dom­i­nat­ed by greens, blues, browns and greys cre­ates a claus­tro­pho­bic atmos­phere in which a pubes­cent blow-up nev­er feels very far away. It’s an impres­sive addi­tion to the com­ing-of-age canon, a mod­ern take on ​‘Lord of the Flies’ that doesn’t pull its punch­es. While the lack of adult over­sight for these fer­al pre-teens may raise an eye­brow, Polinger posi­tions the audi­ence square­ly at eye lev­el, and as a young­ster it real­ly can feel like you’re total­ly alone even sur­round­ed by sup­pos­ed­ly respon­si­ble adults. Yet Polinger also resists the temp­ta­tion to offer trite mes­sages of sup­port or overt self-accep­tance; the film’s con­clu­sion stings like the chlo­ri­nat­ed pool water the group spend hours splash­ing around in.

It’s an aus­pi­cious debut for Polinger, tech­ni­cal­ly ambi­tious and fierce­ly obser­vant of ado­les­cent anx­i­eties. Sink or swim, the scars of child­hood last much longer than any sum­mer school.

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When we first meet the tiny mop­pet Adam (Jules Del­sart) he is lying in a hos­pi­tal bed with a feed­ing tube down his nose. At his side is his moth­er Rebec­ca (Ana­maria Var­tolomei) and head nurse Lucy (Léa Druck­er) who both have the boy’s best inter­ests at heart – right? The hos­pi­tal staff aren’t so sure. Despite Rebecca’s insis­tence that Adam has some sort of stom­ach con­di­tion that makes a reg­u­lar diet unfea­si­ble, Adam is mal­nour­ished with brit­tle bones. Rebec­ca won’t feed him a prop­er diet; if Rebec­ca isn’t present, Adam won’t eat at all. Lucy finds her­self in an impos­si­ble posi­tion, try­ing to act with­in the best inter­ests of her young patient while the hos­pi­tal staff breathe down her neck and the sin­gle moth­er becomes increas­ing­ly desperate.

The stark real­ism Wan­del demon­strat­ed in her har­row­ing debut Play­ground is on show again, with plen­ty of hand­held cam­eras track­ing Lucy as she buzzes around the cor­ri­dors of the hos­pi­tal, treat­ing not only Adam but her oth­er young patients, many of whom are in equal­ly per­ilous sit­u­a­tions. Fans of HBO Max’s 2025 med­ical dra­ma The Pitt might recog­nise the real-time anx­i­ety of Lucy’s shift, as she tries to pro­vide care under incred­i­ble bureau­crat­ic pres­sure and stretched resources with­in the health­care sys­tem. Léa Druck­er, a Cannes main­stay and depend­ably great screen pres­ence, brings a sense of poise and com­pe­tence to her role, even giv­en the dire cir­cum­stances, while Hap­pen­ing break­out Ana­maria Var­tolomei is sym­pa­thet­ic as the moth­er kick­ing against a restric­tive system.

Wan­del avoids easy answers – Adam’s Sake is decid­ed­ly with­hold­ing of the facts, nev­er quite reveal­ing if Rebec­ca is act­ing in her son’s best inter­ests or suf­fer­ing from a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion her­self. This is a strength, as it demon­strates the nuance of her sit­u­a­tion and indeed many real life cas­es for young at-risk chil­dren where there is no straight­for­ward hero or vil­lain. Yet its tight 76-minute run­time does leave us a lit­tle in the lurch – there’s a sense that some vital piece of the puz­zle here is miss­ing, while Rebecca’s fraught rela­tion­ship with her ex (Adam’s father) veers a lit­tle towards cul­tur­al clichés about absent fathers.

Yet there’s no ques­tion­ing Wandel’s can­dor, or her inter­est in approach­ing dif­fi­cult sub­jects with­out danc­ing around them. As in Play­ground, she cap­tures a remark­able per­for­mance from her young lead (here Jules Del­sart) while speak­ing truth to pow­er about the fun­da­men­tal fail­ings with­in the sys­tems designed to pro­tect the most vulnerable.