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2 items from 2012

21 April 2012 4:09 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Into the Abyss; The Lady; Patience (After Sebald); The Story of Film: An Odyssey

At a key moment in Into the Abyss (2011, Revolver, 12), a quietly metaphysical inquiry into the awful realities of senseless murder and state-sanctioned execution, an off-camera Werner Herzog asks an apparently self-possessed prison chaplain to "tell me about an encounter with a squirrel".

The question, delivered with Herzog's trademark deadpan Bavarian drawl, seems to come from nowhere and to bear little relation to the ongoing discussion about the last hours of condemned inmates facing death by lethal injection. Yet as always with Herzog, there is an insightful intuition at work behind the apparent absurdity of his approach and a moment later the formerly guarded reverend (whose duties on death row await him even as he speaks) is in tears, talking of the sanctity and preciousness of life, however great or small, and apparently confronting the "ecstatic truth »

- Mark Kermode

2 February 2012 4:06 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

The Luc Besson film has no scheduled release in Burma, but pirated DVDs have been available for months

They move in crowds, thrusting handfuls of bills into sellers' hands before slipping their purchases stealthily into their bags. With its poor sound quality and shaky videography, this is one DVD that would not normally merit such secrecy – or popularity – on the streets of Rangoon.

But these are not normal circumstances, and this is not a normal film. The Lady, Luc Besson's long-awaited biopic of the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has no scheduled release in Burma and is likely to be banned by the military-backed civilian government.

The buyers are undeterred and eager to know more about 66-year-old "Auntie Suu", as she is known here, who, after 15 years of house arrest, will contest a parliamentary seat with her opposition party National League of Democracy in April's byelections.

Aung San Suu Kyi »

- Kate Hodal

2 items from 2012