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Set in an isolated wood cabin during a heavy snow storm, Director Andrey M Paounov and Screenwriter (and long time Dn alum) Alex Barrett’s frosty feature January is the tale of an encroaching mystery that is set to devour the lives of five men who find themselves caught in a limbo between life and death, past and present, communism and capitalism, known and unknown. It’s inspired by Yordan Radichkov’s play of the same name but whilst that play is concerned with a world where small settlements start to perish, Paounov and Barrett’s film is one where the world and reality itself is at risk of collapse. Shot in gothic black and white photography and with a clever acknowledgement of cinema’s relationship with itself, it’s a feature with striking imagery that’ll linger long in the mind after the credits roll. Dn sat down with...

Andrey Paounov’s opaque but arresting feature turns on mysterious disappearances and wolfish arrivals in a deep dark forest

Here’s a bitter, odd, quirky shaggy-dog ghost story with a wintry chill. Award-winning Bulgarian documentary film-maker Andrey Paounov makes his fiction feature debut with this adaption, along with British co-writer Alex Barrett, from a stage play by Bulgarian author Yordan Radichkov. Two middle-aged men are shivering in a remote snowy hut just on the border of a dark forest full of wolves. They are the Porter (Samuel Finzi) and the Old Man (Iossif Surchadzhiev), and they are … what? Forest rangers? Officials at a science research station? A third resident, Petar, has gone into town earlier, taking with him the horse-and-sled and his rifle.

While Petar is away, a sinisterly threatening man (Zachary Baharov) shows up with another man whose face is obscured by scarves, demanding help with his damaged snow plough.

In London Symphony, Alex Barrett turned the 24-hour life of Britain’s capital into a black-and-white silent film, showing how old techniques are helping film-makers make thoroughly modern movies

‘We felt because you can shoot in colour, you can shoot in widescreen, you can shoot with sound, doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.” Alex Barrett, the director of new film London Symphony, explains why he has made a silent movie that is not only dialogue-free, but also belongs to a genre that last flourished in the 1920s. “I like the mode, and the expression, and the grammar, of the silent era and I don’t really see why that had to die away just because technology enabled us to do other things with the medium.”

Related: London Symphony review – a silent paean to the city

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The industrial scenes of the ‘city symphony’ heyday are eschewed in Alex Barrett’s distinctly 21st-century revival of the form

It’s a sign of the times that the industrial pistons and grimy stevedores you might have seen in the 1920s heyday of the “city symphony” film are hardly anywhere to be seen in Alex Barrett’s sprightly revival of the form. Instead, for a 21st-century Great Wen rhapsodised in silvery monochrome and set without dialogue to James McWilliam’s score, we have bustling culture vultures, a multicultural clutch of temples and acres of steel and glass. Appropriately crowdfunded, London Symphony harnesses the city’s human element – more so than other globalised-London portraits such as Finisterre or Julien Temple’s documentary London: The Modern Babylon – in service of a cheeky formalism. Organising his shots into thematic blocks – nostalgic byways, religion, bins – Barrett has the knack of drawing out visual details...

Life Just Is; Keith Lemon: the Film; Ice Age 4: Continental Drift; The Expendables 2

Somewhere between American mumblecore and European arthouse cinema lie the seeds of writer/director Alex Barrett's micro-budget debut feature, an "anti-dramatic" drama in which nothing much happens – and that's not a criticism. In today's marketplace it's hard not to be ever so slightly charmed by any home-grown tale of aimless London youngsters that doesn't revolve around drug-dealing, geezery gangsterism or fakkin football hooliganism. Instead, the postgrad protagonists of Life Just Is (2012, Independent, 15) put most of their energies into wrestling with what Barrett unabashedly calls "the existential and spiritual dilemmas so central to, yet so ignored by, much of modern life".

If this sounds unbearably pretentious, rest assured there's much that is down-to-earth about this bittersweet, dialogue-driven piece which follows its protagonists through the domestic, romantic and existential ups and downs of a week. One...

★★☆☆☆ A release somewhat symptomatic of what has been a poor week for new theatrical features, Alex Barrett's micro budget British drama Life Just Is (2012) is hampered by an almost complete absence of character or narrative development. Largely consisting of sequential scenes (divided by days) where the film's characters blandly discuss relationships, religion and/or Kierkegaard, there's very little on show here to differentiate Barrett's competently shot debut from a particularly philosophy-heavy episode of Hollyoaks. Whilst not completely unwatchable, we've seen far better homegrown produce this year, potentially made for less. Read more »...

Written and directed by Alex Barrett, serving as his feature directorial debut and premiered at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, Life Just Is follows four university graduates living in London – Pete (Jack Gordon), Tom (Nathaniel Martello-White), Claire (Fiona Ryan>) and Jay (Jayne Wisener) – who find themselves having trouble making the move into adult life. As they hang out, throw parties, and attempt to navigate their new responsibilities, romantic tensions stir and desires to find a spiritual answer to life’s meaning arise, as the true meaning of their friendships are put to the test.

Freeing himself from any distractions due to the film’s small budget, Barrett’s directorial style is very simple, but Life Just Is avoids the flaws of many independent films and doesn’t fall flat to inexpensive looking frames or poor definitions. With minimal cinematic interferences and the use of only a couple of sets,...

Cannes is now over which means it’s time to move to Britain as the Edinburgh Film Festival kicks off!

We’ve just been sent the full line-up for the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival which is now in it’s 66th year. We have our people (Jamie, Steven and Emma) on the ground at the event right now ready to catch as many films as they possible can throughout the next wee or two as we get to see 121 new features and 19 world premieres.

I’ll let the full press release below do the talking but let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments section below.

World Premieres:

Berberian Sound Studio Borrowed Time Day Of The Flowers Exit Elena Flying Blind Fred Future My Love Guinea Pigs Here, Then Leave It On The Track The Life And Times Of Paul The Psychic Octopus Life Just Is Mnl...

The full programme for the 66th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff), which runs from 20 June to 1 July, has been officially announced and will feature nineteen World premieres and thirteen International premieres.

The Festival will showcase one hundred and twenty-one new features from fifty-two countries, including eleven European premieres and seventy-six UK premieres in addition to the World and International premieres. Highlights include the World premieres of Richard Ledes’ Fred; Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena and Benjamin Pascoe’s Leave It On The Track and European premieres of Lu Sheng’s Here, There and Yang Jung-ho’s Mirage in the maiden New Perspectives section; and the International premiere of Benicio Del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Gaspar Noé, Juan Carlos Tabio and Laurent Cantet’s 7 Days In Havana and the European premiere of Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America in the Directors’ Showcase. In addition to the new features presented,...

As we wind down “Season One” of the conversation we take a look back and discuss what might have been overlooked. When I first started this column my hope was that filmmakers and tastemakers would use this forum as a way to debate, raise questions, and challenge one another. For the most part I’ve been happy with the subjects raised by this column and the subsequent conversation that has started in the comments section of some of the posts. However, as we push forward in the new year I would like if we didn’t just talk at you, but with you. We will still use this as a place to raise questions and to present a topic, but I would love it if we were to add more of an answer to the question, or a thread of discussion outside of the comments section. Perfect example…today’s post.