Nikola Jović

"Wistfully intimate, but also has honesty and courage in dealing with grief and acceptance of the inevitable in the final moments of one's life." | Photo: Courtesy Rotterdam Film Festival “Close your eyes, and believe; the wind makes your wishes come true,” says the ailing mother to her filmmaker son in a gently wistful moment that carries all the emotional weight of knowing that nothing lasts, and that the time for letting go is around the corner.

"While this film has the undeniable oldschool sensibility, it never feels archaic or out of joint with its time." | Photo: Highland Film Group After a string of TV movies, in Michael Mann’s first theatrical feature, Thief (1981), the main character, Frank, delivers a line that would later be immortalised by another of Mann’s films, and which encapsulates the ethos of a certain kind of character type.

"Its biggest problem is that its main protagonist and his love interest are never fleshed out and could basically be boiled down to all too known Hero With a Thousand Faces tropes" A certain type of low-brow fantasy action used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter, but with a turn towards comic book intellectual property, while they’re still great worldwide performers, a lot of audiences in the international market have been left dry and other players have filled the void.