FILM REVIEW: Student Films #4 - Bolton Film Festival

3 short student made films entered into the current online Bolton Film Festival.

1. No Refunds - UK - Dir: Chezdan Mills - European Premiere

Not only is this story perhaps quite unique, macabre, interesting and thoughtful, but also is the format the film takes, flashbacks in the form of a recorded video of the events which can be played, paused and fast-forwarded as required. I liked this idea very much and it worked superbly in this context.

The story of the film is also a very interesting one: a young man has become a contract killer for those who are terminal ill and wish to end their lives. After the unexpected and traumatic death of his young pregnant bride, he has no compuction in taking large sums of money from people to accommodate the "perfect ending" for them before he shoots them. 

His conscience pricks him when he accepts a contract on another beautiful young lady who obviously must have reminded him of his wife as he asked her to wear his wife's wedding gown for her final moments; but there is no going back once he accepts the contract, and there are no refunds.

Excellently realised and sympathetically acted.

2. Pastime - UK - Dir: Joel Baker - World Premiere 

Perhaps Pastime could also be read as Past Time...  we are taken to a video game arcade and through the narration of the protagonist we learn that he and his best friend 'Ace' would hang out here all the time. 

It was not particularly clear how we move from there to his witnessing an accident outside the arcade; but we do realise when the same scenario is shown on a video game screen that the young man has been talking about Ace in the past tense... with his final words being, 'I really miss him'. 

Jude Sides plays the gamer with realism, but the story is weak and the transition between the two different sections of the film unclear.

3. The Home Front - Israel - Dir: Tal Inbar 

A very clever idea with use of multi-media in this film as it mixes archive CCTV footage, original footage, crime scene witness interviews (with deliberately dark and obscured faces) and portrays some of the characters in the film (the two terrorists / the main policeman) in a cartoon way concealing their identity. 

We are taken back to Tel Aviv in 2016 and to a terrorist shooting in a cafe in which several people were killed and a police officer allowed a man to shelter in his home with his family whilst he went to search for the terrorists, only realising that the man he had given shelter to was one of the terrorists once at the crime scene. 

A great premise and whether or not this is a true story I don't know, but it certainly looked very convincing with the CCTV footage, and thus very wise to perhaps slightly parody it and obscure identities.

The pulsating modern soundtrack that accompanies the film didn't work for me, but that's totally subjective.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall

on - 22/10/20