Film Podcast #26: Reality & Beyond the Hills

Film Podcast #26: Reality & Beyond the Hills by The Double Negative on Mixcloud

DW Mault reviews Matteo Garrone’s paranoid comedy Reality (2012), and Cristian Mungiu’s dark drama Beyond the Hills (2012).

Reality: Director Garrone’s follow up to Gomorrah could hardly be more different  - a sharp comedy on the perils of chasing celebrity. Fishmonger and family man Luciano (Aniello Arena) becomes utterly obsessed with being a contestant on Italian Big Brother, leading him into a desperate and paranoid existence.

“This is a perceptive, unpredictable and frequently very funny critique of reality television’s ability to elevate irksome nobodies into infinitely more irksome somebodies” – The Telegraph

Beyond the Hills looks at the complicated relationship between two young women, Alina (Cristina Flutur) and Voichita (Cosmina Stratan).  Although they grew up in the same orphanage, they now lead different lives; Voichita has found God in a small Romanian monastery, and Alina plans to take her friend back to Germany to waitress on a tourist boat. Cue conflict, hypocrisy and cruelty.

“Cristian Mungiu’s prize-winning film is a powerful and sombre meditation on faith and friendship in present-day Romania” – the Guardian

Hosted by director and cineaste DW Mault, with special guest, TDN editor Mike Pinnington.

Watch the trailers for Reality and Beyond the Hills   

Reality screens at FACT Tuesday 28 May 

Beyond the Hills screens at FACT tomorrow 3.10pm and Wednesday 27 March