Lee has worked for Screen International since 1996 as an Italy-based film critic. He also writes on travel, design and culture for a range of UK, US and Italian publications.

Lee Marshall

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Top Five

the assassin

  1. The Assassin
    Dir
    Hou Hsiao-hsien

    Quite simply the most beautiful new film I’ve seen for a long, long time. Set towards the end of the Tang dynasty, the Taiwanese director’s ravishing story of an expertly trained female killer sent to rub out the man to whom she was once betrothed takes the normally frenetic wuxia martial-arts genre and turns it into a slow-moving Chinese opera, a succession of tableaux staged with a painter’s attention for detail, colour and composition. But this is no empty exercise in style. A circumspect dance between two highly ritualised forms of consent — that of the court and that of the monastery-trained wushu warrior — it subtly undermines the moral certainties that underpin traditional cinematic tales of avenging heroes.

    CONTACT Wild Bunch  edevos@wildbunch.eu

  2. Carol
    Dir
    Todd Haynes
    CONTACT HanWay Films info@hanwayfilms.com

  3. Anomalisa
    Dirs
    Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson
    CONTACT HanWay Films info@hanwayfilms.com

  4. Arabian Nights Trilogy
    Dir
    Miguel Gomes
    CONTACT The Match Factory info@matchfactory.de

  5. Inside Out
    Dirs
    Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
    CONTACT Disney  www.movies.disney.com

Best Documentary

Behemoth

Behemoth
Dir
Zhao Liang

Inner Mongolia’s plundered steppes form the backdrop of captivating, dreamlike documentary Behemoth (Beixi Moshuo) by Chinese anti-establishment film-maker Zhao, which played in competition at Venice. Locals become mute, downtrodden slaves to vast open-cast mines and fire-breathing steelworks in a cinematic reworking of Dante’s Inferno that is both poetic and polemical.

CONTACT INA  www.ina.fr

Best UK Film

45 years

45 Years
Dir
Andrew Haigh

The growing critical consensus that formed around Haigh’s sensitive 2011 romantic drama Weekend upped the stakes for this prestige-cast follow-up. The director passed the test magnificently. Featuring quietly powerful, slowburn performances by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as an ageing couple coming to terms with a revelation that rocks their relationship, 45 Years is a delicately scripted study of a marriage jolted from its sleepwalking state.

CONTACT The Match Factory info@matchfactory.de

Undiscovered Gem

Family Film

Family Film
Dir
Olmo Omerzu

Programmed by several of this autumn’s smaller festivals but yet to score significant distribution deals, this ironically titled drama about a hip, modern family unit’s slow disintegration impresses across the board. Czech director and co-writer Olmo Omerzu’s cool, clinical approach is veined with dark irony but steers clear of Ulrich Seidl-esque misanthropy; rarely have aridness and sympathy been so strangely wed.

CONTACT Cercamon  www.cercamon.biz

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