MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long

THE just ended Sundance Film Festival (London edition) introduced 12 feature films from this year’s main festival held in Park City in Utah, US. Following its tradition of supporting emerging voices in filmmaking, the festival featured an equal number of male and female directors in this year’s selection, granting a range of British, Finnish, French, Indonesian, Canadian, Lebanese and US filmmakers to tell their authentic stories.
Winner of the audience awards was Brian and Charles, directed by Jim Archer – a story, set in rural Wales, about a lonely inventor who takes on his most ambitious project yet. By assembling a washing machine and a few odd pieces of junk, he invents Charles, an AI bot, who learns English from a dictionary and has an inexplicable obsession with cabbages.

Featuring films with substantial political themes, this year’s festival has ignited a vibrant discussion, suggests RITA DI SANTO

RITA DI SANTO gives us a first look at some extraordinary new films that examine outsiders, migrants, belonging and social abuse

RITA DI SANTO draws attention to an audacious and entertaining film that transplants Tarantino to the Gaza Strip

RITA DI SANTO reports on the films from Iran, Spain, Belgium and Brazil that won the top awards