Final Girls Berlin 2022

Final Girls Berlin 2022 Review: Short Films Not So Short on Horror and Entertainment

Before writing for Film Combat Syndicate and beginning to cover awesome fests like the Final Girl Berlin Film Fest that happened last weekend, I never watched many film shorts. But now, after watching so many as part of covering film fests, I am beginning to really enjoy the art of the short film. It is a tricky thing, to tell so much story in such a short time. As a creative writer, I could compare it to writing a short story instead of a novel or novella; you have to have all the exciting bits but condensed. It truly is a challenging and beautiful art form. For the Final Girls Berlin Film Fest, I opted to view two themed chunks of shorts: medical horror and queer horror. Neither disappointed. The medical horror short films included: Occupational Hazard (directed by Ursula Ellis), Freya (directed by Camille Hollett-French), They Called Me David […]

Final Girls Berlin 2021 Review: Frida Kempff’s KNOCKING

Christina Ortega

So, not to overshare too much, but I recently moved into an apartment and I have not lived this close to neighbors in many years. I was nervous before moving because I was worried about getting an upstairs apartment and making too much noise for my downstairs neighbors. I’ve seen Friends (so many times) and I didn’t want to be as noisy as Mr. Heckles thought Monica and Rachel were. I exercise, I love my Xbox Kinect, I have an Oculus, I love to play music and dance. All require movement. And would lead to noise. Luckily (or not), I got a downstairs apartment. And now I have to resist the urge to hit the ceiling with a broom when my upstairs neighbors are too loud. What’s the point of this? The Final Girls Berlin Film Fest was last weekend and one of the films I reviewed, Knocking, focuses on […]

FINAL GIRLS BERLIN 2022 Review: Kate Dolan’s YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER

Lee B. Golden III

Director Kate Dolan delivers an exceptional debut that’s been amply well-received by critics since its Toronto premiere late last year. You Are Not My Mother, a film that deals heavily in the supernatural with subtle nods to witchcraft as a key plot tool, centers on Char (Hazel Doupe), a private school teenager beleaguered on multiple fronts: At school, she’s bullied by her peers, namely classmate Suzanne (Jordanne Jones) who also happens to be her neighbor. At home, Shar is forced to mitigate with the anxieties and depression of her mentally ill single mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken), which ultimately pervades much of her shared environment with uncle Aaron (Paul Reid) and grandmother Rita (Ingrid Cragie). Further making things worse is when Shar leaves school one afternoon and suddenly finds the family car abandoned in public with Angela all but gone for hours, until finally re-emerging later at home. All seems normal-ish, […]

Final Girls Berlin 2022 Review: WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR

Christina Ortega

I have a weird quirk that I need to share (I have several, but I’m only sharing this one): I don’t like to watch videos on social media. I am not into TikTok nor do I follow people on YouTube. If I click on an article on Facebook and a video starts playing, I immediately close it; I read quickly and would much rather read and ingest the information faster than the video is serving it. So why am I sharing this? Because we here at Film Combat Syndicate are currently covering the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival and I just watched We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and because of the above quirk, this movie was not for me. It was not a bad movie, but I was not the intended audience for this film. So what’s the movie about? I was excited to view this film because […]