Popular reviews

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  Review by Shea ★★★★

  Now THIS is vérité.

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  Review by james ★★★★½

  I have never looked up to check if a film was fictional so quickly in my life.

  Arresting social critique and a pointed deeper dig at the more voyeuristic impulses behind the ethos of cinéma vérité.

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  Review by viva varda ★★★½ 7

  hmm I’m still grappling with this one a bit. on the one hand it delivers an extremely valuable social critique, and it does so in a way that’s innovative and impactful in forcing the audience to reflect on important questions. on the other hand, given the fact that it depicts an intentionally insensitive treatment of such a sensitive topic (albeit in order to critique that insensitive treatment), the layer of audience manipulation feels like an irresponsible tactic to me; I’m just thinking about how re-traumatizing it could be for a survivor to witness this type of scenario unfold especially without knowing it’s scripted beforehand, and the fact that this actually screened at a documentary film festival with that degree of…

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  Review by james ★★★★★

  After pioneers like Jean Roach and Robert Drew had established a discourse regarding the ethics of documentary filmmaking, film student Mitchell Block created an extraordinary indictment of the search for truth as it is rendered through cinema. Through Alec Hirschfield's cruel skeptic role, Block reproduces elements of a culture that is permissive not only of rape itself but the psychological abuse of those who've experienced sexual assault and dare to speak on the subject matter in a forum that doesn't center prosecution and legal justice.

  Perhaps the cherry on top is that Shelby Leverington's character is on her way out to see The Night of the Hunter, a film also heavily concerned with how societies are inclined to protect perpetrators…

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  Review by Per Axel Hagne ★★★★★

  This is the best most honest shortfilm i’ve ever seen.
  
  

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  Review by dankwit

  The Orgone Archive's Fame Difference

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  Review by Roberto Avila ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by Sam Williams ★★★★

  ...No Lies is too real. It's painful to watch even as someone without the experience depicted. Not knowing much about it going into it, I feared that I was watching an actual documentary and hoped that wasn't the case. But the fact that this one is fiction doesn't mean the same thing hasn't happened to numerous women both in the 1970s and today.

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  Review by Saturnome 🦆

  Oh. J'ai vraiment, vraiment bien fait de regarder ce court seulement en connaissant son titre et qu'il avait une réputation (C'est juste 15 minutes, anyway, qu'avais-je à perdre), parce que j'étais au bout de mon siège, perdu dans des questionnements par rapport aux thèmes croisés. C'est pas évident d'écrire davantage. C'est un étudiant en cinéma, très typique étudiant en cinéma, bêtement en train de filmer une amie se préparer à sortir de chez elle, et pis voilà, c'est un seul plan en caméra épaule et euh fichus étudiants en cinéma bon sang

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  Review by UrsulaMS ★★★★½

  This was more stressful than any Safdie film

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  Review by Almir

  NO LIES is a statement on documentary films. My goal was to make a fictional film that would convince the audience it was an actual documentary, a film that would be frankly manipulative.
  (...) The film is about rape in both a literal and figurative sense, since that was the subect that both the actress, Shelby Leverington, and I wanted to deal with. Over a six-week period we interviewed rape victims. (...) Theoretically, we could have filmed any of these women, but what would have put us back in the "real documentary" genre. Also, we felt that it was wrong to put an actual rape victim through the ordeal of retelling the story of her hape. The script for NO…

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  Review by GuyMaddinandMadelineOnAParkBench ★★★★½

  If you don't know anything about "...No Lies," go and watch it without reading any more of this review. I can't imagine you'd regret it.

  That being said, "...No Lies" is an emotional and powerful short film that plays with our ideas of reality by telling a universally true story without telling a "true" story. It's a really interesting idea, and the actors REALLY sell it.

  Fun fact: this came out the same year as "F For Fake," another movie that deals with truth and fiction as it relates to cinema. I guess people were interested in that sort of thing in '73.