A Dark Song

Sophia is grief-stricken, overwhelmed with sadness since the untimely death of her young daughter. In a desperate attempt to achieve some form of closure, she reaches out to Solomon, an occultist with experience in an ancient invocation ritual that Sophia believes will allow her to make contact with her deceased child. Locked away in a remote country house, the disparate pair undergo the long and arduous incantation process, risking both their mental and physical safety as they attempt to access a world beyond our understanding. Both an exhaustive and intense study of ceremonial magic, and an affecting exploration of the paralysing nature of grief, Liam Gavin's striking chamber piece defies easy categorisation. In an eye-opening departure from the comic roles for which he is best known, Steve Oram makes for an impressively overbearing occult practitioner, while the superb Catherine Walker provides the film's gut-wrenching emotional backbone as a mother driven to desperate measures. (London Film Festival)