Instagram is ✨Cinema: More Life (Review) | BFI LFF 2025
Where theatre meets Instagram Live, you can make cinema, and director Bradley Banton has found a unique angle on the hangout film here.
There are a lot of rules in film that people just made up. I remember some Q&A from some nutty Director that said that they didn't want to include a vertical video clip in their film because "it looks ugly, doesn't it?", which made no sense to me, as the film featured a segment in 4:5, which essentially acted as a crop. Crops aren't ugly - they're windows.
Speaking of windows - More Life is not a tragedy, it's not a conflict, it's not a retelling of some awful awful thing, or some satire and breakdown of Instagram Live. All this you may take from the description - or infer from the visuals and concept. When I see a bunch of black boys in a film about social media, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Instead, I spent 78 minutes with the boys - they're supporting their friend, a Painter, an Artist, in Copenhagen for his gallery showing. They have their grudges, their have their rhythms, they get deep, they keep things light. There's so much love there, and so much they all need to unpack.
Where theatre meets Instagram Live, you can make cinema, and director Bradley Banton has found a unique angle on the hangout film here. A stray cameo from Paapa Essiedu was welcome, and the lead performance from Tuwaine Barrett was the glue.
More Life doesn't concern itself with finding answers, rather, bringing a naturalistic story of brotherhood and "coming-of-age" (it feels like?) into a tangible form, so effectively that I forgot I wasn't just watching a livestream.
I hope Instagram get the Distribution rights - this could be a really cool new way of telling stories on the platform.
