Partly shot on 16mm with a Bolex camera, Andrew Legge’s resourceful sci-fi LOLA blends time travel with found footage to engaging effect. It begins with a framing device set in the modern day: the film we’re about to see is in fact a broadcast recorded in 1941.

At this point in the Second World War, two sisters, Thomasina (Emma Appleton) and Martha (Stefanie Martini), have created a large machine, LOLA, that can intercept future audiovisual broadcasts, allowing them to document the music of as-yet-unborn musicians such as David Bowie and Bob Dylan – and to receive Nazi telecommunications. Realising the machine’s potential for the Allied war effort, the sisters send anonymous warnings about imminent bombings, earning them the moniker ‘the Angel of Portobello’; they’re quickly recruited to assist the military…

Full review for Sight and Sound