Written by the world’s top critics, reviews in The Film Verdict are an authoritative guide to the most important new movies appearing on the international scene. In this section you can search for and find more than one thousand reviews that have appeared in The Film Verdict since it began in September 2021. The reviewers are a diverse group based all over the globe: Deborah Young and Jay Weissberg (Rome), Stephen Dalton and Ben Nicholson (London), Boyd Van Hoeij (Luxembourg), Jordan Mintzer (Paris), Clarence Tsui (Hong Kong), Oris Aigbokhaevbolo (Lagos), Patricia Boero (Punta del Este), Lucy Virgen (Guadalajara), Carmen Gray (Berlin), Kevin Jagernauth (Montreal), and Alonso Duralde (Los Angeles).
By Liza Foreman A bevy of high-power American executives hit the San Sebastian International Film Festival on Tuesday for the 2nd edition of the Creative Investors’ Conference. That conference serves mainly to put a spotlight on business beyond Europe. The film...
History, folklore, and contemporary realities intertwine in Amma ki Katha, Nehal Vyas’ essayistic meditation on national aspiration and how stories become enmeshed in state oppression.
While lovely to look at, Gareth Edwards’ latest doesn’t make the case for why we should stop worrying and learn to love AI.
Ewan McGregor goes from IKEA to maternity in Swedish director Niclas Larsson’s muddled but ambitious debut ‘Mother, Couch!’, a surreal family farce set inside a giant furniture store.
David Fincher’s eagerly awaited new movie, "The Killer," is the surprise film at the 71st San Sebastian Festival. From the director of Se7en, Zodiac and The Social Network, and based on the homonymous novel by Alexis Nolent (Matz) and illustrated by Luc Jacamon, The...
Emmanuelle Devos plays the complicit wife of the famous lawyer and closet pedophile Daniel Auteuil in Joachim Lafosse’s slow-moving family drama ‘A Silence’.
El deslumbrante e imaginativo cuento animado de la directora española Isabel Herguera ‘El sueño de la sultana’ sobre una artista itinerante está inspirado en la pensadora feminista bengalí Rokeya Hossain y su cuento de 1905 sobre Ladyland, un país gobernado por mujeres.
A young woman must deal with the physical and psychological bruises of a sexual assault in Shaylee Atary’s powerful dramatic short, Single Light.
A deeply damaged Danish man relocates to Greenland in a bid to escape childhood sexual trauma in Swedish director Isabella Eklöf’s bleakly compelling drama ‘Kalak’, which is based on real events.
Spanish director Isabel Herguera’s exhilarating and imaginative animated tale about a roving artist is sparked by real-life Bengali feminist thinker Rokeya Hossain and her 1905 story about Ladyland, a country run by women.
Spanish directing duo Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal recreate a dark chapter in Brazilian musical history in their visually ravishing animated docu-fiction hybrid ‘Shoot the Piano Player’.
The 2012 Tohoku tsunami still holds an anguished Japanese-Singapore family in its clutches in ‘Last Shadow at First Light’, a complex, if at times overwritten, examination of survivors’ guilt in a first feature from Nicole Midori Woodford.
The road to love is paved with darkly surreal humour for Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed in Greek director Christos Nikou’s uneven but generally engaging low-fi sci-fi rom-com satire ‘Fingernails’.
Achingly poetic and daringly original, Raven Jackson’s first feature ‘All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt’ chooses to tell the story of a Black girl growing up in Mississippi through atmosphere instead of conventional narration.
Orlando, el extravagante manifiesto del director debutante Paul B. Preciado empuja los límites de los géneros masculino/femenino y también de los cinematográficos.
Godard reaches from beyond with one final film, a coarse and compelling act of montage, an expressive audiovisual treatment for a never-to-be-made made feature, Phony Wars.
If Expend4bles were any more by-the-numbers, it would have a numeral in its title. Oh, wait.
Three films produced and distributed by Film Clinic will represent Egypt,Jordan and Lebanon at the 2022 Oscars® in the International Feature Film category. In Jordan, an independent committee of professional experts selected “Amira” to represent Jordan at the Oscars....
CINE VERDICT: Después de su inquietante pero bien recibido thriller `Sundown`, el director mexicano Michel Franco , continúa con `Memoria` un drama familiar-romance dibujado con plantilla , actuado por Jessica Chastain en el papel de una trabajadora social emocionalmente afectada, en Brooklyn.
Germany’s premiere festival platform for rule-breaking indie cinema celebrated its 30th edition with audacious acid-punk UFO comedies, bleak kidnap thrillers and a ground-breaking peek into the multiverse.
Turkey’s chilling political thriller ‘In the Blind Spot’ grabs the Best Film prize at Oldenburg.
A sociopathic amateur film-maker kidnaps the woman he wants to play his fantasy girlfriend role in Truman Kewley’s quietly chilling psycho-thriller debut ‘Beautiful Friend’.
The cruelty of an uncaring welfare state is brought into sharp relief in Jade Hærem Aksnes’s stomach-churning satirical drama about poverty, Grill.
A young boy grieving the loss of his mother forms a bond with a desert drifter in the heart-warming Israeli drama, Seaweed.
Spanish director F. Javier Gutiérrez’s atmospheric but underpowered horror western ‘The Wait’ offers a fistful of familiar supernatural tropes.
Cult director Jérôme Vandewattyne uses a spate of real UFO sightings as the launchpad for ‘The Belgian Wave’, an incoherent but highly entertaining acid-punk sci-fi road movie about close encounters of the surreal kind.
A dark, absurdist farce of wicked schemes bred of hardship in smalltown Brazil reveals helmer Carolina Markowicz as a bold talent.
Oldenburg Film Festival has evolved over the past 30 years, while preserving its intimate atmosphere and founding purpose: to celebrate and support the diverse voices and visions of independent filmmakers, to honor the creativity of the artists upon which the Festival...
A mother and father are confronted with an agonising dilemma as they attempt to prepare the body of their young transgender child for burial in Ahmad Alyaseer’s ‘Our Males and Females’.
A kidnapping sees the lives and fates of three troubled youths become entwined in Takayuki Hayashi’s serene and solemn feature debut, From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea.
A troubled young Swedish woman finds Copenhagen to be a town without pity in Danish director Adam Benjamin Mikkelsen’s slight, disjointed but emotionally powerful debut ‘Frames of Alicia’.
David Gregory’s entertaining documentary ‘Enter the Clones of Bruce’ chronicles the bizarre explosion in Bruce Lee lookalikes and copycat films that followed the martial arts superstar’s death 50 years ago.
Mladen Djordjevic’s slow-burn Midnight Madness selection has headier things on its mind than blood and guts.
2023 Toronto International Film Festival sparkles with starry debuts and international favorites.
A friendship between a dog and a robot in 80s New York provides the foundation for a beautiful and touching exploration of relationships in Robot Dreams.
A man uses virtual reality to experience and retouch the memory of his deceased daughter in this poignant, thought-provoking Iranian sci-fi, Dream Maker.
Maggie Contreras reveals workplace realities for female orchestra conductors as global candidates vie for a Paris contest title, in a warm, glossy doc with surprising political bite.
‘Homecoming’ is a powerful and poignant look at cultural repatriation.
Axel Petersén conjures a surreal, pure vibes, sun-baked noir that’s equal parts David Lynch and Dashiel Hammett.
Temperatures rise but drama stays stuck in this hellish, apocalyptic vision of Rome.
‘A Happy Day’ is a stylized asylum seeker story that wraps its message inside a frustrating riddle.
Mona Achache brings invention, curiosity and raw vulnerability to excavate traces of three generations of female writers in her family and power abuses in France’s literary scene.
A tentative friendship begins between a cleaner and the woman who employs her in Cleaner, a delicately wrought drama about relationships and their boundaries.
‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ is a sensitive look at coming-of-age through the unique lens of the ruthless world of finance.
Nina Palcek follows Lydia Tár in managing Mahler’s 5th with a spiralling personal life in slow-burn thriller ‘Not A Word.’
The sweet and compassionate ‘Solitude’ is a modest drama with a big heart.
‘Woodland’ is an exploration of generational trauma and healing that feels more like a sketch than portrait.
The best thing about the 80th Mostra del Cinema was a stand-out film that almost all the critics were able to get behind and support wholeheartedly – and it won the Golden Lion for Best Film.
The Awards: Yorgos Lanthimos took home the Golden Lion with his wildly inventive feminist portrait ‘Poor Things’, the most popular film in the festival.
Branagh’s most successful Agatha Christie adaptation to date finds mystery and suspense in period, setting, and another distinguished ensemble.
We opened our Venice dailies with an anniversary salute to both the Biennale’s 80th Mostra del Cinema and The Film Verdict’s entry into its third year. I’d like to end with a few words of gratitude to all the many film festivals that have embraced and supported our...
‘Society of the Snow’, the edge-of-seat disaster movie that closes the 80th Venice Film Festival, directed by J.A. Bayona of ‘The Impossible’ fame, recreates the 1972 air crash of a Uruguayan flight in the Andes in great but respectful detail.
La caída del avión uruguayo en 1972 en los Andes es recreada respetuosamente y en gran detalle en “La sociedad de la nieve,” una película infartante sobre el desastre, que cierra el festival de cine de Venecia número 80, y es dirigida por J.A. Bayona, que ganó fama con “Lo imposible.”
Mexican director Michel Franco follows up his unsettling but well-liked Tim Roth thriller ‘Sundown’ with ‘Memory’, a paint-by-numbers romance/family drama starring Jessica Chastain as an emotionally damaged social worker in Brooklyn
Writer-director duo Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman blend historical pandemic echoes with timeless political tensions in their old-fashioned but engaging class-war drama ‘Coup!’
An unexpected story of loneliness and yearning from Stéphane Brizé in which two former lovers come face-to-face with the disappointments of life, beautiful in its understatement and cinematic restraint yet still generating tremendous poignancy.
The miniature beings that starred in an 80s television show slowly unravel in Wander to Wonder, a surreal animation that riffs on an enchanting children’s story trope.
Silent film footage is repurposed in We Should All Be Futurists, a deliciously comic reimagining of Marinetti’s man-machine hybrid as a novel – intimate – cure for female hysteria.
By Liza Foreman Amid the somewhat muted Red Carpet activity affected by the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, sales companies have been ratcheting in deals on smaller as well as bigger titles. Most companies contacted by The Film Verdict were keeping mum on further news...
In ‘Woman of…’, the passive heroism of a Polish working class father of two who identifies as a woman is affectingly portrayed in the inimitable style of Malgorzata Szumowska and her co-director and D.P. Michal Englert (‘Never Gonna Snow Again’).
VERDICT: Creepy but derivative killer spider thriller is angrier at the world than at arachnids.
The Venice Production Bridge is the multi-faceted market arm of the Venice Film Festival, attended by festival business players. VBP focuses on producers and production than sales. By Liza Foreman When the Venice Production Bridge’s head honcho Pascal Diot started the...
Firedream offers lessons of passionate honesty in work made with love. and creativity even with some shortcomings.
A high school girl demonstrates a special gift for empathy and healing others in Belgian director Fien Troch’s mysterious, multi-layered parable about the price of doing good.
A largely deserted port plays host to subtle drama unraveling at a glacially pace in Xandra Popescu’s strangely beguiling study in stasis, Sentimental Stories.
Part survival-revenge drama, part love story, Giorgio Diritti’s ‘Lubo’ addresses the Swiss state’s forcible removal of Jenisch children from their families beginning in the 1930s, and while Franz Rogowski’s magnetism keeps his morally complex character sympathetic, the film feels too much like a miniseries cut down to a very long feature length.
The freewheeling independence of the open road is given a Gen-Z spin in the Ross Brothers’ kinetic and affecting hybrid documentary, Gasoline Rainbow.
A queer filmmaker in a funk despite his pink-blue hair needs to come up with a treatment for a film that’s “fun, sexy, Greek and low budget” in Zacharias Mavroeidis’ The Summer with Carmen (To kalokairi tis Karmen). The resulting meta film succeeds on three of those...
Mujeres en prisiones chilenas retratan la maternidad y el crudo dolor de la separación en este empático e impresionista documental, de Tana Gilbert. filmado con teléfonos celulares.
Women in Chilean prisons record motherhood and the raw pain of separation in Tana Gilbert’s empathetic and impressionistic, mobile-shot doc of solidarity.
Lumbrensueño da una lección de creatividad y amor al cine aún con algunas deficiencias.
‘On The Pulse’ is an admirable but out-of-touch portrait of the gritty work of investigative TV journalists.
Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” is a highly ambitious attempt to fictionalize Isabel Wilkerson’s theory on the centrality of caste rather than race in determining discriminatory hierarchies, playing to the director’s strengths in terms of depicting personal relationships but also her weaknesses in several overly didactic sequences that treat characters and audiences like ignoramuses.
Various installations in the Venice Immersive put their own stamp on the 360-degree viewing experience.
Director Matteo Garrone steps back from the edginess of stylized crime dramas and horror fantasies to recount the no less cruel and shocking journey made by two Senegalese teens to Europe in ‘Me Captain’.
Turkish rookie director Nehir Tuna has made a beautifully played and shot if somewhat opaquely told coming-of-age story set in a rarely-seen world.
Kyoshi Sugita’s “Following the Sound” ticks all the boxes for nipponophiles seeking some extremely austere storytelling and swathes of slow-moving, soothing imagery set in a small, serene town in Japan.
Ena Sendijarevi’s “SWEET DREAMS” has been chosen as The Netherlands’ official entry for the International Feature Film award at the 2024 Academy Awards. The film world-premiered at Locarno Film Festival, where, actress Renée Soutendijk won a Best Performance Leopard...
Rural herders, urbanite journalists and a young monk consider the fate of a captured, livestock-ravaging wild animal in “Snow Leopard”, an affective, nuanced and multilayered film bowing out of competition at Venice four months after the death of its Tibetan director Pema Tseden.
A French family moves to a new place in a rural village in For Night Will Come (En attendant la nuit). What the villagers aren’t initially aware of is that the tenebrous and toothy teenage son of the family, Philémon, is somewhat unusual in nature. It’s not hard to...
By Liza Foreman The Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido has long been a focal point for delegates and stars gathered for the annual Venice International Film Festival. For the 80th edition of the festival this week, the beach hotel which houses both the Venice Production...
Richard Linklater’s farce about a phony hired killer is charming and unpredictable, but it would benefit from dropping the “based on a true story” angle.
A withering take-down of Rome’s vapid middle class, Pietro Castellitto’s (‘The Predators’) exuberant second feature ‘Enea’ is an amusing, fast-paced game that winks at gangster movies and bows in Venice competition.
Directed by Hiam Abbass’s daughter Lina Soualem, this beautifully layered, quietly intelligent documentary explores her female-centric family’s experiences of dispossession and exile following the 1948 Nakba, seeking to break the silence surrounding trauma.
The inconsistencies of adolescence are the challenges of burgeoning womanhood are central to Leila Basma’s knotty and intoxicating coming-of-age short, Sea Salt.
Director General Cinema and Audiovisual Nicola Borrelli at the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and for Tourism takes time to speak with The Film Verdict before Venice.
In ‘Green Border’, veteran Agnieszka Holland is joined by young directors Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha in a black-and-white drama about refugees trying to enter the EU, which is more thematically than emotionally resonant.
An alienated young man becomes fixated on his late father’s extra-terrestrial origins in debutant director Moin Hussein’s underpowered but appealingly strange inner-space odyssey ‘Sky Peals’.
Unspoken traumas are made manifest in Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi’s beautifully drawn and profoundly moving animated allegory, In the Shadow of the Cypress.
Infidelity is followed by murder in glamorous Paris in Woody Allen’s smooth-as-silk 50th film ‘Coup de Chance,’ shot entirely in French.
Una absorbente historia de codependencia edípica ambientada entre los traficantes de droga de Roma, “El Paraíso” cuenta con brillantes actuaciones que superan el sentimentalismo.
An engrossing tale of Oedipal codependence set among Rome’s drug dealers, ‘El Paraiso’ boasts brilliant acting that overcomes sentimentality.
The gilded cage that was Priscilla Presley’s life with Elvis makes a perfect match for Sofia Coppola’s empathetic vision.
David Attenborough and Neil Gaiman are two of the star players in this year’s Venice Immersive lineup.
Selman Nacar’s second feature again examines the gray areas between the law, personal morality, duty and desire.
Starkly opposing views of nature collide in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ which, despite its portentous title, is simplicity itself and in a minor key after ‘Drive My Car’.
Renowned for its innovation, for its 30th anniversary this year, the Oldenburg Film Festival has partnered with the MILC Platform and The Film Verdict to take its first virtual steps into the Metaverse. Users can immerse themselves in virtual Oldenburg and its rich...
William Friedkin’s final film sadly lacks the vibrancy and the claustrophobia of his previous stage-to-screen adaptations.
Olmo Schabel’s directorial debut succeeds as a delivery system for ’90s-indie vibes, but it fails to elicit empathy for its spoiled, obnoxious lead characters.
David Fincher brings his considerable style and craft to this procedural about a professional assassin, but not even Michael Fassbender can make the character distinguishable from a thousand other cinematic hired guns.
The Venice Film Festival has made headlines in some quarters for selecting the latest works of Allen, Polanski and Besson
The inability to open oneself to love is the main beast of Bertrand Bonello’s striking and cerebral film that follows a stalled relationship over three time periods, though the message in the central portion doesn’t have the same resonance as the other two.
Frederick Wiseman’s latest observational documentary ‘Menus Plaisirs’ is a four-hour look at a French dynasty of chefs at the highest possible level.
‘The Featherweight’ is an inventive faux doc portrait of boxing great Willie Pep who faces his greatest fight yet: his own legacy.
Timm Kröger’s ambitious ‘The Theory of Everything’ tips its hat to the genres of yesteryear, though it’s the atmosphere more than the story that impresses in the end.
Hungarian director Dorka Vermes’ feature debut ‘Arni’ is a slow-burn slice-of-life drama with an exceptional lead performance from newcomer Peter Turi.
The low-key Dutch domestic drama ‘Melk’ doesn’t quite manage to set itself apart enough from its competitors.
The Palace, Roman Polanski’s appallingly bland black comedy about the filthy rich, is set in a fancy Swiss hotel on New Year’s Eve 1999, and not the least bit funny.
Jean M. Prewitt is President and Chief Executive Officer, before joining IFTA, Ms. Prewitt was a Principal from 1994 to 1999 at a major Washington, D.C.-based lobbying and public relations firm, representing some of the world’s most prestigious entertainment and high...
The late Italian filmmaker Ruggero Deodato was at the center of one of Venice’s most
anticipated screenings.
Bradley Cooper’s ambitious sophomore directorial effort, about Leonard Bernstein’s married life, soars and sweeps in some passages while falling flat in others.
Sobre todo de noche, el atrevido y excitante debut de Víctor Iriarte, refrescante aún con una historia dolorosa, se estrena en Gionate degli autori en Venecia 2023
‘Foremost by Night’, the exciting and daring feature debut of Víctor Iriarte, is refreshing even with its painful story.
Stefano Sollima delivers the kind of gritty, testosterone-driven underworld drama we’ve come to expect, boasting exceptional performances and location work, but a highly problematic undercurrent of homophobia can’t be brushed under the soiled carpet.
Director Luna Carmoon’s richly imaginative debut ‘Hoard’ finds filth and poetry in a young woman’s traumatic journey from childhood to womanhood.
Casi 50 años después de la pérdida de un documental sobre la comunidad kuna de Panamá, el director suizo panameño Andrés Peyrot lo localiza y exhibe ante una comunidad emocionalmente comprometida, en este documental fascinante aùn con sus fallas.
Saverio Costanzo’s use of “La Dolce Vita” for a 1950s loss-of-innocence story set in Rome’s film world feels locked in its period charms, and despite excellent performances fails to resonate beyond the surface.
A French writer in Japan, played by Isabelle Huppert, struggles with her grief in this mixed bag from director Elise Girard.
Oldenburg Film Festival celebrates 30 years with it's latest selection: Allmen and the Secret of the Koi GER Director: Sinje Köhler Cast: Heino Ferch, Andrea Osvárt, Samuel Finzi, Uwe Kockisch Beautiful Friend USA Director: Truman Kewley Cast: Adam Jones, Alexandrea...
The rich/poor divide in India is staggeringly vivid in Karan Tejpal’s first feature ‘Stolen’, the desperate search for a stolen baby that is powered by exciting chases and the constant threat of violence.
Aardman’s beloved duo Wallace & Gromit return in a demanding but fun VR experience that is part of the 2023 Venice Immersive competition.
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone reteam for an audacious comic odyssey that defies genre and convention.
Dazzling camerawork and an exceptional trio of teenage actors dangle from a weak narrative thread in Alain Parroni’s intense first feature about underprivileged kids growing up without a future.
After The Royal Affair, which gave us Mads Mikkelsen and a then-unknown Alicia Vikander in a tumultuous Rococo-era court romance, Danish writer-director Nikolaj Arcel goes back to the 18th century for another story of power struggles and romance in The Promised Land...
Wes Anderson’s second Roald Dahl adaptation packs a feature’s worth of deadpan humor and aggressive visual style into just 37 minutes.
by Liza Foreman Oscar-winning writer Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Amores Perros, Babel) wasn't even 30 when he was asleep in a car which fell off a cliff. But instead of ending his life, the near-fatal accident inspired the Mexican multihyphenate’s first screenplay...
In a multi-faceted role, Caleb Landry Jones dazzles as the survivor of an inhuman childhood who believes only dogs can love him, in Luc Besson’s calculated, over-the-top yet poignant shaggy-dog story.
With 14 feature-length documentary films, the European Film Academy is presenting a strong Documentary Film Selection for the European Film Awards 2023. A committee consisting of a diverse range of invited European experts has chosen these 14 productions that have...
In his first feature film in eight years, director Michael Mann passionately captures a life where the drive for success and the threat of disaster were intricately intertwined.
The General Delegate of the International Critics Week Beatrice Fiorentino discusses her philosophy for the Venice sidebar.
‘Upon Open Sky’, a Mexican road movie full of restraint and some surprises, premieres in Venice’s Orizzonti section.
In El conde, Pablo Larraín’s darkly comic horror-satire reveals that turning a real-life monster into the protagonist of his own monster movie is an effective way to process historical tragedy.
God is a Woman, nearly fifty years after a film documenting Panama’s Kuna community was lost, Swiss-Panamanian director Andrés Peyrot tracks it down and screens it before an emotionally engaged crowd in this fascinating though flawed documentary.
A sobering observational documentary shot at an air force base in Afghanistan, where director Ibrahim Nash’at embedded himself in order to bear witness to the Taliban mindset.
A cielo abierto, road movie mexicana con una controlada dirección y varias sorpresas se estrena en Horizontes in Venecia 2023
The true story of an Italian submarine commander in World War II who sank enemy ships yet saved defenseless men is told with old-fashioned gusto and retro sentimentality in ‘Comandante’, with star Pierfrancesco Favino injecting life into the film.
TFV talks to the Artistic Director of the Giornate degli Autori, as the Venice sidebar celebrates its 20th edition.
THE FILM VERDICT: You have often underlined the uniqueness of the Biennale di Venezia, which encompasses art, architecture, dance, music and theater as well as cinema. You stress that it “has never been just a showcase for talents and films, it has also been a mirror...
Oceans are the real continents is an exquisite love poem to Cuba, where three generations struggle to survive and dream of escape, depicted in a series of tableaux of daily life in a small rural town.
Los oceános son los verdaderos continentes es un exquisito poema de amor a Cuba, donde tres generaciones luchan por sobrevivir y sueñan con escapar, representado en una serie de cuadros de la vida cotidiana en un pequeño pueblo rural.
Debut director Janis Pugh’s off-beat musical rom-com ‘Chuck Chuck Baby’ is a rough-edged but warm-hearted celebration of working-class dreamers and queer liberation.
Summertime (1955) Campo San Barnaba – Venice, Italy
TFV:A question to you both; how many times or years have you attended TIFF, Toronto for European Film Promotion? SONJA HEINEN: This year, it is EFP’s 25th year at TIFF! We started back then with a small table with a sign on it saying: “The Europeans.” In 2016 we...
Europeans are coming. EFP and eurimages are coming to Toronto
Christian De Schutter, newly Elected EFP Board Members chats with TFV
Publisher and film historian Peter Cowie brings insight and humor to his compact history of the Mostra del Cinema.
Alberto Barbera, director of the 80th Venice International Film Festival, reflects on the future of cinema.
How The Film Verdict has grown since its first public bow in Venice.
European cinema and international films load the Toronto slate.
The third film in Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua’s ultraviolent thriller series is the best one yet. (If only that meant more than it does.)
This queer comedy remains uncompromisingly outrageous and hilarious from start to finish, and if it’s too weird to be a box-office smash, then it has the makings of a future cult classic.
The Teacher’s Lounge by Ilker Çatak (if... Productions Film) will enter the race for Germany to the 96th Oscars® in the “Best International Feature Film”category. The choice was decided by an independent nine member jury who were appointed by various associations...
Closing Night Gala offers the World Premiere of “Uppercut,” the American remake of Torsten Ruether’s film that opened at Oldenburg 2 years ago starring Ving Rhames and Luise Grobmann. Uppercut Torsten Ruether USA/Germany 2023, (World Premiere) A former boxer, whose...
“Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” named Estonia’s national entry for best International Feature Film Academy Award
Teona Strugar Mitevska’s surrealistic vision of a Sarajevo dating event turned lab for reconciliation is refreshing and offbeat in grappling with the Siege’s legacy.
‘El conde’, la oscura sátira de horror cómico revela que convertir a un monstruo de la vida real en el protagonista de su propia película de monstruos es una efectiva manera de lidiar con la tragedia histórica.
Elene Naveriani’s wry celebration of feminist non-conformity from Georgia took topped the awards at Sarajevo.
Gergo Somogyvari’s humanistic doc portrait of life in the woods on Budapest’s margins spotlights the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people and the homeless by Orban’s government.
Emotional highs and lows marked a politically charged Sarajevo edition that saw one day cancelled in solidarity against gender-based violence.
The quietude of a bucolic life, and the deep wordless bonds between a mother and son, lie at the heart of Giorgi Parkosadze’s serene doc, ‘Requiem to the Hot Days of Summer.’
Location Flashback: Verzasca Dam, Gordola, Ticino, Switzerland, James Bond, Pierce Brosnan
Croatian documentary maker Goran Devic charts a decade-long battle for workers’ rights in ‘What’s to be Done?’, an engaging blend of reportage and artfully meta touches.
Sudabeh Mortezai’s caustic, unique take on a shadowy corporation expanding into Albania is part neo-colonial satire, part dystopian thriller.
‘Blue Beetle’ is a superhero movie with laughs, action, cultural specificity and human-sized stakes — here’s hoping there’s room for this character in the next reboot of the DC Universe.
Sarajevo Film Festival shut down its Wednesday schedule to honour a National Day of Mourning after a femicide in Gradacac and protests.
The prize-winning Romanian director discusses his found-footage docu-fiction hybrid film ‘Between Revolutions’, clandestine screenings in Iran, and the political power of cinema.
The long fingers of the Kosovo War reach into the present in Sovran Nrecaj’s patient and stark documentary about Fran and Verka’s isolated life in an abandoned village.
The inaugural Saudi Film Confex, launching in Riyadh will address three main topics: industry trends; global practices and challenges; and opportunities in filmmaking. Thoughtfully designed workshops will be spread over three days, featuring practical training...
Director Nemanja Vojinovic’s visually striking documentary ‘Bottlemen’ finds poetry and beauty among the workers scrabbling to make a living from a giant Serbian trash mountain.
Kumjana Novakova masterfully contextualises archival testimony in her sensitive, formally inventive reckoning with violence against women as a weapon of the Bosnian War.
Belfast-born documentarian Mark Cousins, returning to Sarajevo after 29 years, gave a masterclass on his career and creative inspirations.
Domonkos Erhardt’s student short ‘From the Corner of My Eyes’ uses the malleability of the animated image to great effect to capture a miniature moment of connection.
While Netlfix new film, "Heart of Stone" is shot throughout Europe, it opens with a dizzying sequence that begins in a glamorous casino and ends with Gal Gadot’s special agent parachuting off a 3,000-foot cliff after a high-speed ski chase that was filmed at the...
With ‘Medium’, Greek filmmaker Christina Ioakeimidi adapts Giorgos Sibardis’ novel about a 16-year-old girl coming of age across a scorching Athens summer. Premiered in Sarajevo International Film Festival
Angelina Jolie is set to return to Hungary 13 years after she directed her Golden Globe nominated debut feature film "In The Land of Blood and Honey." This time she will be in front of the camera, portraying the legendary opera singer Maria Callas in Chilean director...
With ‘Lost Children’ Lola Cambourieu and Yann Berlier have created an aching, poignant and keenly observed depiction of a dislocated father-daughter relationship, premiered in Sarajevo International Film Festival,
An elegant, playful exploration of the consolatory but deceptive nature of image-making across generations, from Catalan director-to-watch Laura Ferres is showing in Sarajevo International Film Festival,
Globally feted Scottish writer-director Lynne Ramsay has carved a slender but unique body of work shaped by uncompromising attitude and aesthetic flair.
“Willie and Me” tells the story of a German housewife who escapes a lifeless marriage to venture on an impulsive journey to Las Vegas to see Willie Nelson's farewell concert. Eva Hassmann's multi-hyphenated directorial debut (as writer/director/producer/actor) is a...
Jennifer Reeder discusses her new mind-bending avant-horror film ‘Perpetrator’, kick-ass gender-queer heroines, and the subversively surreal power of genre cinema. Showing in Sarajevo International Film Festival
Kaufman’s style could be deemed ‘screwball,’ could be deemed ‘surreality,’ and should probably be called ‘Screw Reality’. He is honored in Sarajevo International Film Festival
The personal and the political entangle in Self-Portrait Along the Borderline, Anna Dziapshipa’s excellent essay doc about Georgian-Abkhazian relations through the lens of her own family history. It is competing in Sarajevo International Film Festival
A chaotic power struggle plays out in 1989 Transylvania, in Tudor Giurgiu’s cynical, directionless drama of civic breakdown and compromise, is showing in Sarajevo International Film Festival
The Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film, went to “Death of a City“ by João Rosas. The film follows the demolition of an old printing workshop in the center of Lisbon to make way for luxury flats. What starts out as a work-centred film turns out to be an evocative...
Sara Jurincic’s experimental documentary Valerija charts an act of communion with long-deceased relatives, probing playfully at perceptions of remembrance and lineage. It screens in Sarajevo International Film Festival
Critics’ faves by Ali Ahmadzadeh and Radu Jude took home top prizes at a strong Locarno Film Festival.
Critics and public alike applauded the top 76th Locarno Film Festival Awards to Iran and Romania.
Selma Doborac’s formally audacious, challenging and chilling ‘De Facto’, a doc-fiction hybrid, decontextualises war crimes testimony to plumb the power of language. In Sarajevo International Film Festival
Noora Niasari’s episodic debut film ‘Shayda’ stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi (‘Holy Spider’) in an involving performance as an Iranian woman in an Australian women’s shelter.
Estonian director Rainer Sarnet’s ‘The Invisible Fight’ is an idiosyncratic tale featuring monks, metal rock, and a manically superb performance from Ursel Tilk.
Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s loving tribute to theatre teachers, camp and performances is familiar but a little magic all the same.
Once again, the Avant Premiere Series lineup aims to explore the best of regional TV production in Sarajevo International Film Festival
Mátalos a todos de Sebastian Molina Ruiz combina la estética grunge en video con elementos epistolares para explorar el sentimiento adolescente de aislamiento .
A tentative friendship blossoms through video correspondence in ‘Kill ‘Em All’, a deftly observed docudrama filled with youthful uncertainty and poignant loneliness.
A teen comes of age as a troubled Serbia reckons with its direction in ‘Lost Country’, Vladimir Perisic’s sombre yet astute, politically-charged drama.
Una Gunjak’s sensitive, richly textured Bosnian coming-of-ager about a lie’s repercussions questions sexual double standards in a society of repressed fears.
The audacious second feature from Annarita Zambrano (‘After the War’) explores the mindspace of Italian teenagers in 1990 who aren’t allowed to be themselves.
Lynne Ramsay, Charlie Kaufman and Mark Cousins Are Honoured at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival.
Director Nenad Cicin-Sain’s engaging but slightly fawning documentary ‘Kiss The Future’ chronicles Irish rock supergroup U2’s love affair with war-torn Sarajevo during the Balkan wars.
Ali Ahmadzadeh’s third feature ‘Critical Zone’ is an outspoken reflection of the rage in Iranian society today. It is under attack.
In another angry bulletin from Iran in revolt, Ali Ahmadzadeh’s ‘Critical Zone’ hits censorship out of the ballpark.
Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekartík, two of the three filmmakers behind the award winning documentary Velvet Terrorist, have reunited for a film project called Photophobia, shot in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. Both filmmakers arrived in the country in spring...
The Dealing with the Past program at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival is an additional platform for testimonies and stories that can serve as a base for developing film scripts, projects and films. The aim of the program is to initiate dialogue in the countries formed...
A young French law-office worker unexpectedly finds herself defending a murder suspect in First Case (Première Affaire), the debut feature from Victoria Musiedlak. The unassuming drama continues in the vein of down-to-earth portraits of regular people working in...
American indie darling Bob Byington will please his fans with this minor amusing look at an underachieving English lit professor whose greatest disappointment is himself.
Feted Hungarian Oscar-winner István Szabó has spent his epic career probing Central Europe’s painful, morally complex history of post-imperial trauma and totalitarian tragedy.
Riz Ahmed takes centre stage with Isabelle Adjani in ‘Dammi’, Yann Mounir Demange’s fragmentary, experimental and highly sensorial reckoning with his own bifurcated past.
An undisciplined feature debut burdened by regrettably immature dialogue that knee-caps a potentially interesting impressionistic exploration of what “home” means in a globalized world.
A man learns of his own imminent death in iNTELLIGENCE, a strikingly graphic meditation on a curtailed life and the allure of immortality.
This biopic of a gamer-turned-racer delivers sports-movie uplift and racing-movie thrills while never letting up on the product placement.
Renzo Rossellini has lived an adventurous life on the cutting edge of movies and politics.
A developmentally delayed young man falls under the spell of a pansexual itinerant children’s entertainer in Simone Bozzelli’s well-performed but psychologically ill-judged feature debut.
Claudia Roranius’s ‘Touched’ competently telegraphs a complex intimate relationship with unusual frankness and gorgeous visuals, and yet, it falls short of its own material in true emotional terms.
Maryna Vroda’s richly lensed feature debut is a melancholic look at a dying part of north-eastern Ukraine that’s seemingly untouched by the present war, and while the narrative holds interest thanks especially to the protagonist, it’s the documentary-like scenes that are the film’s heart.
Ten projects based on metaverse, AI, machine learning and augmented reality, among others, to compete in the Zinema Startup Challenge.
From soccer to filmmaking, Premio Cinema Ticino-winner Mohammed Soudani has lit, directed, produced and taught cinema in the Swiss region of Ticino, his home for five decades.
Locarno Pro, the industry event of the Locarno Film Festival, has announced the winning projects
En ‘Todos los incendios’ Mauricio Calderón cumple con el reto de hacer una película coming of age -sensible con interés LGBTQ+ y con un estilo personal.
With ‘All the Fires’, first-time director Mauricio Calderón Rico rises to the challenge of a sensitive coming-of-ager with LGBTQ+ interest and a personal style.
Lav Diaz returns to Locarno with A-list collaborators John Lloyd Cruz and Shaina Magdayao in ‘Essential Truths of the Lake’, a fiery noir-inflected takedown of the culture of criminal impunity shaping contemporary Philippine society.
The beguiling Night Shift follows two individuals as they meander around venerated institutions after dark, crafting an entrancing portrait of liminal existences.
The President of the Locarno Film Festival for 23 years, Marco Solari makes a graceful bow as he steps offstage.
A factory worker wrestles with a dispiriting future in this short about a fortune-telling tortoise and a desire for self-determination.
Laura Luchetti’s freely inspired adaptation of Cesare Pavese’s novel ‘The Beautiful Summer’ features an impeccable cast in a perennially relevant tale about the consequences of sexual awakening.
Potent pacing and a charismatic lead propel this absorbing Israeli film in which a young soldier deserts his post during a Gaza incursion and escapes to Tel Aviv where he keeps running.
Locarno’s 2023 Raimondo Rezzonico Award goes to producer Marianne Slot, who has brought the best of auteur cinema to discerning audiences around the world.
Awards Watch: International Oscar® Selection
Prize-winning Romanian provocateur Radu Jude shares his thoughts on Jean-Luc Godard and Andrew Tate, the Barbie movie and the thrilling power of bad taste.
If the end of the world really is approaching, Jude may be our most trenchant Cassandra.
Grindelwald, a village in Switzerland’s Bernese Alps, is a popular gateway for the Jungfrau Region, with skiing in winter and hiking in summer. It’s also a base for mountain-climbing up the iconic north face of Eiger Mountain. In this scene, With Anakin Skywalk’s...
Set on the multicultural fringes of Lisbon, Swiss director Basil Da Cunha’s third feature ‘Manga D’Terra’ is a slender but big-hearted blend of social realist drama and Afro-diaspora musical.
Meg 2: The Trench wastes an hour or so before finally delivering what we paid to see: giant, prehistoric sharks eating tourists.
Dimitra Vlagopoulou shines in ‘Animal’, Sofia Exarchou’s sometimes sexy, sometimes poignant second feature film.
Quentin Dupieux’s gentle satirical humor has been put to better use than in “Yannick,” a slight (in every sense) comedy in need of either more intelligence or delirium to make it meaningfully fill its 66-minute running time.
TIFF unveils the 10 World Premiere features that comprise the Platform programme for 2023, along with the 2023 Platform jury members: Academy Award–winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins, joined by Cannes Jury Prize–winning director, writer, and actor Nadine Labaki, and 2022...
Espectáculo a diario. 36 filmes en la retrospectiva mexicana en el Festival de Locarno
Spectacle Every Day: The Many Seasons of Mexican Popular Cinema is a retrospective that comes to the Locarno Film Festival full of diversity, history and joy.
Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel return with ‘The Falling Star’, another picture more wacky than substantial — and therein lies its charm and limitation.
Locarno celebrates the elegant, contemplative work of renowned Asian filmmaker and artist Tsai Ming-liang.
Oberalp Pass is a high mountain pass at an elevation of 2,044 meters (6,706 feet) above sea level, located on the border of the cantons of Graubunden and Uri in Switzerland through the Swiss Alps. In this scene, James Bond (Sean Connery) keeps his distance while...
Director Bertrand Mandico’s lurid saga of gender-queer decadence and visceral violence ‘Conann’ is a ravishing sensory feast for viewers with strong stomachs.
Artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro show TFV how bold programming makes Locarno a memorable festival.
Roberto Stabile heads the second AVP Summit in Trieste.
The second Audio-Visual Producers (AVP) Summit ended last Friday after three days of panels and discussions tackling topics from the use of artificial intelligence to innovative methods to get indie production projects financed and off the ground, the production of...
Despite its beauty, excellent food, and history, which dates back to 1400 BC, the port city of Trieste is one of the relatively lesser-known Italian destinations. By the second century BC, Trieste was under the control of the Romans, whose emperor Augustus built its...
The Venice Film Festival’s opening film “The Commander” by Edoardo De Angelis, “Enea”, by Pietro Castellitto and “Finalmente l’alba” by Saverio Costanzo, are in the main category competing for the Golden Lion. “Three films shot in Cinecittà in competition at the...
Prepare for the intergalactic spectacle as MILC Platform, in partnership with EPIC Games MegaGrant recipients Gamble Entertainment Group & Ave One Entertainment, sets the stage for the sci-fi indie feature 'Mischief Upon Mischief.' This thrilling film, written &...
Actor Lakeith Stanfield brings human heart to Justin Simien’s mediocre corporate horror comedy ‘Haunted Mansion’.
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra and Eagle Pictures president Tarak Ben Ammar swapped ideas at a lively encounter at the second Audio-Visual Producers (AVP) Summit in Trieste, Italy.
The German production "THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING" (ma.ja.de Fiction, THE BARRICADES) by Timm Kroeger will be shown in the Venezia 80 competitive section. Set in 1962, the black-and-white thriller is about a soon-to-be doctor of physics who is invited to an...
The Board of Directors of the Locarno Film Festival have approved Maja Hoffmann, founder of the LUMA Foundation. Her name was put forward by the appointment committee tasked with finding a successor to Marco Solari, whose members are Edna Epelbaum and Francesco...
This year's poster image was created by Italian illustrator and artist Lorenzo Mattotti for the sixth consecutive year. The image chosen for the 2023 poster “is inspired by the tradition of on the road movies," explains Lorenzo Mattotti, “and in this way seeks to...
The Dolder Grand opened in 1899 as the Dolder Grand Hotel & Curhaus, and offers 175 luxurious rooms and suites, world-class restaurants, a spa, and an art collection that includes originals from Takashi Murakami and Salvador Dali. In this scene, after helping Mikael...
Audio-Visual Producers Summit (AVPSummit) kicks off The Film Verdict’s Publisher, Eric Mika will moderate an exclusive Fireside Chat with industry leaders Tarak Ben Ammar and Tony Vinciguerra, Sony Pictures
In ‘Oppenheimer’, writer-director Christopher Nolan has a stronger handle on the creation of the atomic bomb than on the inner life of the tortured genius behind that creation.
With ‘Barbie’, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach bring an overflowing toybox of ideas to a funny, provocative, meaningful movie that defies its product-placement roots.
“Sandman” season 2 starring Tom Sturridge, was seen shooting at Durdle Door in Dorset last month, shutting down the popular beach for a few days in the middle of the busy tourist season. During filming, secrecy was a priority and the project was only given a code name...
On Friday the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas announced the 14 titles of Spanish productions (nine feature films, one medium-length film, one short and three TV series) to screen from 22-30 September in the Official Selection and in the New...
With 79 countries represented and 275 films (including 40 straight from Cannes) this year’s feature a selection of global and local films, documentaries, world premieres, exclusive releases, and filmmaker conversations. MIFF is partnering with some of Australia’s top...
Diana Lomis, vice president of publicity at Searchlight Pictures will be leaving after finishing her work on “Flamin’Hot”, “Theater Camp”, and “Poor Things” this summer. After nearly 20 years with the studio, she will be launching a consultation company focused on...
Punk rockers, kick-ass senior citizens and fresh new cinematic voices from Iran to India made for a strong edition of the long-running Czech fest.
Juries at the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival showered awards on the caustic Bulgarian tragifarce ‘Blaga’s Lessons’ and Sweden’s off-beat relationship satire ‘The Hypnosis’.
In his latest forensic documentary ‘Facing Darkness’, French director Jean-Gabriel Périot digs into the rich archive of amateur film footage shot in war-torn Sarajevo.
The 76th Locarno Film Festival offers 11 sections, 3 competitions and 20 awards, highlighting both quality and variety. It is a Festival that explores cinema from every perspective, discovering in-the-present filmmakers and films destined to have a future. Concorso...
Director Émilie Brisavoine goes from fear to maternity in ‘Keeping Mum’, an emotionally raw but generally engaging documentary about the mother who abandoned her in childhood.
71st San Sebastian Festival Announces first official selects
Raucous Asian-American road-trip comedy serves up bawdy laughs and star-making performances.
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of a film becomes a moving portrait of place and the healing power of artistic endeavour in Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano.
Swiss filmmaker Thomas Imbach talks about his new documentary ‘Say God Bye’, which screens in the Proxima competition at Locarno.
Actor and screenwriter Lena Góra portrays her own bohemian rock singer mother in ‘Imago’, a baggy but compelling post-punk period piece from Polish director Olga Chajdas.
A flesh-and-blood saint causes chaos for a superstitious mountain community in Georgian director Tinatin Kajrishvili’s darkly satirical, bleakly beautiful fable, ‘Citizen Saint’.
Amid political turmoil in Europe and a push to overhaul Karlovy Vary’s identity for tourists, Russia plays a lesser festival role.
KVIFF Eastern Promises, the festival's Industry section and film market, has the exciting mission of bridging the gap between talented filmmakers and their potential partners, festivals and audiences. “Just like every year, we’ve tried to curate a nice mix of projects...
A lively and engaging rock-doc. ‘Scream of My Blood’ chronicles the riotous career of “gypsy punk” band Gogol Bordello, including singer Eugene Hütz’s family roots in war-torn Ukraine.
Hits all the marks of an adrenaline-packed summer spy thriller, with pacing that makes 163 minutes zip right by.
The Korean-Canadian filmmaker is taking her directorial debut ‘Past Lives’ around the world.
There’s no dignity in a market economy, as a scammed pensioner turns scammer in this caustic Bulgarian tragifarce and thriller.
A young woman becomes obsessed with a man accused of being a brutal serial killer in Pascal Plante’s slickly constructed and brilliantly unsettling thriller, Red Rooms.
La brutalidad colonial de enfrenta a la resistencia indígena en la historia sobrenatural con hechizos y brujería en esta película chilena situada en Chiloé.
An apparently well-put-together couple begin to come loose at the seams after a hypnotherapy session in Ernst De Geer’s awkward and offbeat satire, The Hypnosis.
From heart-breaking performances to queasy satire, from Pedro Costa to Christopher Lee, there was something for everyone in this year’s KVIFF shorts.
Death is not the end in Czech director Robert Hloz’s stylish and ambitious future-noir Euro-thriller debut ‘Restore Point’.
German filmmaker Jan Soldat explains his fascination with cinematic death scenes and the iconic actors who star in them.
Los Angeles, June 6, 2023 – Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), one of the most prestigious events in Latino cinema, announced its winners last week. Academy Award®nominated actor Edward James Olmos, founder of the Latino Film Institute, announced...
Behrooz Karamizade’s handsomely mounted drama Empty Nets is a compelling allegorical tale about the tragic loss of innocence at the hands of the powerful.
A forensic anthropologist works to return names to the unidentified dead that EU states have forsaken in this sensitive yet urgent and persuasive observational documentary.
Europa Distribution returns to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for a new edition of the Film Distribution Innovation Hub where 30 independent distributors, coming from all over Europe and beyond, are participating, The Film Distribution Innovation Hub...
Naqqash Khalid delivers a blistering feature debut with this fragmentary portrait of an actor that delves into questions of performance and identity, In Camera.
Alexandru Solomon leads an offbeat, high-stakes pilgrimage that connects dark history past and present, interrogating the idolisation of Romanian mystic Arsenie Boca through re-enactment and activist exploits.
The Finnish director is the creative force behind ‘Sisu’, one of the action cinema highlights of the year.
In the past year, 179 European films received Film Sales Support (FSS) from Hamburg-based EFP (European Film Promotion) accomplishing its core mission to facilitate sales to countries outside of Europe. FSS plays a crucial role in facilitating investment in additional...
New espionage thriller “The Day of the Jackal”, the contemporary reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s classic novel, is set to start filming in Budapest. The series follows a professional assassin who is contracted by a French paramilitary dissident to kill French...
Earlier the month, Morocco’s Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, visited the filming location of "Gladiator 2" movie in Ouarzazate, following a recent minor fire at the studio. The small fire that broke out was quickly contained by...
A fresh, humanistic period drama that satirises the modernist project of a Czechoslovak factory town, and its sinister demands of conformity on the eve of World War Two.
Earlier this month, Kualoa Ranch, which is a film location, tourist attraction, nature reserve and working cattle ranch, created an awareness promotion on Instagram offering free LEGO® sets from the 30th anniversary collection. LEGO® Jurassic World kits feature...
On August 12, on the Piazza Grande, Locarno will screen Shayda, the powerful debut film from Iranian-Australian Director Noora Niasari, starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival in 2022) and winner of the Audience Award at Sundance this year....
The San Sebastián Festival is devoting its latest classic film cycle, co-organised with the Basque Film Archive in collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the Etxepare Basque Institute in the framework of the Euskadi-Japan 2023 program, to the director Hiroshi...
The reverie of an adult-free summer quickly becomes a monstrous nightmare in Michèle Jacob’s disconcerting portrait of childhood trauma, The Lost Children.
Moroccan documentary maker Asmae El Moudir blends the personal with the political in her formally impressive, puppet-driven, prize-winning family memoir ‘The Mother of All Lies’.
Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Academy Award-nominee Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, winner of the L’Oeil d’Or Award for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will screen on the international festival circuit and will open theatrically...
Harrison Ford’s fond farewell to the long-running tomb raider franchise, ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ balances formulaic blockbuster elements with soulful nostalgia and an audacious time-jumping plot.
Familiar and forgettable, this mediocre animated feature is destined to sink to the bottom of the ocean.
The festival’s Midnight Screenings confirm its commitment to versatile global genre cinema.
The Geneva-born director is back in Karlovy Vary with his new William Shatner documentary.
A 13-year-old girl on a Chilean island reckons with colonial brutality in an ominous, supernatural tale of historical oppression and indigenous resistance.
The deliciously wry, gently unfurling tale of a middle-aged Georgian woman who rejects small-town conformity and experiments with love after a near-death experience.
Brash comedy gives way to heartfelt sentiment, but Jennifer Lawrence, whose multifaceted talent gets showcased here, carries the story across the finish line.
Visual delights, a sweet love story, and that potent Pixar sentimentality carry this animated feature past a periodic table’s worth of script flaws.
Backward Glance at Mexican Animation
The world’s foremost animation film festival is back with another ambitious edition.
CineVerdict: Kudos para José Iñesta, fundador de Pixelatl, un porrista de la animación es galardonado con Premio de la Industria MIFA en Annecy
An animation cheerleader wins the Mifa Animation Industry Award.
IMCINE takes a bow: The Mexican Institute of Cinematography comes to Annecy with a full hand.
Rita Basulto
Léalo en español n animator and film director born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Patricio Plaza studied visual arts and audiovisual communication at the National University of La Plata. He worked as a commercial 2D animator for various studios for over 20 years,...
Marcos Almada is a children's book author, illustrator and filmmaker. He has created characters such as Oscar the Possum and Domingo Teporingo, as well as those starring in Dr. Gecko's Show, a TV series developed by CONACYT and INMEGEN. Alongside producer and animator...
Designer and illustrator Diego Huacuja T is the creative director and co-founder of the company Basa, specialized in design and animation. His fusion of different forms of visual expression and his passion for design and animation have led Diego and his company to...
Aria Covamonas (he/she), by her own admission, was born in 1979 (Solar Common Era) on Earth, a naturally occurring planet in the solar system. Aria is a self-taught filmmaker, photomonteur, and animator. They are best known for their animated films, which are notably...
After studying Graphic Communication Design at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), Miguel Anaya Borja has worked in the areas of art direction, graphic design, advertising, production, and animation. He taught animation courses at the Universidad...
An engraving artist as well as a painter and animator, Amanda Woolrich has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Faculty of Visual Arts of the UNAM. In 2019 and 2021 she was a recipient of a fellowship from the National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA) for young...
Amanda Woolrich es artista de grabado, pintora y animadora. Es egresada, con licenciatura y maestría de la Facultad de Artes Visuales de la UNAM. Fue beneficiaria del programa de jóvenes creadores del FONCA en 2019 con Aquí y allá y en 2021 con Trasiego ambos con...
Miguel Ángel Anaya Borja es un animador mexicano participante con k8 en el Festival de Annecy
Aria Covamonas, artista mexicana de la animaciòn, sus cortos animados participaron en el Festival de Annecy 2023
Diego Huacuja T. es un animador e ilustrador mexicano, sus cortos animados participan en el Festival de Annecy 2023
Marcos Almada en un ilustrador, autor de libros infantiles y cortos animados. Participò en el Festival de Annecy 2023
Patricio Plaza autor de cortos animados, participò en competencia en el Festival de Annecy con Carne de DIos
Rita Basulto, creadora de cortos animados participa en competencia en el Festival de Annecy
Cineverdict: IMCINE el Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografìa llega a Annecy con las manos llenas de sorpresas y animaciones mexicanas
Una mirada retrospectiva a la animación mexicana, exitosa hasta fechas recientes.
Mexican cinema and filmmakers are everywhere at Annecy this year.
CineVerdict: El creador mexicano de animación Jorge Gutiérrez habla con TFV sobre su parte favorita del proceso creativo, lo sorprendente de ganarse la vida con lo que le gusta y tiene además consejos para todo el mundo
The renowned Mexican creator of animation talks with TFV about his favorite part of the filmmaking process and the awesomeness of being paid for something you love to do.
Los cortos mexicanos van al Festival de Animación de Annecy, imaginativos y atrevidos, esperan hacer una gran impresión
With their daring appeal, five Mexican shorts are ready to bowl over the animation festival’s audiences.
Founded in 2008, m-appeal is a dynamic world sales company well- established on the international market. With a carefully curated selection of about 8 films per year, and a focus on original international art-house and genre cinema. They take a particular interest in...
The first and last 10 minutes demonstrate the winning superhero saga this might have been, but the middle two hours are devoted to sloppy, shameless fan service.
Mexican documentarian Everardo González is at his best in a shockingly brutal film without a drop of blood.
Un documental estremecedor, brutal pero sin una gota de sangre, muestra a un documentalista mexicano en su mejor momento
It might be damning with faint praise, but this reboot finds more fun (and visual coherence) in the toy robots than the five earlier efforts directed by Michael Bay.
Breathtaking maximalism, for fans of ‘RRR’ and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (not to mention the previous animated Spider-Man movie).
Women filmmakers swept most of the top awards from Competition to Un Certain Regard and Critics’ Week.
A taut, failed caper story with film noir elements set during a long night in the underbelly of Casablanca is well-paced and grittily shot.
Anointed auteurs padded the competition while the scramble for tickets became exhausting.
After angry, affecting portraits of northern England’s working class families in his previous two films, in ‘The Old Oak’ director Ken Loach travels to a former mining village where Syrian refugees are being resettled, to tell a moving but more generic, less engaging story than its predecessors.
The latest wondrous creation from Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher casts Josh O’Connor as a grave robber in 1980s Etruria.
A powerful, at times remarkable sophomore feature from Jean-Bernard Marlin that takes the usual “Romeo and Juliet” plot, drops it into the projects of Marseille, and then widens its scope with a story of an apocalyptical plague and magical redemption.
The latest feature from South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo, a rather slender drama, closed the Directors’ Fortnight.
Catherine Breillat’s first film in ten years is a more romantic update of the Danish film ‘Queen of Hearts’.
Sahra Mani’s raw documentary about the dire situation for women in Afghanistan, as well as those all but abandoned in so-called safe houses across the border, forces Western audiences to pay attention and stop averting their gaze from the Taliban’s reign of terror.
In his minor-key but charming Cannes contender ‘Perfect Days’, German art-house veteran Wim Wenders delivers a poetic paean to Zen and the art of toilet maintenance.
Pham Tien An’s first feature follows a young man’s slow spiritual journey with long takes, magical imagery and rarely seen glimpses into Vietnamese society.
The pièce de résistance of unabashed culinary cinema, Tran Anh Hung’s ‘The Pot au Feu’ serves up a French country idyll in romantic 19th century sauce for audiences whose tastes run to the fine wines and 12-course meals.
Cine Verdict: La directora brasileña debutante Lillah Halla hace una película llena de entusiasmo y empatía sobre una talentosa jugadora de voleibol que resuena en el panorama actual de los derechos reproductivos.
Brazilian newcomer Lillah Halla makes a film full of zest and empathy about a talented volleyball player that resonates in today´s pro-choice panorama.
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s poetic docu-essay Pictures of Ghost is a passkey to his previous films as well as a personal reflection on his relationship with Recife and cinephilia, but this terrifically edited meditation is also a more universal ode to the way memories become ghosts that inhabit the physical spaces of our lives.
A sardonic angry look at Iran today, ‘Terrestrial Verses’ approaches the country’s malaise in a series of black comedy skits.
Erwan Le Duc conjures a stylish and swoony look at the quick flame of first love and the lingering, unresolved pain of heartbreak.
Marco Bellocchio’s tense, edge-of-seat historical thriller, ‘Kidnapped,’ is the devastating true story of a 6-year-old Jewish boy abducted in 1858 to be raised a Catholic.
“Cerrar los ojos” es una apasionada y atractiva reflexión sobre el arte, la memoria, la identidad y la recuperación del tiempo pasado. Una película del venerado maestro vasco-español Víctor Erice, contada atípicamente, pero que típicamente aborda grandes temas.
Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzmann and a cast of thousands reach for the stars in director Wes Anderson’s visually ravishing retro rom-com ‘Asteroid City’.
A passionate, big-issue film from revered Spanish maestro Victor Erice, ‘Close Your Eyes” engagingly reflects on art, memory, identity and recapturing time past.
Portuguese-Brazilian directors João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora return to Cannes with a complex, highly-charged chronicle of how different generations of a Brazilian indigenous community fight back against intruders on their ancestral lands.
Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s offbeat school thriller about a classroom cult of teenage diet extremists, ‘Club Zero’ is visually delicious but lacks dramatic bite.
