BlackBerry
The backstory to the creation of the world’s once-most-popular smartphone is much wackier than can be imagined, as evidenced in Matt Johnson’s good-humored rise-and-fall business chronicle.
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Author: Deborah Young
Iron Butterflies
The downing of Malaysian Airlines’ passenger flight MH17 in 2014 over Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine becomes a prophetic and highly symbolic event portending the current war and its methods in Roman Liubyi’s doc, whose poetry can seem forced but is still capable of shocking.
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Killing a Traitor
Acclaimed Iranian director Masoud Kimiai pours cinematic rage into his recreation of a 1952 politically-motivated bank robbery that resonates with the protests of today.
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Cinema Sabaya
Low-key but engrossing, this study of Jewish and Palestinian women who take a beginners’ filmmaking class together sidesteps the threatened stereotypes, as Orit Fouks Rotem creates an atmosphere of quiet realism in her first feature film.
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