En la competencia por la Palma de Oro, el 3er. largometraje de la cineasta española Carla Simón, Romería, ofrece un apasionante drama familiar que gira en torno a una joven en su búsqueda por la verdad sobre la muerte prematura de su padre.
Jafar Panahi has never been more explicit in denouncing the torture political prisoners are subjected to in Iran, or the furious longing for revenge that haunts the state’s victims, than in ‘It Was Just an Accident’.
In the running for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón’s third feature “Romeria” offers gripping family drama revolving around a young woman’s search for the truth about her father’s early demise.
Kirill Serebrennikov’s muscular biopic ‘The Disappearance of Josef Mengele’ about the elusive Nazi fugitive is a real-life horror story, sprawling at times but powered by strong performances and great visual swagger.
Stéphane Demoustier directs an elegant film about the dilemma of creators on a real-life project.
El thriller argentino ‘Más allá del olvido,’ dirigido por Hugo del Carril, recibe una merecida actualización en Cannes Classics, 70 años después de su estreno.
The Argentinean thriller directed by Hugo del Carril ‘Beyond Oblivion’ gets a well-deserved brush-up at Cannes Classics, 70 years after its release.
Since 2004, the Cannes Film Festival has actively devoted part of its programming to restored gems, via the Cannes Classics strand.
Oscar-winner Edward Berger’s papal thriller is flashy, pulpy, yet empty entertainment.
When it comes to mob stories, Barry Levinson’s altos know the words but not the music.
Steven Soderbergh’s thrilling marital spy caper plays like an airport novel ghost-written by Edward Albee.
Writer-director Brady Corbet’s monumental period drama about a tortured genius of modernist architecture, ‘The Brutalist’ is ponderous and bloated, but visually stunning and superbly acted.
This adaptation of the Broadway musical – the first half, anyway – offers a lot of craft but not enough magic.
A Brooklyn lapdancer falls for a super-rich Russian playboy in ‘Tangerine’ and ‘Red Rocket’ director Sean Baker’s latest walk on the wild side, ‘Anora’.
Director Walter Salles and actress Fernanda Torres relive the terrors of Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and one woman’s resistance to silence in ‘I’m Still Here’, a gripping, elevating drama about making truth known and rebuilding a life when all seems lost.
Beginning in 2019, a quartet of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers in the Occupied Territories start documenting Israel’s appropriation of the land and its escalation until just after the start of the current juggernaut in Gaza.
The Berlin International Film Festival’s 75th anniversary had a hard time overlooking the political turbulence in the world.
Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s trilogy closer ‘Dreams (Sex, Love)’ grabbed the Golden Bear for its portrait of a 15-year-old girl’s first crush and the intimacy of desire.
Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo returns to Berlin competition for the seventh time with ‘What Does That Nature Say to You’, an amusing boyfriend-meets-girlfriend’s-family tale illustrating the artist’s need to reject materialism.
Filmed in schools all across war-torn Ukraine, Kateryna Gornostai’s panoramic documentary ‘Timestamp’ is a deeply moving ensemble portrait of youthful hope and courage.
Norway won the Golden Bear this year in Berlin with the endearingly awkward ‘Dreams’ (‘Drømmer’), the final installment in Dag Johan Haugerud’s trilogy about contemporary relationships.
‘Monk in Pieces’ is a fragmentary but highly engaging documentary portrait of Meredith Monk, trailblazing icon of New York City’s experimental arts and music scene.
A telepathic schoolgirl unwittingly discovers some disturbing family secrets in German writer-director Frédéric Hambalek’s sharp-witted satirical comedy ‘What Marielle Knows’.
Sam Riley and Stacy Martin share dark secrets and smouldering sexual tension in Jan-Ole Gerster’s slow-moving but stylish psychological thriller ‘Islands’.
The thrill isn’t exactly gone from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it surfaces all too infrequently in this latest installment, which feels both thin and overstuffed.
Multiple Robert Pattinsons share a risky deep-space mission in ‘Parasite’ director Bong Joon-ho’s visually dazzling but muddled dystopian sci-fi comedy thriller ‘Mickey 17’.
Marion Cotillard channels her inner Bette Davis to maximum effect in “The Ice Tower”, French auteur Lucile Hadžihalilovic’s relentlessly dark, glacially paced and emotionally forbidding adaptation of the Snow Queen fairytale.
Director Ido Fluk’s playful period biopic ‘Köln 75’ celebrates the remarkable true story of the teenage German girl who made a landmark jazz concert happen against impossible odds.
Burhan Qurbani’s madly original revamping of ‘Richard III’ is a riotous sensory experience of uninterrupted energy that pushes Shakespearian evil to the limit, in the story of two Arab gangster families.
German writer-director Tom Tykwer returns to the big screen with ‘The Light’, a stylish and ambitious but ultimately shallow family psychodrama set in contemporary Berlin.
The 54th edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam served up a cosmopolitan banquet of punky Balkan bio-drama and chilly Baltic brooding, arty African essay-films and mind-bending Mexican animation.
In her sprawling but boldly original debut feature ‘Red Stars Upon the Field’, Laura Laabs turns the hidden skeletons of German history into a maximalist magical murder mystery tour.
Portuguese documentary-maker José Filipe Costa swerves towards fictional-feature territory in ‘Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator’, a stylistically measured yet quietly glorious character study of the ousted tyrant Salazar.
Indonesian filmmaker Harung Bramatyo makes his first foray at a top-ranked international festival with “Gowok: Javanese Kamasutra’, a visually arresting cross-generational melodrama charting an appre’tice sex tutor’s entangled emotions about love and emancipation.
Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal channel the spirit of cult modernist Robert Walser in this strange, caustic “repainting” of his novel about a beleaguered assistant.
Two troubled teenage sisters share a spookily close bond in actor turned director Ariane Labed’s patchy but atmospheric feature debut ‘September Says’.
TFV spoke to IFFR’s directors, Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart, about the 2025 edition and what they have planned beyond that.
A woman repeatedly fails a Captcha test and starts to wonder whether she is, in fact, a robot in the high concept identity crisis drama, I’m Not a Robot.
Just released in the U.S., ‘Oceans Are the Real Continents’ is an exquisite love poem to Cuba, where three generations struggle to survive 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.
‘Until the Orchid Blooms’ is a fine exploration of the battle between modernism and tradition set in a Cambodian community.
As Saudi Arabia’s film industry continues to grow, Hamzah Jamjoom is playing a part in shaping its future.
Bowing at the Singapore International Film Festival, Chen-hsi Wong’s second feature ‘City of Small Blessings’ is a film of delicate visuals and nuanced performances, but uncertain messaging.
A vengeful labourer’s plan to kill his manipulative foreman gives way to empathy for the rural poor in lawyer-turned-filmmaker Murat Firatoglu’s solid directorial debut.
A troubled, politically entangled premiere in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori has partly overshadowed Rusudan Glurjidze’s wistful Georgian comedy that cleverly targets Georgian-Russian relations.
The director of Georgia’s International Film submission ‘The Antique’ discusses the film’s difficult Venice debut and modern-day censorship from Russia.
TFV spoke with Mohammad Rasoulof about his latest film, the award-winning ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’.
Returning after last year’s dramatic cancellation, the 45th edition of the long-running Cairo festival had a rich international program but a special focus on strong films from Africa, the Middle East, Palestine and Egypt itself.
The Cairo jury gave their main prize to Romanian director Bogdan Muresanu’s tragicomic Cold War period piece ‘The New Year That Never Came’, but local writer-director Noha Adel earned the most awards and warmest reviews with her bittersweet female-driven ensemble drama ‘Spring Came Laughing’.
The Ukrainian director of accidental one-shot war documentary ‘Real’ talks to The Film Verdict about war and peace, boycotting Russian propaganda, and Donald Trump’s prospects for ending the conflict.