Festivals

Dok Leipzig 2025: The Awards

Ivan Ramljak’s much-lauded ‘Peacemaker’ wins DOK Leipzig’s documentary competition while Seth and Peter Scriver’s delightfully bizarre family ruckus ‘Endless Cookie’ takes home the Golden Dove in the animated competition.

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AJP Still3 RonRothschildpng min 1 750x422 1 A Jewish Problem

A Jewish Problem

Ron Rothschild’s self-interrogating documentary ‘A Jewish Problem’ weaves his Jewish Israeli-German family memory into a fearless meditation on how Jewish trauma, European guilt, and Palestinian erasure continue to mirror one another.

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Sediments

Sediments

Laura Coppens recounts the history of 20th century Germany through a riveting familial lens in her documentary ‘Sediments’.

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take money2 Take the Money and Run

Take the Money and Run

Funny and compelling, if slightly glib, Ole Juncker’s fast-paced documentary ‘Take the Money and Run’ chronicles the case of a Danish artist who stole a hefty chunk of gallery money, arguing in court that the theft was a conceptual art statement.

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poked leopard3 The Woman Who Poked the Leopard

The Woman Who Poked the Leopard

Ugandan poet, political activist and professional troublemaker Stella Nyanzi is the explosively charismatic subject of director Patience Nitumwesiga’s assured debut feature ‘The Woman Who Poked the Leopard’.

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9695cd7d 51b9 4ac0 a5b6 131fa2a1d689 The Thing to Be Done

The Thing to Be Done

Srdan Kovacevic’s inspirational ‘fists in the air’ documentary ‘The Thing to Be Done’ offers a close-up on a small workers’ advisory office in Slovenia where a ‘parallel world’ for labour rights could exist.

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Mary Anning

Mary Anning

Paleontology comes to the screen from a child’s point of view in Marcel Barelli’s family-oriented feature debut ‘Mary Anning’.

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ezgif 1f9dcc339cf1e3 Endless Cookie

Endless Cookie

A delightfully bizarre ruckus of wild family anecdote, the Scriver brothers’ animation is an astute catalogue of Canadian First Nations dispossession, and a hopeful contribution to resurgent knowledge.

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active vocab2 Active Vocabulary

Active Vocabulary

A Russian teacher re-enacts her denunciation by one of her own students in director Yulia Lokshina’s ‘Active Vocabulary’, a flawed but ambitious documentary about free speech, propaganda and state indoctrination of schoolchildren.

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cutting through rocks Cutting Through Rocks

Cutting Through Rocks

This multiple prize-winning documentary is an inspirational close-up portrait of a proudly rebellious woman fighting for gender equality in a deeply traditional region of Iran, making powerful enemies along the way.

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Traces of What Remains

Traces of What Remains

A relationship is put to the test in Lisa Blatter’s tender sophomore feature directorial effort ‘Traces of What Remains’, screened at the Zurich Film Festival.

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dok leipzig Welcome to Dok Leipzig 68

Welcome to Dok Leipzig 68

The 68th edition of the world’s longest-running documentary festival promises an all-inclusive Oktoberfest of high art and heavyweight issues, critical thinking and serious fun.

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Wolves

Wolves

Music and far-right politics form the backbone of Jonas Ulrich’s uneven but propulsively sturdy feature debut ‘Wolves’.

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V25melt01 Melt

Melt

A meticulous, contemplative sweep of the globe, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s impressive doc takes stock of humanity’s toil to control ice and snow as the climate crisis advances.

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walks darkness1 She Walks in Darkness

She Walks in Darkness

Spanish director Agustín Díaz Yanes delivers a gripping, action-packed but intellectually hollow thriller about an undercover woman police officer who infiltrates the Basque terrorist group ETA.

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ss nighttime sounds Nighttime Sounds

Nighttime Sounds

In wheatfields dotted with 800-year-old stone statues, hidden female desires burn in Zhang Zhongchen’s engrossing magical realist tale from the Chinese hinterlands.

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Busan 2025 Busan 2025: The Verdict

Busan 2025: The Verdict

Amid widespread concern over the health of the Korean film industry, the Busan International Film Festival celebrated its 30th edition hosting domestic films – and audiences – marked by their variety and vitality.

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Malika still Malika

Malika

Natalia Uvarova’s ‘Malika’ is a levelheaded examination of a mother and daughter relationship on the verge of a new marriage.

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Gloaming in Luomu c Chengdu Lu Films 1 Busan 2025: The Awards

Busan 2025: The Awards

In ‘Gloaming in Luomu’, Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu offers his most radical reworking of the theme of searching for a long-vanished soulmate, in a film that unfolds like a delirious dream.

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ss hidden Hidden Murder

Hidden Murder

Sleek, sophisticated and certifiably scary in parts, ‘Hidden Murder’ is a Spanish-Argentinian psychological thriller premiering in San Sebastian’s RTVE Galas sidebar.

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scary movie A Scary Movie

A Scary Movie

Spanish-Brazilian director Sergio Oksman uses Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ to reflect on the ghosts of his own life in the slender but intriguing hybrid documentary, ‘A Scary Movie;’.

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Maspalomas

Maspalomas

Love, lust and old age coalesce in the layered, emotionally charged queer comedy-drama ‘Maspalomas’, part of San Sebastián’s Official Selection.

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ss tabi Two Seasons, Two Strangers

Two Seasons, Two Strangers

Gently engaging the viewer with whimsical tales of two couples and reflections on the artistic process, Shô Miyake’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner ‘Two Seasons, Two Strangers’ skillfully plays a wide range of chords from melancholy to amusing, tragic to poetic.

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IMG 20250925 205912 Good Valley Stories

Good Valley Stories

The authenticity and good humor in José Luis Guerin’s documentary ‘Good Valley Stories’ make it a contender for San Sebastian’s Golden Shell.

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ballad small player Ballad of a Small Player

Ballad of a Small Player

Colin Farrell gives a high-energy performance as a boozy con man gambling his life away in the casinos of Macau in director Edward Berger’s stylish but shallow thriller ‘Ballad of a Small Player’.

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ss cuerpo Cuerpo Celeste

Cuerpo Celeste

Nayra Ilic Garcia’s minimalist, somewhat impenetrable coming-of-age tale about a 15-year-old Chilean girl, ‘Cuerpo Celeste’, is set during the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

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Bad Apples

Bad Apples

Saoirse Ronan and two child actors shine in the implausible but wildly funny UK comedy ‘Bad Apples’, screened in San Sebastián’s New Directors section.

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IMG 20250925 093527 Los domingos

Los domingos

La vida de una familia española de clase media se convulsiona cuando la hija de 17 años considera convertirse en monja de clausura en la astuta, divertida y frecuentemente conmovedora película ‘Los domingos’ de Alauda Ruiz de Azua.

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nuremberg film Nuremberg

Nuremberg

Russell Crowe, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon give meaty performances in James Vanderbilt’s ‘Nuremberg’, a solidly entertaining historical drama about the post-war trials of prominent Nazis, which is low on subtlety but full of timely political messages.

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ss sundays 2 Sundays

Sundays

The life of a middle-class Spanish family is turned upside down when the 17-year-old daughter considers becoming a cloistered nun in Alauda Ruiz de Azua’s sly, funny and frequently moving ‘Sundays’.

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Kok Kok Kokoook c Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute Kok Kok Kokoook

Kok Kok Kokoook

Scathing social commentary meets brash body horror in the unclassifiable and utterly compelling ‘Kok Kok Kokoook’, Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap’s first feature.

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ungrateful1 Ungrateful Beings

Ungrateful Beings

A holiday homicide triggers a family crisis in Olmo Omerzu’s compelling psychological thriller ‘Ungrateful Beings’, which is clunky in places but saved by its intriguing premise and strong cast.

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Still from Maze (2025)

Maze

Grief is the thing in Maze, Shin Sun’s subdued drama about a trio of people processing loss. An understated but absorbing meditation on guilt and recrimination.

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ss sai SAI Disaster

SAI Disaster

A new-old take on a not very believable serial killer haunting Japan, ‘SAI Disaster’ emphasizes the ordinary, dull, problematic lives of his victims in Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirase’s unremarkable second collaboration.

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Weightless

Weightless

Danish director Emilie Thalund depicts teenage confusion with gentle precision in her feature debut ‘Weightless’.

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Indira Tiwari in Spying Stars (c) House on Fire, Eleeanora Images

Spying Stars

Sri Lankan cineaste Vimukthi Jayasundara re-emerges from his decade-long feature-filmmaking hiatus with ‘Spying Stars’, a moving story about death and mourning packaged as an audacious sci-fi fantasy.

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Angelina Jolie and Louie Garrel en Couture

Coutures

‘Coutures’ mixes sickness, war, high fashion and star power in its race for the Golden Shell at San Sebastian.

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SS as we breathe 1 As We Breathe

As We Breathe

A wildfire out of control in rural Turkey threatens the house, livestock and resourcefulness of a little girl and her motherless family in Seyhmus Altun’s low-key, high-anxiety drama ‘As We Breathe’.

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By Another Name c Mareummo Film By Another Name

By Another Name

A dying filmmaker struggles to bring one final project to fruition and his wife attempts to realise this last wish in “By Another Name”, Korean indie filmmaker Lee Jea-han’s uneventful entry to Busan’s new competition.
 

A dying filmmaker struggles to bring one final project to fruition and his wife attempts to realise this last wish in “By Another Name”, Korean indie filmmaker Lee Jea-han’s plain and uneventful entry to Busan International Film Festival’s newly minted main competition.

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ssiff49621 Deux pianos Two Pianos Two Pianos Two Pianos

Two Pianos

Music and obsessive love are the center of the compelling new Arnaud Desplechin film premiering in competition at SSIFF.

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hen1 Hen

Hen

György Pálfi works with a plucky cast of real animals on ‘Hen’, a scrappy but technically impressive comic thriller about a rebellious bird on the run from the chicken-industrial complex.

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Urchin

Urchin

Harris Dickinson shows impressive directorial chops with the mental health drama ‘Urchin’, starring Frank Dillane.

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Gaumaya Gurung in Shape of Momo

Shape of Momo

Indian filmmaker Tribeny Rai makes back-to-back festival bows at Busan and San Sebastian with ‘Shape of Momo’, a thoughtful family drama about an affluent, cosmopolitan woman’s rebellion against the gender- and class-based schisms in her picturesque Himalayan hometown.

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Screenshot 2025 09 21 10 07 58 461 com.android.chrome scaled e1758444731507 La lucha

La lucha

Un padre y una hija de clase trabajadora pertenecen a un grupo muy unido de luchadores tradicionales en La lucha, una historia inesperadamente extravagante y emocionalmente perfecta ambientada en las Islas Canarias.

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Without Permission 2 c Hassan Nazer Without Permission

Without Permission

A sense of déja vu permeates the Busan competition entry ‘Without Permission’, British-Iranian Hassan Nazer’s awkwardly dated tribute to the subversive spirit of Iran’s filmmakers.

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Kurak 2 c OYMO Studio Kurak

Kurak

Completing the work of her late partner Emial Atageldiev, screenwriter-turned-helmer Erke Dzhumakmatova bows at Busan with ‘Kurak’, a relentlessly brutal exposé of the entrenched, violent oppression of women in Kygryzstan.

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LOS TIGRES ENTRADA min The Tigers

The Tigers

Great performances and good direction save a predictable script in Alberto Rodriguez’s thriller ‘The Tigers’, bowing in competition at San Sebastian.

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ss la lucha Dance of the Living

Dance of the Living

A working class father and daughter belong to a close-knit group of traditional wrestlers in an unexpectedly flamboyant, emotionally pitch-perfect story set on the Canary Islands, ‘Dance of the Living’.

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redoubt1 Redoubt

Redoubt

Writer director John Skoog casts Denis Lavant as a real-life backwoods eccentric from Swedish history in his dramatically thin but compellingly bizarre Cold War drama ‘Redoubt’.

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Funky Freaky Freaks still

Funky Freaky Freaks

‘Funky Freaky Freaks’ puts troubled Korean youth on the big screen in a manner that advertises director Han Chang-lok’s eye for fine performances and unusual visuals.

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The Mutation c June Film The Mutation

The Mutation

Korean cineaste Shin Su-won’s first feature in three years, ‘The Mutation’ is a lyrical and heartfelt odd-couple road movie about bereavement, bigotry and self-belief.

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Soma-Fujii-right-and-Yukino-Murakami-in-Leave-the-Cat-Alone-c-2025-Leave-the-Cat-Alone-film-partners.j

Leave the Cat Alone

With his first feature ‘Leave the Cat Alone’ competing in Busan, Japanese filmmaker Daisuke Shigaya offers a sensitive and subdued exploration into the loves and hopes of some artistic millennials.

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3508 El mensaje

El mensaje

La película de Iván Fund – minimalista y en tono bajo- sobre una joven argentina con un don especial se centra en atmósfera y matices.

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l etranger The Stranger

The Stranger

François Ozon gives much-loved Albert Camus novel ‘L’Étranger’ a chic retro-modernist polish in this sumptuously shot adaptation of a French literary classic.

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Six Days in Spring

Six Days in Spring

Joachim Lafosse tells the story of an unusual vacation in the autobiographical and subtly surprising ‘Six Days in Spring’.

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Still from En Route To (2025)

En Route To

Yoo Jaein’s graduation film, ‘En Route To’, is both a clear-eyed drama about teenage pregnancy and a humorous, touching tale of female friendship.

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Another Birth c IZK Films 2 Another Birth

Another Birth

New York-based Tajik-American filmmaker Isabelle Kalandar bows in competition at Busan with ‘Another Birth’, a mesmerising rite-of-passage drama bolstered by poetry, picturesque landscapes and a powerful turn from its child actor.

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Bakas Identity c BAKAs Identity Film Partners Baka’s Identity

Baka’s Identity

Koto Nagata’s surprisingly subtle and melancholy suspense thriller ‘Baka’s Identity’ about three Japanese scammers vaunts nuanced performances but gets derailed by flashbacks.

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Still from Re-Creation (2025)

Re-Creation

The gripping, formally inventive jury-room drama ‘Re-Creation’ is part speculative fiction and part true crime exposé built around strong performances.

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Still from The Sleeping Beauty (2025)

The Sleeping Beauty

Mattie Do’s The Sleeping Beauty is a beguiling fairy tale of accursed love that blends fantasy and horror, born of traditional Laotian folklore.

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Still from The Girl in the Snow (2025)

The Girl in the Snow

Louise Hemon’s feature fiction debut, The Girl in the Snow, takes real life stories and conjures with them an enthralling period chamber piece with folk horror inflections.

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Still from The Innocents (2025)

The Innocents

German Tejada updates Oswaldo Reynoso into contemporary Lima in The Innocents, a grungy coming-of-age drama that explores burgeoning sexuality and youthful alienation.

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Still from Gunman (2025)

Gunman

The backstreets of Buenos Aires are a deadly labyrinth in Gunman, a hyper-kinetic, bravura single take thriller from Chris Tapia Marchiori.

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Still from Mouse (2025)

Mouse

Paranoia and past trauma come to bear in Mouse, Rosie Barrett’s short small-town drama infused with an impressive, slowly building tension.

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Still from Eugene the Marine (2025)

Eugene the Marine

Scott Glenn is fantastic in Eugene the Marine, a genre-bender that uses heartwarming comedy and bloody giallo to rage against the dying of the light.

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Imagen2 Llueve sobre Babel

Llueve sobre Babel

El elegante primer largometraje de la escritora y directora colombiana Gala del Sol es un carnaval queer audaz, ambicioso y caleidoscópico de lo basado libremente en el ‘Infierno’ de Dante.

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Still from Broken Voices (2025)

Broken Voices

The insidiousness of abuse is expertly explored in Broken Voices, a restrained but devastating loss-of-innocence drama from Ondrej Provaznik.

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Still from Horseshoe (2025)

Horseshoe

Familial fractures persist across decades in Edwin Mullane and Adam O’Keeffe’s deftly observed and emotive debut feature, Horseshoe.

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Still from Dammen (2025)

Dammen

A single wide-angle perspective gives an eerily voyeuristic air to the smart, lowkey exercise in building tension – Dammen.

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The Holy Boy

The Holy Boy

Paolo Strippoli puts his own spin on the intertwining of grief, faith and horror in the solidly intriguing ‘The Holy Boy’.

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silent friend Silent Friend

Silent Friend

Rare is the film able to turn a meditation on time, nature, neuroscience and interspecies connections into a memorable, stirring adventure of ideas like Ildiko Enyedi’s ‘Silent Friend’, a totally original, time-spanning story that closed Venice competition with a bang.

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babystar still 01 Babystar

Babystar

The screen-time satire ‘Babystar’ delivers sharp observations about social media coupled with a surprisingly bold visual style.

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newport folk dream Newport & the Great Folk Dream

Newport & the Great Folk Dream

Loaded with previously unseen archive footage, Robert Gordon’s engaging documentary ‘Newport & the Great Folk Dream’ looks beyond star names like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to explore the musical, social and political roots of Newport Folk Festival.

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final Idan Weiss as Franz Franz

Franz

Newcomer Idan Weiss shines in Agnieszka Holland’s vivid portrait of the tortured writer, Franz Kafka.

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JULIAN ©Grade Solomon16 9 Julian

Julian

‘Julian’ is the sentimental and stirring true story about a tragic romance and the battle for queer rights.

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Who Is Still Alive

Who Is Still Alive

Nicolas Wadimoff returns to the topic of Gaza with the experimental documentary ‘Who Is Still Alive’, an intellectually intriguing Venice premiere.

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duse 1 Duse

Duse

An illuminating, soul-deep portrait of the great Italian stage actress Eleanora Duse, gloriously played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, is interwoven with the rise of Fascism in Italy following the First World War.

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HIND RAJAB The Voice of Hind Rajab

The Voice of Hind Rajab

A tremendously moving reenactment of a real tragedy that took place in Gaza, Kaouther Ben Hania’s ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ masterfully integrates fiction and reality in a grief-stricken lament for a child in mortal danger.

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Memory of Princess Mumbi Memory of Princess Mumbi

Memory of Princess Mumbi

Filmed in Kenya, Damien Hauser’s wildly inventive retro-futuristic fairy tale ‘Memory of Princess Mumbi’ combines dazzling AI visuals with bittersweet meditations on love and loss, cinematic fantasy and human reality.

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a house of dynamite A House of Dynamite

A House of Dynamite

Kathryn Bigelow turns her prodigious talent for edge-of-seat action thrillers to the most terrifying horror show of them all: a rogue nuclear missile is headed straight for the USA and officialdom discovers the absurd inadequacy of available responses, in ‘A House of Dynamite’, a dazzling dark fantasy that leaves viewers shaken.

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Silent Rebellion

Silent Rebellion

Marie-Elsa Sgualdo explores women’s rights in the 1940s in her handsomely mounted, quietly intriguing feature debut ‘Silent Rebellion’.

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A Year of School

A Year of School

Laura Samani deals with high school tribulations in her deceptively breezy sophomore directorial effort ‘A Year of School’.

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PAST FUTURE CONTINUOUS Past Present Continuous

Past Present Continuous

Acclaimed artists and filmmakers Morteza Ahmadvand and Firouzeh Khosrovani (‘Radiograph of a Family’) pool their talents in ‘Past Present Continuous’, an emotionally-charged yet formally distanced creative documentary that combines experiences of Iranians in exile from their country.

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testament The Testament of Ann Lee

The Testament of Ann Lee

Amanda Seyfried is on a mission from God in writer-director Mona Fastvold’s audacious, ambitious and mostly excellent avant-garde feminist musical about a real-life 18th century messianic female religious leader ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’.

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the wizard of the kremlin The Wizard of the Kremlin

The Wizard of the Kremlin

Russian history whips by onscreen in Olivier Assayas’s often fascinating, at times clumsy English-language drama ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin,’ detailing the rise of Putin (Jude Law) and authoritarian power through the eyes of a brilliant, unscrupulous young ideologue.

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The Last Viking

The Last Viking

Anders Thomas Jensen teams up with Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas once again for the hilariously moving dark comedy ‘The Last Viking’.

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Rose of Nevada Rose of Nevada

Rose of Nevada

British writer-director Mark Jenkin’s visually inventive maritime mystery ‘Rose of Nevada’ hits a few choppy waters but ultimately proves to be a haunting meditation on grief, guilt and collective trauma.

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Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro’s lifelong obsession with Frankenstein and his Creature comes to thrilling, bombastic life in this new take on Mary Shelley’s novel.

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Below 2 Below the Clouds

Below the Clouds

Digging deep into Naples’ past, Italy’s premier documentarian Gianfranco Rosi (‘Sacro GRA’; ‘Notturno’) struggles to turn the city into a metaphor for time, history, and the human condition in ‘Below the Clouds’.

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Broken English 1 Broken English

Broken English

Marianne Faithfull died while making the arty swansong documentary ‘Broken English’, which is hampered by too much stylistic trickery but still delivers a rich mixtape of music, memories and boho-rock royalty.

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No Other Choice No Other Choice

No Other Choice

A farcical crimefest with a dark side, Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ amplifies the inhumanity of modern industry and the utter ruthlessness of salaried work in an engaging film full of unexpected twists.

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qaddafi2 1 My Father and Qaddafi

My Father and Qaddafi

Libyan-American director Jihan K mourns both her lost father and her lost fatherland in her moving, lyrical, densely layered murder-mystery docu-memoir ‘My Father and Qadaffi’.

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Still from Coyotes (2025)

Coyotes

Said Zagha’s pulsating neo-noir probes at the dark consequences of being pushed to breaking point in Coyotes, a genre-inflected Palestinian short.

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Milk Teeth

Milk Teeth

Mihai Mincan’s compellingly enigmatic sophomore solo effort ‘Milk Teeth’ deals with the end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania in a roundabout way.

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Hijra Hijra

Hijra

Three women’s journey to Mecca becomes a stunning allegory on life for a 12-year-old girl in Saudi director Shahad Ameen’s (‘Scales’) bewitching road movie, ‘Hijra’.

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bugonia Bugonia

Bugonia

Emma Stone reunites with ‘The Favourite’ and ‘Poor Things’ director Yorgos Lanthimos for ‘Bugonia’, a slight but enjoyably bizarre remake of a cult Korean sci-fi kidnap comedy.

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la grazia La Grazia

La Grazia

Toni Servillo shines in a memorable, tragi-comic performance as the president of Italy in Paolo Sorrentino’s crowd-pleasing Venice opener ‘La Grazia’, an often funny, sometimes moving tale of the Numero Uno’s loneliness, inner doubts and obsessions and his inability to make up his mind on difficult legislation like euthanasia.

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Mother1 Mother

Mother

Noomi Rapace and director Teona Strugar Mitevska give young Mother Teresa a lightly feminist “punk” remix, but sadly their non-committal bio-drama ‘Mother’ is not ‘The Girl with the Jesus Tattoo’.

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phantoms1 Phantoms of July

Phantoms of July

Director Julian Radlmaier’s charming small-town ensemble comedy ‘Phantoms of July’ finds poetry, political unease and romantic yearning at the heart of modern Europe.

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Still from The Orchards (2025)

The Orchards

Antoine Chapon repurposes eerie architectural animations in ‘The Orchards,’ a paean to a lost Damascus community that attempts to resist its eradication by a vindictive regime.

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Still from Index (2025)

Index

Index, the new short film from Radu Muntean is a low-key thriller that transforms tranquil forest bathing into something far more brooding and disquieting.

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Cuba Alaska Still003 Cuba & Alaska

Cuba & Alaska

In Yegor Troyanovsky’s warmly personal, bittersweet doc ‘Cuba & Alaska’, we follow a volunteer combat medic duo of two best friends on and off Ukraine’s wartime roads.

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csm 9 Month Contract 679d23bdba 9-Month Contract

9-Month Contract

Shocking but sensitively handled, Ketevan Vashagashvili’s debut doc ‘9-Month Contract’ exposes exploitative practices in Georgian surrogacy agencies through one woman’s risky reality.

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Still from Divia (2025)

Divia

Dmytro Hreshko’s documentary, Divia, combines alarming scale with small moments to create a haunting portrait of war-ravaged nature in the micro and the macro.

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fantasy2 1 Fantasy

Fantasy

Young Slovenian writer-director Kukla celebrates sexual, ethnic and gender diversity in her slightly heavy-handed but big-hearted debut feature ‘Fantasy’.

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ezgif 1be4bd4877ae34 Two Prosecutors

Two Prosecutors

Sergei Loznitsa’s masterfully controlled, mordantly absurd drama on the fate of a just idealist in Stalin’s USSR is a timely warning on the workings of state terror.

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hell with ivo In Hell with Ivo

In Hell with Ivo

Director Kristina Nikolova’s lively documentary portrait of Bulgarian queer musician and performance artist Ivo Dimchev, ‘In Hell with Ivo’, is compelling but frustratingly light on detail.

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the fin The Fin

The Fin

South Korean director Park Syeyoung’s ambitious dystopian sci-fi thriller ‘The Fin’ makes up for its scrappy plot with biting political subtext and striking grime-punk visuals.

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Still from Loynes (2025)

Loynes

Baroque farce is the order of the day in Dorian Jespers’ surreal new short, Loynes, that transforms a historical curio into a bizarre courtroom nightmare.

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Don't Let The Sun

Don’t Let the Sun

Swiss documentarian Jacqueline Zünd makes her fiction debut with the quietly powerful human relationship drama ‘Don’t Let the Sun’..

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Still from Little Trouble Girls (2025)

Little Trouble Girls

Anchored by a wonderful performance from newcomer Jara Sofija Ostan, Urska Djukic’s feature debut Little Trouble Girls is a refreshing and enigmatic take on sexual awakening.

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Imago 002 1 Imago

Imago

In the gorgeously subtle and poetic doc ‘Imago’, Déni Oumar Pitsaev visits Pankisi to explore what kind of home it can be for the dreams of Chechnya’s displaced.

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Still from Wish You Were Ear (2025)

Wish You Were Ear

Mirjana Balogh’s affirming animation, Wish You Were Ear, finds solace in a dystopian future where ending a relationship requires the physical swapping of a body part.

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WHITE SNAIL INTRAMOVIES LOCARNO 2 White Snail

White Snail

A morgue in Belarus is the unlikely setting for new hope to seed in an unsettling, unusual drama from Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter.

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Sorella di Clausura Main Still Sorella di Clausura

Sorella di Clausura

In Ivana Mladenovic’s satirical, chaotic anti-romance, an obsessed fan in a kitsch-crammed Romania goes to extreme lengths to pursue a Balkan music star.

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Desired Lines Still 04 Desire Lines

Desire Lines

Dane Komljen’s spectral and shape-lifting landscape of bodies and the paranoia of uncertain identity is a mesmerising, unsettling gem.

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The Deal

The Deal

Jean-Stéphane Bron tackles TV thriller territory with his series debut “The Deal”, screened out of competition in Locarno.

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aiff close nada Palestinian Cinema Lights Up the 6th Amman Festival

Palestinian Cinema Lights Up the 6th Amman Festival

Stories told “honestly and unapologetically” proved a winning strategy at the 6th Amman Intl Film Festival – Awal Film, an intimate, carefully programmed showcase for cinema from the Arab countries and beyond that is asserting itself as a major cultural event in the region.

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Aiff tetes 1 Têtes Brûlées

Têtes Brûlées

 A sensitive and emotionally intimate exploration of cultural identity amidst grief, ‘Têtes Brûlées’ recounts how a 12-year-old girl from a Tunisian family living in Brussels loses her beloved brother, in Maja-Ajmia Yde Zellama’s stereotype-shattering debut feature.

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Yalla Parkour car Yalla Parkour

Yalla Parkour

When documaker Areeb Zuaiter in the U.S. stumbles across the Internet videos of daredevil Ahmad, a teenage parkour athlete in Gaza, they begin a heartfelt long-distance friendship that becomes entwined with the filmmaker’s sense of belonging to her mother’s Palestinian homeland, in the fascinating and revealing meeting of worlds, Yalla Parkour.

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aiff clown png The Clown of Gaza

The Clown of Gaza

World premiering at the Amman International Film Festival, Gazan director Abdulrahman Sabbah’s ‘The Clown of Gaza’ is an observant and immersive documentary about the anxiety, hope and resilience of displaced Palestinians through the life of a buoyant street performer.

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aiff awards Amman 2025: The Awards

Amman 2025: The Awards

Lotfi Achour’s chilling psychodrama of a young shepherd who witnesses ISIS behead his cousin won the top prize at the 6th Amman Int. FIlm Festival – Awal Film.

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Hassan Still From Ground Zero +

From Ground Zero +

In ‘From Ground Zero +’ the project organized by Rashid Masharawi collects new documentary testimony giving voice to Palestinians living in the midst of war, in which four directors vividly describe the atmosphere of fear and suffering in Gaza today.

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Aiff mother of schools 1 Mother of Schools

Mother of Schools

 A prestigious boys’ high school between Amman and the Dead Sea finds itself torn asunder in a growing divide between traditional teaching methods and the digital revolution, added to political tensions as the war intensifies in Gaza, in the Jordanian documentary ‘Mother of Schools’.

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AIFF Magic Garden 1 Tales from the Magic Garden

Tales from the Magic Garden

A delightful bouquet of children’s tales, told in stop-motion animation, gently broaches the theme of accepting death and loss in ‘Tales from the Magic Garden’, adapted from the stories of beloved Czech playwright Arnost Goldflam.

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AIFF Algiers Algiers

Algiers

A hard-boiled cop thriller set in Algiers, Chakib Taleb-Bendiab’s debut feature about the race to find a kidnapped street girl packs a lot of fast-paced action, but its momentum hits the wall of an underdeveloped storyline and overly familiar stock characters.

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AIFF Songs of Adam Songs of Adam

Songs of Adam

A magical film about time and history, told through the eyes of a Peter Pan farm boy who refuses to grow up, Oday Rasheed’s ‘Songs of Adam’ masterfully evokes a timeless Iraqi society of Mesopotamian farmers from post-WW2 to the present.

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Young Mothers

Young Mothers

The Dardenne brothers tell another understated story of slices of female life with “Young Mothers”, winner of the Best Screenplay award in Cannes.

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Eagles Eagles of the Republic

Eagles of the Republic

Director Tarik Saleh closes his Cairo trilogy with ‘Eagles of the Republic’, a daring political fantasy thriller set in the Egyptian movie industry, starring a magnetic Fares Fares.

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orwell Orwell: 2+2=5

Orwell: 2+2=5

Never has the world felt closer to the threats of rising fascism described by George Orwell than now, as filmmaker Raoul Peck (‘I Am Not your Negro’) lucidly shows in his new documentary ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’.

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romeria CineVerdict: Romería

CineVerdict: Romería

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.

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Sentimental Value

Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier makes a powerful return to the Cannes Competition with “Sentimental Value”, a meditation on art, family and depression with a distinctly Nordic flair.

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Woman and Child2 3 Woman and Child

Woman and Child

In Saeed Roustaee’s ‘Woman and Child’, a young widow loses control when her son dies, in a well-made, well-acted and unrestrained Iranian melodrama gauged primarily to local audience tastes.

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It Was Just an Accident It Was Just an Accident

It Was Just an Accident

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’.

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Llucia Garcia and Mitch in Romeria.

Romeria

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.

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O agente The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent

A dazzling if confusing thriller set in 1977 Brazil during the worst years of the dictatorship, ‘The Secret Agent’ finds actor Wagner Moura embroiled in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the corrupt police of Recife.

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186397 scaled 1 Fuori

Fuori

 Valeria Golino sparkles in ‘Fuori’, Mario Martone’s nonconformist portrait of celebrated Italian writer and provocateur Goliarda Sapienza, in an often elusive but pleasingly nonconformist feminist tale that takes a timely stand for personal liberty.

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mengele2 The Disappearance of Josef Mengele

The Disappearance of Josef Mengele

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.

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Un Poeta

A Poet

Black humor, irony and a bit of poetry make the Colombian ‘A Poeta’ a very enjoyable watch.

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DPDA Photogrammes FROM MASTERISATION 00156628 Love Letters

Love Letters

In 2013, the Taubira Law granting same-sex couples marriage equality and the right to adopt children, was signed into effect in France. However, where one bureaucratic injustice ended, another began as Alice Douard explores in her debut feature Love Letters. Just because the right to adopt was legal, didn’t mean it didn’t require a few...
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A Useful Ghost A Useful Ghost

A Useful Ghost

In the middle of the Venn diagram of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Quentin Dupieux, and Charlie Kaufman, you might find Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke and his debut feature film A Useful Ghost. Marvellously inventive, what begins as an unlikely ghost story and tragic romance, evolves into an affecting look at what haunts Thailand’s national memories, and the dreams of...
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Die My Love

Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay returns to the big screen with the peculiar Cannes Competition entry ‘Die My Love’, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

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Little Sis The Little Sister

The Little Sister

A devout young Muslim woman struggles to reconcile faith with being lesbian in Hafsia Herzi’s ‘The Little Sister’, celebrating the LGBTQIA culture in Paris in its many aspects as it explores how religion and sexuality shape self-identity.

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Case3 Case 137

Case 137

A real-life police shooting during a chaotic demonstration of the Yellow Vests protesters in Paris lights the fuse to ‘Case 137’, a tense, exciting and meaningful police procedural centered around a tenacious officer investigating police brutality.

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enzo 3 Enzo

Enzo

The final collaboration between Robin Campillo and Laurent Cantet, two masters of contemporary French cinema, strikes a warm Mediterranean high note with the well-heeled rebel Enzo, a 16-year-old boy pushing back blindly against his middle class origins.

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1 LITTLE BIG FAR STARS scaled 1 Little, Big, and Far

Little, Big, and Far

Jem Cohen’s epistolary and associative docufiction is an ode to science and streetcorner stargazing that is haunted by the extinction anxieties of an Anthropocene age.

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ezgif 3ea3d9d67aad69 Flophouse America

Flophouse America

Monica Stromdahl’s raw, intimate doc portrait of a teen living in cramped quarters with his alcoholic parents champions the resilience of youth and the dismantling of shame.

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ezgif 8477781e019cfb Shifting Baselines

Shifting Baselines

Julien Elie’s stark, moody doc premiering at Visions du Réel ponders an Earth with no memory of the night sky’s stars, and a Texas town irrevocably altered by SpaceX’s promise of a colony on Mars.

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TheBrutalist Image3 HERO The Brutalist

The Brutalist

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.

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anora Anora

Anora

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’.

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Im stil here I'm Still Here

I’m Still Here

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.

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NO OTHER LAND photo No Other Land

No Other Land

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.

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if i had legs1 If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Starring Rose Byrne on revelatory form, Mary Bronstein’s high-energy dark comedy ‘If I Had Legs I’d Lick You’ takes a deep dive into the nightmarish pressures and surreal horrors of motherhood.

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202504080 5 RWD 1780 The Settlement

The Settlement

Director Mohamed Rashad’s working-class drama ‘The Settlement’, a visually impressive folk tale portraying a young man’s desperate attempts at social integration, is a milestone for the Egyptian film industry at the Berlinale.

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kontinental2 Kontinental '25

Kontinental ’25

Punky Romanian auteur Radu Jude softens his usual bitingly satirical approach with his latest Berlinale prize-winner ‘Kontinental ’25’, a serious-minded but minor-key social drama about gentrification and bourgeois liberal guilt.

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drommer Berlin 2025: The Awards

Berlin 2025: The Awards

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.

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botanist2 The Botanist

The Botanist

A Kazakh boy and a Chinese girl grow up together in China’s vast northeast, in Jing Yi’s dreamlike and meditative first film, ‘The Botanist’.

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Nature What Does That Nature Say to You

What Does That Nature Say to You

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.

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timestamp2 Timestamp

Timestamp

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.

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Late shift Late Shift

Late Shift

You can’t look away from nurse Floria as she races around an understaffed hospital to check on 25 seriously ill patients in Petra Volpe’s breathless, high-stress salute to the nursing profession.

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Monk in Pieces1 Monk in Pieces

Monk in Pieces

‘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.

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Shoah All I Had Was Nothingness

All I Had Was Nothingness

Guillaume Ribot powerfully evokes the Holocaust in an astutely edited collection of outtakes from Claude Lanzmann’s 9½ hour documentary ‘Shoah’ (1985), both playing in the Berlin Film Festival at a crucial point in history.

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Message The Message

The Message

Ivan Fund’s small, quiet film featuring a young Argentine girl with a special gift is all about atmosphere and nuance.

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reflets 2 Reflection in a Dead Diamond

Reflection in a Dead Diamond

The worlds of James Bond and Italian comic books crash head-on in the drolly witty, madcap psychedelia of ‘Reflection in a Dead Diamond’ from experimental filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani.

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marielle1 What Marielle Knows

What Marielle Knows

A telepathic schoolgirl unwittingly discovers some disturbing family secrets in German writer-director Frédéric Hambalek’s sharp-witted satirical comedy ‘What Marielle Knows’.

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islands1 Islands

Islands

Sam Riley and Stacy Martin share dark secrets and smouldering sexual tension in Jan-Ole Gerster’s slow-moving but stylish psychological thriller ‘Islands’.

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mickey17 Mickey 17

Mickey 17

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’.

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Marion Cotillar and Clara Pacini in The Ice Tower

The Ice Tower

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.

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blue trail The Blue Trail

The Blue Trail

Engrossing actors and an Amazon river setting lighten the heavy-handed social commentary about how the elderly are scandalously mistreated, in Gabriel Mascaro’s likable but narratively slight future dystopia, ‘The Blue Trail’.

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koln75 Köln 75

Köln 75

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.

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No Beast No Beast. So Fierce.

No Beast. So Fierce.

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.

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Living the Land 3 Living the Land

Living the Land

Set in 1991, Huo Meng’s sober and respectful ‘Living the Land’ is a bittersweet reflection on Chinese farmers, capturing the shared experiences of multiple generations who are threatened by mechanization and the urban siren song.

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das licht2 The Light

The Light

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.

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iffr tiger Rotterdam 2025: The Verdict

Rotterdam 2025: The Verdict

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.

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red stars2 Red Stars Upon the Field

Red Stars Upon the Field

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.

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Tigers IFFR 2025 Awards

IFFR 2025 Awards

Original, sophisticated films that pushed the limits of fiction and documentary were recognized by juries at this year’s Tiger awards.

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2b9c9101 fce7 41b8 bef4 b3df391e8fa8 1296x729 1 Acts of Love

Acts of Love

Jeppe Rønde’s psychologically complex yet tender drama delves into the world of trauma healing and cults without sensationalism, preferring to raise questions rather than supply answers.

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Jorge Mota as Antonio Salazar in front of Palacete de São Bento in Our Father - The Last Days of a Dictator

Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator

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.

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97b81791 d427 4fa2 9918 1a25def2ed6b 1296x729 1 The Tree of Authenticity

The Tree of Authenticity

The only African film in this year’s IFFR Tiger Competition, Sammy Baloji’s ‘The Tree of Authenticity’ offers a much-needed disruption to Belgian colonial archives, which dominate historical narratives in Congo.

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Still from a river holds a perfect memory (2025)

a river holds a perfect memory

Tying together disparate locations in Northern England and Jamaica, Hope Strickland’s evocative boat ride, ‘a river holds a perfect memory,’ explores the interrelations between labour, memory and rivers.

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52fd5dd3 3c1a 4228 989b 69aa42ffd76b Wind, Talk to Me

Wind, Talk to Me

Stefan Djordjevic’s sensitive doc portrait of grief and nature’s endless capacity for renewal is a gem of small gestures and surreal moments.

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fcd4abf8 c8fe 4f75 b94e 8df949735a80 Perla

Perla

Alexandra Makarova’s elegant, psychologically complex Cold War drama plumbs the inner dislocation of exile, and the poisonous workings of tyranny.

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Lola Amaria and Alika Jantinia in "Gowok: Javanese Kamasutra".

Gowok: Javanese Kamasutra

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.

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Still from Temo Re (2025)

Temo Re

This Marker-esque monochrome photomontage adapts its protagonist’s docufiction memoir into a slyly funny sketch of a struggling actor in contemporary Tbilisi.

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71dc492e d98e 44ae be4d 54e874f39bb6 Fiume o morte!

Fiume o morte!

Igor Bezinovic engages citizens of his Croatian hometown in a rigorously researched, irreverently punk re-enactment of its brief occupation by Italian poet and self-styled dictator Gabriele D’Annunzio.

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Still from Common Pear (2025)

Common Pear

Traditional fruit cultivation becomes a source of archival fascination in Common Pear, a sci-fi documentary hybrid set amidst environmental collapse.

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Still image from Merckx (2025)

Merckx

The exploits of the legendary Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx are captured in this appreciative archival documentary about his all-conquering career.

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fb0fa82a 4ffd 4058 ba3f 26307bf2b578 Un gran casino

Un gran casino

Daniel Hoesl’s latest skewering of the excesses of the mega-rich is a mesmeric and doomy doc hybrid about the Casino di Campione, Europe’s largest casino.

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idyllic1 Idyllic

Idyllic

Dutch writer-director Aaron Rookus explores the funny side of death, depression and existential despair in his witty, well-crafted tragicomedy ‘Idyllic’.

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Still from Empty Rider (2024)

Empty Rider

The third work in Lawrence Lek’s trilogy on disobedient driverless cars, Empty Rider explores autonomy and responsibility through a futuristic AI show trial.

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babel1 Rains Over Babel

Rains Over Babel

Colombian writer-director Gala del Sol’s stylish debut feature ‘Rains Over Babel’ is an audacious, ambitious, kaleidoscopic carnival of queerness loosely based on Dante’s ‘Inferno’.

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Orenda

Orenda

Pirjo Honkasalo deals with grief, music and faith in her new feature film ‘Orenda’, premiering in Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition.

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010ed6c2 80d6 450e 8dab bbddc8879ddb The Assistant

The Assistant

Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal channel the spirit of cult modernist Robert Walser in this strange, caustic “repainting” of his novel about a beleaguered assistant.

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september says September Says

September Says

Two troubled teenage sisters share a spookily close bond in actor turned director Ariane Labed’s patchy but atmospheric feature debut ‘September Says’.

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balentes1 Balentes

Balentes

Drawing on memories from his own family history, Sardinian director Giovanni Columbu combines ancient and modern animation techniques in his strikingly beautiful period drama ‘Balentes’.

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Sauna

Sauna

Mathias Broe deals with love and discrimination in the queer community with his feature debut ‘Sauna’, premiering at Sundance.

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EFP Collage Highlights from the EFP’s 2024 Sundance Selection

Highlights from the EFP’s 2024 Sundance Selection

This is the third year that The Film Verdict has teamed up with European Film Promotion (EFP) to support European films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Here is a flashback to some of last year’s European films. Many of them went on to become multiple award-winners, and some are currently available for streaming in...
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Danielle UNIFRANCE GOES DIGITAL FOR FRENCH FILM PROMOTION

UNIFRANCE GOES DIGITAL FOR FRENCH FILM PROMOTION

By Liza Foreman In an era where film markets and festivals are undergoing rapid transformation, UniFrance, the organization responsible for promoting French cinema and TV worldwide, is deftly balancing digital innovation with enhanced physical presence. Under the leadership of Executive Director Daniella Elstner, the organization has revamped its flagship events while expanding its digital footprint...
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award An American Film Critic in Paris Explains the Lumiere Awards

An American Film Critic in Paris Explains the Lumiere Awards

Chicagoan Lisa Nesselson has been writing and broadcasting about film, from France, for 40 years. Seventeen years with Variety caught the tail end of when the English-language trades, pre-internet, wielded genuine power concerning a ‘foreign’ film’s likely trajectory. Nesselson reviewed for SCREEN Int’l for 16 years and was the in-house film critic for French 24-hour...
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Jo Cropped Jo Mühlberger talks to TFV

Jo Mühlberger talks to TFV

Jo Mühlberger, European Film Promotion Deputy Managing Director, takes the time to chat with The Film Verdict on his way to Sundance from Hamburg. A familiar face in the international film industry, Jo has been one of the pillars of European Film Promotion for the last 25 years. The Film Verdict: The European Film Promotion...
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Mr. Nobody Against Putin Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

A Russian high school teacher becomes an unlikely undercover activist in ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’, an insider documentary about the poisonous spread of Kremlin pro-war propaganda.

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GEN Dr. Maurizio Bini GEN_

GEN_

In the run-up to her election in 2022, right-wing Italian Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni declared, "Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology.” It’s an odious promise she’s upheld, as last autumn, her government expanded their ban on domestic surrogacy to include citizens traveling abroad...
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The Ugly Stepsister

The Ugly Stepsister

Nordic horror meets classic French fairy tale in ‘The Ugly Stepsister’, a new take on the well-known Cinderella story that is tailor-made for the genre circuit.

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The Things You Kill The Things You Kill

The Things You Kill

More a psychological study than a thriller, ‘The Things You Kill’ explores the corruption and internalized violence of a patriarchal society, spiced with some bold narrative tricks from Alireza Khatami, co-director of the Iranian festival hit ‘Terrestrial Verses’.

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Sundance Collage The EFP celebrates European Films at Sundance 2025

The EFP celebrates European Films at Sundance 2025

Join European fIlmmakers, sales companies and national film centers at the Europe! Hub at the Double Tree Hilton Hotel (The Yarrow), 2nd floor, 1800 Park Avenue, Thursday 23 to Monday 27 January from 9am-6pm EUROPE! HUB is hosted by the Danish Film Institute, German Films, Norwegian Film Institute and the Polish Film Institute See all...
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unnamed 2 Berlinale Shorts 2025

Berlinale Shorts 2025

Featuring films from the classic to the experimental, the 20 works presented in the Berlinale Shorts program will introduce a range of new filmmaking talent.

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Mai Martaba Mai Martaba

Mai Martaba

A strong international introduction to the Hausa-speaking filmmaking of Kannywood, Nigeria’s Oscar submission ‘Mai Martaba’ is an adventure tale drawing on themes of power, gender, and political legacy.

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City of Small Blessings c Akanga Film Asia mm2 Entertainment Purple Tree Pictures Analog Robot City of Small Blessings

City of Small Blessings

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.

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Crocodile Tears Crocodile Tears

Crocodile Tears

Marissa Anita and Yusuf Mahardika deliver biting performances as a possessive mother and a confused mamma’s boy in Indonesian filmmaker Tumpal Tampubolon’s powerful if predictable suspense thriller, ‘Crocodile Tears’.

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The House of Janus c T Works The House of Janus

The House of Janus

Singaporean playwright Keng Sen Ong juxtaposes his queer take on a 17th century opera with a documentary about Dutch curator and academic Adriaan van der Staay’s summer retreat in the beautiful yet bewildering ‘The House of Janus’.

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Nawi film still Nawi

Nawi

‘Nawi’ is one of those rare films that, despite the weighty seriousness of its subject, stays afloat cinematically.

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Russian Consul

Russian Consul

Miroslav Lekic recounts the origins of the Kosovo conflict in ‘Russian Consul’, Serbia’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards.

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yara Yana Wara

Yana Wara

Peru’s Oscar entry ‘Yana Wara’ is a poignant outcry against gender violence suffered by an indigenous Aymara girl who is haunted by malignant spirits, in a story set in the bleak and beautiful Peruvian Highlands.

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yana 2 Cine Verdict Yana Wara

Cine Verdict Yana Wara

La propuesta del Perú al Oscar Internacional es una conmovedora denuncia contra la violencia de género sufrida por una niña indígena aymara, atormentada por espíritus malignos, en una historia ambientada en el hermoso y desolado altiplano andino peruano.

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Antique The Antique

The Antique

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.

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Family Time

Family Time

Tia Kouvo impresses with her feature debut ‘Family Time’, a very personal drama set in her hometown Lahti.

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José Ramón Barreto en Vuelvealavida

CineVerdict: Vuelvealavida

En tono de comedia y apoyada en el encanto de sus jóvenes protagonistas ‘Vuelvealavida’ entra a la pelea de los Óscares por la mejor película internacional por Venezuela

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Still from Imprinting (2024)

Imprinting

A man goes on a psychological and emotional journey into his subconscious in this lavishly mounted but somewhat perplexing short from Andrea Ciavatta, Imprinting.

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cairo poster Cairo 2024: The Verdict

Cairo 2024: The Verdict

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.

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anytime anywhere Anywhere Anytime

Anywhere Anytime

Director Milad Tshangir’s impressive debut feature ‘Anywhere Anytime’ puts a contemporary illegal-immigrant spin on Vittorio De Sica’s beloved Italian neorealist classic ‘Bicycle Thieves’.

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cairo awards 45th Cairo International Film Festival: The Awards

45th Cairo International Film Festival: The Awards

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’.

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Spring came laughing Spring Came Laughing

Spring Came Laughing

The topic is marriage and the four compulsively watchable stories that make up Noha Adel’s ‘Spring Came Laughing’ nail the shallowness, hypocrisy and suffering of Egyptian middle-class women, caught in a web outdated traditions.

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ayse1 1 Ayse

Ayse

Drawn from his own family background, Turkish director Necmi Sancak’s prize-winning debut feature ‘Ayse’ is a bleak but powerful portrait of a highly stressed woman caring for her disabled brother,

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Still from Teta (2024)

Teta (Grandmother)

A mother and her young son’s relationship is pushed to the limit in Teta, an unnerving psychological horror with disquieting, supernatural overtones.

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Writing Hawa film still Writing Hawa

Writing Hawa

The unpredictable nature of conflict robs ‘Writing Hawa’ of much of its compelling titular character, but Najiba Noori’s pro-feminist and anti-Taliban project emerges unscathed in ideological terms.

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On the Border - film image

On The Border

Gerald Igor Hauzenberger and Gabriela Schild have made a quietly spectacular documentary on the migration-related troubles of the Nigerien city Agadez through a trio of knowledgeable and remarkably telegenic mediators.

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The Guest - IDFA film still

The Guest

Zvika Gregory Portnoy and Zuzanna Solakiewicz’s documentary ‘The Guest’ showcases the best side of humanity in troubled times, with unforced intimacy and unavoidable staidness.

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witness1 The Witness

The Witness

Made in collaboration with feted dissident director Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar’s ‘The Witness’ is a muted but quietly furious protest drama about murder and misogyny in contemporary Iran,

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Still from Man Number 4 (2024)

Man Number 4

How we consume images and what it means to be a distant onlooker lie at the heart of Miranda Pennell’s sobering, analytical short, Man Number 4.

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want in her A Want in Her

A Want in Her

Drawing on her own troubled family background, Irish visual artist and first-time feature director Myrid Carten paints a slightly muddled but emotionally powerful portrait of addiction and depression, shame and blame with ‘A Want in Her’.

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Still from The Chant (2024)

The Chant

The stories of three very different women intersect in May Ghouti’s delicate ensemble drama The Chant, which manages to pack a quietly emotional punch.

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Blue Lake The Blue Lake

The Blue Lake

A captivating story, at once simple and profound, describes the relationship between a blind boy and his loving grandfather as they travel through the desert in Daoud Aoulad-Syad’s layered road movie, ‘The Blue Lake’.

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normal abo zaabal1989 Abo Zaabal 89

Abo Zaabal 89

Bassam Mortada’s ‘Abo Zaabal 89’ is a personal odyssey about the scars of political activism in contemporary Egypt, and a big win for Arab documentary filmmaking.

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Shadow Scholars - documentary film still

The Shadow Scholars

‘Shadow Scholars’ introduces a serious issue plaguing academia, but the Eloise King documentary isn’t quite ready to point a finger at the African component of the problem.

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HigherThanAcidicClouds Higher Than Acidic Clouds

Higher Than Acidic Clouds

Iranian director Ali Asgari delivers an elegant response to government censorship with ‘Higher Than Acidic Clouds’, an achingly beautiful essay-film about memory, imagination and Tehran’s toxic skies.

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Gazan Tales beach 1 Gazan Tales

Gazan Tales

Shot over a year ago by students in a filmmaking workshop in Gaza, ‘Gazan Tales’ is a disarming snapshot of four men’s everyday lives, as they pass their days unaware of the disaster about to befall them

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MN 05793 The World of Yousry Nasrallah

The World of Yousry Nasrallah

Yousry Nasrallah’s willingness to address social taboos, his commitment to depicting female protagonists, and his insight into the political and cultural struggles of Egyptian society have earned him popularity and the respect of Arab filmmakers and audiences.

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Sorry cinema jpg From Ground Zero

From Ground Zero

Under the curation of Palestinian producer-director Rashid Masharawi, ‘From Ground Zero’ is an anthology of 22 short films offering a rawly immediate and deeply human response to devastation in the Gaza Strip.

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Home Game - film still

Home Game

Director Lidija Zelovic’s main assets in the often powerfully meditative documentary ‘Home Game’ are her novelistic voice and strong writing.

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underover1 Undercover: Exposing the Far Right

Undercover: Exposing the Far Right

Controversially dropped from the London Film Festival, director Havana Marking’s timely documentary thriller about the work of anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate ‘Undercover: Exposing the Far Right’ is making its international debut in IDFA.

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About a Hero2 About a Hero

About a Hero

Based on an AI screenplay drawn from the works of legendary director Werner Herzog, Polish film-maker Piotr Winiewicz’s docu-fiction debut feature ‘About a Hero’ is a compellingly weird trip into the digital deepfake Twilight Zone.

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Decoded Decoded

Decoded

 Popular director Chen Sicheng  brings Mai Jia’s bestseller ‘Decoded’ to the screen in a wildly imaginative if often confusing genre-buster that co-stars John Cusack as a brilliant mathematician pitted against his even more brilliant Chinese pupil.

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LES BARBARES J22 163 credit photo Julien Panie l 2024 THE FILM LE PACTE H 2024 Meet the Barbarians

Meet the Barbarians

Julie Delpy’s dark refugee comedy ‘Meet the Barbarians’ is a stark reminder of the absurd cruelty of ranking human suffering, and the resilience required to rebuild a life amid indifference and prejudice.

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Passing Dreams 1 Passing Dreams

Passing Dreams

 A stubborn boy searches all over Palestine for a lost pigeon in ‘Passing Dreams’, Rashid Masharawi’s unexpectedly gentle, non-confrontational allegory about the state of the country.

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WhatsApp Image 2024 11 03 at 13.58.32 On its Way to a Comeback

On its Way to a Comeback

The Cairo International Film Festival has put in a big effort to diversify its lineup and make bold choices, like 10 juries judging a historically large selection of films.

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202011300317131713 Cairo Industry Days Panels & Workshops

Cairo Industry Days Panels & Workshops

Cairo Industry Days Panels & Workshops The sixth edition of Cairo Industry Days, running from November 15-20, 2024, offers a dynamic lineup of masterclasses, panels, and workshops covering topics like production, sound designing, story writing, distribution, and pitching. Aimed at fostering essential discussions on industry challenges, Cairo Industry Days provides a platform for Arab filmmakers...
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tarantism Tarantism Revisited

Tarantism Revisited

Visual anthropologists Anja Dreschke and Michaela Schäuble investigate the mysterious rituals of taranatism in this arty, lightly experimental, prize-winning essay-film.

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dok leipzig award DOK Leipzig: The Awards

DOK Leipzig: The Awards

Dominique Cabrera’s feature documentary ‘La jetée: the Fifth Shot’ triumphed in the feature documentary category at Dok Leipzig, while László Csáki’s ‘Pelikan Blue’ swept the animation strand.

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flowers ukraine 1 Flowers of Ukraine

Flowers of Ukraine

A free-spirited urban nature lover becomes a living symbol of Ukrainian resistance in ‘Flowers of Ukraine,’ a slender but immensely charming debut feature by Adelina Borets.

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2d635378 9c64 4ec6 a672 52f6dea11192 1 The Battle for Laikipia

The Battle for Laikipia

Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi’s essential documentary ‘The Battle for Laikipia’ describes global warming and the brutal impact of colonial land ownership in Kenya, showing the overlap of environmental and social issues without oversimplifying.

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b3a988df 003b 4162 a47a fdae62561466 1 There Was Nothing Here Before

There Was Nothing Here Before

Yvann Yagchi’s documentary ‘There Was Nothing Here Before’ is as an angry yet tender letter to a lost friend, amid a brave quest to discover the filmmaker’s family history in the occupied territories.

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la jetee La Jetée, the Fifth Shot

La Jetée, the Fifth Shot

Director Dominique Cabrera’s investigation of her family connections to Chris Marker’s landmark sci-fi film ‘La Jetée’ takes a messy but sporadically magical mystery tour though history, memory, cinema and politics.

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yUTQsp w Morichales

Morichales

Chris Gude’s vivid doc on the ravages and inequalities of ages-long gold mining in Venezuela is startling in its poetry and meticulous in its contextualisation.

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balomania Balomania

Balomania

In her fascinating and visually dazzling debut feature ‘Balomania’, documentary maker Sissel Morell Dargis embeds herself in Brazil’s secretive underground subculture of illegal hot air balloon gangs.

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wishing on a star Wishing on a Star

Wishing on a Star

A playful, lighthearted hybrid doc from Peter Kerekes on steering one’s fate, as an Italian astrologer sends her troubled clients off globetrotting.

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Streamer Dok Leipzig Selected films available for Streaming in Germany

Dok Leipzig Selected films available for Streaming in Germany

DOK Leipzig is showing selected films online throughout Germany during the festival week. A new film or a short film reel will be available via the festival website’s DOK Stream function every day from 29 October to 3 November. These titles will be available for 24 hours, from midnight to midnight. Viewers can find them...
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TL Hebrides Fire Stack 3 Tracing Light

Tracing Light

Thomas Riedelsheimer brings land artists and physicists together in a considered, densely packed doc celebrating the elusive nature of light as a medium.

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marching dark1 Marching in the Dark

Marching in the Dark

A quietly angry film about suicidal Indian farmers and the women they leave behind, documentary director Kinshuk Surjan’s feature debut ‘Marching in the Dark’ is moving, lyrical and surprisingly uplifting.

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Here

Here

Robert Zemeckis’ fixed-camera observation of the passage of time is a slick and profoundly shallow movie aching for depth.

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eca80947 9c2e 4b6d 9725 b2c650a35db7 Blueberry Dreams

Blueberry Dreams

Elene Mikaberidze’s wry, sensitively humane and politically layered debut doc explores precarity on Georgia’s border via one family’s blueberry farm venture.

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20241002 111928 Busan 2024: The Verdict

Busan 2024: The Verdict

From Myanmar workers to K-pop and a swashbuckling Netflix blockbuster, the mood straddled politics and celebration at Korea’s (and possibly Asia’s) largest film festival.

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Busan film Center Busan 2024: The Awards

Busan 2024: The Awards

Park Ri-woong’s South Korean tale of racism and inequality ‘The Land of Morning Calm’ and The Maw Naing’s stirring tale of exploitation in Myanmar, ‘MA – Cry of Silence’, took top honors in the New Currents section.

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Tale of the Land c KawanKawan Media Tale of the Land

Tale of the Land

Indonesian filmmaker Loeloe Hendra’s feature debut in Busan, ‘Tale of the Land’, is a melancholic, beautifully mounted Borneo-set story about a young indigenous woman who has lived her life in a floating house in the middle of the sea.

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For Rana c Madakto Pictures For Rana

For Rana

Iranian director Iman Yazdi offers predictable melodrama with his first feature ‘For Rana’, which is in the running for Busan’s New Currents award.

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Gingerbread for Her Dad c UVENT Production Gingerbread for her Dad

Gingerbread for her Dad

Reflective, heartwarming and funny, ‘Gingerbread for her Dad’ is Kazakh filmmaker Alina Mustafina first feature, in which she embarks on a transcontinental journey to search for her great-grandfather’s remains.

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Village Rockstars 2 c Flying River Films Village Rockstars 2

Village Rockstars 2

With ‘Village Rockstars 2’, Assamese director Rima Das reunites with the cast of her highly-acclaimed 2017 festival hit in a mesmerizing portrait of a teenage girl guitarist’s struggles with nature and culture in northeast India.

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MA Cry for Silence MA - Cry of Silence

MA – Cry of Silence

The Maw Naing’s second fiction feature, ‘MA – Cry of Silence’, is a riveting cri du coeur about life under authoritarian rule in Myanmar, seen through the struggle of aggrieved factory workers against their abusive employers.

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Yen and Ai lee c Bering Pictures Yen and Ai-lee

Yen and Ai-lee

Powerful performances from Taiwanese actors Kimi Hsia and Yang Kue-mei anchor Taiwanese filmmaker Tom Lin Shu-yu’s beautifully filmed black-and-white family drama ‘Yen and Ai-lee’.

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Kanekos Commissary c Kanekos Commissary Film Partners Kaneko’s Commissary

Kaneko’s Commissary

Bowing in Busan’s New Currents competition, Japanese filmmaker Go Furukawa’s feature-length debut, ‘Kaneko’s Commissary’, offers a delicate, humane and relentlessly life-affirming tale about an ex-con.

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Uprising c Netflix Uprising

Uprising

Park Chan-wook produces and pens Kim Sang-man’s ‘Uprising’, a visually and politically-stirring period-drama-meets-action-thriller set during the Japanese invasion of Korea at the end of the 16th century.

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san seb awards San Sebastián 2024: The Verdict

San Sebastián 2024: The Verdict

The long-running Basque film festival’s latest edition delivered contentious prizes and dubious celebrity vanity projects, but it also showcased a feast of Spanish screen talent alongside strong comebacks from Pamela Anderson, Mike Leigh and more.

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Glimmers

Glimmers

Pilar Palomero returns to San Sebastián with her third feature, the quietly moving family drama ‘Glimmers’.

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wailing2 The Wailing

The Wailing

Several generations of women are stalked by the same creepy family curse in Spanish director Pedro Martín-Calero’s stylish, prize-winning psycho-horror debut ‘The Wailing’.

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Skin in spring Skin in Spring

Skin in Spring

Small in scale but big in its ambition to show how an ordinary woman reinvents herself by learning to express her desires, the Colombian film ‘Skin in Spring’ is observational fiction at its most delicate and intriguing

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LastShowgirl2 The Last Showgirl

The Last Showgirl

Former ‘Baywatch’ star Pamela Anderson tests her indie art-house credentials in Gia Coppola’s ‘The Last Showgirl’, a slight but engaging portrait of an ageing Las Vegas dancer facing the existential terror of midlife redundancy.

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Hard Truths Hard Truths

Hard Truths

Mike Leigh returns from a lengthy excursion shooting period films to the kind of chamber piece he excels in, in ‘Hard Truths’, a small story about family dysfunction magnified into high drama by Mariane Jean-Baptiste’s formidable lead performance as a wife and mother going over the edge.

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turn me on Turn Me On

Turn Me On

Director Michael Tyburski’s charmingly offbeat dystopian sci-fi rom-com ‘Turn Me On’ takes place in a cult-like community where sex and love, joy and anger have been chemically erased.

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Lederniersouffle Filmpicture 32466 Last Breath

Last Breath

Costa-Gavras, in top form at 91, starts another revolution, this time about death, with ‘Last Breath’.

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jockey El Jockey

El Jockey

Un jockey campeón se embarca en un viaje surrealista de desafío de género en el disparejo pero elegante, colorido y divertido thriller cómico de Luis Ortega.

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Cuandolasnubesescondenlassombras Fotopelicula 31071 Cuando las nubes esconden las sombras

Cuando las nubes esconden las sombras

Usando los impactantes paisajes del lugar, su compleja historia e intrigante aislamiento, el director José Luis Torres Leiva lentamente desenreda las emociones largamente reprimidas de una citadina angustiada a través de inspiradores encuentros con un grupo de locales en Cuando las nubes cubren las sombras de José Luis Torres Leiva.

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Bagger Drama

Bagger Drama

Piet Baumgartner excavates the unspoken truths of a dysfunctional family with his first fiction feature film ‘Bagger Drama’, screened in San Sebastián’s New Directors section.

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Sujo Sujo

Sujo

The killing of a Mexican cartel boss puts his 4-year-old son in danger in a powerful, often mythic evocation of life lived on the edge of death, Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s engrossing drama ‘Sujo’.

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zafari CineVerdict: Zafari

CineVerdict: Zafari

Cuando la despensa está vacía, una familia de clase media en un país latinoamericano sin nombre, primero pasa hambre y luego se vuelve salvaje en ‘Zafari’. La espeluznante fábula distópica de Mariana Rondón hará que los espectadores no quieran cenar.

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virgen La virgen roja

La virgen roja

Un ensayo imaginativo y fascinante sobre el feminismo y la maternidad, ‘La virgen roja’ de Paula Ortiz presenta a una inolvidable Najwa Nimri como una madre infernal y dominante que ve a su brillante hija de 16 años como una escultura que ha creado para cambiar el mundo en la España de los años 30.

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tropic 4 Querido Trópico

Querido Trópico

Una historia conmovedora y divertida sobre dos mujeres solitarias que se conectan a través de la división de clases, con la actuación excepcional de Paulina Garcia como una matrona rica y mandona que se desliza hacia la demencia.

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My Eternal Summer

My Eternal Summer

Danish director Sylvia Le Fanu makes a powerful debut in feature filmmaking with the loss-centric drama ‘My Eternal Summer’, screened in San Sebastián’s New Directors section.

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ssiff45654 Soy Nevenka I´m Nevenka Soy Nevenka

Soy Nevenka

Veinticuatro años después de la primera denuncia por acoso sexual a un político en España, Iciar Bollaín cuenta la historia en Soy Nevenka con sensibilidad y urgencia. Sir Isaac Newton dijo que su perspectiva era mejor que la de sus antecesores porque estaba parado en hombros de gigantes. Las mujeres del movimiento #metoo, las que...
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SoyNevenka Fotopelicula 30698 I am Nevenka

I am Nevenka

24 years after the first trial of a politician for harassment in Spain, Iciar Bollain directs ‘I Am Nevenka’ with great sensitivity.

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zafari 2 Zafari

Zafari

When the cupboard is bare, a middle-class family in an unnamed Latin American country first goes hungry and then feral in ‘Zafari’, Mariana Rondon’s chilling dystopian fable that will put audiences off their dinner.

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tropic 3 Beloved Tropic

Beloved Tropic

A moving, enjoyable story about two lonely women connecting across the class divide, with an outstanding performance from Paulina Garcia as a wealthy, bossy matron slipping into dementia.

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red virgin 1 The Red Virgin

The Red Virgin

An imaginatively engrossing essay on feminism and motherhood, Paula Ortiz’s taken-from-history ‘The Red Virgin’ features an unforgettable Najwa Nimri as a stage mother out of hell, who sees her brilliant 16-year-old daughter as a sculpture she has created to change the world in 1930’s Spain.

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The End1 The End

The End

Acclaimed documentary director Joshua Oppenheimer makes his fiction feature debut with ‘The End’, an ungainly but wildly ambitious post-apocalypse musical co-starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay and Moses Ingram.

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When Fall Is Coming

When Fall Is Coming

François Ozon tells another story of quirky human relationships in the comedy-drama ‘When Fall Is Coming’, screening in San Sebastián’s Official Selection.

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serpent1 The Serpent's Path

The Serpent’s Path

Festival favorite Kiyoshi Kurosawa remakes his own 1998 revenge thriller ‘The Serpent’s Path’ as a tasteful psychological horror film set in France, whose top-notch, mixed Franco-Japanese cast makes it worth watching.

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In the Name of Blood

In the Name of Blood

Georgian-born French director Akaki Popkhadze brings his dual identity to the screen with the formulaic but confident debut feature ‘In the Name of Blood’, premiering in San Sebastián.

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Bound Heaven2 Bound in Heaven

Bound in Heaven

Doomed lovers fight for their right to party in the melodramatic but visually impressive romantic thriller ‘Bound in Heaven’, a strong debut feature from Chinese writer-director Huo Xin.

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Emmanuelle1 Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle

French director Audrey Diwan’s excruciatingly dull remake of Just Jaeckin’s 1970s soft-porn classic ‘Emmanuelle’ delivers fifty shades of joyless, witless, pointless, mostly sexless tedium.

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on falling On Falling

On Falling

Backed by Ken Loach’s production company, writer-director Laura Carreira’s debut feature ‘On Falling’ is a well crafted but grindingly glum depiction of poverty, alienation and soul-crushing low-wage work.

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Memoir of a Snail

Memoir of a Snail

Australian stop-motion master Adam Elliot is back with his touching, humane second feature ‘Memoir of a Snail’, featuring the voice of Sarah Snook.

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Oldenburg Film Festival

Oldenburg Film Festival 2024: The Verdict

Germany’s leading indie film event, Oldenburg Film Festival, returned to Lower Saxony with an almost implausibly consistent line-up that included grotesque Mexican satire, hard-hitting political cinema from Myanmar and an array of interesting genre cinema.

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Still from At Dawn (2024)

At Dawn

An elderly man savours the small things on what might be his final day alive in Antonin Bonnot’s patient and touching short, At Dawn.

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Still from Alone Together (2024)

Alone Together

A checkpoint stop en route to Tehran leads to a young boy being held for drug possession. A moral quandary ensues in the emotive short, Alone Together.

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A still from A History of Love and War (2024)

A History of Love and War

The tale of Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium is reimagined in A History of Love and War, an anarchic, absurdist black comedy about colonisation and corruption in a fantastical Mexico.

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Still from The Lonely Musketeer (2024)

The Lonely Musketeer

A man finds himself confined in a doorless room in Nicolai Schumann’s claustrophobic monochrome character study, The Lonely Musketeer, built on a remarkable performance by Edward Hogg.

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Still from Saint Clare (2024)

Saint Clare

Mitzi Peirone’s sophomore feature, Saint Clare, about a college student on a mission from God to rid the world of predatory men is stylish, weird, sometimes overdone – and a blast.

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Promotional image from Swing Bout (2024)

Swing Bout

Maurice O’Carroll’s propulsive boxing-cum-crime drama, Swing Bout, bristles with the energy of the ring in this tale of young hopefuls waiting for their chance.

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Still from Telepathic Letters (2024)

Telepathic Letters

Edgar Pera uses AI-generated imagery to envisage a meandering , hallucinatory conversation between the authors Fernando Pessoa and H.P. Lovecraft in Telepathic Letters.

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Still from Bits (2024)

Bits

A woman in smalltown Montana has a near miss with a serial killer but becomes obsessed with being his victim the dark, absorbing drama – Bits.

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Still from Traumnovelle (2024)

Traumnovelle

A doctor goes on a dreamlike odyssey into sexual temptation in Traumnovelle, a new adaption of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella, which has an archness fitting its absurdity.

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Still from Mi Bestia (2024)

Mi Bestia

Religious rumours combine with a blood moon eclipse and a girl’s journey to womanhood in Mi Bestia, a beguiling coming-of-ager with fantasy elements from Camila Beltran.

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Still from Electra (2024)

Electra

Secrets and lies combine with an air of surrealism in Electra, Hala Matar’s fresh and funny riff on Greek myth, Hitchcock and Highsmith, all dripping with Italian style.

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RS185380 GV5A2437 scr 900x600 1 Hungary selects historical drama ‘Semmelweis’ for 2025 International Oscars

Hungary selects historical drama ‘Semmelweis’ for 2025 International Oscars

https://youtu.be/2rQWibxbImQ?si=oSbRRVK6ishWVkj3 Hungary has chosen the historical drama "Semmelweis," directed by Lajos Koltai, as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming Academy Awards. The movie depicts the story of Ignác Semmelweis, a doctor who fought against a mysterious epidemic in a maternity clinic in Vienna in 1847. Despite challenging traditional theories,...
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Still from Skin (2023)

Skin

A young woman confronts her true self in the mirror in this beautifully shot and symbolic evocation of an individual’s transition from female to male in Leo Behrens’ Skin.

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Kreas

Meat

Tragedy and family collide in Dmitris Nakos’ feature debut in which half an acre means the whole world.

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divafutura Diva Futura

Diva Futura

The birth of Italian porn films in the 1980’s is told as a sentimental, gently humorous biopic about porn entrepreneur Riccardo Schicchi in ‘Diva Futura’, a well-written romp made to cash in on its airbrushed sketches of adult film stars Moana Pozzi, Cicciolina and Eva Henger.

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triumph Triumph

Triumph

Psychics, the military, extraterrestrials, and a democratic future collide in this unbelievably wild but true Bulgarian dramedy.

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Seven Days Still 01 Seven Days

Seven Days

Ali Samadi Ahadi’s turgid drama with a script from ‘Sacred Fig’ director Mohammad Rasoulof offers a surface level view of Iranian politics.

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almodovar ve Venice 2024: The Awards

Venice 2024: The Awards

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature ‘The Room Next Door’ was a dignified winner of the Golden Lion: a quietly profound meditation on love and death, pain and glory, buoyed by knockout performances from TIlda Swinton and Julianne Moore.

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Love

Love

Dag Johan Haugerud’s trilogy about relationships in present day Oslo continues with the cleverly moving ‘Love’, screened in Venice’s main competition.

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Mr. K

Mr. K

Crispin Glover falls down the rabbit hole in Tallulah H. Schwab’s surreal comedy that asks big questions.

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Youth: Homecoming

Youth: Homecoming

Wang Bing brings his documentary trilogy to a strong close with ‘Youth: Homecoming’, first screened in Venice’s main competition.

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stranger2 scaled e1725626143802 Stranger Eyes

Stranger Eyes

A kidnap thriller rooted in surveillance, voyeurism and the unkindness of strangers, Yeo Siew Hua’s third feature ‘Stranger Eyes’ is the first ever Singaporean film to compete for the Golden Lion in Venice

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mistress dispeller Mistress Dispeller

Mistress Dispeller

Director Elizabeth Lo explores China’s novel solutions to infidelity and marital crisis with her intimate love-triangle documentary ‘Mistress Dispeller’.

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Sicilian Letters

Sicilian Letters

Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza put their own compelling spin on a true Mafia story with ‘Sicilian Letters’, a Venice competition premiere.

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Still from Almost Certainly False (2024)

Almost Certainly False

Coming of age is tough in Almost Certainly False, a deft exploration of identity and duty in the life of a young Syrian immigrant dreaming of leaving Istanbul for Europe.

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peacock1 Peacock

Peacock

A professional friend-for-hire wakes up to the horrors of his soul-destroying job and hollow lifestyle in Austrian writer-director Bernhard Wenger’s sharp-witted, superbly acted black comedy ‘Peacock’.

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april April

April

Choosing a narrative style as austere and unforgiving as her OB-GYN heroine, rising Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili (‘Beginning’) plumbs the depths of female suffering and self-sacrifice in ‘April’, a festival film which, like its protag, is destined to be admired more than loved.

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al bahs an manfaz Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo

Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo

In this love/hate letter to Cairo, Khalid Mansour’s sensitive debut feature ‘Seeking Haven for Mr Rambo’ pays tribute to a generation of young Egyptians shackled by economic and societal frustrations.

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joker folie a Joker: Folie à Deux

Joker: Folie à Deux

Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips return to their billion-dollar killer-clown origin story with the music-stuffed, lavishly staged but dramatically flawed sequel ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’.

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Still from Three Keenings (2024)

Three Keenings

Three Keenings is a darkly comic character portrait depicts an actor presenting a facsimile of grief that is a thin veneer over the real thing waiting to erupt.

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The Quiet Son

The Quiet Son

Delphine and Muriel Coulin deliver a compelling family drama with their third feature ‘The Quiet Son’, screened in Venice’s main competition.

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Still from Kora (2024)

Kora

Claudia Varejao’s experimental documentary, Kora, is a soulful glimpse into the lives of female refugees and the power of photographs in connecting diasporas with home.

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queer1 Queer

Queer

Daniel Craig stars in Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous adaptation of the cult William Burroughs novel ‘Queer’, a trippy erotic fever dream that mostly hits the target, despite some narrative flaws.

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harvest Harvest

Harvest

Strewn with beauty, sadness and food for thought, Rachel Tsangari’s gripping adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel ‘Harvest’ is an allegory on how modernity has rapidly destroyed our natural relationship with the world.

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vermiglio Vermiglio

Vermiglio

Maura Delpero’s visually resonant, close-to-nature second feature ‘Vermiglio’ follows a large family living in a tiny Alpine village as WW2 draws to a close, emphasizing the changing role of women in society.

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The Room Next Door

The Room Next Door

Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature ‘The Room Next Door’ is a minor-key but quietly profound meditation on love and death, pain and glory.

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Still from The Poison Cat (2024)

The Poison Cat

A closed, patriarchal community begins to transform as the cries of a legendary forest beast foreshadow social revolution in the spirited short, The Poison Cat.

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Ronnie Lazaro in Phantosmia

Phantosmia

A retired military sniper tries to atone for his murderous past in ‘Phantosmia’, Philippine auteur Lav Diaz’s poetic, reflective, modest yet visually captivating study of guilt and redemption.

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The New Year That Never Came

The New Year That Never Came

Romanian filmmaker Bogdan Muresanu delivers sharp holiday-themed satire with his feature debut ‘The New Year That Never Came’, screened in Venice’s Orizzonti section.

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Wolfs

Wolfs

It takes the combined power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to maintain interest in this paper-thin farce about rival crime-scene cleaners.

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baby invasion film Baby Invasion

Baby Invasion

Ageing bad-boy auteur Harmony Korine’s latest experimental art-punk feature ‘Baby Invasion’ is a visually impressive but ultimately hollow exercise in jaded hipster nihilism.

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Still from The Eggregores Theory (2024)

The Eggregores Theory

The surrealism of images created by artificial intelligence evokes the unreliability of memory and elusive nature of a dystopian plague in the sci-fi short, ‘The Eggregores Theory’.

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campodibattaglia big Battleground

Battleground

Three doctors of different political views struggle to treat soldiers returning from the front during WWI and combat a new menace, the Spanish flu, in director Gianni Amelio’s grimly shocking film about war’s after-effects, ‘Battleground’.

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leursenfantsapres And Their Children After Them

And Their Children After Them

French writer-director duo Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma go back to the 1990s with their operatic but flawed coming-of-age saga ‘And Their Children After Them’, adapted from a prize-winning novel.

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image001 RAI CINEMA TOPPER DEL BROCCO TALKS SALES, PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION

RAI CINEMA TOPPER DEL BROCCO TALKS SALES, PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION

The Film Verdict had the opportunity to speak with the Amministratore Delegato of Rai Cinema, Paolo Del Brocco, just before he was leaving for the Venice Film Festival. TFV: Paolo, your mandate has been renewed and you have just had a significant year that brought to fruition many of your initiatives. At the Berlin Film...
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3 amies Trois amies

Trois amies

A trio of French couples exchange partners while they search for love in Emmanuel Mouret’s professionally crafted but unsurprising salute to a great French film genre, ‘Trois amies.’

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killthejockey Kill The Jockey

Kill The Jockey

A horse racing champion embarks on a surreal gender-blurring ride in Luis Ortega’s bumpy but stylish, colourful, enjoyably goofy comedy thriller ‘Kill The Jockey’.

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John Yoko One to One: John & Yoko

One to One: John & Yoko

The life, politics, music and relationship of cultural idols and revolutionary artists John Lennon and Yoko Ono are brilliantly blasted onscreen amid exploding shards of 1970’s Americana in Kevin Macdonald’s and Sam Rice-Edwards’ irresistibly original and high-energy documentary, ‘One to One: John & Yoko’.

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Chain Reactions

Chain Reactions

Alexandre O. Philippe pays tribute to a classic on its 50th anniversary with the heartfelt documentary ‘Chain Reactions’, screened in Venice’s Classics sidebar.

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apocalypseinthetropics Apocalypse in the Tropics

Apocalypse in the Tropics

Brazilian director Petra Costa explores how religious faith can become a dangerous political weapon in ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’, the gripping sequel to her Oscar-nominated ‘The Edge of Democracy’.

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riefenstahl2 Riefenstahl

Riefenstahl

 The film auteur of Nazi Germany par excellence, Leni Riefenstahl and her controversial legacy are examined in fascinating depth in the new German doc ‘Riefenstahl’ by Andres Veiel.

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planet b Planet B

Planet B

French writer-director Aude Léa Rapin’s dystopian cyber-thriller ‘Planet B’ is an ambitious but muddled mix of virtual reality and timely political issues.

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Feeling Better

Feeling Better

Valerio Mastandrea makes good use of his gruff persona in his second directorial feature ‘Feeling Better’, screened in Venice’s Orizzonti competition.

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Still from Mother Mara (2024)

Mother Mara

Mirjana Karanovic shines as both creator and star of Mother Mara, a nuanced drama about a middle-aged woman navigating loss, adapted from elements of a Tanja Sljivar play.

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Der Fleck 09©Funferfilm Skill Issue

Skill Issue

Teens scrutinise each other on a hot summer’s day at the river and drift off into the wilderness in this unique, mysterious German coming-of-ager.

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Still from On the Way (2024)

On the Way

A father and son heading home from football practice face the realities of bureaucracy and the lure of migration in Samir Karahoda’s finely tuned short, On the Way.

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Still from Cent'Anni (2024)

Cent’anni

Documentarist Maja Prelog follows her partner on an arduous post-leukemia cycling trip in Cent’anni, a deeply personal reflection on the emotional effects of serious illness.

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santa communist 1 When Santa Was a Communist

When Santa Was a Communist

Santa Claus is not coming to town in Emir Kapetanovic’s bittersweet comic road movie ‘When Santa Was a Communist’, which is based on an absurd true story in the Balkan region’s ongoing culture wars.

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Still from The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (2024)

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

A passenger train witnesses an act of ethnic cleansing in ‘The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent’, a well-drawn portrait of the wary silence of complicity that allows evil to triumph. Winner of the Palme D’Or – Short Film at Cannes.

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Still from 3 MWh (2024)

3 MWh

A man fastidiously records his electrical energy consumption, gradually counting down to his demise, in this strangely compelling and poetic 16mm short, 3 MWh.

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Fidai20Still202 1 A Fidai Film

A Fidai Film

Kamal Aljafari reclaims and re-envisages looted images from Beirut’s Palestine Research Centre in his moving and enigmatic intervention into the territory of memories.

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Julie Keeps Quiet

Julie Keeps Quiet

Belgian filmmaker Leonardo van Dijl makes a strong feature debut with sports drama ‘Julie Keeps Quiet’, which premiered in Cannes.

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lullaby2 Dad's Lullaby

Dad’s Lullaby

All is disquiet on the eastern home front in Ukrainian director Lesia Diak’s scrappy but emotionally engaging debut documentary ‘Dad’s Lullaby’.

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ezgif 4 9e051201a3 Holy Week

Holy Week

Andrei Cohn’s stark and brutal historical drama on the cycle of bloodshed in nineteenth-century Romania is a resonant study of how hatred is spawned.

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avant drag Avant-Drag!

Avant-Drag!

A lively documentary from Greek director Fil Ieropoulos, ‘Avant-Drag!’ salutes the radical roots and ongoing bravery of queer performers who defy gender norms, especially in more conservative societies.

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The Life Apart

The Life Apart

Marco Tullio Giordana deals solidly with family drama and music in Locarno premiere ‘The Life Apart’.

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therapy1 Family Therapy

Family Therapy

Slovenian writer-director Sonja Prosenc explores the tragicomic extremes of wealth and privilege in her sprawling but impressive social satire ‘Family Therapy’.

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Akiplesa 1 KEY STILL©Akis bado Toxic

Toxic

Lithuanian teens pin hope on an exploitative modelling school as a way out of their dead-end town in Saule Bliuvaite’s acerbic, striking coming-of-ager.

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late summer My Late Summer

My Late Summer

A young woman learns some bittersweet life lessons about love and family in Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic’s latest sunny but slight glum-com ‘My Late Summer’.

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Still from Like a Sick Yellow (2024)

Like a Sick Yellow

Like a Sick Yellow is a fragmentary portrait of place that blurs fact with fiction to create an elusive and unnerving meditation on memory and the Kosovan war.

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Timestalker

Timestalker

Alice Lowe returns behind the camera with her second feature ‘Timestalker’, a century-spanning rom-com screened in Locarno’s Piazza Grande.

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A still from Eight Postcards from Utopia.

Eight Postcards from Utopia

Radu Jude teases the profound out of the profane with a manic, comical collage of material drawn from TV commercials produced in Romania after the collapse of its Communist regime in 1989.

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newsletter webvijest MC 1 min Sarajevo Film Festival Masterclass Series 2024

Sarajevo Film Festival Masterclass Series 2024

This year, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s Masterclass program offers the opportunity to gain insights from experienced film professionals. The Masterclass series will be held from August 17th to 21st, with sessions taking place at the Festival Center (Bosnian Cultural Center, Branilaca Sarajeva 24): Entry to the Masterclass sessions is free, with tickets available online at...
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When the Phone Rang When the Phone Rang

When the Phone Rang

One last memory of a Yugoslavia that no longer exists becomes a site of obsessive return in Iva Radivojevic’s elegantly narrated reconstruction.

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EFA The European Film Academy announces this year’s Feature Film Selection Part 1

The European Film Academy announces this year’s Feature Film Selection Part 1

The European Film Academy has announced their selection for this year's feature film section, Part 1.The selection includes 29 productions as the first part of the Academy’s Feature Film Selection process. There are 26 European countries represented – both EU and non-EU, the list of the selected films reflects the excellency of European filmmakers demonstrating...
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Yeni safak solarken 7 KEY STILL New Dawn Fades

New Dawn Fades

A sensitive mind struggles with esoteric encounters in the Istanbul gloom in Gurcan Keltek’s spectacularly atmospheric horror.

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Hanami - film still

Hanami

Although ‘Hanami’ leans a bit too hard on its magical realism elements, talented director Denise Fernandes makes up for it with an affecting coda.

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75a84fbb 6f72 48a3 a937 270e57421483 Agora

Agora

In a quasi-political thriller, Ala Eddine Slim translates a nightmare of two sleeping animals into a mysterious multilayered investigative story referring to a morally and environmentally corrupt Tunisian village.

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Still from Freak (2024)

Freak

An innocuous question intended to be sexy and intimate probes at relationship boundaries in Freak, a short film about what it means to be truly honest and truly accepted

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Mond 1©UlrichSeidlFilmproduktion Moon

Moon

Kurdwin Ayub’s sophomore feature about a mixed martial arts trainer on peculiar assignment to housebound sisters in Jordan offers sensationalist suspense but few layers of depth.

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Berenice Bejó en México 86

Cine Verdict: México 86

México 86 es el sobrio y sincero segundo largometraje del ganador de la Camera D´Or 2019 César Díaz. al que le falta pasión para ser un relato político convincente.

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Transamazonia 1©Cinema Defacto Gaijin Transamazonia

Transamazonia

Acts of faith, plunder and resistance deep in the Amazon are the territory of a majestic and hallucinatory but heavy-handed anti-colonial thriller from Pia Marais.

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Mexico 86

Mexico 86

‘Mexico 86’, the sober, sincere second feature from 2019 Camera D’Or winner César Díaz, lacks the passion to be a compelling political narrative.

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Weightless - film still

Weightless

Sara Fgaier’s feature debut is an account of love and loss that retains a poetic fragmentary appeal, while concealing a more powerful tale.

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70b7de6d a89a 454c a434 41aa31f2ea1e Holy Electricity

Holy Electricity

Tato Kotetishvili’s Georgian debut is a scrappily episodic and freewheeling, dry-humoured celebration of down-and-out margins brimming with eccentric personality.

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Sew Torn

Sew Torn

Freddy Macdonald delivers Alpine thrills with his feature debut ‘Sew Torn’, part of Locarno’s Piazza Grande selection.

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Invention 2 Invention

Invention

A woman processes the death of her father, a controversial inventor of healing gadgets in a conspiracy-prone America, in this droll, intriguing docufiction.

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Still from Practice, Practice, Practice (2024)

Practice, Practice, Practice

Kevin Jerome Everson’s latest short – Practice, Practice, Practice – is yet another perfectly calibrated examination of the aspects of African-American labour that packs a powerful punch.

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Seses 3©afterschool production Drowning Dry

Drowning Dry

A family derailed by a swimming accident struggles to make sense of the trauma in Laurynas Bareisa’s haunting and profoundly disorienting drama.

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Der Spatz im Kamin 1© Zurcher Film The Sparrow in the Chimney

The Sparrow in the Chimney

Ramon Zürcher’s utterly distinctive talent for twisting the domestic into the uncanny gains intensity in a cutting psychological horror as thrilling as it is elliptical and dark.

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2d0970d9 d6eb 4677 80e6 2a4774504418 Red Path

Red Path

Lotfi Achour’s engrossing psychodrama ‘Red Path’ (‘Les enfants rouges’) is a powerful investigation into the traumatized mind of a young shepherd who witnessed the beheading of his cousin by an extremist group. 

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Frewaka 01 Fréwaka

Fréwaka

Taboo histories of violence against women in Ireland are excavated in Aislinn Clarke’s chilling, over-the-top Irish-language folk horror.

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Bogancloch 1©Ben Rivers Bogancloch

Bogancloch

Ben Rivers revisits hermit Jake Williams in Scottish woodland for a sparse, mysterious and music-oriented doc on life off the grid in gathering crisis.

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Salve María

Mothers don’t

Mar Coll returns to the Locarno Festival to explore the limits of modern motherhood in Mothers Don’t (Salve María), an intimate and empathetic film.

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La Mort viendra 5©Heimatfilm Death Will Come

Death Will Come

Christoph Hochhäusler’s Brussels-set neo-noir about a female assassin sets up wild ideas about futuristic crime which a convoluted plot never quite delivers.

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Salve Maria 2 © Lluis Tudela Cine Verdict: Salve María

Cine Verdict: Salve María

La directora catalana Mar Coll explora los límites de la maternidad moderna en Salve María, largometraje íntimo y empático con el que vuelve al Festival de Locarno

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Le Deluge 1 KEY STILL©The Flood Ascent Film The Flood

The Flood

Gianluca Jodice’s Locarno opener is a handsome but airless portrait of obsolescence, as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette sit out their last months imprisoned in a Paris chateau.

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A Flower of Mine

A Flower of Mine

Italian author Paolo Cognetti returns to his filmmaking roots with ‘A Flower of Mine’, an ode to nature bowing in Locarno’s Piazza Grande.

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kv shoe Karlovy Vary 2024: The Awards

Karlovy Vary 2024: The Awards

Karlovy Vary’s two big standouts when awards were handed out Saturday night were ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things’ directed by prolific Irish documentarian Mark Cousins and Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s Norwegian drama ‘Loveable’ (Elskling).

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hunting daze Hunting Daze

Hunting Daze

A backwoods bachelor party becomes a fight to the death in Canadian writer-director Annick Blanc’s uneven but gripping feminist thriller ‘Hunting Daze’.

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actress Actress

Actress

A legend of Czech cinema receives the tribute she deserves in the documentary ‘Actress’, screened at Karlovy Vary.

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1718787451050 1127x0750 0x0x0x0 1718787465960 Cabo Negro

Cabo Negro

In writer-director Abdellah Taïa’s ode to youthful rebellion ‘Cabo Negro’, two heartbroken queer Moroccans take refuge in a luxury villa to confront old traumas and share solidarity.

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tropicana1 Tropicana

Tropicana

Director Omer Tobi’s debut feature ‘Tropicana’ is a relentlessly dark but grimly compelling portrait of repressed lives and sexual outlaws in a small Israeli desert town.

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porcelain war Porcelain War

Porcelain War

Porcelain War is a beautifully crafted documentary on the creative resistance of Ukrainian citizens under Russian invasion, and the paradoxes of patriotism.

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a sudden glimpse to deeper things A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

Prolific documentarian Mark Cousins has dedicated himself to foregrounding underseen films from around the globe, especially those directed by women sidelined from cinematic history. in some of his best-known work, including the fifteen-hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), and fourteen-hour Women Make Film (2018). The Northern Irish filmmaker’s latest feature documentary A Sudden...
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Chlorophyll

Chlorophyll

Nature takes center stage in Ivana Gloria’s subtly off-kilter coming-of-age debut ‘Chlorophyll’, screening in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition.

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xoftex2 Xoftex

Xoftex

Writer-director Noaz Deshe’s ambitious horror-tinged drama about the surreal absurdism of life in a refugee camp, ‘Xoftex’ is messy and muddled but commendably orginal.

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Still from Night Has Come (2024)

Night Has Come

A group of young men must endure the hardships of a rigorous military training programme in Night Has Come, Paolo Tizon’s intimate and revealing documentary.

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Still from Tiny Lights (2024)

Tiny Lights

Tiny Lights is a keenly observed portrayal of a six-year-old girl’s experience of her parents breaking up, built around a captivating performance from the young Mia Banko.

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Loveable

Loveable

A marriage unravels in the solid Norwegian drama ‘Loveable’, presented in Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe Competition.

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Still from Second Chance (2024)

Second Chance

This tender, often humorous film Second Chance is about a young woman recovering from trauma is a deftly rendered depiction of convalescence and our ability to heal one another.

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the human hibernation The Human Hibernation

The Human Hibernation

Anna Cornudella Castro’s mesmeric debut imagines an esoteric woodland world where humans hibernate, their supremacy among animals a delusion of the past.

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celebration Celebration

Celebration

Full of atmospheric gloom, Bruno Ankovic’s powerful, decades-spanning feature debut shows how wartime violence and desperation seep through a Croatian village like a contagion.

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Still from Windless (2024)

Windless

A son returns to Bulgaria from abroad to settle the affairs of his estranged father in Windless, a confined drama about confronting the past and the act of memorial.

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Holy Cow

Holy Cow

Louise Courvoisier makes a confident, vibrant debut with the rural coming-of-age story ‘Holy Cow’.

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Med FF closing Mediterrane 2024: The Awards

Mediterrane 2024: The Awards

Turkish auteur Zeki Demirkubuz’s ‘Life’ (‘Hayat’) with its caustic social critique and a quietly angry feminist message won the top prize at the second edition of the Mediterrane Film Festival.

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Still from Lapilli (2024)

Lapilli

Overcome with grief at the sudden loss of her grandparents, filmmaker Paula Durinova’s expressive documentary Lapilli finds solace in the geological formations of the Aral Sea.

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real film Real

Real

Former political prisoner turned army commander Oleh Sentsov captures a raw slice of Ukraine frontline combat in his accidental “found footage” war documentary ‘Real’.

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panopticon Panopticon

Panopticon

George Sikharulidze’s debut on masculinity and identity in today’s Georgia is an unusual coming-of-age drama alive with ideas and a bold political imagination.

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The Hungarian Dressmaker (2024)

The Hungarian Dressmaker

A Hungarian dressmaker does what she can to survive and resist the power abuses of the ‘40s Slovak State fascist militia in Iveta Grofova’s dark, evocative drama.

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three days of fish Three Days of Fish

Three Days of Fish

Dutch writer-director Peter Hoogendoorn’s autobiographical second feature ‘Three Days of Fish’ finds both humour and melancholy in a painfully awkward father-son relationship.

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Still from The Dead Don't Hurt (2024)

The Dead Don’t Hurt

Viggo Mortensen’s tender and offbeat drama, The Dead Don’t Hurt, is led by a magnetic Vicky Krieps and cultivates something beautiful amongst the arid plains and rocky outcroppings of the old west.

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Still from Banzo (2024)

Banzo

In the setting of a Portuguese plantation on Principe in the early 20th century, Margarida Cardoso crafts a haunting and unsettling portrait of colonial destruction in the form of Banzo.

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santosh Santosh

Santosh

A brutal rape and murder case in rural India shines a light on deeper problems of corruption, misogyny and inequality in Sandhya Suri’s ponderous but impressive police drama ‘Santosh’.

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The strangers case The Strangers' Case

The Strangers’ Case

Confronting the world refugee crisis head-on in highly dramatic scenes that refuse to let go, Brandt Andersen’s etched-with-an-axe ‘The Strangers’ Case’ is a human disaster movie that passionately describes a chain reaction of real-life horror.

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palazzina Palazzina Laf

Palazzina Laf

Italian actor-director Michele Riondino transforms a notorious real-life case of mass workplace bullying into a boisterous social satire in his lively debut feature ‘Palazzina Laf’.

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Still from Pirates of the Mediterranean (2024)

Pirates of the Mediterranean

The historical documentary Pirates of the Mediterranean combines an operation to uncover a 16th century shipwreck with re-enactment and talking heads to explore an overlooked element of Europe’s past.

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MY WAY My Way

My Way

The colourful back story behind Frank Sinatra’s signature song ‘My Way’ gets the all-star biopic treatment in this slight but engaging French documentary.

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Negu Hurbilak Negu Hurbilak

Negu Hurbilak

At the end of the Basque armed conflict, a young woman waits to flee across the border in ‘Negu Hurbilak’, an atmospheric and rigorously shot but mystifying tale that leaves too much to the viewer’s imagination.

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hayat Life

Life

Uncompromising Turkish low-budget auteur Zeki Demirkubuz ruminates on toxic masculinity, ingrained sexism and existential despair in his ponderous but sporadically absorbing drama ‘Life’.

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BACKSTAGE cover Backstage

Backstage

Mysterious personal dramas unfold off-stage when a modern dance company has a bus break-down traveling to Marrakech in Tunisian codirectors Afef Ben Mahmoud and Khalil Benkirane’s intelligently avant-garde on-the-road drama, ‘Backstage’.

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TV glow I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow

Produced by Emma Stone, writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s uneven but impressively bold passion project ‘I Saw the Tv Glow’ celebrates gender-queer liberation using cult TV homages and hallucinatory horror elements.

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Dear Jassi Dear Jassi

Dear Jassi

An engaging Romeo and Juliet romance between rich and poor Punjabis slowly reveals its darker side in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s laid-back but ultimately devastating social critique. ‘Dear Jassi’.

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sweet dreams Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

Dutch-Bosnian director Ena Sendijarevic’s playful, surreal, stylish second feature ‘Sweet Dreams’ finds a rich seam of darkly absurd comedy in Europe’s murky colonial history.

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hunters3 Hunters on a White Field

Hunters on a White Field

The hunters get captured by the game in ‘Hunters on a White Field’, Swedish writer-director Sarah Gyllenstierna’s classy horror-tinged thriller about the dark side of macho bloodsports.

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Match me door Locarno Pro 2024: 36 Producers Selected for Networking Platform Match Me!

Locarno Pro 2024: 36 Producers Selected for Networking Platform Match Me!

Locarno Pro's international networking initiative Match Me! has selected 36 emerging producers from 14 different countries. From August 9 to 11, Match Me! will organize individual meetings and tailor-made networking activities with potential creative and business partners, with the goal of strengthening relationships in the industry, finding potential co-producers and consolidating the producers’ international visibility....
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Viggo Karlovy Vary International Film Festival President’s Award To Be Presented to Viggo Mortensen

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival President’s Award To Be Presented to Viggo Mortensen

The 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will honor Viggo Mortensen with the Festival President's Award and present his film 'The Dead Don't Hurt,' which he wrote and directed, at the festival's opening ceremony. The versatile actor started his career in the mid-1980s. He appeared in several films including Peter Weir’s ‘Witness’ (1985), Renny Harlin’s...
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Opening Day AVP AVP Summit Challenges the Status Quo

AVP Summit Challenges the Status Quo

The third edition of Italy’s international Audiovisual Producers Summit (June 10-12, 2024) wrapped at the Altafiumara Resort & Spa last week. The AVP Summit is a three-day conference dedicated to the Italian and international entertainment industry with attendees coming from production and distribution companies, television networks and digital platforms as well as independent studios and...
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Mike Leigh 2 MEDITERRANE FILM FESTIVAL TO HONOR MIKE LEIGH WITH CAREER ACHIEVEMENT GOLDEN BEE AWARD

MEDITERRANE FILM FESTIVAL TO HONOR MIKE LEIGH WITH CAREER ACHIEVEMENT GOLDEN BEE AWARD

The Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta will present the Career Achievement Golden Bee Award to BAFTA-winning writer-director Mike Leigh, known for films like 'Vera Drake', 'Another Year', and 'Happy-Go-Lucky'. Leigh, a seven-time Academy Award nominee, will also lead a masterclass during the festival's second edition. The Palme d’Or winning director, Leigh will be accompanied by...
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Bees '20,000 Species of Bees' to open theatrically in the US on June 14

‘20,000 Species of Bees’ to open theatrically in the US on June 14

TFV Chief critic, Deborah Young reviewed 20,000 species of Bees at Berlin 2023, where newcomer Sofia Otero was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. Young called the film “Extraordinary for its sensitivity and perception, Estibollz Urresolo Sologuren’s story of an 8-year-old girl’s growing discomfort with being perceived as a boy is a landmark...
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norah 2.1 Norah

Norah

Tawfik Alzaidi’s classically narrated, slow-burn drama ‘Norah’ is a tribute to art and artists in socially conservative societies like 1990s Saudi Arabia.

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Ernest Cole

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (‘I Am Not Your Negro’) once again makes masterful use of the documentary form as a vehicle for social and political commentary in ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’, an intense viewing experience that leaves its mark long after the last photo fades.

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The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

A French classic gets new, ambitious life on screen with the ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, from the same team as 2023’s ‘The Three Musketeers’.

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Merchandise The Most Precious of Cargoes

The Most Precious of Cargoes

Michel Hazanavicius’s (‘The Artist’) long-cherished animation project ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’, bowing in Cannes competition, nimbly combines a classic, grim fairy tale with the horrors of the Holocaust in a well-made but sentimental tale whose audience is unclear.

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sister midnight Sister Midnight

Sister Midnight

A newly married Mumbai housewife unleashes her inner monster in writer-director Karan Kandhari’s stylish, punky, compellingly strange comedy thriller ‘Sister Midnight’.

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affiche film j0bnXNMrTUXJzx5paphoUI35VYk9XShsBfAd1ngr To a Land Unknown

To a Land Unknown

Mahdi Fleifel’s masterful feature debut ‘To a Land Unknown’ marks a new chapter in Palestinian cinema with its harsh yet empathetic walk in the brutal world of being an Arab refugee in Greece.

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universal lang1 Universal Language

Universal Language

Blending autobiographical elements with heartfelt homages to Iranian cinema, writer-director Matthew Rankin’s charmingly surreal comic fable ‘Universal Language’ reimagines Canada as a Farsi-speaking dreamland.

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Marcello Mio - film still

Marcello Mio

Low on laughs and with a thin plot, Christophe Honore’s ‘Marcello Mio’ is a quirky tribute to one of European cinema’s most famous filial relationships.

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photo3 big Everybody Loves Touda

Everybody Loves Touda

With unconventional yet captivating storytelling, Nabil Ayoush’s ‘Everybody Loves Touda’ champions female empowerment through a young woman who is passionate about the traditional Moroccan folk music of Aita.

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substance The Substance

The Substance

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley co-star in French director Coralie Fargeat’s wild Cannes contender ‘The Substance’, a gloriously tasteless but finely crafted feminist body-horror fairy tale.

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Armand

Armand

Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section showcases emerging Scandinavian talent with ‘Armand’, an enigmatic first film from Norway.

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Selena Gòmez en Emilia Pérez

CineVerdict: Emilia Pérez

Selena Gomez y Zoe Saldaña presumen sus habilidades de canto y baile en el audaz thriller musical mexicano de Jacques Audiard, una lujuriosa celebración de lo queer multicultural y la redención del transgénero.

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balconettes The Balconettes

The Balconettes

Despite a few bumpy moments, actor-director Noémie Merlant’s gory feminist horror comedy ‘The Balconettes’ paints a rowdy, richly imagined portrait of three ladies on fire.

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Limo 2 Limonov: The Ballad

Limonov: The Ballad

In ‘Limonov: The Ballad’, director Kirill Serebrennikov turns up the volume on his already explosive style (Petrov’s Flu), which is really the only way to recount the mad, violence-tinged rise of Russian poet and political extremist Eduard Limonov.

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Caught Tides Caught by the Tides

Caught by the Tides

Re-shuffling footage from films he has shot over the last 23 years, Jia Zhang-ke places his awe-inspiring cinematic mastery on full display in ‘Caught by the Tides’, though its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story.

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image big 5a2416855e73762c1adf626862f98b3b The Brink of Dreams

The Brink of Dreams

In ‘The Brink of Dreams’, Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir deliver a fierce, against-all-odds documentary about a group of young women artists in southern Egypt out to prove their independence as theater performers and independent women in a male-dominated society.

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emilia2 Emilia Pérez

Emilia Pérez

Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña show off their song-and-dance skills in French director Jacques Audiard’s audacious Mexican musical thriller ‘Emilia Pérez’.

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Lobstertrap Freestyle Digital Media acquirs North American VOD rights to the drama/thriller feature 'THE GHOST TRAP'

Freestyle Digital Media acquirs North American VOD rights to the drama/thriller feature ‘THE GHOST TRAP’

Freestyle Digital Media, the digital film distribution division of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group, has acquired North American VOD rights to the drama/thriller feature THE GHOST TRAP, which will be available to rent/own on all digital HD internet, cable, and satellite platforms, as well as on DVD, this fall through Freestyle Digital Media. The drama/thriller...
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kinds of kindness3 Kinds of Kindness

Kinds of Kindness

Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe reunite with ‘Poor Things’ director Yorgos Lanthimos for ‘Kinds of Kindness’, a slight but fun triple-decker sandwich of macabre absurdism.

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A still from Sergei Loznitsa's The Invasion, which premiered at Cannes.

The Invasion

Sergei Loznitsa follows up his landmark 2014 doc ‘Maidan’ with a more recent portrait showing the impact of Russian aggression on his country in ‘The Invasion’.

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megaflop2 Megalopolis

Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating neo-Roman epic ‘Megalopolis’ is a muddled misfire of overcooked kitsch and undercooked ideas.

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A still from Meeting with Pol Pot, starring Irene Jacob

Meeting with Pol Pot

Rithy Panh’s unnerving screen adaptation of U.S. war correspondent Elizabeth Becker’s real-life 1978 visit to Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia vaunts intense performances, a diverse visual palette and an ominous sound design.

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Bird 2 Bird

Bird

In ‘Bird’ Andrea Arnold once again shows she has the magic keys – in this case Franz Rogowski’s piercingly tender bird-man, and Barry Keoghan’s manically affectionate drug-dealer dad — to extract drama, fantasy and authentic emotion from characters living on the lowest rungs of English society.

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girl with needle2 The Girl with the Needle

The Girl with the Needle

Swedish writer-director Magnus von Horn’s Cannes competition contender ‘The Girl with the Needle’ is a gripping historical true-crime thriller cloaked in deliciously dark Nordic Noir visuals.

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wild diamond1 Wild Diamond

Wild Diamond

French writer-director Agathe Riedinger’s coming-of-age Cannes contender ‘Wild Diamond’ is an unpolished gem, but it sparkles with lusty energy and strong performances.

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second act The Second Act

The Second Act

Profilic French prankster Quentin Dupieux finds the funny side of cancel culture, AI and actorly vanity in his meta-comic Cannes film festival curtain-raiser ‘The Second Act’.

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Park Ye-young and Lee Hae-un in Sister Yujeong.

Jeonju 2024: The Verdict

Thanks to its solid, diverse line-up of first and second features, Jeonju International Film Festival consolidated its standing as the premier platform for the discovery of new voices in Korean cinema.

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A still from Time To Be Strong

Time To Be Strong

Scooping three awards at the Jeonju International Film Festival, Namkoong Sun’s ‘Time To Be Strong’ is a winning drama about three traumatized losers in the brutal K-pop rat race.

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A still of When Clouds Hide the Shadows, starring María Alché.

When Clouds Hide the Shadows

One of Jeonju’s annual trio of self-produced titles, ‘When Clouds Hide the Shadows’ is Chilean director José Luis Torres Leiva’s affectionate, contemplative visit to the southernmost outpost of South America.

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Nyon Visions du Réel 2024: The Awards

Visions du Réel 2024: The Awards

Atmospheric, compelling and timely, Swiss documentarian Nicole Vögele’s ‘The Landscape and the Fury’, about migrants trying to cross the Bosnia-Croatian border to reach Europe, won Visions du Réel’s top prize.

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Lynne Ramsay at Stockfish

Lynne Ramsay Gets Awarded

Lynne Ramsay checks in from Stockfish, where she received the festival’s Honorary Award, with new films starring Julianne Moore and Jennifer Lawrence on the horizon.

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Mother Vera Cecile EmbletonAlys Tomlinson Mother Vera

Mother Vera

A nun weighs up the freedoms and limits of a Belarusian convent after heartbreak and heroin addiction in this sublime and sensorial debut feature doc.

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Still from Empathfridges (2023)

Empathfridges

In the slantwise ethnographic documentary ‘Empathfridges’, Rakel Jonsdottir explores the concept of shared fridges in Iceland to create microcosmic portraits of place and community.

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Belle 2 Belle

Belle

The tale as old as time gets a stylish Icelandic makeover in ‘Belle’, the closing film of Stockfish 2024.

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The Landscape and the Fury Nicole Vogele The Landscape and the Fury

The Landscape and the Fury

The Balkan landscape is a witness to cycles of time and displacement in Nicole Vögele’s atmospheric, compelling and very human doc, winner of the top prize at Visions du Réel.

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1484888 Kamay

Kamay

Haunting and multi-layered, this is a stunning debut doc on death, female resistance and knowledge in the mountains of Afghanistan.

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Fragments of Ice Maria Stoianova Fragments Of Ice

Fragments Of Ice

Maria Stoianova draws on her figure-skater father’s ‘80s and ‘90s VHS archive in a poignant debut doc on a Ukraine caught between the illusions of two systems.

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1469718 1280x720 1 Realm of Satan

Realm of Satan

Scott Cummings explores the Church of Satan through theatrical vignettes in his inventive, irreverent documentary portrait of a maligned American outsider culture.

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Still from If I die, will I go home? (2023)

If I die, will I go home?

The experimental short If I die, will I go home? unnervingly explores the psyche of a young man wrestling with how to survive as an adult when bound by the long grip of childhood trauma.

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Still image from Hafey (2023)

Hafey

A young women who suffered a stroke at the age of thirteen, Hafey reconnects with the use of her body through dance in this moving and affirming documentary portrait.

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Metaverse screening room The Metaverse Is Just Getting Started

The Metaverse Is Just Getting Started

By Richard Flynn Is the metaverse DEAD? The metaverse exploded onto the scene like the hottest new Hollywood A-lister, bringing with it the promise of revolutionising the way we live, communicate, and consume content online. But today, “metaverse” has become a dirty word to many, reflecting the shattered hopes and dreams of what might have...
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shp aer 0616 0v9a7149 Shepperton Studios Expansion in Surrey is now Open

Shepperton Studios Expansion in Surrey is now Open

The expansion at Shepperton Studios in Surrey is now open and Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix are in occupation. The state-of-the-art development will add to Shepperton’s world-class amenities and provide an additional 17 sound stages, 548,000 sq ft of production and workshop spaces as well as two backlots. Amazon MGM Studios have taken a total...
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ALL SHALL BE WELL mise en scene filmproduction All Shall Be Well

All Shall Be Well

When her lover of forty years suddenly dies, Angie discovers she has no rights even to her own apartment in Ray Yeung’s Teddy Award-winning ‘All Shall Be Well’, a heartfelt though unexceptional drama revealing Hong Kong’s unjust inheritance laws for same-sex couples.

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golden bear Berlin 2024: The Awards

Berlin 2024: The Awards

The Berlinale awards celebrated cultural differences, with the Golden Bear going to Mati Diop’s poetic and thoughtful documentary on colonialism ‘Dahomey’, which follows the return of looted cultural artefacts to Benin.

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Thinley Llamo in Shambhala, in competition at the Berlinale.

Shambhala

Nepal’s first-ever competition title at the Berlinale, Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala is a visually breathtaking, emotionally engaging relationship drama about a young Tibetan’s physical and mental journey across the Himalayas in search of her vanished husband.

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Still from That's All from Me (2024)

That’s All from Me

A filmmaker explores her struggles with motherhood and artistic stimulus through a correspondence and a short film about birdwatching in That’s All from Me, a deft epistolary short.

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A BIT OF A STRANGER photo A Bit of a Stranger

A Bit of a Stranger

Three generations of Russified women in Ukraine come to grips with their identities and displacement in Svitlana Lishchynska’s rough-edged, absorbing film-as-therapy documentary.

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Still from In the Belly of a Tiger. (c) Berlinale

In the Belly of A Tiger

Bowing in the Berlinale’s independently curated Forum programme, Indian filmmaker Siddartha Jatla’s second feature, ‘In the Belly of a Tiger’, combines social critique with magical realism to depict the struggles of India’s rural poor.

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Sons

Sons

Gustav Möller returns to the thriller genre with his second feature ‘Sons’, bolstered by terrific performances.

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Still from Above the Dust

Above The Dust

Wang Xiaoshuai, controversially without an official screening permit, returns to Berlin with another superb picture about Chinese politics (and peasantry) featuring outstanding performances and stellar dialogue.

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sasquatch1 Sasquatch Sunset

Sasquatch Sunset

Featuring wordless performances by a heavily disguised Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, ‘Sasquatch Sunset’ is a boldly surreal Bigfoot comedy with surprising emotional depth.

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ME EL AIN. Tanit Films Midi La Nuit Instinct Bleu Who Do I Belong To?

Who Do I Belong To?

A misguided narrative full of ill-thought-out atmospheric twists spoils the cinematic attractions of Tunisian-American Meryem Joobeur’s debut feature about a family torn apart when two sons join Daesh.

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Still from Tako Tsubo (2024)

Tako Tsubo

A man has his heart removed in an attempt to lessen his existential anguish in Fanny Sorgo and Eva Pedroza’s expressive, lingering animation, Tako Tsubo.

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black tea Black Tea

Black Tea

The gap between African and Chinese culture proves easier to breach than the perspectives that separate a woman and a man in acclaimed director Abderrahmane Sissako’s ‘Black Tea’, a fascinating love story set in China but one that sadly gets lost in the telling.

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Still from In Praise of Slowness (2023)

In Praise of Slowness

The outmoded bleach sellers of Tangier offer a window to a simpler time and a resistance against rampant growth in Hicham Gardaf’s tranquil documentary, In Praise of Slowness.

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Nguy?n Th? Minh Châu, Hoàng Hà in Cu Li Never Cries

Cu Li Never Cries

Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Ngoc Lan’s first feature, ‘Cu Li Never Cries’, is an absorbing, beautiful ode about a pensioner’s nostalgia for her past and a young couple’s uncertainty about their future.

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Still from The Moon Also Rises (2024)

The Moon Also Rises

An elderly couple retreats from the outside world in preparation for the launch of three artificial moons in the strange and meditative experimental documentary, The Moon Also Rises.

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Tongo saa Rising Up at Night

Rising Up at Night

Nelson Makengo’s beautifully shot and observed documentary ‘Rising Up at Night’ captures the darkness of Kinshasa after severe flooding and electricity cuts, along with the resilience of its people.

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intercepted film Intercepted

Intercepted

Ukrainian director Oksana Karpovych’s quietly powerful documentary ‘Intercepted’ combines bleakly beautiful, defiantly hopeful images of her war-ravaged homeland with recordings of phone calls made by invading Russian soldiers.

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Still from Towards the Sun, Far from the Center (2024)

Towards the Sun, Far from the Center

Santiago, Chile is both brought into focus and dreamily abstracted in Towards the Sun, Far from the Centre, a languid city symphony featuring a queer couple looking for a space in which they can express themselves.

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Gloria Gloria!

Gloria!

A joyful feminist fantasy set in Venice in 1800, in which music unchains an orphanage full of talented girl musicians, ‘Gloria!’ will split audiences into two distinct camps.

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devils bath film The Devil's Bath

The Devil’s Bath

Real historical murder cases inspired ‘The Devil’s Bath’, a relentlessly grim but atmospheric psychological horror thriller from Austrian writer-director duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.

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Still from Remains of the Hot Day (2024)

Remains of the Hot Day

A wonderfully observed sketch of a family lunch in late-1990s China, Remains of the Hot Day not only captures period mood but is compiled from glimpses of myriad miniature dramas.

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Rain 2 Some Rain Must Fall

Some Rain Must Fall

A depressed Chinese woman tired of her unaffectionate family and middle class life heads towards a breakdown in ‘Some Rain Must Fall,’ the first feature by Qiu Yang, whose minimalist storytelling is full of atmosphere and foreboding.

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Still from Bye Bye Turtle (2024)

Bye Bye Turtle

A young girl avoiding her home and a woman returning to hers after a long absence form a brief but profound bond in Selin Oksuzoglu sparkling short, Bye Bye Turtle.

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DIARIES FROM LEBANON. Abbout Productions Diaries from Lebanon

Diaries from Lebanon

Three people in Beirut representing the past, present and future of Lebanon experience the hopes, disappointments and decimated sense of stability in Myriam El Hajj’s sad yet defiant documentary tracing the country’s ups and downs since 2018.

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Still from Pepe (2024)

Pepe

Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’s fanciful exploration of the inner life of one of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos, Pepe, is an idiosyncratic affair as piercing and beguiling as it is confounding.

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Langue etra Langue étrangère

Langue étrangère

In her first solo directing stint ‘Langue étrangère’, Camera d’Or winner Claire Burger cleverly evokes the fears and anxieties of two middle-class 17-year-old European girls about to inherit a world racked with violently diverging political opinions.

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Afterwar 1 Afterwar

Afterwar

Shot over 15 years, Birgitte Stærmose’s deeply empathetic documentary, focused on child survivors, is an intimate and diligent depiction of the lingering aftermath of war.

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Still from Circle (2024)

Circle

A young girl draws a circle on the ground and people are drawn to stand within its borders in Joung Yumi’s typically mannered and strangely engrossing monochrome animation.

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ARCHITECTON Architecton

Architecton

Another stunning documentary from Victor Kossakovsky full of gob-smacking immersive images of the natural world, pitched this time as a call for a harmonious alliance between nature and architecture.

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empire film1 The Empire

The Empire

Mischievous writer-director Bruno Dumont combines visually dazzling ‘Star Wars’ parody with small-town French farce in his admirably ambitious but muddled space opera ‘The Empire’.

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arcadia Arcadia

Arcadia

The living haunt the dead in Yorgos Zois’s sexy glumfest ‘Arcadia’, an aching, downbeat tale about loss and lingering grief, told from the ghosts’ POV.

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marias silence Maria's Silence

Maria’s Silence

The true story of Latvian-born German silent film diva Maria Leiko and her fateful journey to Stalin’s USSR in 1937 is retold in Davis Simanis’s ‘Maria’s Silence’ with a tragic depth that is engrossing and emotional.

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I saw three black lights

I Saw Three Black Lights

Santiago Lozano Álvarez finds an original way – lyrical and exuberant – to talk about the murders, disappearances and ecocide in Colombia in ‘I Saw Three Black Lights’.

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dying film2 Dying

Dying

German director Matthias Glasner’s autobiographical, darkly funny, emotionally raw ensemble drama ‘Dying’ plays like a three-hour family therapy session.

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Still from Meanwhile on Earth (2024)

Meanwhile on Earth

Jeremy Clapin follows I Lost My Body with Meanwhile on Earth, another high-concept exploration of loss occupied by expressive ethical wrangling and intangible alien lifeforms.

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Still Berlin DAHOMEY 02 © LES FILMS DU BAL FANTA SY Dahomey

Dahomey

Mati Diop’s thought-provokingly cerebral-poetic documentary follows the return of 26 looted cultural artefacts and their welcome home to Benin, encompassing the celebrations as well as larger debates around colonialization and how to reintegrate such potently spiritual objects into a society 130 years after they were plundered.

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HORS DU TEMPS. Carole Bethuel Suspended Time

Suspended Time

Olivier Assayas’s semi-autobiographical reverie ‘Suspended Time’ on his stay in the family home during lockdown, is likely his weakest work, playing like a parody of an intellectualized director’s banal ruminations.

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Another end Another End

Another End

Corporate scientists use memory technology to bring back the dead for a brief reunion with their loved ones (played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Bérénice Bejo), in Piero Messina’s clever but often perplexing ‘Another End’, whose futuristic love story beyond the grave is a mighty challenge to unravel.

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Film still from Demba

Demba

Although a bit too dry for a wide audience, Mamadou Dia’s ‘Demba’ has moments of visual grace, a great central performance, and a compelling subject at its core.

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from hilde From Hilde, With Love

From Hilde, With Love

German director Andreas Dresen’s biopic of anti-Nazi activist Hilde Coppi, ‘From Hilde, With Love’ is diligent and thoughtful but too tastefully restrained.

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LA COCINA photo La cocina

La cocina

A disappointing, maddeningly self-indulgent plunge into the tensions and inequities in the kitchen of a Times Square eatery, designed as an anti-capitalist diatribe messily juggling personal and choral storytelling but saved to some degree by excellent chiaroscuro camerawork and a strong cast.

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Redaktsiya / The Editorial Office

The Editorial Office

In the week between the Grammys and the Super Bowl, Human Rights Watch announced that Vladimir Putin and other military officials should be investigated for war crimes following Russia’s assault on Mariupol. On Valentine’s Day it was reported that UNESCO calculated that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused $3.5 billion in damage so far to...
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Every You Every Me - film still

Every You Every Me

Michael Fetter Nathansky, with assistance from lead actress Aenne Schwarz, inspects a shaky relationship in the shadow of work pressures in this adequately sensitive, surreal, and discomfiting look at marriage and its dissatisfactions.

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CROSSING photo Crossing

Crossing

Jennie Livingston’s seminal Paris is Burning was probably the first hit film to show what LGBTQ+ people have always known: we make our own families. They’re often not biological but they are carefully chosen, proving that genetics is no determinant of unconditional love. Levan Akin’s follow-up to his terrific debut feature And Then We Danced...
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Still from Muna (2023)

Muna

A teenager navigates the social pressures of school and the expectations of family in Muna, a thoughtful coming-of-age drama about personal desires and dislocated grief.

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My fav Cake My Favourite Cake

My Favourite Cake

A small jewel of an Iranian romantic comedy, ‘My Favourite Cake’ pits an older woman determined to find a measure of happiness against the restrictions of the Islamic regime and the loneliness of aging, while the film’s creators Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha have been banned from traveling to Berlin.

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small things Small Things Like These

Small Things Like These

Cillian Murphy follows his huge ‘Oppenheimer’ success with glum but powerful personal project ‘Small Things Like These’, a soulful literary psychodrama about mercy, empathy, complicity and dark misdeeds in 1980s Ireland.

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planet janet Janet Planet

Janet Planet

Celebrated stage dramatist Annie Baker paints childhood as a midsummer daydream full of tragicomic adult behaviour in her droll, charming film debut ‘Janet Planet’.

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different man A Different Man

A Different Man

Aaron Schimberg’s darkly funny body-horror fairy tale ‘A Different Man’ takes a satirical scalpel to the beastliness of beauty.

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lupita nyong o RWD 630 MEET THE INTERNATIONAL JURY of Berlinale 2024

MEET THE INTERNATIONAL JURY of Berlinale 2024

Berlinale 74 presents the International Jury, who will be presenting the awards for:Golden Bear for Best Film (awarded to the film’s producers), Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, Silver Bear Jury Prize, Silver Bear for Best Director, Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance, Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, Silver Bear...
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iffr IFFR 2024: The Verdict

IFFR 2024: The Verdict

Rotterdam Film Festival’s 53rd edition balanced an uneven competition program full of sombre three-hour dramas with more adventurous sidebars, essay films, experimental video art and pop superstar guests.

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kiss wagon2 Kiss Wagon

Kiss Wagon

Indian director Midhun Murali’s prize-winning animated shadow-puppet epic ‘Kiss Wagon’ is loopy and confusing but still a dazzling, highly original visual feast.

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Confidenza - film still

Confidenza

Daniele Luchetti’s ‘Confidenza’ (Trust), from the Domenico Starnone novel about a dangerous confidant, features a noteworthy performance from Elio Germano.

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Still image from Stero (2024)

Stero

Language is an instrument of oppression and a tool to combat it in Tevin Kimathi and Millan Tarus’ charming tale of childhood resistance, Stero.

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iffr awards IFFR 2024: The Awards

IFFR 2024: The Awards

Three very different films from Japan, India and Australia won Rotterdam’s Tiger Awards, underlining the festival’s range of new talent.

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Portrait of a Certain Orient Portrait of a Certain Orient

Portrait of a Certain Orient

Awash in a luxuriant atmosphere of passion and emotional discovery created by exquisite b&w images of seas rivers and jungles, Marcelo Gomes’s three characters struggle to shake off the past and move forward post-WW2 in ‘Portrait of a Certain Orient’.

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Still from Worker's Wings (2024)

Workers’ Wings

Ilir Hasanaj’s deeply empathetic documentary ‘Workers’ Wings’, is centred on manual labourers who have suffered workplace injuries, is a tender and intimate marvel.

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ezgif 5 27a8c93fe2 Grey Bees

Grey Bees

Dmytro Moiseiev’s laconic portrait of a solitary beekeeper with an evolving political consciousness in the “grey zone” of Donetsk is sage and affecting.

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Still from 78 Days (2024)

78 Days

Using the aesthetics of home video, with 78 Days Emilija Gasic crafts a poignant coming-of-age drama set amidst the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO.

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steppenwolf Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf

Kazakh writer-director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s stylish but brutal neo-western thriller ‘Steppenwolf’ takes place once upon a time in the Wild East.

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Still from Tenement (2024)

Tenement

The traumas of Cambodia’s past stretch their icy fingers into the present in Tenement, a deeply unsettling psychological horror set in a rundown Khmer-era housing block.

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ezgif 3 9698bcf36a Animalia Paradoxa

Animalia Paradoxa

Using a blend of stop-motion animation and live-action, Niles Atallah gorgeously crafts a mesmeric, dying world of analogue detritus and vestiges of magical knowledge, in which a half-amphibian being dreams of survival.

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Swimming Home Film Still 1 Swimming Home

Swimming Home

A cryptic Deborah Levy novel is stylised for the screen as an elusive and surrealistic dance of the subconscious, as an uninvited guest crashes a poet’s family vacation.

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Stormskerry Maja

Stormskerry Maja

A major piece of Finland-Swedish literature comes to life with epic results in Tiina Lymi’s dramatic adaptation, ‘Stormskerry Maja’,

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flathead2 Flathead

Flathead

Australian director Jaydon Martin’s debut documentary ‘Flathead’ is a feast of gorgeous monochrome cinematography and a compassionate, humane, quietly spiritual work.

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Under a Blue Sun Under a Blue Sun

Under a Blue Sun

Set in the Negev Desert where action blockbuster ‘Rambo III’ was shot, ‘Under a Blue Sun’ is an intricately layered doc scrutinising the intersection of war simulation, oppression and entertainment.

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eternal2 Eternal

Eternal

Danish director Ulaa Salim’s romantic sci-fi weepie ‘Eternal’ is a glossy but underpowered inner-space odyssey that falls short of its Christopher Nolan-sized ambitions.

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ezgif 3 45b8f71d5c Moses

Moses

Baffling, free-ranging and mesmeric, ‘Moses’ roams through a text on religion by Freud with deadpan Finnish humour that grounds its kooky performance art.

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mariofilm2 Mário

Mário

Director Billy Woodberry’s documentary portrait of Angolan poet, revolutionary and Pan-African icon Mário Pinto de Andrade offers an austere but absorbing history lesson.

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Still from DUCK (2023)

DUCK

In the 16-minute short DUCK, visual artist Rachel Maclean co-opts the inherent suspicions of cinematic espionage to craft this surreal mash-up about the escalating media paranoia.

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milkteeth3 Milk Teeth

Milk Teeth

A young woman challenges the superstitious fears of her cult-like patriarchal community in Swiss director Sophia Bösch’s ambitious but uneven dystopian fairy-tale debut ‘Milk Teeth’.

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HERO The Paragon A 2000 2000 1125 1125 crop fill The Paragon

The Paragon

A joyous Kiwi midnight-movie oddity that channels ‘80s fantasy and DIY gumption in a cosmic quest for a hyper-dimensional crystal.

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Actas de Marusia

Chile in our Heart and Eyes

Showing films by Chilean directors in exile, IFFR’s Focus on ‘Chile in the Heart’ helps us better understand the country and the 1973 coup d’état that changed it.

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Head South Film Still 1 Head South Cohort Ltd. Photo Dougal Holmes Head South

Head South

An absurdist, Gothic twist takes Jonathan Ogilvie’s coming-of-age comedy and New Zealand post-punk subculture origin story into delightfully uncharted territory.

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so unreal1 So Unreal

So Unreal

Amanda Kramer’s debut documentary ‘So Unreal’ revisits classic sci-fi movies and vintage cyberpunk thrillers looking for cautionary clues about our current age of digital dystopia.

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Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat - film still

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Johan Grimonprez’s complex, cacophonous ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ is a feat of design, narration, sound, and cinema about an important chapter in Congo’s tragic relationship with the UN, the U.S., and Belgium.

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France ama Gloria © Pyramide International Ama Gloria

Ama Gloria

An intimate and profound study of a child’s need for maternal love, with outstanding acting from 6-year old Louise Mauroy-Panzani and her nanny, Ilça Moreno Zego.

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Reinas dirigida por Klaudia Reynicke

CineVerdict: Reinas

Reinas, dirigida por Klaudia Reynecke es una buena película coming of age que confirma la presencia de una voz con sello propio en el cine latinoamericano

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Reinas directed by Klaudia Reynicke

Reinas

Reinas, directed by Klaudia Reynicke, is a coming of age film that confirms her unique voice in the Latin American Cinema.

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IBELIN2 Ibelin

Ibelin

Computer games offer a severely disabled young man an emotionally rich alternative life in Norwegian director Benjamin Ree’s moving, visually impressive documentary ‘Ibelin’.

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ETERNAL YOU 1 Eternal You

Eternal You

Facts come with chills in this cautionary doc overview of an ethically thorny new reality: the sale of immortality via AI simulations of the dead.

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Intishal El Gouna: The Verdict

El Gouna: The Verdict

Taking place just two months after the onset of the horrendous war in Gaza, the El Gouna Film Festival’s ‘Special Edition’ was a sober but not gloomy affair that paid its respects to the Palestinian people and their cinema.

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GOODBYE JULIA GFF El Gouna 2023: The Awards

El Gouna 2023: The Awards

The El Gouna Film Festival awards this year included ’Goodbye, Julia’, a Sudanese film by Mohamed Kordofani about two women divided by their cultures, which won the Cinema for Humanity Audience Award, while Egyptian director Ibrahim Nash’at’s ‘Hollywoodgate’ won as best documentary and Hong Sang-soo’s latest ‘In Our Day’ got the best narrative nod.

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wall film1 The Wall

The Wall

Vicky Krieps gives a striking performance as a racist Arizona border patrol guard in Belgian director Phillippe Van Leeuw’s otherwise underwhelming contemporary frontier western ‘The Wall’.

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ZINET Zinet, Algiers, Happiness

Zinet, Algiers, Happiness

A delightful Algerian documentary about cinema and the Casbah makes a superb companion piece to the newly-restored 35mm print of ‘Tahia Ya Didou’ by cult comic and director Mohamed Zinet.

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teacher film1 The Teacher

The Teacher

Gaining extra urgency in the light of current events, British-Palestinian director Farah Nabulsi’s debut feature ‘The Teacher’ is a well-intentioned but flawed drama set in the occupied West Bank

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q jpg Q

Q

An all-female Islamic sect in Lebanon first ensnares, then abandons a deeply spiritual woman, along with her mother and her daughter, in Jude Chehab’s intriguing but unstructured portrait of her unusual family in ‘Q’.

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real rehyaneh Seven Winters in Tehran

Seven Winters in Tehran

The cruel and gripping story of Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 19-year-old Iranian woman convicted of murdering a man who attempted to rape her, unfolds like a thriller in Steffi Niederzoll’s documentary recreation, ‘Seven Winters in Tehran’.

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abdul leila2 From Abdul to Leila

From Abdul to Leila

French-Iraqi director Leila Albayaty explores her own complex cultural roots, painful family tensions and buried traumatic memories in her emotionally raw docu-musical ‘From Abdul to Leila’.

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Dreaming and Dying Dreaming & Dying

Dreaming & Dying

Magical realism and Far East ghost stories inject a thrilling, if not always crystal clear, element into Nelson Yeo’s fishy tale of an overage and not completely human love triangle, ‘Dreaming & Dying’.

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scrapper2 Scrapper

Scrapper

A charmingly eccentric 12-year-old girl struggles to bond with her estranged father in writer-director Charlotte Regan’s funny, sunny, prize-winning debut feature ‘Scrapper’.

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have sex2 How to Have Sex

How to Have Sex

A timely coming-of-age drama about young women dealing with the complexities of sexual consent, writer-director Molly Manning Walker’s prize-winning debut feature ‘How to Have Sex’ is impressively nuanced and emotionally rich.

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The Duke and The Poet The Duke and the Poet

The Duke and the Poet

Who wanted to assassinate Mihailo Obrenovic, the ruling Prince of Serbia, in 1868? As the true story plays out in The Duke and The Poet, director Milorad Milinkovic’s glossy tale of royal intrigue, almost everybody inside and outside the country had an ax to grind. While the Radovanovic brothers are marked in history as the...
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The Boy and the Heron

The Boy and the Heron

At age 82, Hayao Miyazaki proves once again that he’s our greatest living animator with this haunting tale of a boy on a mystical adventure in WWII-era Japan.

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songsofearth 01 Songs of Earth

Songs of Earth

A stunningly shot meditation on man and nature — or more like man in nature — that could have benefited from more substance.

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1406017 thepeasants 104217 The Peasants

The Peasants

Luminous hand-painting animates a famed Polish tale of female defiance in a rural world of predatory opportunism and survival.

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IDFA Flags in Amsterdam

IDFA 2023: The Verdict

IDFA 2023 received a staggering dose of real-life events on its opening night; the quality of its film selection and a few political moves helped it recover.

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Idfa awards IDFA: The Awards

IDFA: The Awards

Shoghakat Vardanyan’s ‘1489’ wins Best Film at IDFA for its humor and humanity in what the jury called “a vivid evocation of 100 years of history in less than 100 minutes of cinema.”

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The Burden - still

The Burden

Elvis Sabin Ngaibino’s IDFA 2023 documentary, ‘The Burden’, walks a familiar path of African misery, but his compelling subjects lends this sophomore feature documentary a deserved poignancy.

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Still from 14 Paintings (2023)

14 Paintings

Just over a dozen artworks are observed in situ in 14 Paintings, a patient but cumulatively fascinating cross-section portrait of contemporary China.

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greenaway1 Peter Greenaway at IDFA 2023

Peter Greenaway at IDFA 2023

A star guest at the Dutch documentary festival, 81-year-old art-house provocateur Peter Greenaway discusses his two new feature projects, his fears for the future of cinema, and his own feelings of mortality.

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kyiv files1 The Kyiv Files

The Kyiv Files

Dutch director Walter Stokman digs into recently declassified KGB archives in ‘The Kyiv Files’, an uneven but timely documentary about Ukraine, Russia and Cold War paranoia.

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Tide Comes In2 As the Tide Comes In

As the Tide Comes In

Directors Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen find beauty and sadness in ‘As the Tide Comes In’, a visually exquisite documentary about a tiny Danish island community menaced by climate change.

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tehachapi1 Tehachapi

Tehachapi

French visual artist and film-maker JR chronicles his grand-scale collaboration with the inmates of a maximum-security prison in his didactic but uplifting documentary ‘Tehachapi’.

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4 Limitation

Limitation

A raw and immediate found-footage assemblage, ‘Limitation’ traces Russia’s hand in the coup that overthrew Georgia’s first post-Soviet president Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

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alreadymade1 Alreadymade

Alreadymade

Director Barbara Visser explores the controversial links between pioneering Dadaist artists Marcel Duchamp and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven in her lively, adventurous, unconventional documentary ‘Alreadymade’.

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Still from Between Delicate and Violent (2023)

Between Delicate and Violent

Sirin Bahar Demirel’s stimulating bricolage short, Between Delicate and Violent, combines archival imagery with animation to examine how pictures tell stories and whether they can be mined for truth.

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do9Cd0lw In Wolf Country

In Wolf Country

Fear-stoking myths around wolves, back in Germany after a century, are dismantled in Ralf Bücheler’s doc ‘In Wolf Country’, appealing to nature management via science.

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aba film still 06 1 Magic Mountain

Magic Mountain

A haunting, poetic doc with political undercurrents, ‘Magic Mountain’ examines a once-grand sanitorium in the Georgian mountains lost to the vultures of capitalism.

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blessed plot This Blessed Plot

This Blessed Plot

Director Marc Isaacs takes a bumpy but engaging journey into post-Brexit England in his eccentric docu-fiction pageant ‘This Blessed Plot’.

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Still from I Would Like to Rage (2023)

I Would Like to Rage

Chloe Galibert-Laine’s latest video essay, I Would Like to Rage, reflects on the place of rage online and through this lens explores the blurred lines between authenticity and performativity

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Still 26 A Picture to Remember

A Picture to Remember

Olga Chernykh’s poetic, vividly sensorial essay-doc debut ‘A Picture to Remember’ reconstitutes Donetsk as a cinematic site of memories for three family generations of women.

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while the green grass grows 2023 While the Green Grass Grows

While the Green Grass Grows

Peter Mettler’s multi-layered, monumental cine-diary is a meditation on our obsession with the other side that is as playful and surprising as it is frequently sublime.

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VIFF distribution x A24 1 Vilnius International Film Festival unveils distribution partnership with A24 and Baltic expansion

Vilnius International Film Festival unveils distribution partnership with A24 and Baltic expansion

VIFF announces a new partnership with A24, one of the fastest-growing film studios in the United States. This collaboration marks a significant milestone for the VIFF distribution department and holds great promise for the cinema industry in the Baltic region. Additionally, as part of their expansion, VIFF will now be extending its activities to encompass...
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A still from The Night Rain South Township

The Night Rain South Township

Chinese filmmaker Li Binbin’s directorial debut, ‘The Night Rain South Township’, won a special mention at Pingyao with an enigmatic story of a young man’s rediscovery of his cultural roots in a foggy town in China’s southwest hinterlands.

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A still from Dance Still.

Dance Still

Awarded by both the main and youth juries at Pingyao, ‘Dance Still’ is directing duo Qin Muqiu and Zhan Hanqi’s triumph of a slacker comedy, trading in jet-black absurdist humour aimed at China’s bewildered millennials.

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A still from City of Wind

City of Wind

In ‘City of Wind’, Mongolia’s Academy Award hopeful which has already collected prizes at Venice and Pingyao, director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir offers a charmingly intimate look at a gifted young city-dwelling shaman.

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play dead1 Play Dead!

Play Dead!

Documentary director Matthew Lancit addresses his existential health fears through horror movie tropes in ‘Play Dead!’. a compelling hybrid blend of non-fiction and playful fakery.

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Film still from La Vourdlak

La Vourdalak

Adrien Beau’s ‘La Vourdalak’ is a lo-fi take on the 1839 Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy novella and a super-quirky, semi-scary, and supremely absurd film..

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104 2 One Hundred Four

One Hundred Four

‘One Hundred Four’ is the number of refugees stranded on one of the world’s deadly smuggling routes, the Mediterranean, in Jonathan Schörnig’s real-time documentary.

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Still from An Asian Ghost Story (2023)

An Asian Ghost Story

Mass wig exportation becomes the lens through which the fascinating, spectral doc An Asian Ghost Story explores Hong Kong’s late 20th-century modernisation and position between East and West.

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johnnyme Johnny & Me

Johnny & Me

Director Katrin Rothe’s animated bio-documentary hybrid ‘Johnny & Me’ brings to life the visually striking photomontage work of pioneering political artist John Heartfield.

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Still from Compound Eyes of Tropical (2022)

Compound Eyes of Tropical

One of the traditional fables of Sang Kancil, the wily mouse-deer, is brought exquisitely to life in Zhang Xu Zhan’s electrifying, otherworldly animation, Compound Eyes of Tropical

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Through The Night film still

Through The Night

Delphine Girard examines the possibly violent encounter between a man and a woman in her solidly unadorned debut feature, ‘Through the Night’, winner of the Audience Award at the Giornate degli Autori.

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9a1176f2 8427 4899 986d 9a3716911087 1 Beauty and the Lawyer

Beauty and the Lawyer

A married LGBTQ+ couple worry if a future Armenia will honour the rights of their non-conventional family, in this intimately observational, activism-based doc.

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Still from Lumene: Privatisation (2023)

Lumene: Privatisation

In the complex and thought-provoking essay film, Lumene: Privatisation, David Shongo reflects on the commodification of cultural memory and the lasting impacts of insidious colonial impositions.

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togoland4 Togoland Projections

Togoland Projections

German director Jürgen Ellinghaus retraces the West African travels of a silent-era film director in ‘Togoland Projections’, a dry but engaging documentary about European colonialism’s screen legacy.

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Still from Zima (2023)

Zima

The chill is both atmospheric and emotional in Zima, a scratchy, punkish, magical realist animation about life in a quiet, snow-laden fishing village.

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standywandy 1 The Standstill

The Standstill

Austrian documentary maker Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s symphonic Covid chronicle ‘The Standstill’ plays like a slow-motion disaster movie with immersive widescreen visuals.

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vika1 Vika!

Vika!

Polish director Agnieszka Zwiefka’s lively documentary ‘Vika!’ paints a celebratory but poignant portrait of Warsaw’s oldest club DJ.

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The Last Relic

The Last Relic

Masses seduced by past imperialistic might and activists seeking change present clashing public spectacles in Marianna Kaat’s punchy, broad-strokes doc on modern Russia.

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Dok Judges Meet the Juries of Dok Leipzig

Meet the Juries of Dok Leipzig

Three juries comprised of distinguished filmmakers and arts professionals, as well as a jury of audience members, will be presenting awards for short and feature-length animated and documentary films in competition at the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig. The jury members will bring together diverse perspectives on contemporary international documentary and animated filmmaking. The 2023...
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Still from Knit's Island (2023)

Knit’s Island

A trio of documentarians traverse the forbidding digital landscapes of an online survivalist video game to explore the communities that have emerged there in this verité machinima, Knit’s Island.

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My lost country ishtar yasin

My Lost Country

‘My Lost Country’ is a personal documentary in which the director Ishtar Yasin uses multiple tools in a moving portrait of her Iraqi father.

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dance first2 Dance First

Dance First

Gabriel Byrne plays dual versions of Irish literary legend Samuel Beckett in Oscar-winning director James Marsh’s unrevealing but elegant and engagingly offbeat bio-drama ‘Dance First’.

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gamma rays1 Gamma Rays

Gamma Rays

Canadian director Henry Bernadet paints a sunny patchwork portrait of multicultural Montreal in his collaborative teen-driven docu-drama ‘Gamma Rays’.

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toll 4 Toll

Toll

Lively characters get involved in a farcical church course designed to rewire gays in the otherwise staid ‘Toll’ (‘Pedagio’), a story about coping with poverty and ignorance in remote Brazil.

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red island 3 Red Island

Red Island

In equal parts fiercely amusing and roundly desolating, Robin Campillo’s ‘Red Island’, an offbeat look at the end of French colonialism in Madagascar, is a crowd-pleaser in San Sebastian’s Official Selection.

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Still from We Are the Hollow Men (2023)

We Are the Hollow Men

Rati Oneli’s phlegmatic drama, We Are the Hollow Men, depicts the difficult relationship between an estranged father and son when the latter returns home after his mother’s death.

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Ex-Husbands

Ex-Husbands

Griffin Dunne, James Norton and Miles Heizer co-star in Noah Pritzker’s underpowered but charming ensemble drama ‘Ex-Husbands’. which pays fond homage to a lost analogue era of bittersweet New York comedies.

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royalhotel2 The Royal Hotel

The Royal Hotel

Australian writer-director Kitty Green takes a hellish holiday in the badlands of toxic masculinity with her punchy feminist Outback thriller ‘The Royal Hotel’.

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the rye horn The Rye Horn

The Rye Horn

Celebrating the natural cycles of life in women’s ever-changing bodies, Jaione Camborda’s second feature ‘The Rye Horn’ is a moving period drama that touches on abortion laws in 1971 Spain.

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Still from Pirsas (2023)

Pirsas

Angelica Maria Torres Tamayo works through a personal tragedy in Pirsas, a deeply affecting documentary about a family trauma and the prospect of recovery.

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Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans in Mother, couch!

Mother, Couch!

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.

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A Silence 2 A Silence

A Silence

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’.

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Sueño de la sultana

CineVerdict: El sueño de la sultana

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.

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Still from Single Light (2023)

Single Light

A young woman must deal with the physical and psychological bruises of a sexual assault in Shaylee Atary’s powerful dramatic short, Single Light.

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kalak1 Kalak

Kalak

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.

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sultana tree Sultana's Dream

Sultana’s Dream

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.

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piano player3 They Shot the Piano Player

They Shot the Piano Player

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’.

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Last Shadows Last Shadow at First Light

Last Shadow at First Light

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.

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fingernails2 Fingernails

Fingernails

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’.

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All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt Still 1 H 2022 All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

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.

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Peter Sargaard in Memory Michel Franco

CineVerdict: Memoria

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.

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beaut friend Beautiful Friend

Beautiful Friend

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’.

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Still from Grill (2023)

Grill

The cruelty of an uncaring welfare state is brought into sharp relief in Jade Hærem Aksnes’s stomach-churning satirical drama about poverty, Grill.

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Still from Seaweed (2023)

Seaweed

A young boy grieving the loss of his mother forms a bond with a desert drifter in the heart-warming Israeli drama, Seaweed.

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wait2 The Wait

The Wait

Spanish director F. Javier Gutiérrez’s atmospheric but underpowered horror western ‘The Wait’ offers a fistful of familiar supernatural tropes.

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belgian wave3 The Belgian Wave

The Belgian Wave

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.

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Carvao 3 Charcoal

Charcoal

A dark, absurdist farce of wicked schemes bred of hardship in smalltown Brazil reveals helmer Carolina Markowicz as a bold talent.

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Still from Our Males and Females (2023)

Our Males and Females

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’.

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ALICIA2 Frames of Alicia

Frames of Alicia

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’.

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clones of bruce Enter the Clones of Bruce

Enter the Clones of Bruce

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.

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Still from Robot Dreams (2023)

Robot Dreams

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.

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Still from Dream Maker (2023)

Dream Maker

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.

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06sp tribeca maestra inyt 01 fkzm superJumbo Maestra

Maestra

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.

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Little Girl Blue 157753 H 2023 Little Girl Blue

Little Girl Blue

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.

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Still of Lesley Conroy a Angela in Cleaner (2021)

Cleaner

A tentative friendship begins between a cleaner and the woman who employs her in Cleaner, a delicately wrought drama about relationships and their boundaries.

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"Not A Word" directed by Hanna Slak

Not A Word

Nina Palcek follows Lydia Tár in managing Mahler’s 5th with a spiralling personal life in slow-burn thriller ‘Not A Word.’

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"Woodland" directed by Elisabeth Scharang

Woodland

‘Woodland’ is an exploration of generational trauma and healing that feels more like a sketch than portrait.

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pik Venice 2023: The Verdict

Venice 2023: The Verdict

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.

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Yorgos Lanthimos Golden Lion winner

Venice 2023: The Awards

The Awards: Yorgos Lanthimos took home the Golden Lion with his wildly inventive feminist portrait ‘Poor Things’, the most popular film in the festival.

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Society of the Snow J.A. Bayona

Society of the Snow

‘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.

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Society 2 CineVerdict: La sociedad de la nieve

CineVerdict: La sociedad de la nieve

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.”

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Memory Peter Sarsgaard, Jessica Chastain

Memory

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

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COUP 1 Coup!

Coup!

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!’

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79966 HORS SAISON OUT OF SEASON Credits Michael Crotto.2 1 Out of Season

Out of Season

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.

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Still from Wander to Wonder (2023)

Wander to Wonder

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.

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Still from We Should All Be Futurists (2023)

We Should All Be Futurists

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.

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Woman Of

Woman Of…

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’).

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infested vermines

Vermines

VERDICT: Creepy but derivative killer spider thriller is angrier at the world than at arachnids.

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Firedream lumbrensueño

Firedream

Firedream offers lessons of passionate honesty in work made with love. and creativity even with some shortcomings.

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Holly Director Fien Troch

Holly

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.

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Still from Sentimental Stories (2023)

Sentimental Stories

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.

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Franz Rogowski

Lubo

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.

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Still from Gasoline Rainbow (2023)

Gasoline Rainbow

The freewheeling independence of the open road is given a Gen-Z spin in the Ross Brothers’ kinetic and affecting hybrid documentary, Gasoline Rainbow.

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Malqueridas Tana Gilbert

CineVerdict: Malqueridas

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.

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Malqueridas Still 1 1536x864 1 Malqueridas

Malqueridas

Women in Chilean prisons record motherhood and the raw pain of separation in Tana Gilbert’s empathetic and impressionistic, mobile-shot doc of solidarity.

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Jon Bernthal, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

Origin

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.

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io capitano Io Capitano

Io Capitano

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 ‘Io Capitano’.

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A still from Following the Sound

Following the Sound

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.

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A still from Snow Leopard.

Snow 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.

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Enea Pietro Castellitto

Enea

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.

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Hiam Abbass, Lina Soualem

Bye Bye Tiberias

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.

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Still from Sea Salt (Leila Basma, 2023)

Sea Salt

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.

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Nicola Borrelli MIBACT

TFV Talks to Nicola Borrelli

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.

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sky peals Sky Peals

Sky Peals

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’.

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coup de chance Coup de Chance

Coup de Chance

Infidelity is followed by murder in glamorous Paris in Woody Allen’s smooth-as-silk 50th film ‘Coup de Chance,’ shot entirely in French.

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El paraiso, Margarita Rosa de Francisco, Edoardo Pesce

CineVerdict: El Paraíso

Una absorbente historia de codependencia edípica ambientada entre los traficantes de droga de Roma, “El Paraíso” cuenta con brillantes actuaciones que superan el sentimentalismo.

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El paraíso, margarita rosa de francisco, Enrico Maria Artale

El Paraiso

An engrossing tale of Oedipal codependence set among Rome’s drug dealers, ‘El Paraiso’ boasts brilliant acting that overcomes sentimentality.

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Evil Does Not Evil Does Not Exist

Evil Does Not Exist

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’.

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Metaverse 2 MILC Metaverse Finds its Home with the Oldenburg Film Festival

MILC Metaverse Finds its Home with the Oldenburg Film Festival

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 history, attend panel discussions and discover a curated collection of films from...
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George Mackay, Léa Seydoux

The Beast

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.

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Still from Arni

Arni

Hungarian director Dorka Vermes’ feature debut ‘Arni’ is a slow-burn slice-of-life drama with an exceptional lead performance from newcomer Peter Turi.

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The Palace Roman Polanski

The Palace

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.

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Jean Prewitt Headshot Jan 2022 IFTA & AFM STEADFAST LEADERSHIP AND VISION

IFTA & AFM STEADFAST LEADERSHIP AND VISION

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 technology companies. She also served as a senior government official with the U.S. Department...
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Pierfrancesco Favino

Adagio

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.

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hoard1 Hoard

Hoard

Director Luna Carmoon’s richly imaginative debut ‘Hoard’ finds filth and poetry in a young woman’s traumatic journey from childhood to womanhood.

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God is a woman

CineVerdict: Dios es una mujer

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.

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Joe Keery, Rebecca Antonaci, Willem Dafoe

Finally Dawn

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.

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1 v2 CropWidthWyIxMjAwIl0 Oldenburg Film Festival Announces Line Up

Oldenburg Film Festival Announces Line Up

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 Meyer Behind the Haystacks GRE Director: Asimina Proedru Cast: Stathis Stamoulakatos, Lena Ouzounidou, Evgenia Lavda...
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Stolen

Stolen

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.

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An Endless Sunday Una sterminata domenica

An Endless Sunday

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.

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In Besson Dogman, Caleb Landry Jones Dogman

Dogman

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.

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Upon open sky

Upon Open Sky

‘Upon Open Sky’, a Mexican road movie full of restraint and some surprises, premieres in Venice’s Orizzonti section.

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God is a woman, Laida Diaz de Prestan

God is a Woman

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.

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Taliban

Hollywoodgate

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.

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Comandante Pierfrancesco Favino

Comandante

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.

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Gaia Furrer Gaia Furrer

Gaia Furrer

TFV talks to the Artistic Director of the Giornate degli Autori, as the Venice sidebar celebrates its 20th edition.

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Roberto Cicutto President Biennale Venezia

3 Questions for Roberto Cicutto

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 of political, social and environmental criticalities.”  How have you...
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Chuck Chuck2 Chuck Chuck Baby

Chuck Chuck Baby

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.

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EFP Girls2 Holding The Euro Umbrella at TIFF

Holding The Euro Umbrella at TIFF

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 re-invented this idea and organized a...
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Peter Cowie

Venice Memories

Publisher and film historian Peter Cowie brings insight and humor to his compact history of the Mostra del Cinema.

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Jaime Vadell en El conde de Pablo Larraín Augusto Pinochet

CineVerdict: El conde

‘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.

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Fairy Garden main Fairy Garden

Fairy Garden

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.

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Still from What's to Be Done (2023)

What’s to be Done?

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.

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1681725872338 Europa

Europa

Sudabeh Mortezai’s caustic, unique take on a shadowy corporation expanding into Albania is part neo-colonial satire, part dystopian thriller.

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Still from Bottlemen (2023)

Bottlemen

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.

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517939a8 3097 4e1b bba4 2b78263a708d Silence of Reason

Silence of Reason

Kumjana Novakova masterfully contextualises archival testimony in her sensitive, formally inventive reckoning with violence against women as a weapon of the Bosnian War.

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Medium (2023), Sarajevo International Film Festival

Medium

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

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Still from Lost Children (2023), Sarajevo International Film Festival,

Lost Children

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,

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Sarajevo International Film Festival, Permanent Picture

The Permanent Picture

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,

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Still from Self-Portrait Along the Borderline (2023), Sarajevo International Film Festival

Self-Portrait Along the Borderline

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

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Libertade, Sarajevo International Film Festival

Libertate

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

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Still from Valerija (2023), Sarajevo International Film Festival

Valerija

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

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De facto, Sarajevo International Film Festival

De Facto

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

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Still from Matalos a todos (2023)

Kill ‘Em All

A tentative friendship blossoms through video correspondence in ‘Kill ‘Em All’, a deftly observed docudrama filled with youthful uncertainty and poignant loneliness.

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Lost Country Lost Country

Lost Country

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.

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EXCURSION Excursion

Excursion

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.

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kiss future1 Kiss The Future

Kiss The Future

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.

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Critical Zone Critical Zone

Critical Zone

In another angry bulletin from Iran in revolt, Ali Ahmadzadeh’s ‘Critical Zone’ hits censorship out of the ballpark.

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David Krumholtz

Lousy Carter

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.

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szabo2 Kudos to István Szabó

Kudos to István Szabó

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.

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Still from Dammi (2023) featuring Riz Ahmed and Yousfi Henine

Dammi

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.

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Still image from Baan

Baan

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.

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Still from iNTELLIGENCE (2023)

iNTELLIGENCE

A man learns of his own imminent death in iNTELLIGENCE, a strikingly graphic meditation on a curtailed life and the allure of immortality.

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Still from Patagonia

Patagonia

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.

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Film still from Touched

Touched

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.

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Stepne

Stepne

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.

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All the fires, Locarno LGBTQ+, cine mexicano

All the Fires

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.

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Essential Truths of the Lake Essential Truths of the Lake

Essential Truths of the Lake

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.

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Image from Night Shift of a security guard played by Kayije Kagame in a nondescript hallway.

Night Shift

The beguiling Night Shift follows two individuals as they meander around venerated institutions after dark, crafting an entrancing portrait of liminal existences.

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The Beautiful Summer still

The Beautiful Summer

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.

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Ido Tako

The Vanishing Soldier

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.

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manga2 Manga D'Terra

Manga D’Terra

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.

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Still from Animal by Sofia Exarchou

Animal

Dimitra Vlagopoulou shines in ‘Animal’, Sofia Exarchou’s sometimes sexy, sometimes poignant second feature film.

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Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin, Sébastien Chassagne, Raphaël Quenard

Yannick

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.

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conann2 Conann

Conann

Director Bertrand Mandico’s lurid saga of gender-queer decadence and visceral violence ‘Conann’ is a ravishing sensory feast for viewers with strong stomachs.

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crystal globe 2023 57th Karlovy Vary Awards

57th Karlovy Vary Awards

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’.

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facing darkness Facing Darkness

Facing Darkness

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.

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keeping mum Keeping Mum

Keeping Mum

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.

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imago Imago

Imago

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.

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Citizen Saint1 Citizen Saint

Citizen Saint

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’.

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Still from Red Rooms (2023)

Red Rooms

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.

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brujeria1 CineVerdict: Brujería

CineVerdict: Brujería

La brutalidad colonial de enfrenta a la resistencia indígena en la historia sobrenatural con hechizos y brujería en esta película chilena situada en Chiloé.

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Still from The Hypnosis (2023)

The Hypnosis

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.

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Restore Point2 Restore Point

Restore Point

Death is not the end in Czech director Robert Hloz’s stylish and ambitious future-noir Euro-thriller debut ‘Restore Point’.

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Still from Empty Nets (2023)

Empty Nets

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.

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sconosciuti puri 2023 Pure Unknown

Pure Unknown

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.

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Still from In Camera (2023)

In Camera

Naqqash Khalid delivers a blistering feature debut with this fragmentary portrait of an actor that delves into questions of performance and identity, In Camera.

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Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife still 2 Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife

Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife

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.

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0 9 We Have Never Been Modern

We Have Never Been Modern

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.

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Shayda Noora Niasari's Shayda, starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi, to close Locarno76

Noora Niasari’s Shayda, starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi, to close Locarno76

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. Actress Cate Blanchett, who is Executive Producer will also join the director and...
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Still from The Lost Children (2023)

The Lost Children

The reverie of an adult-free summer quickly becomes a monstrous nightmare in Michèle Jacob’s disconcerting portrait of childhood trauma, The Lost Children.

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mother of all lies The Mother of All Lies

The Mother of All Lies

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’.

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sorcery Sorcery

Sorcery

A 13-year-old girl on a Chilean island reckons with colonial brutality in an ominous, supernatural tale of historical oppression and indigenous resistance.

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PATRICIO PLAZA DIRECTOR 1 Patricio Plaza

Patricio Plaza

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, participating in seven feature films and numerous series and advertising projects. His personal...
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MarcosAlmadaRivero foto Marcos Almada

Marcos Almada

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 Carlos Azcuaga, he has directed and written several short films such as...
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Diego Huacuja Diego Huacuja T

Diego Huacuja T

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 reach new personal and professional levels within the industry, leading to local...
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Aria Covamonas, I can`t go on like this, cortos animados, cortos mexicanos

Aria Covamonas

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 influenced by the photomontages of Hannah Höch and the oeuvre of mistress...
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Miguel anaya borja400 Miguel Anaya Borja

Miguel Anaya Borja

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 Iberoamericana, graphic design at the UAM and workshops for children and adults in several states in the country. His first...
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Amanda Woolrich Amanda Woolrich

Amanda Woolrich

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 creators with her animated experimental shorts “Here...
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amanda woolrich 1 Amanda Woolrich

Amanda Woolrich

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 cortometrajes de animación experimental. Además de exhibirse en Annecy,...
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Aria Covamonas, I can`t go on like this, cortos animados, cortos mexicanos

Aria Covamonas

Aria Covamonas, artista mexicana de la animaciòn, sus cortos animados participaron en el Festival de Annecy 2023

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Marcos Almada, Dr. Gecko, Festival de Annecy 2023, cortos animados

Marcos Almada

Marcos Almada en un ilustrador, autor de libros infantiles y cortos animados. Participò en el Festival de Annecy 2023

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HOUNDS photo Hounds

Hounds

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.

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The Old Oak 1 smallest The Old Oak

The Old Oak

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.

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SALEM photo Salem

Salem

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.

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BREAD AND ROSES photo Bread and Roses

Bread and Roses

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.

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Perfect Days Perfect Days

Perfect Days

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.

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Pot v small The Pot au Feu

The Pot au Feu

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.

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B Levante Levante

Levante

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.

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levante Power Alley

Power Alley

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.

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PICTURES OF GHOSTS photo Pictures of Ghosts

Pictures of Ghosts

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.

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Rapito small Kidnapped

Kidnapped

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.

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Cerrar los ojos 1 MB CineVerdict: Cerrar los ojos

CineVerdict: Cerrar los ojos

“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.

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asteroid1 Asteroid City

Asteroid City

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’.

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CLose your Eyes small Close Your Eyes

Close Your Eyes

A passionate, big-issue film from revered Spanish maestro Victor Erice, ‘Close Your Eyes” engagingly reflects on art, memory, identity and recapturing time past.

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Buriti 2 c Karo Films Entre Films The Buriti Flower

The Buriti Flower

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.

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club zero3 Club Zero

Club Zero

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.

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Man in Black 1 c Wil Productions Gladys Glover Louverrture Films Wang Bing 1 Man in Black

Man in Black

Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s second entry at Cannes 2023 is an intensely physical portrait of the life and tribulations of Chinese composer Wang Xilin.

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THE OTHER LAURENS photo The Other Laurens

The Other Laurens

In his feature-length debut, Claude Schmitz aims to simultaneously pay homage to, and blow up, film noir tropes, and while that’s not exactly the result, his film is a handsome, largely enjoyable play on the genre that becomes a bit too shaggy by the end.

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solutions1 The Book of Solutions

The Book of Solutions

Back after a long hiatus with his most personal film to date, French writer-director Michel Gondry’s ‘The Book of Solutions’ is a scrappy, self-indulgent but entertaining love letter to asshole artists.

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Hibernate 3 If Only I Could Hibernate

If Only I Could Hibernate

Japan-educated Mongolian filmmaker Zoljargal Purevdash’s first feature provides a sensitive yet sobering account of a teenager’s struggle for his family’s survival, even if it means sacrificing his own future.

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Firebrand Firebrand

Firebrand

Alicia Vikander steps into the robes of Henry VIII’s last queen in a drama more concerned with turning Katherine Parr into feminist icon than is historically believable, yet bold visuals and a fine cast raise the appeal of Brazilian auteur Karim Aïnouz’s first time in Cannes competition.

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may december 1 May December

May December

The combined talents of Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and veteran indie auteur Todd Haynes are largely wasted on humdrum Cannes competition contender ‘May December’.

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flower moon3 Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon

Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro compete to out-grimace each other in Martin Scorsese’s latest monumental but lumbering period true-crime thriller ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’.

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BANEL E ADAMA photo Banel & Adama

Banel & Adama

French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s strikingly shot, solid debut set in the Senegalese Sahel features a compelling central figure whose monomaniacal love for her husband sets nature itself against their village.

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4b3cd486e1c576f9deea83db0ccc416c The Rapture

The Rapture

In this promising feature debut, French writer-director Iris Kaltenbäck has turned what sounds like a high-concept pitch for a Hollywood comedy — a girl tries to pass off her best friend’s baby as her own — into a thought-provoking, emotionally involving look at both motherhood and womanhood. Carried by two excellent leads, The Rapture (Le...
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zone1 1 The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest

‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘Under The Skin’ director Jonathan Glazer makes his Cannes debut with his coldly compelling, boldly experimental Holocaust drama ‘The Zone of Interest’.

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LES FILLES DOLFA photo Four Daughters

Four Daughters

An enthralling “fictional documentary” by Kaouther Ben Hania exploring the psychological states of a strong-headed Tunisian mother and her four daughters, two of whom joined Islamic State, through staged recreations and interactions with actors playing their roles.

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ABOUT DRY GRASS photo About Dry Grasses

About Dry Grasses

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s melancholy, dialogue-heavy rumination on personal responsibility, politics and the weight of provincial isolation is intellectually rigorous and always engrossing but largely lacks the well-earned emotional gifts of his more recent masterworks.

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A Prince c Andolfi A Prince

A Prince

French farmer-filmmaker Pierre Creton combines his professional horticultural knowledge and his idiosyncratic cinematic language to produce an enigmatic, enthralling and intensely erotic film about a young gardener’s rite of professional and sexual passage in rural Normandy.

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BLACK FLIES photo Black Flies

Black Flies

A punishing, loud plunge into the brutality of EMT work in Brooklyn’s grittiest hoods that banks on Sean Penn’s stardom but is tone-deaf to its problematic treatment of immigrant communities and women.

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Los delincuentes 3 CineVerdict: Los delincuentes

CineVerdict: Los delincuentes

Una deliciosa ensoñación sobre cómo escapar de la adormecedora esclavitud diaria del capitalismo y encontrar el verdadero significado de la libertad. Los delincuentes es increíble hechizo de tres horas que seguramente será captado por múltiples territorios.

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A scene of The delinquents

The Delinquents

A delicious reverie on escaping capitalism’s numbing daily drudge and finding the true meaning of freedom, “The Delinquents” is a rare three-hour charmer sure to be scooped up in multiple territories.

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Youth Youth (Spring)

Youth (Spring)

Wang Bing’s intimate portrait of the Chinese youth who sew the world’s clothing for a pittance, ‘Youth (Spring)’ speaks truth to the global economy.

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OnTheEdge 05 ©PenelopeChauvelot On the Edge

On the Edge

Nicolas Peduzzi’s doc following a devoted Paris psychiatrist on hospital rounds is as warmly human as it is indignant at the capitalist gutting of public services.

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SIMPLE COMME SYLVAIN CREDIT FRED GERVAIS The Nature of Love

The Nature of Love

Ever since humans were able to grunt to communicate affection for another person, the world’s greatest minds have grappled with understanding and defining the elusive, unpredictable, and disorienting feeling of desire. If history’s deepest thinkers haven’t been able to sort out the riddle of affection, what chance do the rest of us have? Monia Chokri’s...
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Monster 1 Monster

Monster

A gripping drama — almost a mystery — about ordinary people, ‘Monster’ from Japanese master Kore-eda Hirokazu connects to viewers.

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anselm still Anselm

Anselm

Wim Wenders’ new film is a visually arresting study of Anselm Kiefer, evoking the artist’s preoccupations with history and mythology to craft a suitably elegant portrait.

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TIGER STRIPES Tiger Stripes

Tiger Stripes

Malaysian writer-director Amanda Nell Eu’s groundbreaking Cannes premiere ‘Tiger Stripes’ is an offbeat body-horror monster movie with sharp feminist claws.

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goldman case img The Goldman Case

The Goldman Case

This riveting courtroom drama distils Pierre Goldman’s complex life into one of its defining moments while crafting a ranging reflection on past and present injustice.

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occupied Occupied City

Occupied City

’12 Years a Slave’ director Steve McQueen exhaustively chronicles the Nazi occupation of his adopted hometown Amsterdam in his formally adventurous but lumbering. disjointed documentary ‘Occupied City’.

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ItalianScreens Italian Screens

Italian Screens

By Caren Davidkhanian Led by Roberto Stabile, Italian Screens was launched jointly by Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Cinecittà for the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Ministry of Culture, and the Academy of Italian Cinema and David di Donatello Awards, the Italian premier film awards that showcase the best of Italy’s film...
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ic there is a stone main There Is A Stone

There Is A Stone

Tatsunari Ota’s second feature, the winner of Jeonju IFF’s international competition, teases ravishing visuals and taut emotions out of two strangers’ uneventful walkabout in a small town in Japan.

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This is the President still c M Project This Is the President

This Is the President

Lee Chang-jae’s documentary about former South Korean president Moon Jae-in mixes footage of his current incarnation as a gardening retiree with glowing testimonials from his aides, but lacks context for non-domestic audiences.

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kc From You 02 From You

From You

Shin Dong-min’s monochrome and monotonous three-part drama about a young fashion designer, a rookie actor and a filmmaker came tops at Jeonju International Film Festival’s Korean competition.

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jcp Breath 04 Breath

Breath

Korean filmmaker Jéro Yun reflects on death and its visceral (dis)contents by tracking the demanding routines and discerning perspectives of an undertaker and a trauma cleaner.

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padilla The Padilla Affair

The Padilla Affair

Pavel Giroud’s award-winning documentary unearths footage hidden for fifty years in a searing, definitive chronicle of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla’s political suicide.

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cf Where Would You Like to Go 02 Where Would You Like To Go?

Where Would You Like To Go?

Kim Hee-jung’s modestly scaled but emotionally potent South Korean-Polish co-production assesses the emotional fallout from a high-school drowning accident, with nods aplenty to late Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski.

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il sol A Brighter Tomorrow

A Brighter Tomorrow

Nanni Moretti returns to his forte, sardonic Italian socio-political commentary, in the meandering collage film ‘A Brighter Tomorrow’ (‘Il Sol dell’avvenire’).

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sensitive content img Sensitive Content

Sensitive Content

Upending the online practice of blurring sensitive content, Narges Kalhor’s short documentary celebrates those bravely sharing uncensored images of Iran’s recent protests.

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filming img Filming

Filming

The sumptuously photographed documentary depicts the realities of a location film shoot while ruminating on filmmaking with the help of Robert Bresson.

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incident img Incident

Incident

Bill Morrison’s latest found footage film uses multiple perspectives to dissect and interrogate the lethal shooting of Harith Augustus in 2018.

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ardent other img Ardent Other

Ardent Other

Alice Brygo’s arresting film is an experiential recreation of the crowds massing around the burning Notre-Dame in 2019 and myriad responses to the catastrophic events.

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NIGHT FALLS Stills 09 Night Falls

Night Falls

Young miner-turned-filmmaker Jian Haodong delivers an authentic glimpse of life in China’s rural hinterlands in a semi-autobiographical road movie about a man’s lonely return to his village during the pandemic.

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Tomorrow is a long time Still01 Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Taiwanese arthouse A-lister Leon Dai and new actor Edward Tan front Singaporean filmmaker Jow Zhi Wei’s visually enchanting, structurally disciplined first feature.

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Kissing the Ground You Walked On still 7 Kissing the Ground You Walked On

Kissing the Ground You Walked On

Inspired by the sentiments of Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’ and mirroring the aesthetics of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’, Macau filmmaker Hong Heng-fai’s first feature offers sensual and sultry drama about love, art and human existence.

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RASHID BAHATI Insight Into FESPACO

Insight Into FESPACO

As a lover of African and African Diaspora film, attending the Fespaco film and television festival in Burkina Faso for the seventh time since 2005 was an inspiring experience. As one of Africa's largest and oldest film and television festivals and markets, Fespaco significantly impacts the local economy of Ouagadougou, the capital and most populated...
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AFCI Logo black orange 1 AFCI Week

AFCI Week

Film commissioners from around the world gathered in Hollywood March 27-30 for AFCI Week 2023 – the premier global conference for film commission professionals. Held at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, the conference brought together more than 125 film commissioners who spent the week sharing best practices, meeting with colleagues and forging new...
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limbo1 e1677169629895 Limbo

Limbo

Ruggedly beautiful landscapes and elegant monochrome visuals help make up for a thin plot in Australian director Ivan Sen’s politically charged neo-western crime thriller ‘Limbo’.

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LEON photo green Leon

Leon

Thierry Mugler’s steadfast love for his partner, the Polish performance artist Krzysztof Leon Dziemaszkiewicz, lies at the heart of “Leon,” a sympathetic look at what it’s like for a deeply insecure exhibitionist to live in the shadow of the world-famous man he adores.

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THE LAST SEAGULL 1 The Last Seagull

The Last Seagull

Noted Bulgarian director Tonislav Hristov turns his camera on an aging beachside charmer whose years as a gigolo for women tourists are nearing their end just as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine make him rethink his future.

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MIGHTY AFRIN 10 Mighty Afrin: in the Time of Floods

Mighty Afrin: in the Time of Floods

The border between documentary and fiction is troublingly blurred in this exquisitely composed immersive story of a young girl living in the flooded plains of the Brahmaputra River who goes to Dhaka in search of her father.

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end night Till the End of the Night

Till the End of the Night

Love is only slightly warmer than death in German director Christoph Hochhäusler’s genre-blending, gender-bending, hit-and-miss crime thriller ‘Till the End of the Night’.

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under the sky of d Under the Sky of Damascus

Under the Sky of Damascus

A superficial, ethically problematic documentary about gender-based violence in Syria whose “topic-of-the-moment” theme can’t paper over glaring flaws in structure, scope, and treatment of its subjects.

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BLUE BAG LIFE 1 Blue Bag Life

Blue Bag Life

A riveting cine-memoir that breaks through all the pitfalls of film-as-therapy, accompanying artist Lisa Selby as she tries to come to terms with her largely absent heroin-addicted mother as well as her own struggles with addiction, that of her partner, and her fears of continuing the cycle of maternal dysfunction.

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Navalny2 1 Navalny

Navalny

Director Daniel Roher’s gripping documentary about the poison plot against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny gains extra urgency in the light of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

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allquietonthewesternfront hero All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

Edward Berger’s deeply disturbing anti-war film is an unforgettable adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s literary classic, affording a visceral sense of life and death in the trenches of WWI. It won 4 Oscars, including Best International Feature.

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daughter and son still Daughter and Son

Daughter and Son

Sachiko and Ming share an apartment and predilection for role-play in Cheng Yu’s enigmatic and intriguing exploration of one relationship through the prism of many.

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les chenilles still Les Chenilles

Les Chenilles

Two Levantine immigrants working in a Lyon café bond in this meditation on friendship and the long fingers of history which claimed the Berlinale Shorts top prize.

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pinocchio2 Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Mexican visionary Guillermo Del Toro’s first animated feature is a visually ravishing but dramatically wooden update of much-filmed Italian fairy tale ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’.

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ber bears 73rd Berlinale Awards

73rd Berlinale Awards

Kristen Stewart’s jury awarded the Golden Bear to the French documentary ‘On the Adamant’, about a floating psychiatric hospital on the Seine.

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On the Adamant c TS Production Longride On the Adamant

On the Adamant

French documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s latest feature, competing in Berlin, gives voice to the patients in a psychiatric day care centre floating on the Seine.

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THE WALLS OF BERGAMO photo The Walls of Bergamo

The Walls of Bergamo

An outstanding, deeply moving documentary that finally addresses the pandemic not simply as a record of a tragedy but a collective trauma needing to be processed as a community.

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LOVE TO LOVE YOU photo estate of Donna Summer Sudano Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

From early days in Boston to the height of her stardom and sudden crash, this affectionate documentary made with major family involvement doesn’t probe deep enough or contextualize her career, but it reminds us that Donna Summer was a terrific performer whose talents were minimized by the moniker “Queen of Disco.”

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the beads still The Beads

The Beads

Two young women travel to a remote cottage so one of them can administer a chemical abortion in this languorous vignette of rebirth and sororal care.

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easternfront1 Eastern Front

Eastern Front

Mostly filmed in the Ukraine war zone by brave battlefield paramedics, ‘Eastern Front’ is a raw and immersive reportage documentary that feels like an urgent first draft of history.

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Art College 1994 c Nezha Bros Pictures Company Limited Beijing Modern Sky Culture Development Co. Ltd. Art College 1994

Art College 1994

Painter-filmmaker Liu Jian’s third animated feature (his second in Berlin competition) lacks the bite to capture the painful realities faced by Chinese art school students as their country opened up to the West and capitalist ideals.

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ber suzume film partners Suzume

Suzume

The latest YA fantasy adventure from Japanese anime master Makoto Shinkai is a beautifully written and animated work of the imagination that incorporates elements of ‘Your Name’ and ‘Weathering with You’ and often sails beyond them.

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Living Bad Living Bad

Living Bad

This companion to Bad Living is a repetitive exploration of deceitful mothers and toxic families that offers no new insights.

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c courtesy of the artist and neugerriemschneider Berlin ALLENSWORTH

ALLENSWORTH

James Benning’s latest, bowing in the Berlin Forum, offers a powerful comment on racial politics in the U.S. in a static-shot portrait of the first settlement to be founded and governed by African-Americans.

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Bad Living Image Bad Living

Bad Living

The feel bad movie of Berlinale is a bleak and punishing look at familial decay that’s both manipulative and dishonest.

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dipped in black still Dipped in Black

Dipped in Black

This deeply personal documentary follows an Australian Aboriginal man as he escapes the chokehold of the big city to reconnect with Country.

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ber bees 2 CineVerdict: 20.000 especies de abejas

CineVerdict: 20.000 especies de abejas

La historia de sobre un niño de 8 años que siente una creciente desesperación de ser percibido como masculino es extraordinaria por su sensibilidad y percepción. Será un parámetro en la discusión fílmica sobre género, sexualidad e identidad.

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ROTER HIMMEL photo Afire

Afire

Christian Petzold is in top form with this intimate summer drama that quietly builds to an unexpected, heart-wrenching finale.

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a kind of testament still A Kind of Testament

A Kind of Testament

This strange and engrossing short blends a surreal and slippery story about a bizarre online relationship with Stephen Vuillemin’s glorious animation.

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In Water Jeonwonsa Film Co. In Water

In Water

South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo teases all the humour and melancholy out of his young cast in a comedy of awkward manners, bowing in the Berlin sidebar Encounters.

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Sofia Otero in 20,000 species of bees

20,000 Species of Bees

Extraordinary for its sensitivity and perception, Estibollz Urresolo Sologuren’s story of an 8-year-old girl’s growing discomfort with being perceived as a boy is a landmark in the filmic discussion of gender, sexuality and identity.

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202308490 1 RWD 1380 Opponent

Opponent

Payman Maadi gives another outstanding performance in a deeply layered refugee drama that isn’t always the sum of its parts.

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ber claire simon Claire Simon

Claire Simon

A Berlin regular, French documentarian Claire Simon is back in the Forum section with her film ‘Our Body’, chronicling the everyday routines in a gynecological hospital.

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Music Berlinale 2023 still Music

Music

Angela Schanelec returns to Berlin with another weird, challenging film destined to thrive only in ultra-art houses and academic spaces based on its austere approach to narrative enjoyment.

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202312647 1 The Plough

The Plough

French director Philippe Garrel in The Plough is faithful to his intimist style, working with his three children in a classic tale.

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infinity2 Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool

Canadian writer-director Brandon Cronenberg’s darkly satirical sci-fi horror thriller about sun-seeking tourists on a clone-killing crime spree, ‘Infinity Pool’ is a deliriously debauched joyride into Hell.

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IM TOTEN WINKEL photo In the Blind Spot

In the Blind Spot

A bold and chilling political thriller of shifting perspectives in which the weight of state-sanctioned terror begins to crush a security agent in eastern Turkey, where trauma and paranoia rip apart the social fabric.

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Ber Shadowless The Shadowless Tower

The Shadowless Tower

Zhang Lu’s ‘The Shadowless Tower’ is gentle, impressionistic story set in historic old Beijing is a rambling account of complicated family ties and individual loneliness.

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waking up in silence Waking Up in Silence

Waking Up in Silence

This tenderly moving documentary observes a group of Ukrainian children adapting to their new lives, after having been re-homed in former military barracks in Germany.

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ber bigini Antonio Bigini

Antonio Bigini

Bologna-based film curator and director Antonio Bigini is in Berlin with his fiction debut ‘The Properties of Metals’, premiering in the Generation sidebar.

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LettaScreenShot Letta Defines Leadership

Letta Defines Leadership

Giampaolo Letta is arguably the most powerful man in Italy’s film industry. He hails from an influential Italian family. His father, Gianni, is a well-known journalist and politician who was undersecretary of state in four Silvio Berlusconi governments. His cousin, Enrico, was himself prime minister of one of Italy’s short-lived governments. Letta became vice president...
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Totem, Lila Aviles, sick father, children

Totem

In Totem Mexican director Lila Avilés shows sensibility and a strong hand. In Berlin Festival competition

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AL MURHAQOON photo The Burdened

The Burdened

A hard-pressed couple in Yemen’s port city of Aden search for a doctor to perform an abortion in Amr Gamal’s excellent, understated yet hard-hitting portrait of a family and their city in desperation.

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Sisi and I Sisi & I

Sisi & I

Frauke Finsterwalder delivers yet another take on the life of Empress Sisi, but can’t escape the long shadow of the much more spirited ‘Corsage’.

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discoboy1 Disco Boy

Disco Boy

Debutant director Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Berlin competition contender ‘Disco Boy’ is a stylish but silly yarn about disco-dancing soldiers and shamanic eco-warriors.

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ber Malene Choi Malene Choi

Malene Choi

Korean-born Danish filmmaker Malene Choi talks to The Film Verdict about her fiction debut ‘The Quiet Migration’, premiering in the Panorama section.

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Orlando, my political autobiography Paul B. Preciado, LGBT+ activist

Orlando: My Political Biography

In Orlando, My Political Biography director and LGTB+ activist Paul B. Preciado extravagant manifesto pushes the boundaries of feminine-masculine genres as well as cinematographic ones.

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202306461 3 Between Revolutions

Between Revolutions

Vlad Petri’s visually captivating yet structurally slippery found-footage film reflects on the suppression faced by young, idealistic Romanian and Iranian women under self-avowed “revolutionary” regimes.

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Reality Sydney Sweeney Reality

Reality

Sydney Sweeney shines in Tina Satter’s captivating, word-for-word account of Reality Winner’s FBI interrogation

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PAST LIVES photo copyright Jon Pack Past Lives

Past Lives

A remarkably delicate, moving romance destined to be a major indie hit, boasting superb dialogue, terrific performances and an insightful understanding of how the what-ifs of life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives.

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jill uncredited still Jill, Uncredited

Jill, Uncredited

This thoughtful compilation film draws our gaze to something unregistered across decades of British cinema and television – the face of a particular extra, Jill Goldston.

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KILL BOKSOON photo Kill Boksoon

Kill Boksoon

A slick but hollow Netflix actioner about an aging professional assassin balancing work and motherhood, inspired in parts by “Killing Eve” but without the bite.

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Matria 1 1 Matria

Matria

Álvaro Gago´s first feature Matria is the moving and humorous portrait of a hardworking  yet almost powerless woman,  in which the myth of matriarchy in Galicia is debunked.

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manodrome1 Manodrome

Manodrome

Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody co-star in ‘Manodrome’, director Andrew Trengove’s timely thriller about toxic masculinity and incel culture.

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Perpetrator1 Perpetrator

Perpetrator

Cult director Jennifer Reeder’s hallucinatory high-school horror thriller ‘Perpetrator’ puts a queer feminist spin on teen slasher conventions.

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Ber Balckberry 2 BlackBerry

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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The Echo, Tatiana Huezo, documentary, Mexican cinema

The Echo

Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo returns with The Echo to her first cinematographic love in this moving and beautifully photographed documentary about teenagers in a Puebla community.

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last things still Last Things

Last Things

The nature and potential of non-human evolution are explored to disquieting effect in Deborah Stratman’s essayistic blend of science fact and science fiction.

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white plastic3 White Plastic Sky

White Plastic Sky

Prize-winning Hungarian director duo Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó foresee a bleak future for humankind in their visually striking debut feature ‘White Plastic Sky’, an animated eco-disaster movie with a lyrical fairy-tale edge.

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THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS photo The Survival of Kindness

The Survival of Kindness

Rolf de Heer’s stripped-down story of a black woman who escapes from a cage and walks through a landscape heavy with racism and pandemic fear aligns with much of his intensely humane films, yet it feels weighed down by the uncertainty of its ultimate message.

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berl siren The Siren

The Siren

Iranian director Sepideh Farsi opens a revelatory and very chilling window on a city under siege by a foreign power in her powerful, animated coming-of-ager, ‘The Siren’.

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she came She Came to Me

She Came to Me

Opening the Berlin film festival, Rebecca Miller’s quirky New York rom-com ‘She Came to Me’ feels creaky and clumsy in places, but is saved by its fine cast and off-beat charm.

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BER Iron Butterflies Iron Butterflies

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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Playland Film Still 1 Playland

Playland

The ghosts of Playland Cafe, Boston’s oldest gay bar pre-demolition, return in this heartfelt, multi-layered tribute to marginalised history, DIY spirit and queer performance.

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before collapse2 Before the Collapse

Before the Collapse

Prize-winning French novelist Alice Zeniter makes a confident directing debut with ‘Before the Collapse’, a lively mystery drama about bed-hopping bohemians in emotional crisis.

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kill trait 2 Killing a Traitor

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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hanging tree1 Under The Hanging Tree

Under The Hanging Tree

A murder investigation in Namibia is haunted by echoes of colonial genocide in Perivi John Katjavivi’s flawed but intriguing supernatural crime thriller ‘Under The Hanging Tree’

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three sparks Film Still 1 Three Sparks

Three Sparks

A sensitive, intricately layered and hand-crafted portrait of mountain life in northern Albania, women’s labour and ancient laws.

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Four Little Adults Film Still 1 Four Little Adults

Four Little Adults

This entertaining rom-com offers a freshly subversive, anti-bourgeois twist on the genre, as a pastor and politician in Helsinki open up their marriage to non-monogamy.

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human nature still Human Nature

Human Nature

A couple reflect on a failed pregnancy in the midst of the pandemic in Monica Lima’s tactile and delicate drama about the desire to nurture and propagate.

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natura still Natura

Natura

Matti Harju’s debut feature is a hypnotic slow-burning anti-thriller that is more interested in exploring disillusionment and social imbalance than narrative twists or action spectacle.

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copenhagen1 Copenhagen Does Not Exist

Copenhagen Does Not Exist

A young Danish woman mysteriously vanishes in director Martin Skovbjerg’s smart, stylish blend of sensual romantic drama and moody suspense thriller ‘Copenhagen Does Not Exist’.

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sudestada still 2 Southern Storm

Southern Storm

A cynical private detective becomes enthralled by a woman he is been paid to surveil in this unconventional and tender tale based on Juan Saenz Valiente’s graphic novel.

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Gagaland Film Still 1 Gagaland

Gagaland

A street dance craze becomes a way of life for kids live-streaming from the social margins, in this psychedelic celebration of self-expression.

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Helene small new Kudos to Hélène Louvart

Kudos to Hélène Louvart

Established in 2020, the Robby Müller Award honors outstanding lifetime achievements in cinematography. Rotterdam has previously bestowed this prestigious award upon Diego García (Mexico), Kelly Reichardt (USA) and Sayombu Mukdeeprom (Thailand), and is now focusing on France, at least on paper. For while she may hail from the country that birthed the cinematograph, Hélène Louvart...
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LUKA1 Luka

Luka

Director Jessica Woodworth’s monochrome anti-war drama ‘Luka’ is visually stunning but weighed down by its ponderous, pretentious tone.

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La Palisiada Film Still 1 1 La Palisiada

La Palisiada

An oblique, inventive anatomy of an investigation and execution in ‘90s Ukraine, and a legacy of Soviet violence passed down to today’s generation.

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prosinecki still Prosinecki

Prosinecki

An ageing footballer reflects on his career in this layered rumination on the nature of the beautiful game adapted from the filmmaker’s own short story.

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new strains2 New Strains

New Strains

Actor-director duo Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan make inventive use of vintage lo-fi video technology for ‘New Strains’, a slight but hugely charming pandemic rom-com.

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A primeira idade Film Still 1 A Primeira Idade

A Primeira Idade

Banishments cannot stave off knowledge in this visually bold fable about a colony of children insulated from death and memory.

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tito still Tito

Tito

Filmed on a tiny camera smuggled into Haiti’s National Penitentiary, this portrait of an inmate is upsetting, enraging, and deeply moving.

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Drawing Lots Film Still 1 Drawing Lots

Drawing Lots

The black-humoured snapshot of a disorderly Georgian seaside community where love and crime bring scant reward.

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superposition3 Superposition

Superposition

An isolated Danish family encounter spooky doubles of themselves in ‘Superposition’, a twist-heavy psycho-thriller from first-time feature director Karoline Lyngbye.

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Indivision Film Still 1 Birdland

Birdland

Revolution is coming in this intricate, densely layered vision of the burning of a forest and the girl who harnesses the technology of dissent.

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Letzter Abend Film Still 1 c klinkerfilm One Last Evening

One Last Evening

A couple’s farewell dinner in Hanover descends into chaos in this pandemic-era portrait, with a political sting in its tail, of an anxious, divided generation.

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night and fear still Night and Fear

Night and Fear

Sound and images captured during several years of documentary making form the basis for this haunting essayistic meditation on fear and its effects.

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tigru1 Day of the Tiger

Day of the Tiger

A runaway tiger means extra trouble for a strife-torn married couple in Romanian director Andrei Tanase’s engaging but slight feline chase drama ‘Day of the Tiger’.

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store1 1 The Store

The Store

Director Ami-Ro Sköld blends live action with stop-motion animation in ‘The Store’, an impressive social drama which takes place in a Swedish supermarket.

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Munch Film Still 1 1 Munch

Munch

Unexpected formal flourishes can only spice up conventional ideas on tormented genius in this take on the life of Norway’s Expressionist painter Edvard Munch.

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alien0089 still ALiEN0089

ALiEN0089

Valeria Hofmann’s uncanny and unsettling film explores the collisions between a video game and the real world, when a young woman attempts to call out online harassment.

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Screen Shot 2023 01 24 at 19.07.30 When It Melts

When It Melts

For her first stab behind the camera, veteran Belgian actress Veerle Baetens, who’s best known for co-starring in the Oscar-nominated country music tearjerker, The Broken Circle Breakdown, certainly hasn’t taken the easy road. By adapting writer Lize Spit’s 2016 Flemish-language novel, The Melting, she’s chosen an extremely tough topic that requires a sizeable amount of...
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Film still from Animalia

Animalia

In ‘Animalia’, Sofia Alaoui’s gorgeously shot debut feature, ideas of spirituality mix with commentary on class and religion in a package that refuses to easily yield the keys to its own meaning.

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Still from Pianoforte

Pianoforte

Jakub Piatek’s classical music documentary covers the prestigious Chopin Competition, presenting a group of talented kids in a story that starts slow but becomes truly buoyant in its final third.

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Twice Colonized c Anorak Film Twice Colonized

Twice Colonized

Danish documentary filmmaker Lin Alluna’s feature-length debut veers away from the political to reveal the internal conflicts tearing at the Greenland-born, Denmark-educated and Canada-based Inuit civil rights activist Aaju Peter.

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stroll2 The Stroll

The Stroll

A timely and compassionate Sundance documentary premiere, ‘The Stroll’ puts a highly personal spin on New York City’s hidden history of black transgender sex workers

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mamacruz3 CINE VERDICT: Mamacruz

CINE VERDICT: Mamacruz

Kiti Manver interpreta a una abuela religiosa que accidentalmente descubre el porno en Internet, dando lugar a una comedia que empodera a las mujeres mayores al tiempo que ironiza sobre la disminución de fieles católicos en España.

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mamacruz2 Mamacruz

Mamacruz

Kiti Manver plays a religious grandmother who accidentally discovers online porn, igniting a comedy that empowers older women while poking fun at Spain’s dwindling Catholic faithful.

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cinema sabaya 2 Cinema Sabaya

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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Hilma, Lasse Hâllstrom, Lena Olin, swedish painter

Hilma

Hilma, Lasse Hallström’s beautifully crafted biopic brings to life an almost unknown Swedish painter who was an avant gardiste, spiritualist and theosophist.

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darkling 01 Darkling

Darkling

Dusan Milic’s psychological thriller-cum-horror set in post-war Kosovo excels in creating an unsettling atmosphere, but its conclusion doesn’t quite deliver on its promise.

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MEDFEVER PHOTOGRAMME 00285193 Mediterranean Fever

Mediterranean Fever

Palestine’s Oscar submission is an uneven story of a depressed man hoping to get his neighbor to bump him off, told in a vaguely black comedy manner.

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shot in arm2 Shot in the Arm

Shot in the Arm

Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s conventional but compelling documentary ‘Shot in the Arm’ examines the anti-vaccine movement before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

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reyes del mundo Kings of the World

Kings of the World

Colombian writer-director Laura Mora’s prize-winning road movie ‘Kings of the World’ is a messy but big-hearted love letter to the loveless.

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BOY FROM HEAVEN photo 300x200 1 Cairo Conspiracy

Cairo Conspiracy

Sweden’s shortlisted International Oscar hopeful, formerly known as ‘Boy from Heaven’, is a solid though cautious, slow-burn loss-of innocence tale wrapped around the struggle between State versus Religion, designed for Western consumption.

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babylon1 Babylon

Babylon

Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead a starry cast in ‘Babylon’, Damien Chazelle’s huge, ambitious but flawed love letter to Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties.

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Contenders compilation The International Contenders: Our Verdict

The International Contenders: Our Verdict

As a quick perusal of The Film Verdict’s Oscar coverage shows, the Academy Awards are no longer an exclusively or even a mostly American thing. With our reviews, interviews and profiles, we have tried to capture the world-wide excitement of filmmakers and producers competing for Best International Feature Film, with entries coming from the 92...
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ballad begic A Ballad

A Ballad

Bosnian director Aida Begic gives a 21st century feminist remix to a 19th century folk story in her baggy but formally ambitious ‘A Ballad’, the Oscar entry from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Eami2 Eami

Eami

The plight of the indigenous Ayoreo, the last tribe to avoid contact and reclaim its territories in the Paraguayan Chaco Forest, is painstakingly and poetically rendered in this drama premiering at Rotterdam.

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eami flat CINE VERDICT: Eami

CINE VERDICT: Eami

La difícil situación de los indígenas ayoreo, la última tribu en evitar el contacto y reclamar sus territorios en la selva del Chaco paraguayo, se plasma de forma minuciosa y poética en este drama que se estrenó en Rotterdam y es candidata al Oscar Internacional 2023 por Paraguay.

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Elempleadoyelpatron Filmpicture 24821 The Employer and the Employee

The Employer and the Employee

A subtle character study successfully explores guilt, filial duty and labor relations between a young farmhand and his boss, set among the vast soybean plantations along the Uruguay Brazil border.

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el empleado y el patron los dos CINE VERDICT: El empleado y el patrón

CINE VERDICT: El empleado y el patrón

Un sutil estudio de personajes que explora con éxito el sentimiento de culpa, el deber filial, y las relaciones laborales entre un joven peón y su patrón, ambientado en las vastas plantaciones de soja a lo largo de la frontera entre Uruguay y Brasil.

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Alice Diop 1 Profile: Alice Diop

Profile: Alice Diop

French director and documentarian Alice Diop makes a bright debut in fiction filmmaking with her complexly layered, multi-prize-winning ‘Saint Omer’, exploring the dark side of motherhood.

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202206230 6 RWD 775 A Piece of Sky

A Piece of Sky

A beautifully shot, rigidly ice-cold story of love, disease and crushed dreams that will play best with festival crowds and highly selective art houses.

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Holt Spider green net Holy Spider

Holy Spider

Ali Abbasi’s Iranian-set noir, based on a real serial killer of prostitutes, explores the social and religious culture that is often used as an excuse for violence against women.

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Laura mora Profile: Laura Mora

Profile: Laura Mora

Laura Mora became the first Colombian director to win the Golden Shell at San Sebastian for her chaotic, dreamlike epic, ‘The Kings of the World.’ It is now Colombia’s Oscar hopeful.

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Winners1 Winners

Winners

The UK’s official Oscar submission is a sweetly knowing homage to classic cinema, especially the modern masters of Iran.

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The Last Film Show Last Film Show

Last Film Show

Oscars voters have always had a soft spot for movies about movies – and Last Film Show should very much fit their bill as they survey the candidates for the Best International Film Academy Award. India’s submission for the category is a lushly-lensed feature aimed squarely at showcasing the magical allure of film and the...
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seyedi world war iii World War III

World War III

A manual day laborer is selected to play Hitler in a film, but this stroke of “luck” leads to terrible tragedies on the film set in Houman Seyedi’s expertly crafted, realistic/metaphoric tale about authoritarian society.

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Nostalgia Picomedia Nostalgia

Nostalgia

Mario Martone directs an emotional terror tour through Baroque, Camorra-ridden Naples, where actor Pierfrancesco Favino has a rendezvous with destiny.

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DATM UCR 02 EDITED Domingo and the Mist

Domingo and the Mist

In Costa Rica’s Oscar entry, magic realism meets environmental degradation in the austere tale of a widower’s resistance against ruthless developers.

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kalev2 Kalev

Kalev

Estonia’s official Oscar submission ‘Kalev’ finds timely modern echoes in a true sporting saga that took place during the dying days of Russian occupation.

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Blanquita 768x432 1 CINE VERDICT: Blanquita

CINE VERDICT: Blanquita

Un complejo thriller basado en un escándalo verdadero de abusos sexuales que involucra a políticos chilenos, sacerdotes, empresarios y niños desamparados, donde nadie es totalmente inocente o culpable.

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Ajoomma Film Ajoomma

Ajoomma

He Shuming’s feature debut ‘Ajoomma’, Singapore’s Oscar hopeful, is an amusing look at life’s second act with a warm, winning performance by Hong Huifang.

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riverbed 3 Riverbed

Riverbed

Lebanese actress Carole Abboud brings a sense of wistful loneliness to the role of an independent woman estranged from her adult daughter in Bassem Breche’s sketch-like feature debut.

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victim film Victim

Victim

Competing forms of victimhood expose a rotten racist society in Slovak director Michal Blaško’s prize-winning Oscars submission ‘Victim’.

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6 Cairo statuettes Cairo 2022: The Awards

Cairo 2022: The Awards

Firas Khoury’s notable feature debut ‘Alam’ about Palestinian teens living in Israel fought off the competition to win Cairo’s main prize.

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river of desire River of Desire

River of Desire

Jealousy, betrayal and revenge weave through Sergio Machado’s sultry, fatalistic melodrama set in the Amazon, where a woman becomes the object of desire of three passionate brothers.

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The Family The Family

The Family

The toxic privilege of Algeria’s ministerial elite is the target of Merzak Allouache’s fitfully successful mix of class satire and political thriller.

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FAR FROM THE NILE photo2 Far from the Nile

Far from the Nile

Cairo awarded its best documentary prize to this broadly appealing fly-on-the-wall documentary about a group of musicians from countries bordering the Nile who go on a demanding hundred-day-tour of the U.S.

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Uncanny Me

As we stand on the edge of increasing digital frontiers, Katharina Pethke’s thought-provoking film explores the mechanics and implications of creating a virtual doppelganger.

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svetlonoc natalia germani clanokW The Nightsiren

The Nightsiren

A past tragedy haunts the Slovak woodlands in this eerie mystery-horror in which a woman labelled a witch by villagers reclaims her power.

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ALAM photo Alam

Alam

Writer-director Firas Khoury refreshingly normalizes the lives of a group of Palestinian teens in Israel and then adds a political overlay in this notable debut that deserves more attention than accorded in Toronto.

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Light upon light Sayida Zainab Light Upon Light

Light Upon Light

Danish director and anthropologist Christian Suhr’s feature documentary offers a respectful yet compelling peek into the surprisingly diverse communities of Sufi worshippers within the Islamic tradition of Egypt.

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19B Stills 1 19B

19B

Ahmad Abdalla’s latest is a handsomely produced, effective drama about a redundant Cairene house guard, the sole resident of a dilapidated mansion, trying to stave off the encroaching collapse of his world.

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Cairo HOURIA Houria

Houria

Young actress Lyna Khoudri sparkles as an Algerian dance student forced to reorder her priorities after she is physically assaulted in an emotion-clad feminist drama directed by Mounia Meddour (‘Papicha’).

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Still from Merkel

Merkel

The rise and tenure of Germany’s first female leader gets favourable treatment in this politically star-studded documentary by Eva Weber.

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black stone1 Black Stone

Black Stone

Greek-British director Spiros Jacovides transforms an eccentric Athens family’s secrets and lies into warm-hearted comedy in his prize-winning debut feature ‘Black Stone’.

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Still from Free Money

Free Money

Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko examine a newfangled Western method of aid to Africa and return with predictable answers in this largely agreeable fare.

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Still from Paradise

Paradise

In stunning images, Alexander Abaturov’s debut shows global warming heroes in far-flung northeastern Siberia, abandoned by the Russian government.

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Still from Much Ado About Dying

Much Ado About Dying

Simon Chambers’ family-filming-family masterpiece is a tender and often funny chronicle of a dying man who secretes his brilliant charisma every moment the camera finds him awake.

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bastards Bastards

Bastards

A youthful gathering in a sunny Greek villa becomes an orgy of sex, drugs and violence in ‘Bastards’, a flawed but lively debut feature from director Nikos Pastras.

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4wt8lUqM Stuntwomen

Stuntwomen

A fascinating and troubling behind-the-scenes look into the work of female stuntwomen, who must frequently portray victims at the hands of violent men.

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ApoloniaAPOLONIA 2 Apolonia, Apolonia

Apolonia, Apolonia

A multi-layered, intensely personal exploration of what’s at stake in an artistic life, through a sprawling portrait of French painter Apolonia Sokol.

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Behind the haystack

Behind The Haystacks

Writer-director Asimina Proedrou’s grimly compelling debut feature ‘Behind The Haystacks’ is a contemporary Greek tragedy about family conflicts and border tensions.

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how is katia e1668123539484 How is Katia?

How is Katia?

A Ukrainian paramedic wrestles with personal tragedy and public injustice in Christina Tynkevych’s powerful, prize-winning fiction-feature debut ‘How is Katia?’

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iman1 Iman

Iman

A Greek-Cypriot family fall apart against a backdrop of terrorism and racial tension in ‘Iman’, a glossy thriller from writer-director duo Corinna Avraamidou and Kyriacos Tofarides

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The Taste of Apples is Red

Director Ehab Tarabieh’s debut fiction feature ‘The Taste of Apples is Red’ is a brooding slow-burn thriller about long-buried family secrets returning to haunt a close-knit Druze village in the Golan Heights.

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medium 02b8ac41 6da8 414f abca b4c14e2e9028 All You See

All You See

A highly stylised, thought-provoking meditation on being stared at without being truly seen, as female immigrants to the Netherlands reflect on their experiences across generations.

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devils peak Devil's Peak

Devil’s Peak

Simon Liu utilises his familiar febrile aesthetic as a way to explore and represent Hong Kong’s tumultuous recent history, to deeply disquieting effect.

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narcosis1 Narcosis

Narcosis

A grieving family struggle to move beyond tragedy in Martijn de Jong’s poetically filmed debut feature ‘ Narcosis’, the official Dutch submission to the Oscars.

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Aurora’s Sunrise

A powerful, accessible blend of animation and archive that bears witness to the Armenian genocide through the eyes of survivor and Hollywood silent star Aurora Mardiganian.

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cavewoman Cavewoman

Cavewoman

Director Spiros Stathoulopoulos reimagines the ancient Greek drama ‘Electra’ as a World War II revenge thriller in ‘Cavewoman’, a boldly experimental mix of close-up acting and rich sound design.

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retreat1 Retreat

Retreat

A father and son share a tense, creepy mountain holiday in Swiss director Leon Schwitter’s minor-key but atmospheric debut ‘Retreat’.

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Maria Novaro IMCINE, women filmmakers Mexican Cinema

Maria Novaro Speaks to TFV

The head of the Mexican Film Institute on how IMCINE has fostered the growing number of women filmmakers in Mexico and on the launch of TFV’s Spanish language reviews in Cine Verdict.

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Endangered Movie Journalist Tribeca Film Festival 1 CINE VERDICT: Endangered

CINE VERDICT: Endangered

En Endangered las documentalistas Heidi Ewing y Rachel Grady hablan con urgencia pero sin sensacionalismo al reportar los peligros que enfrenta la prensa en lugares sin conflicto armado declarado.

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Endangered, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Brady, documentary, free press

Endangered

In Endangered documentarists Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are urgent but never sensationalistic in reporting on the dangers faced by the press in places where there is no official armed conflict.

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venus 2022 film ester Venus

Venus

Catalonian director and horror specialist Jaume Balaguero’s latest offering is a messy and almost incoherent tale of demonic uprising. 

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venus 2022 film ester CINE VERDICT: Venus

CINE VERDICT: Venus

La más reciente película del director catalán y especialista en horror Jaume Balagueró es una desordenada y casi incoherente historia de surgimiento diabólico.

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Mi casa está en otra parte, indocumentados, documental, inmigración

Home is Somewhere Else

My home is somewhere else, is a bilingual “animentary” uses the voices of Mexican immigrants, both legal and undocumented, to reveal their fears and dreams through imaginative drawings that allow for greater intimacy and understanding.

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Mi casa está en otra parte, indocumentados, documental, inmigración

CINE VERDICT: Mi casa está en otra parte

Mi casa está en otra parte es un documental bilingüe que utiliza las voces de los inmigrantes mexicanos, legales e indocumentados, para revelar sus miedos y sus sueños a través de imaginativos dibujos de animacion que permiten una mayor intimidad y comprensión.

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1b15a642 327e 4aaa bbee 8faa3a57e12f.jpg A Hawk as Big as a Horse

A Hawk as Big as a Horse

An offbeat, multi-layered “documentary fairytale” in which a film crew help a bi-gender ornithologist enact Twin Peaks-inspired fantasies in the woods outside Moscow.

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pawnshop The Pawnshop

The Pawnshop

Polish director Lukasz Kowalski celebrates a different kind of pawn star in his prize-winning docu-comedy debut ‘The Pawnshop’.

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b173b8bd b0fc 4cb6 a94b 193a0d46106a Motorrodillo

Motorrodillo

This observational documentary follows the travails of a female driver who is part a grass-roots public transit system connecting the villages of northern Colombia.

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one mother One Mother

One Mother

French director Mickaël Bandela reassembles his broken family history into a multi-media memory mixtape in his messy but stylish bio-documentary ‘One Mother’.

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subtraction hero Subtraction

Subtraction

Two of Iran’s biggest actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, play double roles in Mani Haghighi’s chilling, fast-paced thriller with allegorical overtones about life in contemporary Iran.

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Sub Terra

Life is seen through the eyes of a mysterious creature living beneath the soil in this curious but at times unsettling underground animation from Jeffrey Zablotny.

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A Life Like Any Other

A searching and honest recalibration of one family’s narrative, as the director reinterprets her father’s obsessive home movies from her mother’s perspective of domestic unfulfillment.

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bc54de30 a821 4061 aca8 898cfc59e6e6 The Mechanics of Fluids

The Mechanics of Fluids

Gala Hernandez Lopez’s essay film addresses the incel phenomena from a position of fascination and empathy, seeking to understand the pain of isolation in a connected world.International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

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dependents1 The Dependents

The Dependents

Canadian diplomat’s daughter Sofia Brockenshire assembles a rich mosaic of memories from her family’s globe-trotting history in her visually impressive essay-film debut ‘The Dependents’.

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homes carry The Homes We Carry

The Homes We Carry

Afro-German documentary director Brenda Akele Jorde’s debut feature ‘The Homes We Carry’ is a touching family saga of love and loss, historic betrayal and mixed cultural identity.

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97eb4f45 a826 426b 92c1 c802f8ce403c Make or Break

Make or Break

This atmospheric animated documentary uses collage and fleeting rotoscoped drawings to convey the brutality and dislocating effect of state care in the GDR.

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On Taphonomy

The life and work of German palaeontologist Johannes Weigelt is itself placed under the microscope in this inventive and unexpectedly charged miniature portrait.

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bunch amateurs1 A Bunch of Amateurs

A Bunch of Amateurs

In her prize-winning documentary ‘A Bunch of Amateurs’, director Kim Hopkins finds hope, humour and heart-warming humanity in an ailing amateur film-making club in northern England.

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1661174317036 1298x0702 0x0x0x0 1661174329180 The Hamlet Syndrome

The Hamlet Syndrome

A few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country began, a group of five young Ukrainian men and women, not all of whom were professional actors, collaboratively developed a theatrical production. They examined their experiences of armed conflict and persecution against the backdrop of the Maidan uprising of 2013 and the onset of war...
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klokkenluider Klokkenluider

Klokkenluider

Featuring a strong ensemble cast including Tom Burke and Jenna Coleman, Neil Maskell’s directing debut ‘Klokkenluider’ is a chilling comedy conspiracy thriller about whistleblowers on the run from mortal danger.

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she said She Said

She Said

Director Maria Schrader’s timely and gripping newsroom drama ‘She Said’ stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the campaigning reporters who helped bring Harvey Weinstein to justice.

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El visitante3 The Visitor

The Visitor

Martin Boulocq’s timely drama exposes a complex web of family, class, and economic codependency in modern Bolivia, where evangelical churches recruit and exploit indigenous communities.

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pretty red dress1 Pretty Red Dress

Pretty Red Dress

In ‘Pretty Red Dress’, the vibrant debut feature from British writer-director Dionne Edwards, a troubled family of black Londoners learn to express their true selves with a little help from Tina Turner and a fabulous frock.

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AynaAyna3 Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Three women struggle for independence in an increasingly conservative society in Belmin Söylemez’s award-winning drama set in an Istanbul acting workshop.

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Black Night Black Night

Black Night

A man’s search for redemption after participating in a group murder neatly exposes a community’s moral rot in Ozcan Alper’s rugged mountain thriller, winner of the best Turkish film award at Antalya.

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rheingold2 Rheingold

Rheingold

German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s Wagnerian hip-hop biopic ‘Rheingold’ tells a lively but familiar raps-to-riches story.

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Origin LFF Out of Darkness

Out of Darkness

A nomadic tribe clashes with mysterious monsters in director Andrew Cumming’s gripping, stylistically bold Stone Age survivalist horror thriller ‘The Origin’.

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Stonewalling Huangji RyujiOtsuka Film Stills 02 Stonewalling

Stonewalling

Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka’s latest is slow but thoughtful and strangely engaging on the subject of a young Chinese woman on the verge of making a potentially life-changing decision.

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maternal 1 Maternal

Maternal

A cocky 14-year-old rebel becomes a mother in Pilar Palomero’s closely observed and vibrant tale, whose mixed pro/non-pro cast is convincingly upbeat.

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Pornomelancolia2 Pornomelancolía

Pornomelancolía

Director Manuel Abramovich’s controversial docu-fiction portrait of Mexican porn star Lalo Santos, ‘Pornomelancolía’ is empathetic and absorbing, despite being disowned by its leading man.

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Marlowe Marlowe

Marlowe

For the 100th film of his career, Liam Neeson switches from action thriller to classic film noir in a flyweight but generally entertaining post scriptum to Raymond Chandler’s immortal detective series, co-starring Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange.

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runner1 Runner

Runner

Writer-director Marian Mathias celebrates small acts of kindness and empathy in her opaque but haunting debut feature ‘Runner’.

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Walk up Walk Up

Walk Up

Emotions are delicately explored over drinks in South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s beguiling and deceptively simple relationship tale.

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WONDER1 The Wonder

The Wonder

Oscar-winning director Sebastien Lelio’s handsome literary mystery thriller ‘The Wonder’ stars Florence Pugh as a kick-ass nurse fighting fake news and dubious miracles in 19th century Ireland.

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the substitute The Substitute

The Substitute

Set in the barrios of Buenos Aires, Diego Lerman’s classroom drama movingly praises a dissatisfied young lit teacher who can’t help but interfere in his students’ lives.

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Il boemo Il Boemo

Il Boemo

The life and loves of 18th century Czech opera composer Josef Myslivecek, and his dazzling Italian career and fall into obscurity, are lovingly and authentically reconstructed in Petr Vaclav’s sumptuous period production.

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thunder1 Thunder

Thunder

Carmen Jaquier’s powerful debut feature ‘Thunder’ chronicles a stormy collision between religious faith and sexual rapture in early 20th century Switzerland.

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sparta Sparta

Sparta

Screening in San Sebastian competition after it was pulled from Toronto, Ulrich Seidl’s most controversial film to date underlines the sleaze and creepiness of pedophilia so forcefully it is painful to watch.

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the great silence The Great Silence

The Great Silence

Katrin Brocks’ feature debut takes full advantage of its exotic setting in a highly dramatized if not always convincing story about a devout young woman who’s about to become a nun when her violent brother turns up at the convent.

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Black Guelph The Black Guelph

The Black Guelph

Actor turned director John Connors makes a powerful statement with his debut dramatic feature ‘The Black Guelph’, a gritty Irish crime thriller about secrets, lies and trauma passed down the generations.

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Aberrance1 Aberrance

Aberrance

Director Baatar Batsukh raises the bar for Mongolian genre cinema with his twist-heavy, visually impressive psycho-horror debut ‘Aberrance’.

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Prison 77 Prison 77

Prison 77

Director Alberto Rodriguez grippingly reconstructs the post-Franco years, using historical riots and prisoners demanding human rights as a microcosm of Spain as it made a screeching transition from fascism to democracy.

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Parsley still Parsley

Parsley

Jose Maria Cabral’s historical drama about the appalling 1937 ‘Parsley massacre’ in the Dominican Republic is a well-mounted but utterly harrowing picture of atrocity.

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junk space2 Junk Space Berlin

Junk Space Berlin

Debutant director Juri Padel’s low-budget cyberpunk thriller ‘Junk Space Berlin’ elevates its scrambled plot and fuzzy intentions with dazzling digital glitch-art visuals.

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Linoleum Linoleum

Linoleum

Director Colin West’s soulful sci-fi comedy drama ‘Linoleum’ balances its sentimental message with sharp jokes, strong performances and deft plot twists.

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father devil2 Our Father, The Devil

Our Father, The Devil

Revenge is not so sweet in ‘Our Father, The Devil,’ director Ellie Foumbi’s gripping, horror-tinged thriller about African immigrants with a shared history of violence.

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gravity The Gravity

The Gravity

Social tensions and strange cosmic disturbances collide in French director Cédric Ido’s imperfect but admirably ambitious genre-blurring thriller ‘The Gravity’.

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Blanquita KeyStill01 Blanquita

Blanquita

A complex thriller based on a true sexual abuse scandal involving Chilean politicians, priests, businessmen and homeless children, where nobody is wholly innocent or guilty.

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Brothers Still Brothers

Brothers

A gory, suspenseful debut from Kazakhstan’s Darkhan Tulegenov offers a moody, pessimistic take on the crime thriller that interrogates class inequality and hypocrisy.

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A Man of Reason

A Man Of Reason

Jung Woo-sung’s accomplished directorial debut is a South Korean actioner brimming with inventive flash that marks him as a filmmaker to watch.

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Kstill28 2 Way Out Ahead Of Us

Way Out Ahead Of Us

A vague, dreamlike lyricism is prioritised over socio-political critique in Rob Rice’s collaboratively-minded doc-fiction portrait of a family facing uncertain futures in the Californian desert.

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Vicenta B 463649696 Vicenta B.

Vicenta B.

Director Carlos Lechuga sends a powerful farewell letter to a country adrift in depression and despair in this heartbreaking chronicle of the post-Cuban revolution.

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No Bears No Bears

No Bears

The world premiere of Jafar Panahi’s simple but militantly engrossing ‘No Bears’, which comes to grips with the thin line between art and reality, took place in Venice competition while the director remained in prison in Tehran after his second arrest on July 11.

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THE LISTENER1 The Listener

The Listener

Steve Buscemi makes a rare return to directing for ‘The Listener’, starring Tessa Thompson, a well-meaning but slender single-person drama about hurting and healing in a post-Covid world.

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Goliath 1.14.1 Goliath

Goliath

Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s reinvention of the western is a cutting political allegory, a taut revenge tale and a visual extravaganza rolled into one.

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71289 BLONDE Actress Ana De Armas Credits Netflix Blonde

Blonde

Pre-release hype will be the biggest friend to this mess of a pseudo-biopic that reduces Marilyn Monroe to a disturbed child-woman with Daddy issues, never offering a glimpse of the screen magic notwithstanding Ana de Armas’ impressive recreation.

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Beyond the Wall Beyond the Wall

Beyond the Wall

A shattering drama that courageously portrays Iran as a violent Big Brother police state, Vahid Jalilvand’s third film is a shrill, breath-taking mind-trip driven by between two exceptional actors, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Diana Habibi.

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SAINT OMER Still 1 Saint Omer

Saint Omer

Alice Diop’s superb fiction debut is a marvel of control and depth, using the trial of a Senegalese woman guilty of killing her infant to honestly explore the complexities of motherhood while foregrounding it all within France’s racist currents.

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vera Vera

Vera

Award-winning documentary team Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel plunge deep into the heart of the adult daughter of spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma in a wonderfully touching film portrait that tips its Stetson at the illusory side of documentaries.

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lord ants Lord of the Ants

Lord of the Ants

Director Gianni Amelio recreates a dismaying but true story from 1960’s Italy, when a brilliant writer who does little to hide his love for young men is persecuted and put on trial by a laughably outmoded justice system.

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Call of God Call of God

Call of God

A young woman’s first love turns out to be a bad dream in the final film of South Korean master Kim Ki-duk, a visually striking if (for Kim) restrained relationship film that was posthumously completed by Estonian producer and director Artur Veeber.

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71317 THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER Actress Tilda Swinton The Eternal Daughter

The Eternal Daughter

Joanna Hogg’s latest exploration of mother-daughter relations sees Tilda Swinton playing both roles in an etiolated ghost story whose artificiality kills its characters despite Swinton’s admirable performances.

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P1340223 When the Waves Are Gone

When the Waves Are Gone

Philippine auteur Lav Diaz offers a damning and doomed critique of the violent state of his country through the on-screen physical and psychological disintegration of a policeman weighed down by the guilt of his officially-sanctioned murderous past in ‘When the Waves Are Gone’.

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love life Love Life

Love Life

A young couple dealing with the tragic loss of a child finds their love for each other challenged in a deeply original drama from Koji Fukada (‘Harmonium’).

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amanda Amanda

Amanda

Writer-director Carolina Cavalli paints a charming picture of a charmless heroine in her confidently quirky debut feature ‘Amanda’.

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in viaggio In Viaggio

In Viaggio

Italy’s premier documaker Gianfranco Rosi turns his attention to Pope Francis and his non-stop foreign travels, stressing the ecumenical core of his messaging as he comments on the world’s horrors.

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The whale The Whale

The Whale

In a career-best performance, Brendan Fraser turns Darren Aronofsky’s apartment-bound drama about an unhappy English teacher crippled by obesity and his daughter’s distance into a classic piece of filmmaking whose emotions are truly immense.

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74092 L IMMENSITA IMMENSITY Actress Pene lope Cruz Credits Angelo Turetta 3 Immensity

Immensity

Penélope Cruz is a joy as a 1970s mother whose free spirit is frozen by her husband’s stereotyped insensitivity, yet other elements of Emanuele Crialese’s film, which is equally focused on the daughter’s certainty she was born the wrong gender, are less transcendent.

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EL AKHIRA LA DERNIERE REINE 3 The Last Queen

The Last Queen

An old-fashioned historical epic on steroids in which a bloodthirsty corsair makes an alliance with the King of Algiers but then determines to conquer the ruler’s headstrong wife.

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NEZOUH photo Nezouh

Nezouh

Touches of magical realism aren’t enough to hold together this well-meaning yet clumsy story of an adolescent girl in war-torn Damascus whose father refuses to accept that changed circumstances make his pose as the family guardian irrelevant.

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master gardener Master Gardener

Master Gardener

A timely occasion to foreground the growing role of American extremists like the Proud Boys is largely manqué in Paul Schrader’s unconvincing story about a marked man trying to redeem himself, starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver.

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71319 ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED Nan Golding Credits Nan Goldin All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Artist Nan Goldin’s activism in holding the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis is seen as a natural extension of her rebellious, freely lived and proudly messy life in Laura Poitras’ well-structured, powerful documentary.

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71291 BONES AND ALL Taylor Russell Timoth e Chalamet Credits Netflix Bones and All

Bones and All

Luca Guadagnino again proves his understanding of the yearning for a fellow soul that defines all feelings of difference in this beautifully played road trip movie which uses cannibalism as metaphor.

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dugo come le tartarughe 2 Like Turtles

Like Turtles

Midlife crisis meets coming-of-ager in this sensitive, elegant first film set in Rome and directed by Italian actress Monica Dugo.

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PADRE PIO 3 Padre Pio

Padre Pio

Abel Ferrara’s total misfire aims to merge the story of a 1920 class-related massacre with the contemporaneous crisis of faith of Italy’s most popular 20th century saint, but the poor script, bad acting and overall lack of cohesion make this just a time-waster.

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2043316.jpg r 1920 1080 f jpg q x xxyxx A Couple

A Couple

A monologue on love, marriage, devotion and utter deception that will play best to fans of either Leo Tolstoy or Frederick Wiseman — perhaps to both.

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banu 2 Banu

Banu

War and patriarchy deprive Azerbaijani women of their sons in an intimate, courageous drama that intertwines personal and political plot lines, directed and acted by first-time director Tahmina Rafaella.

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white noise White Noise

White Noise

Noah Baumbach and an inspired cast headlining Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig enjoyably bring Don DeLillo’s “unfilmable” novel about America in the Eighties to life with retro gusto, while straining to make it relevant.

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DDD 01 Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous

Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous

Paris-based Lebanese filmmaker Wissam Charaf’s second feature takes a delicately droll and deadpan approach in depicting social malaise in Beirut, as seen by a migrant Ethiopian maid and a bomb-surviving Syrian refugee.

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71903 PRINCESS Official still Credits Young Films Indigo Film 1 Princess

Princess

A rare fictionalized look at a Nigerian sex worker in Italy that celebrates its subject, flaws and all, with a spirited central performance and a laudable sensitivity destined to find welcoming arms worldwide.

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LA MARCIA SU ROMA photo The March on Rome

The March on Rome

Mark Cousins’ thought-provoking examination of the rise of Fascism through a detailed analysis of a 1922 propaganda film that signaled the start of a far-right ideology whose insidious roots continue to find fertile ground.

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You Will Not Have My Hate You Will Not Have My Hate

You Will Not Have My Hate

Director Kilian Riedhof’s deluxe weepie ‘You Will Not Have My Hate’ is based on a best-selling memoir about a Parisian family dealing with the aftermath of terrorist violence.

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Sarajevo 2022: The Awards

Croatian director and actor Juraj Lerotic was the big winner at Sarajevo, taking home both the Best Film and Best Actor prizes for his sensitive and devastating feature ‘Safe Place’.

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love dog still Love Dog

Love Dog

This debut feature from Bianca Lucas is an unusual portrait of contemporary America and an incredibly intimate, heart-wrenching depiction of grief.

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eclipse The Eclipse

The Eclipse

The past is a foreign country full of shadowy horrors in ‘The Eclipse’, Serbian director Nataša Urban’s prize-winning documentary about unreliable memory and collective amnesia.

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ribs still Ribs

Ribs

Farah Hasanbegovic uses a beautifully simple hand-drawn animation style to bring to life this meditation on physical limitations and finding acceptance in our own bodies.

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six weeks Six Weeks

Six Weeks

A rebellious teenage mother gives her newborn baby daughter up for adoption in Noemi Veronika Szakonyi’s emotionally raw, elegantly shot drama ‘Six Weeks’.

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riders1 Riders

Riders

Two unlikely Balkan bikers and a Slavic Pixie Dream Girl share an eventful road trip in ‘Riders’, director Dominik Mencej’s slight but sweet semi-homage to ‘Easy Rider’.

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atonal glow still Atonal Glow

Atonal Glow

This portrait of a musical prodigy brims with the same energy as its subject’s piano playing while depicting the boy as well as the talent.

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another spring1 Another Spring

Another Spring

Serbian director Mladen Kovacevic finds echoes of the current Covid pandemic in Europe’s last smallpox outbreak in his artful, atmospheric found-footage documentary ‘Another Spring’.

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1377104 sigurnomjesto 1 370323 crop Safe Place

Safe Place

Raw, authentic emotion and inventive lyricism combine in Juraj Lerotic’s sensitive, devastating reckoning with an acute mental health crisis in the family.

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men deeds Men of Deeds

Men of Deeds

A murder cover-up in a corrupt town is the catalyst for an inept police chief’s crisis of conscience in Paul Negoescu’s downbeat portrait of masculinity in meltdown ‘Men of Deeds’.

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PG ©LocarnoFilmFestival 3 Locarno 2022: The Verdict

Locarno 2022: The Verdict

The 75th edition of the Locarno Film Festival reinforced what’s been apparent for some time: programming a major festival largely composed of world premieres that falls between Cannes and Venice is no easy task. Embracing its cinephilic reputation with more conviction than ever, Locarno continues to search for challenging works in their two main prize-giving...
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Locarno 2022: The Awards

Brazilian director Julia Murat’s bold, brave and important feature ‘Rule 34’ (‘Regra 34’) walked off with the Pardo d’oro for best film at Locarno in a surprise win.

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serviam Serviam - I Will Serve

Serviam – I Will Serve

A twisted sister at an all-girl Catholic school pushes her fanatical faith to dangerous extremes in Ruth Mader’s gripping psycho-horror thriller ‘Serviam – I Will Serve’.

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highsmith Loving Highsmith

Loving Highsmith

Swiss director Eva Vitija gets up close and personal with much-filmed thriller author and queer icon Patricia Highsmith in her well-crafted documentary ‘Loving Highsmith’.

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matadero1 Matadero

Matadero

Director Santiago Fillol revisits the brutal political climate of 1970s Argentina through the lens of cinema in his dry but elegant period thriller ‘Matadero’.

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MATTER OUT OF PLACE 2 CNGF Matter Out of Place

Matter Out of Place

Award-winning documentary director Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest exquisitely composed opus looks at the global garbage crisis, from Maldive palm groves strewn with plastic to festering landfills, encompassing community rubbish collections and recycling plants in a cinema-essay style whose noninterventionist approach caters to audiences already committed to the cause.

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Still from A Woman

A Woman

Past the rather dull international title, Jean Paul Civeyrac’s ‘A Woman’ is a serviceable drama with thriller-esque features and Sophie Marceau in the lead role.

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stella love Stella in Love

Stella in Love

A troubled teenage girl finds love and liberation in the nightclubs of 1980s Paris in director Sylvie Verheyde’s slight but charming autobiographical retro-drama ‘Stella in Love’.

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PETITES STILLS 220629 1.2.2 Little Ones

Little Ones

Debuting director Julie Lerat-Gersant imbues tremendous sympathy for her 16-year-old pregnant protagonist in this unpretentious, heartfelt drama whose overall predictability doesn’t detract from its modest strengths.

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MedusaDeluxe Medusa Deluxe

Medusa Deluxe

Debut director Thomas Hardiman’s off-beat single-shot murder mystery ‘Medusa Deluxe’ is a dazzling catwalk show of spiky comedy, fluid camerawork and fabulous hair.

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Skazka Fairytale 2 Fairytale

Fairytale

Alexander Sokurov indulges his fascination with the corrosiveness of power in this mesmeric, bewildering and often tedious phantasmagoria combining deep fake technology with the graphic arts.

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Still from Tommy Guns

Tommy Guns

Backed by Vasco Viana’s superb cinematography, Carlos Conceição’s film about a squadron of soldiers in pre-independence Angola rises above its narrative gaps.

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Stone Turtle 5©Greenlight Pictures 1 Stone Turtle

Stone Turtle

An intriguing though not always well-integrated attempt to engage with different forms of storytelling, including traditional Malaysian folklore, at the service of a feminist revenge tale.

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lola film Lola

Lola

A pair of eccentric bohemian sisters build a machine that can change the future in Irish director Andrew Legge’s flawed but admirably ambitious lo-fi sci-fi oddity ‘Lola’.

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My Neighbor Adolf 1©2 Team Productions Luis Cano My Neighbor Adolf

My Neighbor Adolf

A misfire of perplexing obliviousness, in which we’re meant to believe that Udo Kier’s character once bore a striking resemblance to Hitler. The best that can be said about this limp comedy is that it could have been far more offensive.

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Ariyippu 2 Declaration

Declaration

Class inequality, corruption and power dynamics between the sexes is the background to this working-class Malayalam drama anchored by the nuanced female lead, played by Divya Prabha, and mesmeric images in a latex glove factory.

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bullet train Bullet Train

Bullet Train

Brad Pitt plays a laconic hit man in director David Leitch’s ‘Bullet Train’, a laborious action comedy about mayhem and murder on an Oriental express.

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a far shore A Far Shore

A Far Shore

Japanese director Masaaki Kudo turns a compassionate eye on a 17-year-old nightclub hostess with a toddler, sent skidding toward prostitution in a heart-felt story set on Okinawa.

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june1 June Zero

June Zero

Director Jake Paltrow’s multi-character drama about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, ‘June Zero’ is a bold but muddled patchwork.

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In Broad Daylight still In Broad Daylight

In Broad Daylight

Ambiguity abounds in Emmanuel Tardif’s elusive Québécois drama about a family’s self-imposed isolation after an unexpected event and the spreading fractures in their fragile status quo.

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Pamfir still Pamfir

Pamfir

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s debut is a propulsive drama employing folkloric elements and mythic overtones in its portrayal of a man trying to navigate a provincial criminal underworld.

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you have to come andseeit You Have to Come and See It

You Have to Come and See It

Spanish director Jonas Trueba reunites his favorite actors for a 64-minute chamber piece, in a relaxed, engaging, free-wheeling exchange of moods and ideas between two 30-something couples.

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Thermal Hotel Karlovy Vary: The Verdict

Karlovy Vary: The Verdict

The masks were off and the parties were on at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 1-9) in a 56th edition brimming with street music, audiences hungry for edgy new movies and civilian crowds gaily mixing with festival-goers in what felt like the first real post-Covid film festival. Of course, it helped that the...
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KVIFF globe Karlovy Vary 2022: The Awards

Karlovy Vary 2022: The Awards

CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION Grand Prix – Crystal Globe SUMMER WITH HOPE Directed by: Sadaf FOROUGHI   Special Jury Prize YOU HAVE TO COME AND SEE IT Directed by: Jonás Trueba   Best Director  Beata PARKANOVA for WORD   Best Actress (jointly awarded) Taki MUMLADZE and Mariam KHUNDADZE for A ROOM OF MY OWN   Best Actor...
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see you friday robinson2 See You Friday, Robinson

See You Friday, Robinson

Two cultural titans, Jean-Luc Godard and Ebrahim Golestan, exchange online messages in director Mitra Farahani’s scrappy but sporadically charming documentary ‘See You Friday, Robinson’.

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zoo lock down Zoo Lock Down

Zoo Lock Down

Andreas Horvath’s observational documentary offers a different, meditative view of animals in captivity, whose uneventful lives without a human audience inevitably recall our own experience with the pandemic.

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brainwashed2 Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Director Nina Menkes attacks cinema’s long history of sexism, including some canonical male directors, in her timely and enjoyably polemical filmed lecture ‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’.

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The Trees still The Trees

The Trees

The nature of loss both personal and planetary become intertwined in Ramzi Bashour’s mordantly comic drama about a man returning home after his father’s death.

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summer with hope Summer with Hope

Summer with Hope

Canadian-based filmmaker Sadaf Foroughi (‘Ava’, 2017) revisits the theme of teenage rebellion in middle-class Iran in a drama full of danger and nervous energy.

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rubikon Rubikon

Rubikon

Austrian director Magdalena Lauritsch’s sci-fi eco-disaster movie ‘Rubikon’ is an admirably ambitious but dramatically flawed debut.

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A Provincial Hospital still A Provincial Hospital

A Provincial Hospital

The Covid ward of a hospital in a town in western Bulgaria is the subject of this clear-eyed observational documentary about the perseverance of both its staff and patients.

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Like a Fish Like a Fish on the Moon

Like a Fish on the Moon

Iranian director Dornaz Hajiha pushes maternal and paternal sentiment to anguishing extremes in an intriguing and intensely acted debut feature, but the ending is missing.

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banger1 Banger

Banger

Drugs, rap music and reckless hunger for fame prove to be a potent cocktail in Czech writer-director Adam Sedlák’s enjoyably cartoonish comedy thriller ‘Banger’.

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Catcave Hysteria still Catcave Hysteria

Catcave Hysteria

The women’s toilet in a nightclub becomes the site of miniature disasters and minor catastrophes in Angelika Abramovitch’s multi-stranded and surprisingly affecting short.

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Fools img Fools

Fools

Tomasz Wasilewski’s oblique new drama is a slowly unwinding puzzle in which a couple’s life is thrown into disarray when one of them brings her ill son to live with them.

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silence1 Silence 6-9

Silence 6-9

Actor-director Christos Passalis draws on his Greek Weird Wave roots for ‘Silence 6-9’. a cryptic but mostly impressive debut feature.

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ramona Ramona

Ramona

A layered, mellow rom-com follows an aspiring, insecure actress torn between two love interests and careers in modern-day Madrid.

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America still America

America

Ofir Raul Graizer’s sophomore feature is a novelistic exploration of duty and companionship that is as vibrant and colourful as it is humane.

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Art Talent Show Art Talent Show

Art Talent Show

A wild documentary ride through the selection process at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where the teaching staff brainstorms to test the hidden talent of young applicants, and future artists do their best to make the undefined grade.

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lynch oz2 Lynch/Oz

Lynch/Oz

Director Alexandre Philippe’s undisciplined but insightful documentary ‘Lynch/Oz’ explores the influence of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ on David Lynch’s surreal cinematic universe.

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Strasbourg 1518 img Strasbourg 1518

Strasbourg 1518

Jonathan Glazer’s lockdown short embraces the urge to dance, re-framing a 16th century madness into an infectious ode to perseverance in the pandemic era.

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Borders of Love still Borders of Love

Borders of Love

A couple decide to broaden their sexual horizons with increasingly complicated results in Tomasz Winski’s knotty and intimate examination of honesty within relationship dynamics.

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room of my own1 A Room of My Own

A Room of My Own

A young Georgian woman struggles to overcome stifling sexism and emotional trauma in director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze’s worthy but muted chamber drama ‘A Room of My Own’.

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The Uncle still The Uncle

The Uncle

A family celebration in 1980s Yugoslavia turns out to be anything but in this unnerving chamber piece that peppers farcical notes into an otherwise stomach-churning thriller.

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Word The Word

The Word

A small-town notary and his unbending wife put honor and honesty first in an uplifting if under-dramatized story from the Czech Republic’s Communist past, directed by Beata Parkanova.

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Pieta still Pietà

Pietà

Baroque stylings and meticulous composition create a hermetically sealed world in Eduardo Casanova’s ornate tale of overbearing matriarchal control.

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you wont be alone You Won't Be Alone

You Won’t Be Alone

 Noomi Rapace is among the moving female cast of Goran Stolevski’s Macedonian folk tale about blood-sucking, shape-shifting witches who offer body horror at its scariest, yet it’s also full of poetry, with a lot to say about women and life on Earth.

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horseplay1 Horseplay

Horseplay

Argentinean director Marco Berger turns his queer eye on the straight guys in ‘Horseplay’, a darkly funny critique of homophobic machismo.

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The Night still The Night

The Night

Tsai Ming-liang is a master of the meditative short and he’s on exemplary form again with this nocturnal moment of rest in a restless Hong Kong.

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vesper Vesper

Vesper

Engrossing and full of credible Euro SFX, the Lithuanian-French sci fi fantasy featuring Raffiella Chapman as a 13-year-old, self-taught scientist looking for a way out of a socially and environmentally sick world, seems targeted at imaginative YA audiences.

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bornholm2 Fucking Bornholm

Fucking Bornholm

Polish director Anna Kazejak chronicles scenes from a collapsing marriage in her darkly comic holiday-from-hell psychodrama ‘Fucking Bornholm’.

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Sideral still Sideral

Sideral

Brazil’s first manned rocket launch provides a catalyst for transformation and a leftfield opportunity for escape in Carlos Segundo’s bittersweet and dryly absurdist short.

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Mutter1 Mother

Mother

German writer-director Carolin Schmitz takes a journey from here to maternity in her fresh but slight docu-drama hybrid ‘Mother’.

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Butterfly Vision Cannes ff Butterfly Vision

Butterfly Vision

Maksym Nakonechnyi’s carefully calibrated drama about a young Ukrainian woman soldier who returns home in a prisoner exchange, tortured and pregnant, projects a more human, less heroic view of the Ukraine-Russia war while it affirms a woman’s right to choice vis-à-vis maternity.

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cosmo2 It's In Us All

It’s In Us All

A random tragedy exposes the dark heart of a rural Irish community in ‘It’s In Us All’, the absorbing debut feature from actor-director Antonia Campbell-Hughes.

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Still from Performer

Performer

An otherwise solid examination of a young man’s masculinity dircted by newcomer Oliver Grüttner isn’t quite sure if it seeks to praise or condemn.

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carajita final Carajita

Carajita

Class and race intersect in a suspenseful drama set in the Dominican Republic, where loyalties get tested when a Black nanny raises the spoilt brat of a wealthy white family.

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Ordinaries2 The Ordinaries

The Ordinaries

A richly satirical sci-fi allegory with an edge of biting social commentary, writer-director Sophie Linnenbaum’s impressive feature debut ‘The Ordinaries’ is anything but ordinary.

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Servus Papa2 So Long Daddy, See You In Hell

So Long Daddy, See You In Hell

Teenage rebels confront the sexually abusive leader of a cult-like commune in German director Christopher Roth’s timely, engrossing, based-on-reality drama ‘So Long Daddy, See You in Hell’.

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Paloma 2 Paloma

Paloma

Actress Kika Sena takes director Marcelo Gomes’s story of a young trans woman to another level as Paloma, a romantic mother and farm worker who dreams of a formal church wedding,

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Woman on the Roof 2 Woman on the Roof

Woman on the Roof

In writer-director Anna Jadowska’s sensitive whydunit, veteran Polish actress and Tribeca winner Dorota Pomykala plunges the viewer into psychological  depths in her deftly nuanced portrait of a 60-year-old who tries to rob a bank with a kitchen knife.

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sirens2 Sirens

Sirens

Director Rita Baghdadi’s engaging, ear-bashing documentary ‘Sirens’ chronicles the emotional and political struggles of Lebanon’s first all-female thrash metal band.

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taking4 The Taking

The Taking

Director Alexandre Philippe’s latest essay-film ‘The Taking’ is a thoughtful, visually ravishing, politically charged rumination on American cinema’s oldest rock stars.

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Zelensky corriere della Sera Cannes 2022: The Verdict

Cannes 2022: The Verdict

Along with the shiny gold button given to badge-holders celebrating Cannes’ 75th glorious anniversary, this year’s festival can justly be hailed as a return to normality after the Covid-19 pandemic canceled it in 2020 and severely truncated it in 2021. Whether it’s the normality we all hoped to see is another question. Yes, masks were...
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Cannes 2022: The Awards

Palme d'Or TRIANGLE OF SADNESS directed by Ruben ÖSTLUNDGrand Prix (jointly awarded) CLOSE directed by Lukas DHONTSTARS AT NOON directed by Claire DENISBest Director PARK Chan-wook for DECISION TO LEAVE Best Screenplay Tarik SALEH for BOY FROM HEAVEN Jury Prize (jointly awarded) EO directed by Jerzy SKOLIMOWSKI THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS (Le otto montagne) directed by Charlotte...
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War Pony Felix Culpa War Pony

War Pony

WINNER OF THE CAMERA D’OR IN CANNES FOR BEST FIRST FILM.  ‘War Pony’, from first-time directing duo Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, deeply immerses the viewer in the roughshod coming-of-age drama of two teenage boys who live on the fringes of the law on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.

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Mariupolis 2 Still 1 Mariupolis 2

Mariupolis 2

Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravi?ius was killed by Russian soldiers after shooting footage for this gritty and unnerving documentary about life in the besieged, bombed-out Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

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8617 99 Moons

99 Moons

Sex and love don’t always make for ideal bedmates, and the strain one places on the other is at the heart of Swiss writer-director Jan Gassmann’s latest feature, 99 Moons. Provocative but also thought-provoking, this story of a couple that meets through a Tinder-like hookup app and falls into a long-term relationship is backed by...
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Harka Harka

Harka

Documentary director Lotfy Nathan’s prize-winning dramatic debut ‘Harka’ is a powerful if slightly heavy-handed take on injustice and protest in the Arab world.

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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION The Natural History of Destruction

The Natural History of Destruction

Sergei Loznitsa’s latest archival cinema essay, inspired by W.G. Sebald’s book and organized within a quasi-symphonic structure, lays out the brutality of fire bombings in World War II and the ways the war machine refused to acknowledge the human costs.

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THE MOUNTAIN The Mountain

The Mountain

Thomas Salvador’s beguiling second feature innovatively combines a realistic first half with fantasy elements in the second without losing its earlier spirit, achieved through unpretentious storytelling, a superb visual eye and excellent special effects.

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f161203cd68cb51c2f1696ce4072abc3 Son of Ramses

Son of Ramses

Clément Cogitore is less known in France as a feature filmmaker than as young and highly coveted visual artist, with shorts like the Siberia-set documentary, Braguino, and the crunk dance battle/opera piece Les Indes galantes — both released in 2017 — sealing his reputation in the museum world much more than on the big screen....
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GODLAND Godland

Godland

Magisterial in the manner of 19th century epic novels and visually influenced by that era’s photography, Hlynur Pálmason’s third feature is a stunning, psychologically rich tale set against Iceland’s awe-inspiring landscapes.

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STARS AT NOON Stars at Noon

Stars at Noon

CANNES GRAND PRIX – JOINTLY AWARDED, REVIEWED MAY 26 Set in Central America, Claire Denis’ second English-language film is more straightforward than most of her works but is unmistakably hers in the way she suspends her complex characters in the sweaty grasp of a tropical setting.

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CLOSE. Credit Kris Dewitte Menuet Close

Close

CANNES GRAND PRIX, JOINTLY AWARDED – REVIEWED MAY 27 Lukas Dhont’s gut-wrenching second feature is a stunning ode to adolescent same-sex friendship and a powerful critique of the ways society normalizes aggression while demonizing physical tenderness.

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triangle1 Triangle of Sadness

Triangle of Sadness

PALME D’OR IN CANNES, REVIEWED MAY 22 Swedish social satirist Ruben Östlund returns to Cannes with ‘Triangle of Sadness’, another sprawling but roaringly funny attack on wealth, beauty and privilege.

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Ice Merchants still Ice Merchants

Ice Merchants

A father and son make daily parachute jumps from their cliffside home to sell ice in João Gonzalez’s gripping and poignant animation.

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mother son Mother and Son

Mother and Son

Prize-winning French writer-director Léonor Serraille plots a multi-decade family saga in her ambitious but uneven second feature ‘Mother and Son’.

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Joyland Joyland

Joyland

Winner of the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard, Sadiq’s delicate first feature explores the destructive force of patriarchy in a Pakistani family and the fallout from a long-unemployed man’s work at an erotic dance theatre.

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Night Light still Night Light

Night Light

A teenager cares for her younger siblings in this delicate portrait of familial love and the desire to hold on to a semblance of childhood.

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Blue Caftan The Blue Caftan

The Blue Caftan

After her award-winning ‘Adam’, writer-director Maryam Touzani affirms her strong storytelling skills in a hugely touching love story set in an old Moroccan medina, where Lubna Azabal battles illness to be with her homosexual husband Saleh Bakri.

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showing up Showing Up

Showing Up

Michelle Williams reunites with feted indie writer-director Kelly Reichardt for ‘Showing Up’, a modest but moving portrait of frustrated artists and dysfunctional families.

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Persona still Persona

Persona

A young woman wrestles with the duality of her private self and her public persona in this brief but highly effective South Korean animation.

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Tsutsue still Tsutsue

Tsutsue

Two boys struggle with the loss of their older brother in this liminal and haunting Ghanian drama from director Amartei Armar.

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Parfum vert The Green Perfume

The Green Perfume

It’s the end of Europe as we know it, but stars Vincent Lacoste and Sandrine Kiberlain feel just fine in this breezy, rather trite French caper flick.

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The Spiral 2 The Spiral

The Spiral

María Silvia Esteve’s new short is a bombastic and overwhelming voyage of colour and sound that conveys the psychological sensation of spiraling hypochondria.

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silent twins The Silent Twins

The Silent Twins

Laetitia Wright and Tamara Lawrence play twisted sisters in director Agnieszka Smoczy?ska’s uneven but beguiling true story ‘The Silent Twins’.

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Liquid Bread still Liquid Bread

Liquid Bread

An offbeat comedy about family dysfunction ultimately becomes a touching examination of how we deal with scars left on us by our histories.

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Broker Broker

Broker

Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s first film lensed in South Korea, about a well-intentioned gang who sell motherless babies, is a minor work with only distant echoes of his 2018 Palm d’Or winner Shoplifters, but still imbued with the filmmaker’s militant humanism.

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Pacifiction Pacifiction

Pacifiction

Spanish director Albert Serra’s slow-burning, suspenseful Tahiti-set tale pitches Benoît Magimel’s quasi-colonial official against nuclear conspiracies.

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elvis3 Elvis

Elvis

Baz Luhrmann restores The King to his throne in his subjective but generous, imaginative and visually opulent rock’n’roll biopic ‘Elvis’.

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BURNING DAYS photo Burning Days

Burning Days

Emin Alper’s best film to date is a searing drama of corruption in a small Turkish town that deftly tackles populism, environmental destruction and, surprisingly, homophobia.

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the pass The Pass

The Pass

Pepi Ginsberg’s riveting drama tackles the combustible nature of repressed sexuality when a spot of wild swimming takes an unexpectedly dangerous turn.

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On Xerxes Throne still On Xerxes' Throne

On Xerxes’ Throne

The outlawing of physical contact creates a cauldron of unexpressed sensuality for the burnished and browbeaten shipyard workers of Evi Kalogiropoulou’s eerie dystopian short.

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Leila 2 Leila's Brothers

Leila’s Brothers

Director Saeed Roustaee (‘Just 6.5’) takes a hard turn into social drama with his epic saga about an Iranian family trying to claw its way out of poverty, beautifully shot, directed and acted.

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THE DAM 4 The Dam

The Dam

Lebanese artist-filmmaker Ali Cherri delivers a visually mesmerising and quietly political first feature, set among Sudanese bricklayers working on the biggest hydroelectrical dam in Africa.

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Will You Look At Me still Will You Look At Me

Will You Look At Me

Shuli Huang’s intensely personal and moving diary film is like a heart-wrenching exploration of – and possibly coda to – his relationship with his mother.

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Under the fig trees ©Henia Production Maneki Films Under the Fig Trees

Under the Fig Trees

A gently appealing choral work from Tunisia with a strong understanding of rhythm and balance that marks a strong first feature for documentary-trained Erige Sehiri.

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moonage1 Moonage Daydream

Moonage Daydream

Director Brett Morgen’s overstuffed hot mess of a documentary ‘Moonage Daydream’ celebrates David Bowie’s legacy as a live performer, spiritual thinker and living work of art.

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un varon A Male

A Male

Gender construction is denounced in a raw, slow-burning exposé of toxic masculinity among Colombia’s street thugs.

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9b01c26ffdb7802ce0b816bbb66268c5 The Pack

The Pack

In this first-time feature from Colombia, a group of convicted juvenile criminals are stranded in a remote country estate, where they undergo a bizarre rehabilitation process while providing free labor for a gang of shady correctional officials. It’s an intriguing set-up for a film that never fully ignites, either in terms of the direction or...
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crimes2 Crimes of the Future

Crimes of the Future

Legendary cult director David Cronenberg’s first film in eight years, ‘Crimes of the Future’ is an ambitious but unconvincing return to familiar body-horror themes.

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Decision to Leave Still 3 Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave

Korean cult director Park Chan-wook takes us on the rollicking ride of a deconstructed murder investigation, complicated by obsessive love and betrayal.

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90f98cf4a48e71a9df9cc42ea953f3a9 More Than Ever

More Than Ever

Death hovers over director Emily Atef’s fifth feature, More Than Ever (Plus Que Jamais), in unsettling ways. First, it fuels this solemn and emotionally gripping story about a woman in a relationship who's diagnosed with a rare lung disease and faced with her imminent demise. Second, and even more upsettingly, the woman’s partner in the...
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Amo still Amo

Amo

Emmanuel Gras’ aesthetically minded short is an abstract vision that blends planetary movement and physical intimacy, playfully meditating on where exactly we come from.

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men garland2 Men

Men

Jessie Buckley and multiple versions of Rory Kinnear co-star in writer-director Alex Garland’s impressively weird feminist folk-horror thriller ‘Men’.

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RMN still1 R.M.N.

R.M.N.

Cristian Mungiu’s excoriation of xenophobia in multiethnic Transylvania is a classic example of the director’s dedication to naturalism and boasts several superb sequences, but it tries a bit too hard to encompass more topics than it can comfortably handle.

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Mi pais Atacama Pro My Imaginary Country

My Imaginary Country

Though nothing like Patrizio Guzmán’s fabled ‘The Battle of Chile’ or ‘Nostalgia for the Light’, this energizing doc is still a master class on Chile’s recent nation-wide uprising for democracy and social justice.

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aftersun1 Aftersun

Aftersun

Writer-director Charlotte Wells combines great performances, poetic visuals and bittersweet personal memories in her dazzling debut feature ‘Aftersun’.

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the stranger The Stranger

The Stranger

Hinging on two compelling performances, this is an absorbing drama that blends the cat-and-mouse tension of a thriller with police procedural to gripping and haunting effect.

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BOY FROM HEAVEN photo Boy From Heaven

Boy From Heaven

A solid though cautious, slow-burn loss-of innocence tale wrapped around the struggle between State versus Religion set (but not shot) in Cairo and designed for Western consumption.

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Enys Men Enys Men

Enys Men

Experimental lo-fi director Mark Jenkin finds a rich seam of pagan folk-horror buried in the rocky terrain of England’s weird wild west in ‘Enys Men’.

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corsage1 Corsage

Corsage

Director Marie Kreutzer and star Vicky Krieps give a famous 19th century Austrian empress a subversive feminist remix in their joyously imaginative Cannes premiere ‘Corsage’.

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Armageddon Armageddon Time

Armageddon Time

An immersive portrait of writer-director James Gray’s family in 1980s Queens, N.Y. is woven around the young protag’s dawning social consciousness.

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EO © Aneta Gebska Filip Gebski EO

EO

Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s mix of beauty and bombast makes a donkey of a promising premise of making audiences observe a chaotic, cruel world through a braying animal’s eyes.

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Father and Soldier Father & Soldier

Father & Soldier

Mathieu Vadepied’s affecting portrait of paternal love hinges on intensely involving performances by Omar Sy and Alassane Diong, as an African father who goes to war to protect his conscript son.

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Harkis still c Pyramide Films Harkis

Harkis

A fiery and timely reflection about a dark episode in French history at the risk of being written out of the books with the normalisation of far-right politics in the country.

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1e5a1ce8d3c0ace951b28058d0f7ea5a96d2c448 Rodeo

Rodeo

Writer-director Lola Quivoron’s debut, Rodeo, belongs to a recent class of French films made by and about young women, with stories that combine the coming-of-age genre — what the French call un film d’initiation — with elements of a Hollywood thriller or horror flick. They tend to be first features and are often highly stylized...
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gods creatures God's Creatures

God’s Creatures

Emily Watson plays a troubled Irish matriarch in ‘God’s Children’ a handsome but heavy-handed family psychodrama from directing duo Seala Davis and Anna Rose Holmer.

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LENVOL. Credit CG Cinema Scarlet

Scarlet

Pietro Marcello’s disappointing follow-up to “Martin Eden” combines uncharacteristically saccharine visuals with a weak narrative and treacly score.

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TCHAIKOVSKYS WIFE. Credit Hype Film Tchaikovsky's Wife

Tchaikovsky’s Wife

A disappointingly anemic take on the great composer’s unfortunate marriage, gloriously shot by Vladislav Opelyants yet hampered by Kirill Serebrennikov’s less than penetrating narrative.

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Still Working1 Still Working 9 to 5

Still Working 9 to 5

Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton look back on their ground-breaking feminist comedy hit ‘9 to 5’ in this timely documentary from directors Camille Hardman and Gary Lane.

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top gun2 Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise returns to his career-making role as a hotshot U.S. Navy pilot in director Joseph Kosinski’s shallow but action-packed sequel ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

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Zero Position 1 Zero Position

Zero Position

Toronto photographer Louie Palu’s unstructured yet immersive trip into the Donbas war zones in 2016 makes a skin-crawling intro to the current invasion of Ukraine.

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A Taste of Whale A Taste of Whale

A Taste of Whale

The age-old Faroe Islands tradition of slaughtering pilot whales for their tasty meat gets pushback from animal rights activists in a documentary that raises more complex questions.

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old school cumming My Old School

My Old School

Scottish director Jono McLeod’s debut documentary ‘My Old School’ is a highly entertaining account of an outlandish fraud and its lingering aftershocks.

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Devils Drivers TDF 1 The Devil's Drivers

The Devil’s Drivers

In a West Bank documentary that begins like a thriller and ends like a drama, Daniel Carsenty and Mohammed Abugeth introduce a new path into a conflict that never leaves the news.

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congress of idling persons still Congress of Idling Persons

Congress of Idling Persons

In this collaborative rumination on the nature and limits of political protest, Bassem Saad weaves together performance, found footage, and on-screen text with playful results.

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fire or love still Fire of Love

Fire of Love

A phenomenal archive of cataclysmic imagery is the main attraction in Sara Dosa’s doc about star-crossed volcanologists, but it’s also imbued with their zeal.

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boilingpoint2 Boiling Point

Boiling Point

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 9, 2021 Stephen Graham gives a raw, red-meat performance as a troubled chef in this sizzling single-shot ensemble drama now on Netflix.

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Cinandobutton2 2 PRESS RELEASE

PRESS RELEASE

CINANDO AND THE FILM VERDICT REVITALIZE THE FILM REVIEW WITH AN EXCLUSIVE DIRECT ACCESS BUTTON TO FILMS ON CINANDO CINANDO and THE FILM VERDICT (TFV) announce an innovative new feature that will make the TFV film review a more valuable tool for film distribution companies and sales organizations across the globe. It will also provide...
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study of a fight still Study of a Fight

Study of a Fight

A simple premise yields increasingly complex results in Marie Suul Brobakke’s dissection of a romantic relationship between two actors rehearsing a scene.

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THESS AWARDS 2 AWARDS CORNER

AWARDS CORNER

Golden Alexander Award - International competition A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS (Denmark-Finland-Sweden-Ukraine) by Simon Lereng Wilmont Special Jury Award - International competition YOUNG PLATO (UK-Ireland-France-Belgium) by Declan McGrath and Neasa Ní Chianáin Golden Alexander Award - Newcomers competition GOLDEN LAND (Finland-Sweden-Norway) by Inka Achté Special Jury Prize - Newcomers competition THE DEVIL’S DRIVERS (Qatar-France-Lebanon-Germany) by Daniel Carsenty...
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Belfast2 Belfast

Belfast

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 13, 2021 Kenneth Branagh won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for this warm, funny, visually sumptuous autobiographical drama.

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Still from The Bride

The Bride

An often poetic and fragmentary course on what it means to be a woman, Tiziano Doria and Samira Guadagnuolo’s The Bride is a demanding project that resists conventional storytelling and yet manages to be engaging.

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the invitation still The Invitation

The Invitation

Fabrizio Maltese’s new documentary is both an artfully captured portrait of Mauritania and a road trip guided by an elusive filmmaker and a watching spirit.

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Still from Golden Land

Golden Land

Following a man from Somaliland who journeys from Finland back to the country of his birth, Inka Achte’s documentary is engaging and often entertaining—with an unexplored darkness lodged within its heart.

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not my mother2 You Are Not My Mother

You Are Not My Mother

Irish writer-director Kate Dolan’s prize-winning debut feature ‘You Are Not My Mother’ is a rich witches’ brew of psychological horror, social realism and creepy Celtic folklore.

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fuck this job1 F@ck This Job

F@ck This Job

Vera Krichevskaya’s lively documentary ‘F@ck This Job’ chronicles how a rebellious gang of champagne-loving Moscow socialites ended up running the last independent TV news channel in Putin’s increasingly repressive Russia.

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AHA movie A-ha: The Movie

A-ha: The Movie

A career-spanning documentary on Norway’s most successful pop band, ‘A-ha: The Movie’ is an earnest but mostly absorbing study of fame, friendship and midlife angst.

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Rhino image Rhino

Rhino

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 13, 2021 Ukrainian activist Oleh Sentsov directs a hard-boiled gangster tale set in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose over-the-top violence is starkly undermotivated.

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quiet girl The Quiet Girl

The Quiet Girl

A emotionally fragile schoolgirl spends a revelatory summer with foster parents in director Colm Bairéad’s haunting, prize-winning, Irish-language debut feature.

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Heroinas still Heroines

Heroines

Communal mythologies and the importance of historical forebears are explored in Marina Herrera’s quietly humorous hybrid documentary about a rebellious Indigenous woman.

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FOGAREUFilmes Fogaréu

Fogaréu

Debuting director Flávia Neves throws far too many elements into her overstuffed Gothic-tinged plot, intriguing enough to hold attention but too convoluted to withstand criticism.

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Taurus MGK Taurus

Taurus

Musician Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly, plays a drug-damaged pop star in director Tim Sutton’s ‘Taurus’, a stylishly sleazy but self-indulgent depiction of toxic fame.

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Haulout still Haulout

Haulout

Evgenia and Maxim Arbugaeva’s astonishing documentary captures the annual arrival of thousands of walruses on a remote beach in the Russian Arctic in awesome intimacy.

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Screen Shot 2022 02 18 at 19.19.29 Millie Lies Low

Millie Lies Low

Millie foolishly lies low but the film should stand tall given how well it captures the excruciatingly relatable tribulations of a young New Zealand woman who digs herself into a very deep hole while attempting to preserve other peoples’ expectations.

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unrest1 Unrest

Unrest

Cyril Schäublin’s Berlin prize-winner ‘Unrest’ is a playful, gently subversive, precision-tooled drama about anarchist watch-makers in 19th century Switzerland.

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Screen Shot 2022 02 18 at 19.16.09 Working Class Heroes

Working Class Heroes

The band of rowdy construction workers at the heart of Serbian director Milos Pusic’s dark new dramedy are not your typical Working Class Heroes, and the film’s title is meant to be taken somewhat ironically, or at least with a sizeable grain of salt. They are, however, the victims of a corrupt system that starts...
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Screen Shot 2022 02 18 at 19.13.43 Axiom

Axiom

Jöns Jönsson’s intriguing slow-burner about a charismatic fabulist occasionally challenges our suspension of disbelief, but its exacting evocation of atmosphere nicely plays on the tension between normality and disruption.

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BER Ta farda Until Tomorrow

Until Tomorrow

The rapidly changing social mores in Iran are highlighted in the dilemma of a single mother and her baby, directed by Ali Asgari with thriller-like tension.

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NorthTerminal still North Terminal

North Terminal

A new documentary from Lucrecia Martel explores communal creativity and expressive performance by bringing together marginalised artists in the north of Argentina.

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Trap still Trap

Trap

Anastasia Veber’s prize-winning drama is an evocative exploration of the lives of young people in contemporary Russia caught between aggression and eroticism, isolation and intimacy.

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The Novelists Film The Novelist’s Film

The Novelist’s Film

Hong Sang-soo’s 27th feature, and his third in competition in Berlin in as many years, offers his trademark acerbic humor, anchored by veteran Korean actress Lee Hye-young’s caustic turn as an embittered writer.

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BER Leonora addio Leonora Addio

Leonora Addio

On his first completely solo flight directing without his late brother, Paolo Taviani pays a stirring salute to Sicily’s great novelist and playwright Luigi Pirandello.

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Still from No U-Turn

No U-Turn

Another documentary subtly but clearly discouraging African migration, with the good sense to find camera-friendly subjects who imbue the film’s trite theme with humour and energy.

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DerPassfalscher Stills DREIFILM 220112 5 The Forger

The Forger

Maggie Peren’s evocation of young, reckless Jewish forger Cioma Schönhaus during the dark days of Hitler’s Berlin is strong on physical atmosphere but can’t balance his devil-may-care spunk with a sense of what awaits should he be caught

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one year night One Year, One Night

One Year, One Night

Spanish director Isaki Lacuesta’s powerful eyewitness drama ‘One Year, One Night’ chronicles the shattering aftershocks of the 2015 Bataclan theatre attack on one young Parisian couple.

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© Micha Bar Am 1341 Frames of Love and War

1341 Frames of Love and War

Magnum photographer Micha Bar-Am’s life and work is powerfully, sometimes painfully recounted through still images and offscreen voiceover in Ran Tal’s multilayered documentary that questions the psychological effects of shooting atrocities.

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BER Return to Dust Return to Dust

Return to Dust

Li Ruijun’s deeply felt portrait of mature love between two socially unvalued Chinese peasants is beautiful to look at, but labors to catch the emotional wave it promises.

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My Small Land My Small Land

My Small Land

Japanese filmmaker Emma Kawawada takes the humanist cue from her mentor, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and adapt it to her warm and engaging directorial debut, in which a Kurdish-born Japanese teenager struggles to keep her life and dreams afloat when the authorities threaten to deport her family from the country.

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DragonsTooth still Dragon Tooth

Dragon Tooth

Through colourful, chemically contaminated found footage, Rafael Castanheira Parrode evocatively excavates the trauma of the 1987 radioactivity disaster in Goiânia, Brazil.

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Screen Shot 2022 02 13 at 9.53.44 A E I O U -- A Quick Alphabet of Love

A E I O U — A Quick Alphabet of Love

A joyful, transgressively liberating ode to cinema and the way an unexpected passion can make societal barriers disappear, Nicolette Krebitz’s intelligently written and expertly crafted love story about an older woman and a much younger man is a delight.

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BER Hefzy bw KUDOS TO: MOHAMED HEFZY

KUDOS TO: MOHAMED HEFZY

When it was announced that Egyptian producer and screenwriter Mohamed Hefzy would be on the World Cinema Dramatic Competition jury at Sundance this year, following his recent jury stints at Venice and BFI London, we saw it as not just a recognition for the producer, but as a sign that the importance of Arab cinema...
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MYANMARDIARIESsuffocating Myanmar Diaries

Myanmar Diaries

An anonymous collective of Burmese filmmakers delivers a powerful statement of defiance against the murderous military dictatorship that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government on February 1, 2021.

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DREAMING WALLS Dreaming Walls

Dreaming Walls

There’s not much new in this lovingly made impressionistic documentary about New York’s very well-chronicled Chelsea Hotel, but the place and its tenacious residents still have a pull.

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call jane Call Jane

Call Jane

Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver play abortion rights activists in director Phyllis Nagy’s worthy but timid debut feature ‘Call Jane’.

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both sides Both Sides of the Blade

Both Sides of the Blade

French screen heavyweights Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon trade bruising blows in ‘Both Sides of the Blade’, a conventional but gripping love-triangle drama from veteran Gallic auteur Claire Denis.

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SONNE photo. Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion Sonne

Sonne

Gen Z’s creative use of video and chat powers Kurdwin Ayub’s knowing take on a teenage girl in Vienna forced to negotiate the tensions and expectations arising from her Kurdish identity.

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CONVENIENCE STORE Convenience Store

Convenience Store

A punishing film of unrelenting cruelty which seeks to draw attention to the plight of enslaved Central Asian workers in Russia, but its overstuffed plot and taunting hopelessness is more alienating than galvanizing.

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Dirndlschuld still Dirndlschuld

Dirndlschuld

Super 8 footage of an idyllic holiday destination provides the serene surface for Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg’s probe into the darker elements of history both political and personal.

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INTO MY NAME Into My Name

Into My Name

Elliot Page’s attachment as executive producer will spur interest, but “Into My Name” stands on its own as a sensitive, humanist portrait of four young F to M trans Italians coming into their own.

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flux gourmet2 Flux Gourmet

Flux Gourmet

Cult director Peter Strickland’s culinary art-world satire ‘Flux Gourmet’ is enjoyably weird but ultimately undercooked.

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Cinco lobitos Lullaby

Lullaby

Motherhood is de-glamourized in this gentle, honest account of parenting during stressful times, shot in Spain’s Basque country by director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.

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ber rimini Rimini

Rimini

Austrian actor Michael Thomas memorably embodies an off-season hotel singer who drinks to stave off loneliness in Ulrich Seidl’s arch, wintry and ultimately bleak reflection on human failings.

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BER Occhiali neri Dark Glasses

Dark Glasses

Less gore and more psychology should broaden the audience for Dario Argento’s kinky but strangely staid horror film about a slasher out to kill a blind prostitute.

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Agrilogistics still Agrilogistics

Agrilogistics

Gerard Ortín Castellví’s film about the mechanised standardisation of plant products in an industrial greenhouse is both hypnotic and unsettling; meticulous documentary and dreamlike fantasy.

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peter von kant Peter Von Kant

Peter Von Kant

French director François Ozon pays artfully twisted homage to Fassbinder’s torrid queer classic ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant’ in this stylish glam-rock remake.

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still from Rookies

Rookies

Once again dealing in dance, Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai follow a group of hip hop-loving kids striving for academic success in a Parisian school.

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Oink still Oink

Oink

A young girl adopts a rambunctious piglet and must navigate puppy classes and survive the annual sausage-making competition in this delightful stop-motion animation.

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ber gregors 2 Kudos to Ulrich and Erika Gregor

Kudos to Ulrich and Erika Gregor

The 72-year history of the Berlin Film Festival has been shaped by many people, but arguably none have left a greater mark than Erika and Ulrich Gregor, the founders of the Arsenal Cinema and creators the festival’s influential Forum section. And it’s not just a matter of the sheer amount of time the couple was...
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human1 A Human Position

A Human Position

A young woman struggles to process personal trauma and wider social injustice in Norwegian director Anders Emblem’s slender but quietly haunting drama A Human Position,

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Kumbuka still Kumbuka

Kumbuka

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo’s documentary is a multifaceted exploration of complex questions around the combating of European perspectives in cinema about Africa.

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A still from The Dream and the Radio.

The Dream and the Radio

Canadian filmmakers Renaud Després-Larose and Ana Tapia Rousiouk pay tribute to Stan Brakhage, Guy Debord, Jean-Luc Godard and Pedro Costa in an intriguing experimental exercise looking at the history of cinema and old-school political activism.

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MurmursoftheJungle still Murmurs of the Jungle

Murmurs of the Jungle

Our prehistoric relationship to the forest is atmospherically invoked in this documentary about a small Indian village and the tales its inhabitants tell of the whispering trees.

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kung fu zohra Kung Fu Zohra

Kung Fu Zohra

French director Mabrouk El Mechri’s screwball action comedy about domestic violence, Kung Fu Zohra is admirably audacious but misses the target.

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TuggingDiary still Tugging Diary

Tugging Diary

Yan Wai Yin’s diaristic documentary uses the interplay of posters and graffiti on a local footbridge to explore and evoke intense social unrest in Hong Kong.

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A still from The Last Ride of the Wolves

The Last Ride of the Wolves

Alberto De Michele artfully deglamorises the gangster film, constructing instead two interlaced stories around a man’s complex relationship with his father and the latter’s plans for one last heist.

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To Love Again Film Still 1 To Love Again

To Love Again

The vestiges of politically-instigated past trauma come back to trouble an older couple in their second marriage as they begin ruminating on their demise in Gao Linyang’s subtly crafted, detail and performance driven feature debut.

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NosferastaFirstBite still Nosferasta: First Bite

Nosferasta: First Bite

A captivating, shapeshifting excavation of the vampirism of Christopher Columbus and the colonial project filtered through the weed-fuelled mythology of artist and singer, Oba.

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DRIFTING PETALS 2 Drifting Petals

Drifting Petals

The history of Hong Kong and its seething democratic movements is interwoven with a cryptic ghost story in Clara Law’s challenging film about memory and political struggle.

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SongsofDying still Songs for Dying

Songs for Dying

Korakrit Arunanondchai’s deeply moving film combines elements of mysticism, ecology, and politics to form some kind of understanding in the face of painful personal loss.

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CE2 Third Grade

Third Grade

French auteur Jacques Doillon returns to form in this endearing, small-scale chronicle of abuse and friendship between two kids from different social classes.

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Still from Freda

Freda

Gessica Geneus’s debut feature is a superb meditation on sisterhood, motherhood, and what it means to love a failing nation.

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SingingStill240 Singing in the Wilderness

Singing in the Wilderness

A bittersweet chronicle of Miao farmers who form a Christian choir in the remote mountains in China, and who are recruited to perform nationally while gradually losing their lands, autonomy, and identity.

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Yamabuki 03 Yamabuki

Yamabuki

Focusing on the plight of both working-class locals and migrant labourers in a small town, Juichiro Yamasaki’s third feature powerful chronicles the greying fortunes of Japan’s depopulated provinces.

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TheMakingofCrimeScenes still The Making of Crime Scenes

The Making of Crime Scenes

Hsu Che-yu’s examination of a political assassination combines digital and physical reconstruction techniques to understand the life of a mobster, assassin, and film producer.

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Knocked Down I Get Knocked Down

I Get Knocked Down

Retired pop star and former anarchist Dunstan Bruce tries to rekindle his youthful punk rage in the charmingly offbeat music documentary I Get Knocked Down.

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malinche 2 edit Malintzin 17

Malintzin 17

Eugenio and Mara Polgovsky gently comment on the cycle of life in an observational documentary shot through a window in Mexico City.

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ROTT ACHROME 1 Achrome

Achrome

An innocent farm boy experiences first-hand the horrors of the Nazi occupation of the Baltic states when he becomes a collaborator in Maria Ignatenko’s sensitive but over-aestheticized reflection on war.

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Assault2 Assault

Assault

Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov finds tragicomic humour in Assault, a bleakly stylish thriller about a snowbound high school under terrorist attack.

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Nazarbazi still Nazarbazi

Nazarbazi

An utterly captivating found footage collage that pieces together a sensuous history of intimacy in Iranian post-revolution cinema where depictions of physical contact are prohibited.

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Glamour Shot1 Give Me Pity!

Give Me Pity!

Amanda Kramer recreates a 1970s-style variety TV special to comment on a certain kind of diva celebrity, but the results are tediously self-indulgent, clueless about camp affect, and open to claims of disingenuousness.

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UzMBFQBpZmZyLmZpb25hLW9ubGluZS5uZXQ0AGF0dGFjaG1lbnRzLzRiZDFmOTUzLWE4MWQtNDI3MS1iYjdkLWE1YzgyM2U2YjQ3ZS5qcGc Broadway

Broadway

The Greek weird wave meets film noir in this quirky crime drama from first-time feature director Christos Massalas.

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Still from Met Mes

Met Mes

A little lie to the police threatens to change a teenager’s life in Sam De Jong’s insightful and sometimes distractingly overdriven film.

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my emptiness and i. 2 My Emptiness and I

My Emptiness and I

This fictionalized portrait of a trans woman’s emotional journey towards selfhood tries to cover too many bases in the psychological process, but Raphaëlle Perez’s sympathetic performance and the film’s overall sensitivity make up for some of its flaws.

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Daryns Gym still Daryn’s Gym

Daryn’s Gym

Brett Michael Innes’ third film, set mostly at a gym in Johannesburg, goes down easy and would be fun for the family—as long as you keep the kids away.

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Proyecto Fantasma Film Still 1 Phantom Project

Phantom Project

A pleasant though minor queer-skewed indie slice-of-life look at Millenials in Chile, using a ghost device as a way of concretizing the niggling concerns within a struggling actor’s subconscious.

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Please Baby Please Please Baby Please

Please Baby Please

Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling and Demi Moore celebrate the hidden queerness of vintage Hollywood in Amanda Kramer’s WTF retro-musical Please Baby Please.

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ROTT The Island 2 The Island

The Island

Robinson Crusoe goes musical in a deliciously disorienting brain-teaser from feted Romanian animation director Anca Damian.

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Warsha still Warsha

Warsha

A potentially familiar story of a Syrian construction worker living in Lebanon is turned on its head in Dania Bdeir’s sensual and soulful evocation of freedom.

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Still from Babysitter

Babysitter

‘Babysitter’ steers clear of preachiness in its half-scolding and often amusing examination of sexual and sexist attitudes in the wake of #MeToo.

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Midwives Still 2 Midwives

Midwives

Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s first feature-length documentary offers a mellow and intimate portrait of two midwives – one a Buddhist, the other Muslim – who defy the deadly inter-communal conflict around them to become friends and health care providers for their poverty-stricken communities.

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Tundra still Tundra

Tundra

A paper-pushing official searches for a woman in red in José Luis Aparicio’s noirish short set in an oppressive, dystopian Cuba afflicted by strange, sluglike creatures.

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Sandstorm still Sandstorm

Sandstorm

An excellent, nuanced performance by Parizae Fatima anchors Seemab Gul’s tense depiction of a teenage girl navigating the dangers and dilemmas of an online relationship.

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cerdita Piggy

Piggy

Fans of slasher films will revel in this darkly comic subversion of the genre premiering at Sundance, where an obese, bullied teenager gets her revenge on the village mean girls.

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GIRL PICTURE still Girl Picture

Girl Picture

 Three high school girls in Finland pursue love and orgasm in Alli Haapasalo’s frank and often warmly emotional tale aimed at teen audiences.

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THE MISSION 1 The Mission

The Mission

Young American missionaries from the Church of the Latter-Day Saints set off to convert the dubious inhabitants of Finland in Tania Anderson’s paradoxical but respectful documentary.

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75000 still $75,000

$75,000

First person testimonies and 3D modelling are effectively combined in Moïse Togo’s harrowing short documentary about the horrific violence faced by albino people across Africa.

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Bestia still Bestia

Bestia

The inner life and fragmenting psyche of a secret police agent form the basis of Hugo Covarrubias’s exemplary and sinister stop-motion animation set during the Chilean military dictatorship

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utama Utama (Our Home)

Utama (Our Home)

Sundance premieres a spellbinding portrait of life in the Bolivian Andes, where a drought threatens the livelihood of an elderly Quechua couple and their herd of llamas.

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patricio guzman adentro Kudos to Patricio Guzman

Kudos to Patricio Guzman

The bloody military coup that shook up Chile in 1973 would not be as well known around the world without the remarkable documentary trilogy made by Patricio Guzman, The Battle of Chile (La batalla de Chile). After the coup, Patricio was imprisoned in the infamous soccer stadium where so many disappeared from; then he went...
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SPEAK NO EVIL still Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil

When a Danish couple visits a Dutch couple they barely know, polite discomfort dissolves into horror as Christian Tafdrup’s social comedy of manners goes Gothic dark.

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LoveStoriesontheMove still Love Stories on the Move

Love Stories on the Move

Ilinca H?rnu? gives a captivating performance in Carina Gabriela Da?oveanu’s restrained but perceptive drama about a taxi driver longing for romance amidst a faltering marriage.

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NOTHING COMPARES Nothing Compares

Nothing Compares

Director Kathryn Ferguson’s engaging music documentary Nothing Compares explores Sinéad O’Connor’s legacy as both icon and iconoclast, with input from the scandalous singer herself.

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Gentle keystill 2 Gentle

Gentle

A female bodybuilder tries her hand as an escort in order to pay for her steroids and supplements in this beautifully calibrated, exceptionally well-played feature that digs deep inside its characters, forcing audiences to upend initial conceptions while weaving a memorable, lingering spell.

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Klondike Stills 007 Klondike

Klondike

Notwithstanding truly impressive visuals by D.P. Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi, “Klondike” underwhelms with its unilluminating look at the Donbas region conflict in Ukraine, seen through a reductionist gendered lens where women nurture and men achieve nothing but destruction.

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LIVING1 Living

Living

A masterful Bill Nighy, director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro relocate Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 classic Ikiru to post-war London in the quietly powerful remake Living.

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LEONOR WILL NEVER DIE Sheila Francisco Leonor Credit Carlos Mauricio Leonor Will Never Die

Leonor Will Never Die

Martika Ramirez Escobar’s audacious first feature is a maniacally meta love letter to Philippine cinema, but its films-within-a-film structure and nods to wildly different genres suffer from the lack of a substantial story.

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Zoon still Zoon

Zoon

Jonatan Schwenk follows the award-winning ‘Sog’ with another beguiling animated short that wordlessly meditates on our relationship to the natural world via a group of axolotls and the people that eat them.

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1 TANTURA image Tantura

Tantura

Israeli filmmaker Alon Schwarz questions his own country’s foundational myth with a harrowing investigation of the state-sanctioned cover-up of the killings of hundreds of civilians in a Palestinian village in May 1948.

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zoon jonatan schwenk Short Film Reviews Debut on The Film Verdict

Short Film Reviews Debut on The Film Verdict

Affirming our commitment to review the finest of world cinema regardless of length, The Film Verdict is proud to announce a new Short Films column which will make its debut during the Sundance Film Festival and will be a notable feature of our coverage in Rotterdam and Berlin. It will be curated by London-based critic...
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LOST FLOWERS still Lost Flowers

Lost Flowers

In his diaristic portrait of grief during the isolation of lockdown, Fabrizio Maltese has crafted a personal documentary full of universal poignancy.

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macbeth1 The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Originally reviewed Oct. 12, 2021 – NOW ON APPLE TV Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand and a solo Joel Coen turn Shakespeare’s bloodthirsty classic Macbeth into a ravishingly beautiful game of thrones.

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Still from Shabu

Shabu

Through its boisterous main character, Shamira Raphaëla’s ‘Shabu’ represents a break from the clichéd images of Black experience in the West.

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Drive My Car Drive My Car

Drive My Car

Winner of the Academy Award for best international feature, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’ is the story of how love survives death in a long, measured, ultimately mesmerizing examination of the human soul.

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No Lands Man No Land's Man

No Land’s Man

Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a pathological liar whose romance with an Australian girl unveils a horrifying backstory of racism in Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s genre-bending pleaser.

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EUROPA STILL 06 Europa

Europa

An immersive, sensorial plunge into a young Iraqi refugee’s desperation as he evades capture by anti-immigration vigilantes in a Bulgarian forest, filmed with taut suspense and anchored by a stand-out performance from Adam Ali.

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A scene from Zinder

Zinder

Aicha Macky’s superb documentary about the impoverished citizens of Zinder, in the Republic of Niger, bends towards compassion for a neglected people.

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hostilidades The Hostilities

The Hostilities

The winner of Morelia’s best documentary award is a raw, honest chronicle of the violence afflicting Mexico, seen through the lives of the filmmaker’s own family.

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Words of Negroes Words of Negroes

Words of Negroes

Workers in an outdated sugar cane factory in Guadeloupe read from the transcripts of an 1842 trial against a slave owner in Sylvaine Dampierre’s powerful act of reclaiming history, Words of Negroes. Stunningly shot by Renaud Personnaz in crisp, vivid images, the film is a documentary only in as much as it’s a work of...
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MAY GOD BE WITH YOU 6 May God Be With You

May God Be With You

The act of exile is never a single-generation event; its ever-mutating ramifications shift down the family tree, undergoing a change as each generation grapples with questions of identity and belonging. Given that the person who flees their country often rejects shared introspection, preferring to contain memories rather than admit to the host of emotions that...
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MARX CAN WAIT Marx Can Wait

Marx Can Wait

The most fascinating aspect of Marco Bellocchio’s guilt-streaked revisitation of the suicide of his twin brother in 1968 is the insight it offers into the Italian master’s creative font–his own family.

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RUPTURE photo1 Rupture

Rupture

The unsettled protagonists of Hamzah Jamjoom’s “Rupture” seem to be literally pulled through past, present and future in this Italian-inspired thriller in which a woman’s sanity is disturbed by her pregnancy and a malevolent concierge (played by Billy Zane) with his own unsavory baggage.

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The Lost Daughter

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel ‘The Lost Daughter’ strays too far from Italy to be convincing, but a stunningly good Olivia Colman saves the day.

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nejib belkadhi communion 1 2000px Communion

Communion

In his exploration of a man’s descent into madness during the present pandemic, director-actor Nejib Belkadhi makes a rare of-the-moment drama, inflected with humor and surrealism, that captures our unease in ways likely to outlast COVID’s grip on our psyches.

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plaza catedral2 Plaza Catedral

Plaza Catedral

Panama’s Oscar-shortlisted drama eloquently portrays class divides, as a bereaved upper-class architect seeks redemption in her friendship with a homeless, street-smart boy.

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the exam The Exam

The Exam

Cheating on a high school exam for a good cause gives top Iraqi Kurdish writer and director Shawkat Amin Korki (‘Memories on Stone’) a fertile moral field to examine the traps surrounding female empowerment.

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flee1 Flee

Flee

Denmark’s shortlisted Oscar contender Flee is a warmly personal animated coming-of-age documentary about an Afghan refugee coming to terms with his sexuality and painful family history.

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Red Sea photo Red Sea 2021: The Verdict

Red Sea 2021: The Verdict

Saudi Arabia takes a big step forward with an international culture event in Jeddah that, for all the glitches, showcased the modern and rapidly changing face of its society.

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lamb1 Lamb

Lamb

Noomi Rapace stars in Iceland’s boldly original Oscar submission Lamb, a twisted folk-horror thriller about fantastic beasts and family trauma.

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HUDAS SALON photo Huda's Salon

Huda’s Salon

Hany Abu-Assad’s best work toys with questions of moral absolutes, yet his dissatisfying “Huda’s Salon” is hamstrung by a weak script and ill-advised editing choices that fail to build characters or tension, despite an interesting premise.

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ROUTE 10 2 Route Ten

Route Ten

What on the surface appears to be a formulaic road movie thriller about a couple of siblings tormented by a white Jeep on a desert road turns into a surprising critique of the Saudi old guard in which the younger generation declares its liberation from toxic patriarchy.

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Becoming

An omnibus of women-directed Saudi shorts that acts as a calling card for the diversity of rising talent in the Kingdom, offering five largely strong entries highlighting the ways women negotiate traditional female and non-female spaces.

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Radiograph still Radiograph of a Family

Radiograph of a Family

Director Firouzeh Khosrovani’s own parents embody the lacerating split of Iran into modern liberals and Islamic fundamentalists after the 1978 revolution, in a personal doc of startling clarity and impact.

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Hit the Road big Hit the Road

Hit the Road

Voted best film at the London BFI festival and Mar del Plata, an offbeat Iranian roadie launches the filmmaking career of Jafar Panahi’s son Panah in style.

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THE STRANGER photo The Stranger

The Stranger

Palestine’s 2022 Oscar submission is a brooding story of lives in limbo in the Golan Heights, stunningly shot and wrenching in its moving evocation of a man mired in self-loathing and paralyzed by the physical and existential no-man’s land resulting in the Israeli occupation and the disaster in Syria.

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Immersion2 Immersion

Immersion

A Chilean family sail into stormy waters in director Nicolás Postiglione’s tense, gripping, politically charged suspense thriller Immersion.

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A SECOND LIFE photo 3 A Second Life

A Second Life

A well-calibrated debut with a fine central performance, weaving together notions of class and familial betrayal when an impoverished mother sells her son’s kidney to a well-off family in exchange for a better life.

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Cairo Tomorrow Tomorrow

Tomorrow

In the bitter drama of a human rights lawyer struggling with mental illness, well-known actor Dhafer L’Abidine directs, produces and stars in a passionate plea to Tunisians to reclaim their revolution.

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The Power of the Dog

Jane Campion’s bold cinematic interpretation of Thomas Savage’s novel about cattle ranchers in 1920’s Montana is a sensuous, aestheticized Netflix release, whose meticulous detail and gay subplot are admirable but a little tiring.

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0969415.jpg r 1920 1080 f jpg q x xxyxx Authentik

Authentik

France’s most famous rap duo gets an energized if standardized biopic in this first of two projects to tackle the legacy of hip-hop group Suprême NTM.

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DAUGHTERS OF ABDULRAHMAN photo Daughters of Abdulrahman

Daughters of Abdulrahman

Predictably stereotyped characterizations still deliver some enjoyable moments in this female empowerment story that unfortunately also plays to the region’s homophobia but will be a crowd-pleaser in the Arab world.

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thomas1 Dear Thomas

Dear Thomas

Director Andreas Kleinert’s prize-winning Cold War bio-drama Dear Thomas pays compelling but indulgent tribute to East German literary outlaw Thomas Brasch.

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Tonights Homework 10 1 Tonight's Homework

Tonight’s Homework

Abbas Kiarostami’s trailblazing ‘Homework’ (1989) gets a brilliant update in a documentary that is equal parts hilarious and saddening in its portrayal of Iranian schoolkids.

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When Pomegranates Howl When Pomegranates Howl

When Pomegranates Howl

With sensitivity and devastating last-scene irony, filmmaker and poet Granaz Moussavi cinematically embeds the viewer in children’s lives in the heart of war-torn Kabul, in Australia’s Oscar hopeful.

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danacao2 Ironland

Ironland

An outcry against man-made environmental disasters, tracking the long-term effects on the survivors of the biggest dam collapse in Brazil.

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NR 10 Nr. 10

Nr. 10

Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam takes darkly comic gloom to a new level with his audaciously weird tenth film, Nr. 10.

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lKQYhLfQ 660x330 1 Isaac

Isaac

In his skillfully helmed first feature, Isaac (Izaokas), Lithuanian writer-director Jurgis Matulevicius delves into his country’s turbulent past under both Communism and Nazism, following a trio of friends in the 1960s whose lives are overshadowed by a massacre that took place during WWII. Mixing historical fact with an existential crime story, the film is bathed...
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looking back1 No Looking Back

No Looking Back

Russian director Kyrill Sokolov’s high-octane action comedy No Looking Back involves three generations of women from the same dysfunctional family.

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Holy Emy Holy Emy

Holy Emy

A young Filipino immigrant in Greece with special healing powers is the focus of Araceli Lemos’ assured drama delving into questions of spirituality, belonging and sisterly bonds with a distinctively creepy edge.

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Moneyboys 3 Moneyboys

Moneyboys

A high-end gay sex worker in China longs for the family affection he felt as a child in C.B. Yi’s beautifully crafted if not always satisfying debut that showcases the talents of actor Kai Ko.

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Sisterhood 1 Sisterhood

Sisterhood

The hypocrisy of high school slut-shaming is the core theme of this strong feature debut boasting two exceptional performances and a layered script that’s distinctly Macedonian but with international resonance.

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Vera Dreams of the Sea

Kosovo’s Kaltrina Krasniqi makes an impressive feature debut with this beautifully measured drama about a once-compliant 60-something widow who attempts to deflect the malevolent traditional patriarchy in a nation on the edge of change.

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PostMortem01 Post Mortem

Post Mortem

Filled with enough gyrating dead corpses to cast the next Zack Snyder movie several times over, director Péter Bergendy’s Hungarian horror flick Post Mortem is high on gore and jump scares, low on convincing storytelling and originality. It displays a solid level of craft, especially the heavy use of visual and makeup effects, but otherwise...
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Thessaloniki 2021: The Verdict

The sense of relief that suffused the 62nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival could be felt throughout the city’s repurposed old port, not just in the festival locations but in the favorite bars, restaurants and hangouts of the cinema crowd who palpably relished their return to a beloved city. Let’s be honest: San Sebastián and Thessaloniki...
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TITANE1 Titane

Titane

A gloriously extreme Oscar submission, French writer-director Julia Ducournau’s prize-winning erotic thriller about a gender-blurring serial killer with a fetish for sex with cars is funny, fast and furious.

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The 4 walls pic The Four Walls

The Four Walls

Bahman Ghobadi’s latest Kurdish story, shot in Istanbul, hovers between tragedy and humor without hitting the emotional high note it aims for.

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Hero Asghar Farhadi A Hero

A Hero

Feted Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest Oscar contender is a classy but underpowered drama about moral complexity and social media shaming.

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WHITE BUILDING photo White Building

White Building

Cambodia’s Oscar submission is a semi-autobiographical critique of how the country’s rampant capitalism frays the traditional social fabric, told with sympathy yet short on dynamism.

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The Great Basin The Great Basin

The Great Basin

Few people outside eastern Nevada will have even heard of White Pine County, a rural area on the border with Utah that’s home to just over 10,000 inhabitants. If it has any especially distinguishing characteristics outside ones stereotypically associated with rural counties in this part of America, The Great Basin doesn’t reveal, and while Chivas...
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Invisible Demons Invisible Demons

Invisible Demons

Rahul Jain follows up his festival mega-hit ‘Machines’ with an apocalyptic vision of Delhi’s life-threatening pollution that floods the screen with present-day disasters.

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FESPACO 2021: The Verdict

Mati Diop's Atlantique (Atlantics) kicked off the 27th FESPACO, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival that takes place bi-annually in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou, in a screening that foreshadowed a couple of features of the 2021 festival. One of these was welcome, the other frustrating. The most welcome thing first. It was a...
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uma baia A Bay

A Bay

The city of Rio de Janeiro lies on the western shore of Guanabara Bay, the location of Murilo Salles's hymn to working class toil, A Bay (Uma baía). Salles excelled as cinematographer in such Brazilian film classics as Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands and has directed both fiction and documentaries, winning a Silver Dove...
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CLARA SOLA Clara Sola

Clara Sola

Costa Rica dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya gives an eerie, riveting perf but it only goes so far in this unstructured tale of magic realism and female power from debuting director Nathalie Alvarez Mesen.

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AMIRA photo Amira

Amira

A great deal of attention is about to accrue to Egyptian director Mohamed Diab, who’s just finished shooting on the Marvel franchise series Moon Knight, slated for release sometime in 2022. That’s a good thing, because it likely means his Venice premiered Palestinian-set feature Amira can be quickly pushed aside. Diab’s previous features Cairo 678...
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Compartment no. 6 Compartment No. 6

Compartment No. 6

You can’t say no to a relationship this mismatched in Juho Kuosmanen’s warm-hearted but melancholy voyage to nowhere, starring Russian actor of the moment Yuriy Borisov and Seidi Haarla as the Finnish tourist who stumbles across him.

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CAPTAINS OF ZAATARI photo Captains of Za'atari

Captains of Za’atari

Everything about Ali El Arabi’s Captains of Za’atari seems custom-made to appeal to a broad public. After all, who doesn’t love an underdog story, this one involving a couple of Syrian teens in a Jordanian refugee camp whose skills at football (European; soccer for Americans) give them a shot at a less circumscribed world? The...
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May Odeh

El Gouna 2021: The Verdict

The town of El Gouna is a purpose-built gated community on Egypt's Red Sea coast just north of the popular resort city of Hurghada. It’s a place of privilege, where rolling green lawns and intensely colored bougainvillea grace pleasingly designed villas varied enough to feel distinctive yet with nothing that jars or clashes. El Gouna...
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Dashcam1 Dashcam

Dashcam

Controversial LA musician Annie Hardy plays an obnoxious American tourist battling demonic forces in the English countryside in director Rob Savage’s profane, provocative, hilarious found-footage horror comedy Dashcam.

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Life of Ivanna Life of Ivanna

Life of Ivanna

Documaker Renato Borrayo Serrano offers eye-opening glimpses into the harrowing and chaotic life of a modern Nenets woman that overturn stereotypes about Arctic life.

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Still from Rwandan film Nameless

Nameless

This small film from Rwanda looks too cheap to succeed on a large scale—but its filmmaker is worthy of attention going forward.

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Screen Shot 2021 10 22 at 20.17.57 Murina

Murina

‘Murina’, which won this year’s Camera d’Or in Cannes for first-time director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, extols female rebellion but walks a dangerous tightrope connecting the male gaze with the body of a rebellious 17-year-old girl.

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Still from Eyimofe

Eyimofe

Chuko and Ari Esiri’s Eyimofe, which is competing at Fespaco, combines two semi-overlapping stories of Nigerians on the edge. The first story is titled Spain, the second Italy. The idea in both titles is destination. In both stories, the Nigerian characters have come to believe that another life, one of happiness and devoid of material lack,...
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cruz cropped Cruz

Cruz

Teresa Camou Guerrero’s poetic, heartbreaking documentary follows an indigenous Mexican family displaced by violent drug traffickers who struggle to return to their homelands.

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ear for eye1 ear for eye

ear for eye

James Bond star Lashana Lynch joins a large ensemble cast in debbie tucker green’s powerful stage-to-screen drama for the Black Lives Matter era.

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AS IN HEAVE SiiiTILL As in Heaven

As in Heaven

In the 19th century, a 14-year-old Danish girl struggles between her will and God’s in Tea Lindeburg’s impressionistic period drama, winner of the best director nod in San Sebastian.

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kerr1 Kerr

Kerr

Turkish writer-director Tayfun Pirselimoglu’s prize-winning thriller Kerr is a surreal small-town murder mystery with echoes of Kafka and Lynch.

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Juju Stories still Juju Stories

Juju Stories

While still clearly finding their voice, three young Nigerian directors serve up entertaining vignettes of African life derived from popular made-in-Africa superstitions.

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Harder They Fall2 The Harder They Fall

The Harder They Fall

Idris Elba, Regina King, Jonathan Majors and LaKeith Stanfield strap on their six-shooters for Jeymes Samuel’s boorishly enjoyable African-American western.

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Anatolian Leopard

The conservative new social order sidelines an old-school zookeeper in Emre Kayis’s closely observed, metaphoric first feature about Turkish society, winner of the Fipresci award in Toronto.

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MIguel Coyula caso1 Copy Blue Heart

Blue Heart

A complex, cryptic, compelling film in which Miguel Coyula’s surreal images portray a sci fi Cuba that attempts to mold young minds through genetic engineering.

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NO TIME2 No Time to Die

No Time to Die

The 25th James Bond film is bloated and plodding in places, but it ultimately delivers the goods and sends Daniel Craig out in a blaze of glory.

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Nochedefuego Filmpicture 23079 Prayers for the Stolen

Prayers for the Stolen

Three little girls grow up in a village terrorized by the drug cartels in Tatiana Huezo’s dreamy and terrifying first feature, which won San Sebastian’s Latin Horizons crown.

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Blue Moon

Trapped in a violent family, a young woman rebels in Alina Grigore’s assured and absorbing first feature, another gift from contemporary Romanian cinema.

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7.2.2 7.2.2 I Want to Talk About Duras

I Want to Talk About Duras

In her many novels, plays and movies, author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras would often make herself a character in the stories she was telling, mixing autobiography and fiction into a seamless blend that the French called autofiction. It was writing with a capital I, or Je, and it would help foster in a new wave...
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The Good Boss

Javier Bardem is the main attraction as a smooth-talking factory owner in Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s drawing room social satire about modern labor.

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Django & Django

Quentin Tarantino explains his love for Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti Westerns and reveals a lot about his own work in the process in Luca Rea’s irresistible, eye-opening documentary.

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Middle Man The Middle Man

The Middle Man

A small-town misfit takes a new job breaking bad news to bereaved families in Bent Hamer’s droll, elegantly filmed tragicomedy The Middle Man.

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Maixabel

Award-winning Spanish filmmaker Icair Bollain chillingly dramatizes the real-life encounter between a strong-minded widow and the repentant Basque terrorists who murdered her husband.

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Benediction

The life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon movingly expresses the traumas of war and love in one of writer-director Terence Davies’ finest creations.

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Silent Land Silent Land

Silent Land

A wealthy young Polish couple are forced to confront their own moral bankruptcy during a luxury Italian vacation in Silent Land, Aga Woszczy?ska’s elegantly bleak exploration of First World Problems.

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Encounter

Riz Ahmed stars in this stylish sci-fi chase thriller as a troubled military veteran battling his own demons as well as extra-terrestrial enemies.

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America Latina

Elio Germano plays a mild-mannered dentist who discovers a girl is tied up in his basement in Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo’s (‘Favolacce’) absurdist psychological thriller.

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Leave No Traces

The first shot of Leave No Traces may make you think you’re at a retrospective of one of the great Polish filmmakers from forty or more years ago, so perfect is the recreation. It takes place in a shadowy Warsaw bedroom in 1983, and the stillness, warm tonalities and welcome texture (the film appears to...
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Otar’s Death

Partly inspired by real events, Otar’s Death is a fractious Georgian family drama with breathless thriller elements and a deep streak of black comedy.

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The Catholic School

Stefano Mordini’s unconvincing ensemble drama searches for the origins of evil that provoked the Circeo massacre of two girls in 1975 and rattled upper class Rome.

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Freaks Out

There’s a reaction shot in Mel Brooks’ The Producers when the open-mouthed audience watches the “Springtime for Hitler” number in shocked disbelief, amazed that something so crass and campy could have made it on Broadway. The scene is hilarious because Brooks knows he’s gone far beyond the bounds of tastefulness, and it’s become a classic...
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Reflection

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 7, 2021 Ukrainian filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych follows up his Venice Horizons-winning ‘Atlantis’ with ‘Reflection’ (‘Vidblysk’), a perturbing true horror tale of his country’s war with Russia.

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Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon

A psychotic girl with lethal powers walks anywhere she pleases at night in Ana Lily Amirpour’s occasionally amusing but mostly treadless fantasy, ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon.’

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Il Buco

The symbiotic relationship between people of the land and their environment is the basis of all Michelangelo Frammartino’s work, most strikingly seen in his 2010 second feature Le Quattro Volte, a surprise international arthouse success. His hallmarks – unfussy, majestic photography, a pronounced sympathy for craggy-faced elders whose lifetimes of outdoor work can be traced...
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Dune

There must be a reason Frank Herbert’s sci fi masterwork Dune defies cinematic adaptation, the latest attempt being director Denis Villeneuve’s attentively lensed but humorless actioner aimed at teen fans of the book and Timothée Chalamet.

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Karmalink

Jake Wachtel’s Critics Week opener in Venice is a brash hybrid of near-future sci fi and timeless Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation.

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The Hand of God

Paolo Sorrentino reflects on his Neapolitan youth in an autobiographical film whose first half is replete with signature baroque touches but then loses its way.

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The Card Counter

One of Paul Schrader’s most complex and profound reflections on personal traumatic memory bleeds into the American tragedy of Abu Ghraib in an anguishing drama starring Oscar Isaac, Tye Sheridan and Tiffany Haddish.

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Wild Roots

Young Hungarian writer-director Hajni Kis delivers a highly assured debut feature with non-professional actors in the lead roles.

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runner 1 Runner

Runner

This cat-and-mouse chase thriller offers an opaque commentary on love as a form of psychosis and the paranoid political mood in post-Soviet Lithuania,

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Hinterland

This superior pulp-noir thriller has a reality-bending look that draws heavily on vintage German Expressionist art.

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Bird Atlas

Olmo Omerzu’s Czech boardroom farce is an absurdist comic parable about lives ruined and families divided by too much focus on money.

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The Stronghold

Over the past decade or so, the French city of Marseille has worked hard to clean up its image, gentrifying a significant area around its touristy Vieux-Port, opening a brand new museum and conference center — both architectural marvels — and attracting a swatch of young residents, including a growing number of Parisians relocating there...
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Our Men

Claire Denis sublimely explored the sweaty, dust-coated bodies of French legionnaires in one of her best movies, Beau Travail, which focused on a platoon of lonesome fighters marooned at a remote outpost in East Africa. In Our Men (Mon légionnaire), the second feature from writer-director Rachel Lang, we get to see the other side of...
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A New Old Play

Director Qiu Jiongjiong uses a traditional theater troupe to spin out three long hours of dreamy reflections on Chinese history in the 20th century.

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