Berlin 2026: The Verdict
Ilker Catak’s drama ‘Yellow Letters’ wins the Golden Bear for Best Film amid a firestorm of unrelated political debate.
Festivals
Berlin 2026: The Awards
Two films about Turkey won the Golden Bear for Best Film and Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 76th Berlin Film Festival.
Cesarean Weekend
A boozy party at a seaside villa descends into a delirious explosion of suppressed angst for two slackers and their angst-ridden middle-aged fathers in “Cesarean Weekend”, Iranian indie cinema instigator Mohammad Shirvani’s first feature in 13 years.
Trial of Hein
Home is definitely not where the heart is in young German writer-director Kai Stänicke’s ‘Trial of Hein’, a ponderous but mostly impressive drama about exile, identity and repressed desire.
The Loneliest Man in Town
A droll delight from Austria, whose wry performance by aging blues player Al Cook made it one of the most popular films in Berlin competition, ‘The Loneliest Man in Town’ once again pushes the documentary envelope in unexpected ways devised by filmmakers Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.
Queen at Sea
The issues of living with a relative with cognitive decline are at the core of Lance Hammer’s quietly devastating ‘Queen at Sea’.
Moscas
Las moscas y su irritante zumbido son la pesadilla de un día de verano, y dan a la primera escena de Moscas una sensación de comedia muda perfectamente sincronizada. Esta es la historia de un hombre y su hijo de 9 años que se alojan precariamente con una casera reticente y de mirada fría mientras...
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Prosecution
Director Faraz Shariat’s second feature ‘Prosecution’ is a stylish, fast-paced, politically charged crime thriller about a young German-Korean state prosecutor targeted by neo-Nazi racists.
Wax & Gold
Austrian documentarian Ruth Beckermann delves into Ethiopian history by looking into a specific building in the engrossing ‘Wax & Gold’.
The Ballad of Judas Priest
Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello co-directs ‘The Ballad of Judas Priest’. a polite but warm-hearted rockucumentary about one of heavy metal’s foundational bands, aided by Jack Black, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Grohl and other famous fans.
Yellow Letters
An acclaimed Turkish actress and her theater director husband lose their livelihoods over a petty dispute with the authorities in power in ‘Yellow Letters’, a deeply disturbing tale that struggles to stay on topic.
Rosebush Pruning
Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz satirises the lurid psycho-sexual absurdities of a deeply dysfunctional dynasty in his shallow but stylish Euro-comedy reboot, ‘Rosebush Pruning’.
Hangar rojo
¿Hasta dónde debe llegar un oficial militar que ha jurado lealtad a la constitución de su país al obedecer las órdenes de sus superiores? En 81 tensos minutos de crisis democrática, filmados en un implacable blanco y negro, Hangar Rojo sitúa al espectador dentro de la mente del capitán Jorge Silva, el rígidamente disciplinado comandante...
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Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Documentary director Grant Gee’s debut dramatic feature ‘Everybody Dogs Bill Evans’ offers a lyrical, fragmentary portrait of a troubled jazz icon at a crucial career crossroads.
The Red Hangar
Based on a true story pregnant with contemporary moral questions, ‘The Red Hangar’ is the gripping portrait of a courageous Air Force captain forced to draw the line, during Chile’s military coup in 1973 that overturned the Salvador Allende government and democracy.
Berlin 2026: The American Question
The lineup of Berlin 2026 boasts some major US titles, but are they really what the festival needs?
Rotterdam 2026: The Verdict
South African and Bangladeshi films won big at a 55th edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival embracing global chills and genre thrills.
Rotterdam 2026: The Awards
Highlighting a rich splash of African titles, the South African drama about an elderly goat herder, ‘Variations on a Theme’, topped the awards list at the 2026 International Film Festival of Rotterdam.
The Horror, the Horror Descends on Rotterdam
This year’s Rotterdam took a free-wheeling approach to genre pieces, particularly global horror.
Home Bitter Home
Artistic frustrations are the throughline in the Lebanese omnibus film ‘Home Bitter Home’, set in present day Beirut.
Bowels of Hell
Social satire meets (literal) toilet humor in the gruesomely entertaining Brazilian horror comedy ‘Bowels of Hell’.
Supporting Role
Georgian director Ana Urushadze’s Supporting Role is a wildly eccentric take on fleeting windows for creative ambition, in a worldweary, twilight Tbilisi.
Talking to a Stranger
A demon feeds on a mother’s grief in ‘Talking to a Stranger’, a powerful and unsettling piece of Mexican horror.
The Apple Doesn’t Fall…
China’s one-child policy provides the inspiration for Dean Wei and Shiyu Liu’s The Apple Doesn’t Fall…, a meticulous and theatrical apartment-bound family drama told through expressive dance.
My Daughter Is a Zombie
A parent-child bond is tested in a supernatural manner in the highly entertaining South Korean film ‘My Daughter Is a Zombie’.
La belle année
Documentary and fiction are interwoven in ‘La belle année’, a contemplative self-portrait that connects contemporary grief and teenage romantic obsession to tantalising effect.
Second Skin
The collaboration between three filmmakers to re-enact sexual assaults suffered by Russian women, Second Skin, is a staggering and imperative act of bearing witness.
Yellow Cake
Tiago Melo brings satirical bite to genre thrills in ‘Yellow Cake’, his delirious sci-fi mix of geopolitics and apocalyptic fears in Brazil’s Northeast.
Projecto Global
Bloated but compelling, writer-director Ivo M. Ferreira’s stylish fact-based retro-thriller about a real 1980s terrorist group feels like a Portuguese cousin of ‘One Battle After Another’.
The Kidnapping of a President
Political upheaval is the backdrop for a fact-based dark comedy in the shape of Samuli Valkama’s ‘The Kidnapping of a President’.
First Light
A corruption scandal throws a nun into crisis in Australian-Filipino director James J. Robinson’s debut ‘First Light’, an intriguing, introspective slow-burner.
The Gymnast
Writer-director Charlotte Glynn balances hard-nosed grit and tenderness in her quietly devastating portrait of an injured teen gymnast in working-class Pittsburgh.
Accept Our Sincere Apologies
A luxury Venice hotel is a site of strange death dealings and cryptic dream logic in Juja Dobrachkous’s mesmeric, eccentric sophomore feature.
Chronovisor
Kevin Walker and Jack Auen’s eerie, stylish techno-horror debut draws us through a library wormhole into a ‘70s scandal around a Benedictine monk’s memory-recording machine.
The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford
A small-town Scottish tour guide declares war on a blockbuster TV fantasy show in ‘The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford’, writer-director Seán Dunn’s enjoyably off-beat comedy about grief, depression and obsessive fandom.
Elements Of(f) Balance
Like a delicately composed ecosystem, Othmar Schmiderer’s documentary ‘Elements Of(f) Balance’ is a patchwork of finely tuned vignettes that together form a thoughtful meditation on our relationship with the planet.
Rotterdam 2026: An Interview with Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart
TFV inaugurates its Rotterdam 2026 coverage with our customary chat with the festival directors, Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart.
Dead Souls
Cult indie director Alex Cox gives Nikolai Gogol’s classic satirical novel ‘Dead Souls’ a surreal Wild West makeover in this uneven but enjoyably bizarre love letter to the spaghetti western genre.
The Oligarch and the Art Dealer
The docuseries ‘The Oligarch and the Art Dealer’ provides a gripping look into a high-profile battle in the shadowy realm of the luxury art trade.
Sundance Says Farewell to Park City in Politically Charged Final Year
The charged atmosphere was felt up and down Main Street.
Hold Onto Me
A father and daughter find their way back to each other in the debut drama ‘Hold Onto Me’.
How to Divorce During the War
A couple falls apart as Russia invades Ukraine in this timely exploration of the limits of privilege and empathy in ‘How to Divorce During the War.’
An Interview with Sinead O’Shea
The director of ‘All About the Money’ discusses profiling the radical politics of James ‘Fergie’ Chambers.
To Hold A Mountain
A shepherdess takes on the military in ‘To Hold a Mountain’, a documentary about bullets versus beauty.
All About the Money
James “Fergie” Chambers lets it all hang out in this unique portrait of a super wealthy revolutionary.
Shame and Money
The fragile independence of a nation is refracted through a working couple in the observant drama ‘Shame and Money’.
European Films Head To Sundance for the Last Splash in Park City
Sundance bids farewell to Park City while topical Euro films make their debut.
An interview with Marnie Blok
The writer-director of ‘Beyond Silence,’ which scooped the narrative short prize at Tribeca, discusses giving voice to victims of abuse and the overwhelming reaction of audiences.
Riverstone
‘Riverstone’ is a great-looking road movie with deep but questionable politics.
Dream of the Red Chamber ‘77
Long considered lost and an urban myth of sorts, ‘Dream of the Red Chamber ‘77’, legendary Chinese filmmaker Chiu Kang-chien’s irreverent, Singapore-set reinterpretation of the Chinese literary classic, re-emerges after nearly five decades as a key curio in the restoration programme at the Singapore Intl. Film Festival.
Cactus Pears
A gay man returns to his ancestral village and rekindles his relationship with his childhood friend-turned-lover in ‘Cactus Pears’, Indian filmmaker Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s sensitive, bittersweet first feature.
The Old Man and His Car
Veteran Singapore actor Lim Kay Tong anchors ‘The Old Man and His Car’, Michael Kam’s sensitive and slow-moving feature debut about a retiree preparing to leave his house, his car and his memories for Canada.
Where Lions Roar and Cubs Prowl: SGIFF Hits 36
A-list Asian stars, international festival hits, local trailblazers and restored classics converge at the latest edition of the Singapore International Film Festival.
Habibi Hussein
Alex Bakri’s power-conscious documentary ‘Habibi Hussein’ dismantles the feel-good façade of “development work,” revealing the power imbalances, condescension and erasure that underpin a German-led attempt to revive Jenin’s cinema.
The Residence
Literary ambition and the dangers of artificial intelligence coalesce in Yann Gozlan’s entertaining sci-fi thriller ‘The Residence’.
Cairo 2025: The Verdict
Blending bold Arab selections, strong youth engagement, major Palestinian films, and a confident curatorial vision, the 46th Cairo International Film Festival delivered a focused and forward-looking edition.
Cairo 2025: The Awards
Presided by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the jury of the 46th Cairo International Film Festival bestowed the Golden Pyramid Award on ‘Dragonfly’ directed by Paul Andrew Williams.
IDFA 2025: The Awards
‘A Fox Under a Pink Moon’, the emotionally charged collaboration between veteran Iranian documentary maker Mehrdad Oskouei and his teenage niece, Soraya Akhalaghi, won IDFA’s international competition while another Iranian film, ‘Past Present Continuous’ by filmmakers Morteza Ahmadvand and Firouzeh Khosrovani, won the Envision competition.
The Film Verdict Celebrates Arab Talent in Cairo with Next Generation Awards
The Film Verdict continues to spotlight emerging voices in the Arab world, recognising promising filmmakers, actors, and critics whose work is reshaping cinema across the Middle East and North Africa.
TFV-CIFF Next Generation Award Winners 2025
The Film Verdict-Cairo International Film Festival Next Generation Award Winners for 2025 honor young Arab talent.
That Summer in Paris
The 2024 Paris Olympics serve as the backdrop for a heartwarming tale of sisterhood in Valentine Cadic’s feature debut ‘That Summer in Paris’.
Mohammed & Paul – Once Upon a Time in Tangier
Nordin Lasfar has made a decent, anodyne documentary from flammable material in ‘Mohammed & Paul – Once Upon a Time in Tangier’.
Cairo 2025: The XR Experience
A new chapter begins for CIFF, as Cairo 2025 introduces festivalgoers to the world of immersive experiences and augmented reality.
Matabeleland
Matabeleland may be her first feature documentary but Nyasha Kadandara juggles romance and politics across Zimbabwe and Botswana like a pro.
Coexistence, My Ass!
An Israeli stand-up comedian turns the hate and anger of her divided homeland into tragicomic humour in the timely, irreverent documentary ‘Coexistence, My Ass!’
A Fox Under a Pink Moon
Armed only with a phone camera, a troubled young Afghan woman films her attempts to illegally cross the border to Europe in the visually beautiful collaborative documentary ‘A Fox Under a Pink Moon’
Goundafa, the Cursed Song
The influence of a conservative new imam on a Moroccan tribal village is an economic, emotional and cultural disaster in ‘Goundafa, the Cursed Song’, which neatly embraces the simplicity of the people and their ancient lifestyle.
Naguib Mahfouz Still Walks Cairo’s Film Scene
Almost 20 years after his death, the legacy of writer Naguib Mahfouz continues to be present on the Egyptian cultural scene.
Death Does Not Exist
Revolution takes on a new, animated form in Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s elliptically intriguing film ‘Death Does Not Exist’.
Voices of Gaza and Beyond: Palestinian Stories at CIFF
At the 46th Cairo International Film Festival, Palestine is not only present as a topic; it’s foundational to the emotional and artistic narrative.
Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment
Andreas Pichler’s whistle-blower documentary ‘Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment’ is a convincing expose on Musk’s self-driving Teslas that could use less politics and more numbers.
Rahhala: Hayya ala Hayya
Harrowing memories of domestic abuse are recounted over striking images of the natural world in Rahhala: Hayya ala Hayya, Lujain Jo’s beautiful and brutal reckoning with trauma.
Air Horse One
Lasse Linder’s equine documentary, Air Horse One, is a quiet portrait of a champion thoroughbred – a behind the scenes peek that is meditative though never profound.
Life after Siham
Like Youssef Chahine’s quadrilogy, which explored his and his family’s defeats, shames, and victories, Namir Abdel Messeeh’s tenderhearted documentary ‘Life After Siham’ turns private mourning into a quiet, searching act of cinema.
The Audience Comes First: An Interview with CIFF Artistic Director Mohamed Tarek
After a decade of involvement with the Cairo Intl. Film Festival, Mohamed Tarek steps into the leadership position, prioritizing viewers and revitalizing programming.
The Six Billion Dollar Man
If great men deserve great documentaries, director Eugene Jarecki’s exhaustive profile of Julian Assange, ‘The Six Billion Dollar Man’, could hardly be bettered.
The Sessions
One woman’s sexual assault is a stand-in for every woman’s in Belgian director Sien Versteyhe’s tightly focussed chamber documentary.
Looking for Ayda
Sarra Abidi’s slow-moving existential drama set in a remote Tunisian call center painstakingly illustrates what living a life of quiet desperation really means in ‘Looking for Ayda’.
Triangle of Love
A journey through love and feelings left unsaid, ‘Triangle of Love’ turns everyday speech into an archive of attachment and grief.
Better Go Mad in the Wild
A pair of deeply eccentric twin brothers and a talking cow are the stars of Czech director Miro Remo’s mischievous, tragicomic, prize-winning documentary ‘Better Go Mad in the Wild’.
All My Sisters
Tracking his nieces for two decades, from girlhood to womanhood, documentary maker Massoud Bakhshi’s ‘All My Sisters’ is a quietly subversive, deeply personal insider portrait of gender politics in Iran.
“In the end, it’s about ethics”: an interview with Isabel Arrate Fernandez
IDFA’s new Artistic Director Isabel Arrate Fernandez on running the world’s largest documentary festival, the dangers of AI, and a controversial new ban on state-funded Israeli films.
Complaint No. 713317
A small domestic malfunction unveils suffocating routine and bureaucratic absurdity in Yasser Shafiey’s Kafkaesque dark comedy ‘Complaint No. 713317’.
The Silent Run
In ‘The Silent Run’, Marta Bergman’s reconstruction of a tragic true story about a young migrant family trying to enter England from Belgium carves out its niche in the familiar European genre by shifting viewpoints between the determined, frightened refugees and the police whose job it is to stop them.
The Evolution of Khaled El Nabawy
Khaled El Nabawy is regarded as one of the most prominent actors of his generation and among the most conscious of art as a cultural and human message that transcends local boundaries.
One More Show
The obliterated ruins of Gaza and its refugee tents bear witness to a rare act of defiance — laughter and smiles — in Mai Saad’s and Ahmed Eldanf’s hauntingly powerful documentary ‘One More Show’.
CIFF Kicks Off
Among 120 titles representing more than 50 countries at the 46th Cairo Intl. Film Festival, 14 films are competing for the Golden Pyramid awards, including five Arab features.
TFV Talks to Mohamed Sayed Abdel Rahim about Cairo Industry Days
Raising the profile of Egyptian cinema, the oldest and most important film industry in the MENA region.
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.
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.
Elephants & Squirrels
History and colonialism form the basis for Gregor Brändli’s engrossing ‘Elephants & Squirrels’, screened at DOK Leipzig.
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.
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’.
The Beauty of the Donkey
Childhood memories and a lost homeland are the backbone of Dea Gjinovci’s powerful documentary ‘The Beauty of the Donkey’.
I Love You, I Leave You
Mental health receives a very personal approach from Moris Freiburghaus, whose film ‘I Love You, I Leave You’ is rooted in friendship.
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.
Mary Anning
Paleontology comes to the screen from a child’s point of view in Marcel Barelli’s family-oriented feature debut ‘Mary Anning’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Writing Life: Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students
French Nobel winner Annie Ernaux’s writing becomes a prism for the minds of a new generation in Claire Simon’s deceptively simple, insightful and expansive doc.
San Sebastian 2025: The Verdict
From the cloister to Gaza, powerful films and opinionated audiences make themselves heard at San Sebastian.
San Sebastian 2025: The Awards
Spanish director Alauda Ruiz de Azua won San Sebastian’s best film prize with her witty, paradoxical and often quite moving ‘Sundays’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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;’.
Maspalomas
Love, lust and old age coalesce in the layered, emotionally charged queer comedy-drama ‘Maspalomas’, part of San Sebastián’s Official Selection.
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.
Historias del buen valle
Autenticidad y buen humor en las manos de José Luis Guerin hacen de estás Historias una contendiente fuerte a la Concha de oro.
Good Valley Stories
The authenticity and good humor in José Luis Guerin’s documentary ‘Good Valley Stories’ won it the Special Jury Award at San Sebastian.
Basque Glories: Restoring Basque Language Films at San Sebastián
Following the success of ‘Tasio’ on the festival circuit last year, the Basque Film Archive will present the restored versions of four 1980s medium-length feature at San Sebastián.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
Las corrientes
Las tensiones de la maternidad se desbordan en Las corrientes, un drama existencial y visualmente expresivo.
Si no ardemos, cómo iluminar la noche
El debut de Kim Torres es un coming of age sobrio y sensible que se estrena en el Festival de San Sebastián.
If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night
Kim Torres’ first film is a sober and sensitive coming-of-ager.
Seven O’Clock Breakfast Club for the Brokenhearted
South Korean rom-com royalty Bae Suzy and The Squid Game star Lee Jin-wook descend on Busan with the slick, subdued and fastidiously chaste ‘Seven O’Clock Breakfast Club for the Brokenhearted’.
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.
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.
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.
Weightless
Danish director Emilie Thalund depicts teenage confusion with gentle precision in her feature debut ‘Weightless’.
Gloaming in Luomu
Zhang Lu conjures an enigmatic, engaging and visually enchanting cinematic experience with ‘Gloaming in Luomu’.
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.
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’.
The Importance of Being Lillian Hellman
The San Sebastián Retrospective, devoted to Lillian Hellman, is even more timely now than when it was announced.
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.
Two Pianos
Music and obsessive love are the center of the compelling new Arnaud Desplechin film premiering in competition at SSIFF.
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.
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.
Los tigres
Grandes actuaciones y buena realización salvan un guion previsible in ‘Los tigres’.
The Tigers
Great performances and good direction save a predictable script in Alberto Rodriguez’s thriller ‘The Tigers’, bowing in competition at San Sebastian.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
San Sebastian 2025: The Female Touch
Women are prominently featured at San Sebastián 2025, from the poster to the subject of the Retrospective, and beyond.
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.
Six Days in Spring
Joachim Lafosse tells the story of an unusual vacation in the autobiographical and subtly surprising ‘Six Days in Spring’.
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.
Jafar Panahi Receives Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award at Busan
Iranian cineaste Jafar Panahi talks about his 30-year relationship with BIFF and calls for a change in the Academy Awards’ submission rules.
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.
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.
Jung Hanseok Takes Charge at Busan; Fest Pivots to Competition
Busan International Film Festival enters a new era with a dedicated competition section and the appointment of a new festival director eager to highlight BIFF’s Asian focus.
Oldenburg 2025: The Awards
Ondrej Provaznik’s ‘Broken Voices’ takes the top prize, while debut directors flourish at Oldenburg 2025.
Oldenburg Film Festival 2025: The Verdict
The indie film event par excellence, Oldenburg Film Festival, returned over an inspiring five days filled with bold and creative filmmaking from brutal dystopian pregnancy dramas to charming mental health love stories.
Re-Creation
The gripping, formally inventive jury-room drama ‘Re-Creation’ is part speculative fiction and part true crime exposé built around strong performances.
Oldenburg pays tribute to Don Keith Opper
Most famous for his role in the Critters franchise, Oldenburg celebrates Don Keith Opper’s contributions as a screenwriter.
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.
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.
Controversy and Oscar Season Buzz Mark TIFF 50th Celebrations
The Oscar field narrows in Toronto as protesters scrutinize programming.
An Interview with Anders Thomas Jensen
The prolific Danish screenwriter and director, Anders Thomas Jensen, talks about his latest wander into the weird with Mads Mikkelsen, ‘The Last Viking.’
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.
The Boy with White Skin
Labour and mythology come crashing together in The Boy with White Skin, a disquieting short set in the pitch darkness of a Senegalese gold mine.
Under the Burning Sun
Incandescent rage sets alight Under the Burning Sun, a road trip through a merciless dystopian desert where women’s bodies are not their own.
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.
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.
Broken Voices
The insidiousness of abuse is expertly explored in Broken Voices, a restrained but devastating loss-of-innocence drama from Ondrej Provaznik.
perfectly a strangeness
The short experimental documentary ‘perfectly a strangeness’ pairs the mundane with the majestic in an equine odyssey to the stars.
Our Father
Addiction and religion clash in ‘Our Father’, a powerful drama about getting clean under the eye of God.
Independent Spirit Returns with the 32nd Oldenburg Film Festival
The city in Lower Saxony comes to life with the return of Germany’s top indie festival, the Oldenburg Film Festival.
German director Joscha Bongard on Influencer Families and His Satirical Drama Babystar
German director Joscha Bongard discusses the commodification of intimacy and the influencer industry as his debut fiction feature ‘Babystar’ bowed in Toronto.
Winter of the Crow
Lesley Manville sees history unfold in front of her eyes in the uneven Cold War thriller ‘Winter of the Crow.’
Venice 2025: The Verdict
Dissent around the jury’s Golden Lion pick only slightly dimmed one of Venice’s best film festivals in years.
The Holy Boy
Paolo Strippoli puts his own spin on the intertwining of grief, faith and horror in the solidly intriguing ‘The Holy Boy’.
The Currents
The tensions of motherhood overflow in the existential, visually expressive drama ‘The Currents’.
Venice 2025: The Awards
Golden Lion goes to Jim Jarmusch; Grand Jury Award to Gaza drama ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
To the Victory!
Valentyn Vasyanovych imagines post-war Ukraine with both hope and fear in the compellingly meta drama, ‘To the Victory!’
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.
Egghead Republic
Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja take on edgelord media with an inventively comic touch in ‘Egghead Republic’.
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.
“Nothing Is Final With Kafka”: Agnieszka Holland on ‘Franz’ and Rehumanising a Legend
Polish director Agnieszka Holland discusses ‘Franz’, her “punky” Toronto-bowing take on the novelist Kafka.
The Love That Remains
A family falls apart into each other’s arms in Hlynur Palmason’s distinctive ‘The Love That Remains’.
Giornate degli Autori: Venice 2025 Awards
The independent filmmakers section reaches its 22nd edition.
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.
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.
The Toronto International Film Festival Rolls Out the Red Carpet for its 50th Birthday
The Toronto International Film Festival celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year, but by no means are they riding on cruise control. Even as they welcome dozens of stars on the red carpet, preparations are underway for the launch of a full-fledged market in 2026. It’ll be the third on the calendar attached to major festivals,...
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Reviving the Past for the Present: Taiwan Revs Up its Restorations
The Venice bow of the restored version of Tsai Ming-liang’s Golden Lion winner ‘Vive L’Amour’ is just the latest stop on Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s festival tour, showcasing Taiwanese cinema, history and culture.
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.
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.
Silent Rebellion
Marie-Elsa Sgualdo explores women’s rights in the 1940s in her handsomely mounted, quietly intriguing feature debut ‘Silent Rebellion’.
A Year of School
Laura Samani deals with high school tribulations in her deceptively breezy sophomore directorial effort ‘A Year of School’.
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.
How to Shoot a Ghost
Mortality is on the mind in Charlie Kaufman’s contemplative and illusory short, How to Shoot a Ghost – an enveloping, chimeric memento mori.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
Venice Immersive 2025: the Communal in the Virtual
Multiple elements of the 2025 edition of Venice Immersive tried to go beyond the conventional image of the virtual reality experience.
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.
Venice 2025: A Royal Pre-Opening
The new reconstruction of ‘Queen Kelly’ was an appetizer for things to come at Venice 2025, the 82nd edition of the festival.
Sarajevo 2025: The Awards
Stefan Dordevic’s sensitive doc portrait of grief won top honors at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival.
Sarajevo 2025: The Verdict
Wind, Talk to Me was named Best Feature at Sarajevo Film Festival’s political and star-studded 31st edition.
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.
CineLink Winners at Sarajevo 2025
A rich array of awards was distributed to film projects at the 23rd CineLink Industry Days in Sarajevo.
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.
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.
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.
I Believe the Portrait Saved Me
The documentary vignette ‘I Believe the Portrait Saved Me’ uses a deeply personal story to explore the power of creativity and evoke the teetering knife edge of survival.
Sarajevo Honoree Willem Dafoe on David Lynch, Scorsese and More
The prolific American actor discussed working with unconventional arthouse giants, and the view from atop one of Scorsese’s most controversial scenes.
Ray Winstone Honored with the Heart of Sarajevo
.A more prolific and eclectic actor is hard to find: Ray Winstone adds another feather to his cap with Sarajevo Film Festival’s highest award.
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.
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.
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’..
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.
Paolo Sorrentino, the Self-Effacing Star Director
The man behind ‘The Consequences of Love’ and ‘The Hand of God’ is among the guests of honor at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
How Come It’s All Green Out Here?
Nikola Lezaic melts the lines between fiction and family memory in a gently unusual but ultimately frustrating drama about a road trip to Dalmatia for a re-burial.
God Will Not Help
A woman’s strange arrival upends order in a Croatian shepherd clan in Hana Jusic’s powerful, brooding period drama.
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.
Sarajevo 2025: The Heart of the Matter
The 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival promises to be yet another rich and layered showcase of contemporary cinema.
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.
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.
Desire Lines
Dane Komljen’s spectral and shape-lifting landscape of bodies and the paranoia of uncertain identity is a mesmerising, unsettling gem.
The Boy from the River Drina
Past traumas are at the center of Zijad Ibrahimovic’s documentary ‘The Boy from the River Drina’, screened in Locarno’s Panorama Suisse section.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Royal Film Commission Rides the Waves
From a cash rebate up to 45% for foreign productions shooting in Jordan to educational programs to develop filmmakers and audiences, Jordan’s Royal Film Commission has become a leading force in the MENA region for film culture.
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.
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’.
18 Awards at Amman Film Industry Days
With 150 film submissions, it’s already a win to be among the projects selected at the Amman Film Industry Days.
Amman Film Industry Days at its Busiest
As Amman’s Film Industry Days explode with some 400 participants signed on, Industry head Bassam Alasad assesses, “Arab cinema has gotten bolder and wilder – no rules can hold back its creativity.”
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.
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.
Amman Int. Film Festival Navigates an Unscripted World
Amman International Film Festival – Awal Film (AIFF) raises the curtain on Arab and international films for the 6th time, during a pause in Mideast hostilities and the ongoing tragedy in Palestine.
28 Years Later
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland reteam for a sequel to their zombie smash that’s got a lot of heart – and other organs.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
Sepideh Farsi’s documentary ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’ is a devastating yet profoundly human portrait of photojournalist Fatma Hassona and her life under siege in Gaza.
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.
Asian Restorations on the Rise at Cannes
Some of the best discoveries of Asian cinema at Cannes this year took place in the Classics programme, with overlooked auteurs from marginal countries receiving belated acclaim.
Cannes 2025: The Verdict
The diversity of art was a running theme at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where an Iranian filmmaker won the Palme d’Or and Japan emerged strong.
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.
78th Cannes Film Festival 2025: The Awards
Outspoken Iranian director Jafar Panahi takes the Palme d’Or with his daring ‘It Was Just an Accident’.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
CineVerdict: Un poeta
Humor negro, ironía y desafío de los estereotipos cinematográficos hacen de ‘Un poeta’ una comedia para ser disfrutada.
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.
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
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
Lynne Ramsay returns to the big screen with the peculiar Cannes Competition entry ‘Die My Love’, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.
The Great Arch
Stéphane Demoustier directs an elegant film about the dilemma of creators on a real-life project.
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.
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.
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.
The Mountain Won’t Move
Brothers in North Macedonia’s mountains question the shepherding life in Petra Seliskar’s empathetic and earthy observational doc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Berlinale 2025: The Verdict
The Berlin International Film Festival’s 75th anniversary had a hard time overlooking the political turbulence in the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Message
Ivan Fund’s small, quiet film featuring a young Argentine girl with a special gift is all about atmosphere and nuance.
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.
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’.
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.
The Blue Trail
Engrossing actors and an Amazon river setting lighten some heavy-handed social commentary about how the elderly are scandalously mistreated, in Gabriel Mascaro’s likable future dystopia, ‘The Blue Trail’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
IFFR 2025 Awards
Original, sophisticated films that pushed the limits of fiction and documentary were recognized by juries at this year’s Tiger awards.
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.
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
Science fact is stranger than science fiction in this tonally flat but fascinating documentary profile of controversial dolphin whisperer, inner-space psychonaut and LSD enthusiast John C. Lilly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths
Ostensibly about the preservation of an ancient language, Eva Giolo’s essay film ‘Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths’ combines linguistics with landscape and myth to captivating effect.
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.
Don’t Leave the Kids Alone
A mother unadvisedly leaves her two young sons home alone in Don’t Leave the Kids Alone chaotic but largely entertaining Mexican haunted house horror.
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.
Common Pear
Traditional fruit cultivation becomes a source of archival fascination in Common Pear, a sci-fi documentary hybrid set amidst environmental collapse.
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.
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.
Wondrous is the Silence of My Master
Ivan Salatic’s magnificently moody, intelligent and doom-laden vision of Montenegrin freedom fighting and exile questions the formation and undoing of national myth.
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’.
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.
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’.
An Interview with Marten Rabarts
TFV spoke with Marten Rabarts, the newly appointed Head of IFFR Pro, to discuss the industry side of the festival.
Sukkwan Island
Vladimir de Fontenay’s otherwise superb father-son drama is marred by an unsatisfactory ending.
The Legends of Eternal Snow
Sakha cinema pioneer Aleksei Romanov reworks an eerie Yakut tale for an intriguing mix of ethnographic detail, anti-imperial defiance and bone-deep chill.
An Interview with Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart
TFV spoke to IFFR’s directors, Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart, about the 2025 edition and what they have planned beyond that.
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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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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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 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
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.
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
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.
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’.
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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What a Year!
Last year was a landmark year for The Film Verdict, and 2025 will be full of changes.
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.
Oceans Are the Real Continents
Just released in the U.S., ‘Oceans Are the Real Continents’ is an exquisite love poem to Cuba, where three generations struggle to survive daily life in a small rural town.
CineVerdict: Los océanos son los verdaderos continentes
Los oceános son los verdaderos continentes es un exquisito poema de amor a Cuba, donde tres generaciones luchan por sobrevivir y sueñan con escapar, representado en una serie de cuadros de la vida cotidiana en un pequeño pueblo rural.
An Interview with Zeki Demirkubuz
Zeki Demirkubuz, one of Turkey’s best-known filmmakers, discusses the importance of closely observing and deeply understanding people in this interview on his new film ‘Life’ (‘Hayat’).
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.
Until the Orchid Blooms
‘Until the Orchid Blooms’ is a fine exploration of the battle between modernism and tradition set in a Cambodian community.
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.
One of Those Days When Hemme Dies
A vengeful labourer’s plan to kill his manipulative foreman gives way to empathy for the rural poor in lawyer-turned-filmmaker Murat Firatoglu’s solid directorial debut.
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’.
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’.
Can Africa Hope for an Oscar?
Nine films have been sent to the 2025 Oscars by African countries. Will any one get a nomination?
An Interview with Toby Schmutzler and Milcah Cherotich
TFV spoke with Milcah Cherotich and Toby Schmutzler, two of the persons behind ‘Nawi’, Kenya’s official submission for the 97th Academy Awards.
Prostrate and Draw Near
The evocative short animation, Prostrate and Draw Near, explores a strange and unique moment in the Great Mosque of Mecca during a Covid-19 lockdown.
An Interview with Miguel Gomes
TFV spoke with Miguel Gomes, whose latest film ‘Grand Tour’ is Portugal’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards.
Russian Consul
Miroslav Lekic recounts the origins of the Kosovo conflict in ‘Russian Consul’, Serbia’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards.
An Interview with Alessandra Celesia
The director of ‘The Flats’ discusses documenting the untold stories of The Troubles.
An Interview with Miroslav Lekic
TFV speaks to Miroslav Lekic, the director of ‘Russian Consul’, Serbia’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards.
An interview with Tito Catacora
Peruvian filmmaker Tito Catacora finished shooting ‘Yana Wara’ after the sudden death of his nephew, the original director.
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.
Cine Verdict Entrevista con Tito Catacora
‘Yana Wara’ es la presentación de Perú para los Premio Internacional de la Academia 2025
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.
An Interview with Rusudan Glurjidze
The director of Georgia’s International Film submission ‘The Antique’ discusses the film’s difficult Venice debut and modern-day censorship from Russia.
Family Time
Tia Kouvo impresses with her feature debut ‘Family Time’, a very personal drama set in her hometown Lahti.
An Interview with Tia Kouvo
Director Tia Kouvo talks to TFV about the process of making Finland’s Oscar submission ‘Family Time’.
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
An interview with Andrea Ciavatta
The creator and subject of the Oscar-qualified short, ‘Imprinting’ – Andrea Ciavatta – discusses translating his life to the screen and the role of music in his film.
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.
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.
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’.
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’.
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.
Yousra and Hussein Fahmy receive the inaugural Omar Sharif Award
The new Omar Sharif Award recognizes the growth of the Middle East as a premier filmmaking region.
Putting an end to stereotypes in Africa’s cinema
The Cairo Industry Days’ dynamic panel about African cinema underlined how filmmakers must challenge the systems that restrict them.
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.
“This film disproves the supremacy of Global North academic institutions”: an interview with ‘The Shadow Scholars’ director Eloise King
British director Eloise King discusses her documentary ‘The Shadow Scholars’, showing at the 2024 edition of IDFA, and what it says about the intellectual capacities of the Global South.
TFV highlights Arab talent with Next Generation Awards
The Film Verdict chief critic and editor Deborah Young addressed the importance of the awards in celebrating exceptional MENA film talent.
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.
Profile: Rakeen Saad
Rakeen Saad of Jordan began acting at ten and has steadily grown in her chosen career.
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.
Profile: Noha Adel
Screenwriter and director Noha Adel represents Egypt in Cairo Film Festival competition with her first feature, ‘Spring Came Laughing’.
Profile: Ahmad Al-Ayyad
For his extensive experience covering Saudi cinema and the regional film industry, Al-Ayyad has been awarded the Next Generation Award.
Profile: Hani Khalifa
Hani Khalifa’s latest film ‘Flight 404’ is Egypt’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.
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,
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.
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’.
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’.
Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya
Malena Szlam uses in-camera editing to craft Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya, an evocative 16mm exploration of Australia’s vast central eastern ranges and their deep geological time.
“No Ukraine, no Ukrainian movies”: an interview with film director and military commander Oleh Sentsov
The Ukrainian director of accidental one-shot war documentary ‘Real’ talks to The Film Verdict about war and peace, boycotting Russian propaganda, and Donald Trump’s prospects for ending the conflict.
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.
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.
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.
Hussein Fahmy, a president for all seasons
The affable president of the Cairo Film Festival is a clear-sighted leader whose other job is being one of Egypt’s biggest stars.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Holidays in Palestine
In his well-executed documentary ‘Holidays In Palestine’, Maxime Lindon dissects what it means to be a Palestinian with a European passport.
TFV talks to Rashid Masharawi
Rashid Masharawi discusses his work and his enduring commitment to bringing Palestinian stories to the global stage.
Difficult questions and radical solutions: an interview with IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia
The outgoing head of IDFA, the world’s biggest documentary festival, Orwa Nyrabia insists non-fiction cinema must balance pragmatism and radicalism, mainstream and marginal voices.
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.
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.
TFV Talks to CIFF Director Essam Zakaria
The new man behind the 45th festival wants films to be seen beyond central Cairo.
TFV Talks to Mohamed Sayed Abdel Rahim, head of Cairo Industry Days
The head of Cairo Industry Days hopes the market-based event will promote inclusivity among all players of Egyptian filmmaking, not just festival and arthouse circles.
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.
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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The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
A cadre of feral siblings teach a small town the true meaning of Christmas in a rare faith-based film that doesn’t oversell its message.
DOK Leipzig 2024: The Verdict
The long-running East German documentary and animation festival found a fruitful balance this year between heavy political themes and more playful, experimental, mind-bending films.
Tarantism Revisited
Visual anthropologists Anja Dreschke and Michaela Schäuble investigate the mysterious rituals of taranatism in this arty, lightly experimental, prize-winning essay-film.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
DOK Leipzig festival serves up an autumnal feast of documentaries, animation and innovation.
The 67th edition of DOK Leipzig festival promises a week of pop and politics, critical debate and constructive disagreement in fiercely divided times.
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.
A Year in the Life of the Country
Tomasz Wolski’s found-footage documentary ‘A Year in the Life of the Country’ paints a playful, freewheeling collage portrait of Communist Poland during martial law and the birth of Solidarity.
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.
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.
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.
Journey to Face Them
Hwang In-won makes a case for the unresolved nature of the trauma of sexual assault in her meditative, elliptical first feature ‘Journey to Face Them’.
A Girl with Closed Eyes
Chun Sunyoung’s debut feature ‘A Girl with Closed Eyes’ is a well-made thriller lightly marred by an elaborate third act.
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.
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.
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.
White Bird
This platitude-heavy infomercial for kindness benefits from strong performances and handsome production design.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
San Sebastián 2024: The Awards
All the big prize winners, surprise career comebacks and controversial jury choices at the long-running Basque film festival.
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’.
CineVerdict: El lugar de la otra
‘El lugar de la otra’, el debut en ficción de Maite Alberdi, está hecho con elegancia pero carece de profundidad
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
Maybe It’s True What They Say about Us
A psychiatrist is put to the test when her daughter, the member of a cult, is arrested for killing her baby in the spooky but unconvincing Chilean-Argentine drama ‘Maybe It’s True What They Say About Us’.
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.
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.
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.
Last Breath
Costa-Gavras, in top form at 91, starts another revolution, this time about death, with ‘Last Breath’.
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.
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.
In Her Place
Maite Alberdi’s fiction debut ‘In Her Place’ is a well-crafted feature, but lacks depth.
Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness
Actor turned director Johnny Depp pays indulgent tribute to bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani, and to himself, in the badly misjudged and barely coherent biopic ‘Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
European Cinema Enters the Metaverse with UniFrance’s MyMetaStories Festival
By Liza Foreman In a groundbreaking fusion of European cinema and the gaming world, UniFrance is set to launch the second edition of MyMetaStories, a film festival that brings the art of filmmaking into the virtual realm of Minecraft. Running from October 11 to November 3, 2024, the event aims to bridge the gap between...
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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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“It is like burning books” — Argentine cinema in danger
One of the most prominent Latin American film industries is under the chainsaw.
CineVerdict: “Es como quemar libros” — Cine argentino en peligro
Uno de los cines mas prominentes de América Latina bajo la motosierra.
Yerai Cortés’ Flamenco Guitar
Vibrant flamenco music redeems a weak narrative in Antón Alvarez’s directorial debut.
CineVerdict: La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés
La exuberante música flamenca y el talento de Yerai Cortés sobrepasan un argumento débil.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oldenburg 2024: The Awards
The eccentric Canadian bicycle comedy ‘James’ claimed the Best Film prize at Oldenburg 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.
Oldenburg’s tribute to Na Gyi and Paing Phyo Thu
The director and actress couple Na Gyi and Paing Phyo Thu have been in hiding since having to flee after their arrest was ordered by the military junta in 2021.
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.
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.
Energetic 49th Toronto International Film Festival Buzzes with Oscar Season Hopefuls
2024 awards race takes shape as TIFF brings stars and prestige to the red carpet.
Oldenburg Ruined All Other Film Festivals for Me
First-time filmmaker Truman Kewley describes his emotions screening ‘Beautiful Friend’ to audiences, in a journey that began at last year’s Oldenburg Film Festival.
Nostalgia of a (Still) Alive Heart
Two young children are left to find their own way when their father commits suicide in Diego Gaxiola’s poignant magical realist short, Nostalgia of a (Still) Alive Heart.
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.
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.
The Swedish Torpedo
Frida Kempff’s powerful biopic defies conventions as it studies the intersection of patriarchy and sport.
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.
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.
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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The 31st Oldenburg Film Festival rolls out the red carpet
Oldenburg, Germany’s premiere indie film festival, returns
The Courageous
An empathetic study of a woman trying to hold it together for her kids is powered with a memorable performance by Ophelia Kolb.
A Missing Part
Guillaume Senez’s sensitive and low-key melodrama explores the harsh realities of Japan’s child custody laws.
Venice 2024: The Verdict
The long, hot summer seemed reluctant to end as crowds returned to the Lido to see the stars and the Venice film selection.
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.
My Fathers’ Daughter
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a fantasy father figure in Egil Pedersen’s charming coming-of-age dramedy.
Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story
Blue Road finds the blazing truth in famed author Edna O’Brien’s remarkable career.
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.
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.
Producer Alex C. Lo bursts onto the international festival scene
Taiwan-born and New York-based producer Alex C. Lo seems to be everywhere on the A-list festival circuit.
The Quiet Ones
Frederik Louis Hviid’s nerve-rattling heist flick unfolds with sweat-soaked tension and clockwork precision.
Youth: Homecoming
Wang Bing brings his documentary trilogy to a strong close with ‘Youth: Homecoming’, first screened in Venice’s main competition.
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
Mistress Dispeller
Director Elizabeth Lo explores China’s novel solutions to infidelity and marital crisis with her intimate love-triangle documentary ‘Mistress Dispeller’.
Temporary Shelter
Anastasiia Bortuali’s debut documentary is a captivating scrapbook of Ukrainians forging a new life in Iceland.
Sicilian Letters
Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza put their own compelling spin on a true Mafia story with ‘Sicilian Letters’, a Venice competition premiere.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The IDM Film Commission South Tyrol supports native born Maura Delpero’s film ‘Vermiglio’
Maura Delpero returned to her native region for her second feature film, choosing most of the locations between South Tyrol and Trentino as the backdrop for her film debuting at the 81st Venice Film Festival. VERMIGLIO is competing in Venice as the first South Tyrolean filmmaker for the Golden Lion. VERMIGLIO is a production with...
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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.
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’.
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’.
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.
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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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.’
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’.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
Venice Immersive 2024: A Bodily Matter
The 2024 Venice Immersive selection featured some interesting variations on the usual VR experience, involving the body and senses in new ways.
49th Toronto International Film Festival Offers an Intriguing and Diverse Selection of European Cinema
TIFF’s slate of European cinema ranges from provocative documentaries to pulse-pounding genre thrills.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom
The Japanese franchise celebrates its 45th anniversary with the VR film ‘Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom’, shown in the Venice Immersive lineup.
Feeling Better
Valerio Mastandrea makes good use of his gruff persona in his second directorial feature ‘Feeling Better’, screened in Venice’s Orizzonti competition.
What If…? An Immersive Story
Marvel Studios makes it VR debut with ‘What If…? An Immersive Story’, based on the animated series dealing with alternate realities.
The Verdict: Sarajevo 2024
Sarajevo Film Festival’s 30th edition was a starry affair, balancing stories from the Balkan region’s dark past with signposts to a brighter future.
Sarajevo 2024: The Awards
The Romanian ‘Three Kilometers to the End of the World’ by director Emanuel Pârvu took home the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Feature Film.
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.
Saule Bliuvaite on awards, future plans and Stephen King.
We spoke to Saule Bliuvaite, fresh off her dual triumph in Locarno with her debut feature ‘Toxic’.
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.
Holy Electricity director Tato Kotetishvili in Sarajevo: “When you’re open to chance, the universe gives you surprises”
Fresh from awards in Locarno, Georgian director Tato Kotetishvili spoke about integrating reality and trusting in magic with debut feature Holy Electricity.
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.
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.
John Turturro in Sarajevo: “As you can see, I’m a very inhibited actor.”
Beloved American actor John Turturro spoke of depicting eccentrics, early typecasting, and the realities of mental health care to a rapt masterclass audience in Sarajevo.
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.
Alexander Payne talks ‘Election’ sequel, western plans and his love for classic car chase movies.
The Oscar-winning director of ‘Sideways’, ‘About Schmidt’, ‘Nebraska’ and ‘The Holdovers’ came to Sarajevo Film Festival for a masterclass talk and gala screening.
Festival Flashback: Looking Back to 2001 at the Sarajevo Film Festival
This year marks the 30th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. SFF is the largest and most premier festival in Southeast Europe. The festival was launched during the siege of the Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. The first Sarajevo Film Festival was held from 25 October to 5 November 1995. With the siege of Sarajevo...
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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.
Julie Keeps Quiet
Belgian filmmaker Leonardo van Dijl makes a strong feature debut with sports drama ‘Julie Keeps Quiet’, which premiered in Cannes.
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’.
Cord Jefferson talks race and racism, ‘American Fiction’ and post-Oscars plans in Sarajevo.
The Oscar-winning writer-director of ‘American Fiction’ gave a lively masterclass and hosted a gala screening as part of the Balkan-region film fest’s 30th anniversary edition.
Locarno 2024: The Verdict
The 2024 Locarno Film Festival spotlighted the future in more ways than one.
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.
Locarno 2024: The Awards
‘Toxic’ (‘Akiplesa’), the first feature directed by Lithuania’s Saulé Bliuvaité, swept two top awards at the 77th Locarno Film Festival.
The Life Apart
Marco Tullio Giordana deals solidly with family drama and music in Locarno premiere ‘The Life Apart’.
Family Therapy
Slovenian writer-director Sonja Prosenc explores the tragicomic extremes of wealth and privilege in her sprawling but impressive social satire ‘Family Therapy’.
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’.
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.
Sarajevo Film Festival celebrates 30 years as a potent symbol of peace, unity and great cinema.
Southwest Europe’s biggest film festival is marking its landmark anniversary with a feast of premieres, new locations across the city, plus starry guests including Meg Ryan and John Turturro.
Timestalker
Alice Lowe returns behind the camera with her second feature ‘Timestalker’, a century-spanning rom-com screened in Locarno’s Piazza Grande.
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.
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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At the Door of the House Who Will Come Knocking
Finding universal emotion in a singular case study, director Maja Novakovic’s painterly debut feature ‘At the Door of the House Who Will Come Knocking’ is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on loss and loneliness.
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.
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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looking she said I forget
A young woman acclimatises to the rhythms of a new city while reflecting on those of her lifestyle in looking she said I forget, the heady short from Naomi Pacifique.
New Dawn Fades
A sensitive mind struggles with esoteric encounters in the Istanbul gloom in Gurcan Keltek’s spectacularly atmospheric horror.
Alien: Romulus
Fede Alvarez returns to the well of the original 1979 Ridley Scott hit while adding a few space-screams of his own.
Listen to the Voices
In the impressive ‘Listen to the Voices’, Maxime Jean-Baptiste presents a sobering look at trauma, blackness, and violence in a Guianese neighbourhood.
Ben Burtt on the Magic of Sound Effects
TFV speaks to Oscar winner Ben Burtt, the 2024 recipient of the Vision Award at the Locarno Film Festival.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Claude Barras: Art in (Stop) Motion
The Locarno Film Festival pays tribute to Claude Barras, a major name in contemporary Swiss animation.
Karlovy Vary 2024: The Verdict
The 58th edition of KVIFF featured Kafka-esque comedy, a strong international program and some controversial prize choices.
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).
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’.
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.
Porcelain War
Porcelain War is a beautifully crafted documentary on the creative resistance of Ukrainian citizens under Russian invasion, and the paradoxes of patriotism.
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
Nature takes center stage in Ivana Gloria’s subtly off-kilter coming-of-age debut ‘Chlorophyll’, screening in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition.
Mediterrane 2024: The Verdict
The island of Malta adds a Mediterranean-themed film festival in its quest to make the film industry a pillar of its economy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Inside Malta: an interview with James Vella
British-Maltese musician, soundtrack composer and record label boss James Vella talks to The Film Verdict about his deep connections to Maltese music, cinema and culture.
I’m Not Everything I Want to Be
An enthralling doc on Czech photographer Libuse Jarcovjakova, whose candid, diaristic images show a communist Prague on the margins, and life on her own terms.
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.
Karlovy Vary Looks to Young Audiences
The 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival freshens up and renews its commitment to a new generation of viewers.
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’.
Inside Malta: Fabrizio Fenech
Representing the younger generation of Maltese filmmakers, Fabrizio Fenech hopes for an uptick of local productions in the future.
Inside Malta: Joseph Formosa Randon
Expert location manager and line producer Joseph Formosa Randon has worked on the top foreign shoots in Malta.
Inside Malta: An interview with Jon S. Baird
Currently head of the jury at Mediterrane Film Festival, the UK-based writer-director Jon S. Baird talks to The Film Verdict about his upcoming projects, his Scottish roots and his personal connections to Malta.
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.
Inside Malta: A Visit to Malta Film Studios
On a break from Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival, The Film Verdict takes a rare peek inside the studio complex where Game of Thrones, Troy, Assassin’s Creed, Napoleon and both Gladiator films were shot.
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.
There’s Something about Teresa Cavina
Mediterrane Film Festival’s new artistic director, Teresa Cavina, turns her attention to Malta and the Mediterranean in this interview with TFV.
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.
Inside Malta: Joshua Cassar Gaspar
The Film Verdict is at Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta for the next week talking to key players in the Maltese film industry.
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’.
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.
Hooked to the Silver Screen: celebrating David Bowie’s rich cinematic odyssey
The second edition of Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival is paying tribute to art-rock icon David Bowie’s cinematic legacy with a dedicated sidebar.
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.
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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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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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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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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‘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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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.
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’.
Cannes 2024: The Verdict
Women’s films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema’s elder statesmen fell out of favor.
Cannes 2024: The Awards
Sean Baker’s fizzy Cinderella tale about a Brooklyn lap dancer who falls for a Russian playboy won this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes.
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.
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’.
Somali Filmmaker Mo Harawe Makes History
When ‘The Village Next to Paradise’ bowed in Un Certain Regard, Mo Harawe became the first Somali filmmaker to compete at Cannes.
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.
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.
Mahdi Fleifel on the challenging miracle of creating Palestinian films
The Palestinian-Danish director Mahdi Fleifel, in Cannes with a brutally realistic exile story, opens up about the difficulty of exiles making films in exile about other exiles.
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.
The Village Next to Paradise
Mo Harawe’s story of a Somali family attempting to make ends meet in a troubled environment is visually striking and masterfully told.
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.
The Other Way Around
Jonas Trueba creates a warm and winning ode to love and letting go in the sun-kissed dog days of summer.
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.
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.
A Queda do Céu/ El cielo que cae
La lucha de los yanomami, chamánica y ambientalista, es retratada con respeto y conocimiento en este visualmente atractivo documental
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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 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.
Three Kilometers to the End of the World
The backwardness of a Romanian country village catches 17-year-old Adi in a homophobic trap in Emanuel Parvu’s justly indignant but conventionally scripted ‘Three Kilometers to the End of the World’.
An Unfinished Film
Lou Ye’s 2024 Cannes entry, ‘An Unfinished Film’, takes too long but comes across with some genuinely emotional moments.
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’.
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating neo-Roman epic ‘Megalopolis’ is a muddled misfire of overcooked kitsch and undercooked ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
French Riviera Film Festival (FRFF) announces finalist shorts of the 2024 competition
The sixth annual French Riviera Film Festival (FRFF), scheduled to take place from May 17-18, 2024, celebrates short films and short-form content from all over the world. The festival co-founders, Nicole Goesseringer Muj and Gotham Chandna, have announced the finalist shorts of the 2024 competition today (see below for finalists). FRFF was first launched in...
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Visions du Réel’s Emilie Bujès: It’s all about the filmmaking
Nestled on the shores of Lake Geneva, , Visions du Réel has developed into a small gem for documentary cinema, screening 128 films in its main programs.
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.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Guy Ritchie displays his usual skill at stylized violence, cheeky repartee, and bespoke costuming, but the build-up in this WWII action saga outshines the climax.
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.
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.
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.
Stockfish 2024: The Verdict
The 10th anniversary edition of the Icelandic festival Stockfish brought professionals and casual audiences together in a warm, intimate manner.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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CineVerdict: Cine en español ¿en serio?
TFV y CineVerdict le da al cine en español una muy merecida atención
Born to Review: TFV Swims Against the Current
International films are emerging from a bleak winter of disregard, thanks to the power of professional reviews.
Al-Takdir at the Kickoff
Al-Takdir, a new bilingual film platform spotlighting the cinema of the Middle East, is about to bow at Cannes.
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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An Innovative Italy-U.S. Deal Heads to the State Department
A new production agreement between the United States and Italy is in the works that could mean significant advantages to projects of Italian origin.
The Arab Cinema Center Celebrates its First 10 Years
The Arab Cinema Center turns ten this year, continuing to offer networking opportunities to Arab filmmakers and their counterparts around the globe.
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.
Berlin 2024: The Verdict
Berlin’s transitional year unfolded uncertainly amid a dire world political situation and an imminent leadership change at the festival.
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.
for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world
Crypto-currencies and cryogenics become intertwined in Gala Hernandez Lopez’s illusory dual-screen collage which ruminates on humanity’s speculative relationship with the future, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Great Yawn of History
Aliyar Rasti’s contemplative fable searches for a better future in the vast Iranian countryside.
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.
Drive-Away Dolls
This lumbering lesbian road-trip “comedy” lurches its way toward nowhere in particular.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
Martin Scorsese pays personal homage to visionary film-maker duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in David Hinton’s formally traditional but thorough documentary ‘Made in England’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Traveller’s Needs
Hong Sang-soo’s third collaboration with Isabelle Huppert is the weakest outing for both the director and actor so far.
CineVerdict: Memorias de un cuerpo que arde
Las voces de tres mujeres dan autenticidad a una película a punto de rebasada por propósitos didácticos. Memorias de un cuerpo que arden que se estrena en la sección Panorama en la Berlinale.
Memories of a Burning Body
The voices of three women give authenticity to ‘Memories of a Burning Body’, premiering in the Panorama section at the Berlinale.
The Importance of Networking
TFV attended a Berlinale networking event for German talents and asked them about their experiences.
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.
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.
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’.
CineVerdict: Yo vi tres luces negras
Santiago Lozano Álvarez encontró una manera original -lírica y exuberante- de hablar sobre los asesinatos, desapariciones y ecocidio en Colombia en Yo vi tres luces negras
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.
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’.
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.
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.
The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder
Filmmaker Inadelso Cossa uses sensory evocation to delve into the lingering impact of Mozambique’s civil war (1977 to 1992) in ‘The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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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.
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.
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’.
A Different Man
Aaron Schimberg’s darkly funny body-horror fairy tale ‘A Different Man’ takes a satirical scalpel to the beastliness of beauty.
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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Checkpoint Carlo Chatrian
Carlo Chatrian is about to unleash his fifth and final Berlinale.
Snap Chat With Simone Baumann
TFV speaks to Simone Baumann, Managing Director of German Films.
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.
Palestinian Cinema at IFFR 2024: Pictured but Not Forgotten
Scattered over different sections with few ripples in the media, four films detailing the Palestinian experience stood out at Rotterdam.
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.
Confidenza
Daniele Luchetti’s ‘Confidenza’ (Trust), from the Domenico Starnone novel about a dangerous confidant, features a noteworthy performance from Elio Germano.
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.
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’.
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.
Scud’s Farewell to Filmmaking
TFV interviewed outspoken Hong Kong director Scud, who brought his tenth and perhaps final film to Rotterdam.
Eco Village
Fumbling first love stirs up a frenzy in this indie debut that gets further away the closer you get.
Steppenwolf
Kazakh writer-director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s stylish but brutal neo-western thriller ‘Steppenwolf’ takes place once upon a time in the Wild East.
Daphne was a torso ending in leaves
In the spritely and tactile essayistic ode to a heroine of Greek myth Daphne was a torso ending in leaves, Catriona Gallagher reflects on the legacy of an ancient arboreal transformation.
The Manetti Bros. and Italian Genre Cinema
TFV correspondent Max Borg investigates the Manetti-verse and how the Italian duo scored a Focus program at this year’s IFFR.
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.
Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others
A solitary artist rents her Tehran house out to a film crew, in an ingeniously layered, droll reflection on how we construct memory and community.
I Do Not Come To You By Chance
The cast shines, but this adaptation of the popular Nigerian novel could use a little more life.
After The Long Rains
Damien Hauser’s enchanting, sun-baked drama ‘After the Long Rains’ has bigger questions beneath its welcoming glow.
“I like creating work that people are repulsed by”: An interview with Rachel Maclean
The feted Scottish film and video artist Rachel Maclean talks Barbie, James Bond, pink-punk maximalism and the subversive power of bad taste.
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.
Stormskerry Maja
A major piece of Finland-Swedish literature comes to life with epic results in Tiina Lymi’s dramatic adaptation, ‘Stormskerry Maja’,
CineVerdict: La historia se escribe de noche
Veredicto: ‘La historia se escribe de noche’ es un retrato inusual de los apagones que han azotado a Cuba durante los últimos años y un ejercicio exquisito de atmósfera cinematográfica
History Is Written at Night
‘History Is Written at Night’ is an unusual portrait of the blackouts that have plagued Cuba over the past few years and an exquisite exercise in atmosphere.
Adorable illusions: Debbie Harry and director Amanda Kramer discuss virtual reality, deepfake porn and New York punk.
The iconic Blondie singer narrates and appears in Kramer’s new documentary ‘So Unreal’, a mind-bending deep dive into prophetic cyberpunk cinema.
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.
Five Experiences from IFFR’s Immersive Media Reviewed
From Aay Liparoto’s powerful ‘Small Acts of Violence’ to Rachel Maclean’s darkly surreal ‘I’m Terribly Sorry’, Rotterdam kept Immersive Media viewers up-to-date.
Tiina Lymi on the Language of Film
Finnish director-screenwriter-actress Tiina Lymi. whose ‘Stormskerry Maja’ had its international premiere in Rotterdam, reflects on making the spoken word realistic on screen.
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’.
The Paragon
A joyous Kiwi midnight-movie oddity that channels ‘80s fantasy and DIY gumption in a cosmic quest for a hyper-dimensional crystal.
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.
CineVerdict: Con Chile en el corazón… y en la mirada
Al mostrar filmes de directores exiliados, el Focus Chile en el corazón de IFFR 2024 nos ayuda a entender mejor el país y el día en que cambió de golpe.
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.
Pierre Monnard is Back in French
The Swiss director is bringing his new film ‘Bisons’ to Rotterdam.
Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart on Rotterdam’s Present and Future
The mainstream and the niche coexist at IFFR this year under artistic director Kaludjercic and managing director Stewart.
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.
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.
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
European Creativity Shines at Sundance
The Europeans were in form at Sundance, where they showed their first new films of 2024.
Handling The Undead
Thea Hvistendahl’s half-Stephen King, half-Kafka first feature, ‘Handling the Undead’, is a confident three-pronged narrative on the irreversibility of death.
A New Kind of Wilderness
In a Norwegian doc world premiering at Sundance, a moving family story is occasionally snagged by unconvincing dramatic contrivances.
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.
Veni, Vidi, Vici
Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann’s ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ is an incredibly clear-eyed take on the absolute power the rich have in a capitalist society.
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.
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.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
This superhero sequel represents something never-before-seen in cinema: a boring James Wan movie.
Egyptian star Yousra talks to Marianne Khoury
Two of El Gouna Film Festival’s leading ladies discussed Yousra’s film career in a special masterclass.
El Gouna Egyptian Shorts: Local Stories Impress
Egyptian filmmakers stand out in El Gouna’s official Short Film Competition.
Family Portrait
Director Lucy Kerr’s feature debut ‘Family Drama’ is slender and elusive, but highly atmospheric and hauntingly strange.
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.
A Window on Palestine at El Gouna
In a time of war, El Gouna’s special 2023 edition presents an insightful collection of recent films from Palestine, curated with the Palestine Cinema Days.
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
Sudanese Classic Shorts at El Gouna: The Desert vs Modernization
El Gouna is screening eight Sudanese shorts from the ’70s and ’80s to retell a forgotten chapter of African film history.
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’.
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’.
Marwan Hamed: Industry First!
Marwan Hamed’s work cannot be separated from the industry aspects of his successful film career.
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’.
Ahmed Shawky discusses FIPRESCI, diversity, and post Arab Spring cinema
FIPRESCI President and head of CineGouna SpringBoard Ahmed Shawky aspires for more diversity in film circles and more freedom for Arab narratives.
Marianne Khoury and Intishal Al-Timimi Negotiate El Gouna’s Special Edition
“Art should not be sacrificed during wars”: El Gouna’s Intishal Al Timimi and Marianne Khoury tell TFV
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.
5 Questions for Matteo Garrone
Two African boys who dream of Europe cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean on a heroic journey in ‘Me Captain’. Italy’s Oscar entry from acclaimed filmmaker Matteo Garrone.
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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Five Questions for Milorad Milinkovic
Filmmaker and producer Milorad Milinkovic reveals he is also a history buff in his recreation of the assassination of Prince Mihailo Obrenovic III in Serbia’s Oscar entry, ‘The Duke and the Poet’.
5 Questions for Margreth Olin
Nine cinematographers worked on depicting the landscape of glaciers and fjords that shaped director Margreth Olin’s childhood in Norway.
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.
João Canijo on Oscars, Dual Projects and Strindberg
The director of ‘Bad Living’ talks to TFV about how it feels to be Portugal’s Oscar submission for the third time.
Songs of Earth
A stunningly shot meditation on man and nature — or more like man in nature — that could have benefited from more substance.
Anna Hints on Safe Spaces, Nudity and Posters
Director Anna Hints discusses all things ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’, Estonia’s Oscar entry.
Radu Jude Discusses Red Carpets, Barbie and Dracula
Exuberant director Radu Jude talks to TFV about Romania’s Oscar hopeful ‘Do Not Expect Too Much From the
End of the World’ and what’s coming next.
Five Questions for Loïc Tanson, director of ‘The Last Ashes’
The filmmaker talks about ‘The Last Ashes’, an intriguing blend of European and American film traditions that is Luxembourg’s selection for the Oscar race.
Ramata-Toulaye Sy on taking ‘Banel & Adama’ to Cannes and the Oscars
Ramata-Toulaye Sy, the talented new director shooting in Senegal, gracefully glides from a Cannes premiere to the Oscar race.
The Peasants
Luminous hand-painting animates a famed Polish tale of female defiance in a rural world of predatory opportunism and survival.
“Miracles happen, you just need to look around”: an interview with Tinatin Kajrishvili and Lasha Khalvashi.
Tinatin Kajrishvili, the director and producer of Georgia’s official Oscar submission ‘Citizen Saint’ discuss superstition, crucifixion and the current boom in world-class Georgian cinema.
A “Special Edition” of El Gouna Film Festival 2023
Festival confirms dates will be December 14 – 21.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Biljana Tutorov and Melissa Thackway Talk IDFA 2023 and the Power of Archives
Melissa Thackway and Biljana Tutorov, jury members for the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award at IDFA 2023, join TFV’s Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, the jury’s third member, in a discussion about the evolution of archives and the festival’s controversial opening night.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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
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.
IDFA’s Orwa Nyrabia on Making Space for the Unclassifiable
IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia talks with TFV critic Carmen Gray about the festival’s role in times of tension, and where documentary might be heading.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
DOK Leipzig 2023: The Verdict
With its socially and politically engaged agenda, DOK Leipzig’s 66th edition felt especially timely this year during a major period of global turbulence.
DOK Leipzig 2023: The Awards
Peter Mettler’s personal and poetic reflection ‘While the Green Grass Grows’ wins DOK Leipzig’s Golden Dove as best international documentary.
Director Lina Soualem Talks about Palestine’s Oscar submission ‘Bye Bye Tiberias’
Lina Soualem is touring global festivals with her very personal documentary’ Bye Bye Tiberias’, in “a moment of great tragedy and despair”.
El Shatt — A Blueprint for Utopia
‘El Shatt’, a commune established by 28,000 Dalmatian Croats in colonial Egypt where they fled Nazi persecution in 1944, is remembered in Ivan Ramljak’s romanticized but well-researched documentary.
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.
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..
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.
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.
White Angel — The End of Marinka
A hard-hitting immersion into life and death under Russian invasion in eastern Ukraine, ‘White Angel – The End of Marinka’ is seen through an evacuation team’s GoPro helmet footage.
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.
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
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.
Going viral: an interview with ‘The Standstill’ director Nikolaus Geyrhalter
The feted Austrian documentary maker talks about capturing the Coronavirus crisis on camera, filming in perilous places, and his life-changing rejection from film school.
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.
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.
Belarusian Filmmakers Talk Independence in Exile at DOK Leipzig
Belarusian Independent Film Academy founders, and the team of doc ‘Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus,’ discuss aims and challenges at DOK Leipzig.
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.
TFV Talks To Maria Fredriksson about The Gullspång Miracle
Maria Fredriksson plunged into the doc-making deep end for her debut feature ‘The Gullspång Miracle’, screening at DOK Leipzig.
The Standstill
Austrian documentary maker Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s symphonic Covid chronicle ‘The Standstill’ plays like a slow-motion disaster movie with immersive widescreen visuals.
The Mother of All Hybrids
Asmae El Moudir’s ‘The Mother of All Lies’ embodies both sides of DOK Leipzig’s festival identity.
Three Windows on South West
An ostensibly simplistic documentary about a flat in Kyiv, Three Windows on South West uses incidental memories to paint a fleeting collective portrait of another time.
Isabel Herguera, the Dream of a Master Animator
Spanish animator, author and producer Isabel Herguera bings her first feature to DOK L — a masterfully evocative work on feminism and women’s lives, ‘Sultana’s Dream’.
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.
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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“A festival is not there to create comfort”: An interview with DOK Leipzig artistic director Christoph Terhechte
The head of the world’s oldest documentary film festival talks controversial programming choices, magical public screenings, and the need to learn from uncomfortable history lessons.
The Gullspång Miracle
Eerie, gripping and expertly crafted, Maria Fredriksson’s mind-bending doc takes myriad twists through a Nordic family mystery.
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.
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.
San Sebastian 2023: The Verdict
This year’s San Sebastian was a sunny festival filled with discoveries.
San Sebastian: The Awards
Jaione Camborda’s delicate drama of a midwife, ‘The Rye Horn’, won the Golden Shell.
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’.
CineVerdict: Mi país perdido
Mi país perdido es un documental personal en el que la directora usa múltiples herramientas en un conmovedor retrato de su padre irakí
Gamma Rays
Canadian director Henry Bernadet paints a sunny patchwork portrait of multicultural Montreal in his collaborative teen-driven docu-drama ‘Gamma Rays’.
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.
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.
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.
Víctor Erice, Spanish Master
Revered Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice receives the Donostia Award at SSIFF.
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’.
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.
Amma ki Katha (My Amma’s Tale)
History, folklore, and contemporary realities intertwine in Amma ki Katha, Nehal Vyas’ essayistic meditation on national aspiration and how stories become enmeshed in state oppression.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
CineVerdict: Orlando, mi biografía política
Orlando, el extravagante manifiesto del director debutante Paul B. Preciado empuja los límites de los géneros masculino/femenino y también de los cinematográficos.
Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars”
Godard reaches from beyond with one final film, a coarse and compelling act of montage, an expressive audiovisual treatment for a never-to-be-made made feature, Phony Wars.
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.
Oldenburg Film Festival 2023: The Verdict
Germany’s premiere festival platform for rule-breaking indie cinema celebrated its 30th edition with audacious acid-punk UFO comedies, bleak kidnap thrillers and a ground-breaking peek into the multiverse.
Oldenburg 2023: The Awards
Turkey’s chilling political thriller ‘In the Blind Spot’ grabs the Best Film prize at Oldenburg.
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’.
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.
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’.
From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea
A kidnapping sees the lives and fates of three troubled youths become entwined in Takayuki Hayashi’s serene and solemn feature debut, From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea.
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’.
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.
Working Class Goes To Hell
Mladen Djordjevic’s slow-burn Midnight Madness selection has headier things on its mind than blood and guts.
Strikes Can’t Keep the Shine Off Movies at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival
2023 Toronto International Film Festival sparkles with starry debuts and international favorites.
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.
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.
Shame On Dry Land
Axel Petersén conjures a surreal, pure vibes, sun-baked noir that’s equal parts David Lynch and Dashiel Hammett.
I Told You So
Temperatures rise but drama stays stuck in this hellish, apocalyptic vision of Rome.
A Happy Day
‘A Happy Day’ is a stylized asylum seeker story that wraps its message inside a frustrating riddle.
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.
Spirit of Ecstasy
‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ is a sensitive look at coming-of-age through the unique lens of the ruthless world of finance.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CineVerdict: Lumbrensueño
Lumbrensueño da una lección de creatividad y amor al cine aún con algunas deficiencias.
On The Pulse
‘On The Pulse’ is an admirable but out-of-touch portrait of the gritty work of investigative TV journalists.
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.
Venice Immersive: Variations on 360 Degrees
Various installations in the Venice Immersive put their own stamp on the 360-degree viewing experience.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the Shadow of the Cypress
Unspoken traumas are made manifest in Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi’s beautifully drawn and profoundly moving animated allegory, In the Shadow of the Cypress.
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.
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.
El Paraiso
An engrossing tale of Oedipal codependence set among Rome’s drug dealers, ‘El Paraiso’ boasts brilliant acting that overcomes sentimentality.
Venice Immersive: Bugs, Birds and Books
David Attenborough and Neil Gaiman are two of the star players in this year’s Venice Immersive lineup.
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’.
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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Allen, Besson, Polanski: Three Converging Scandals?
The Venice Film Festival has made headlines in some quarters for selecting the latest works of Allen, Polanski and Besson
The Featherweight
‘The Featherweight’ is an inventive faux doc portrait of boxing great Willie Pep who faces his greatest fight yet: his own legacy.
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.
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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Nuovo Mondo Deodato
The late Italian filmmaker Ruggero Deodato was at the center of one of Venice’s most
anticipated screenings.
CineVerdict: Sobre todo de noche
Sobre todo de noche, el atrevido y excitante debut de Víctor Iriarte, refrescante aún con una historia dolorosa, se estrena en Gionate degli autori en Venecia 2023
Foremost by Night
‘Foremost by Night’, the exciting and daring feature debut of Víctor Iriarte, is refreshing even with its painful story.
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.
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.
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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Wallace & Gromit in ‘The Grand Getaway’
Aardman’s beloved duo Wallace & Gromit return in a demanding but fun VR experience that is part of the 2023 Venice Immersive competition.
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.
Beatrice Fiorentino
The General Delegate of the International Critics Week Beatrice Fiorentino discusses her philosophy for the Venice sidebar.
Upon Open Sky
‘Upon Open Sky’, a Mexican road movie full of restraint and some surprises, premieres in Venice’s Orizzonti section.
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.
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.
CineVerdict: A cielo abierto
A cielo abierto, road movie mexicana con una controlada dirección y varias sorpresas se estrena en Horizontes in Venecia 2023
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.
Gaia Furrer
TFV talks to the Artistic Director of the Giornate degli Autori, as the Venice sidebar celebrates its 20th edition.
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 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.
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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EUREKA! The Europeans Are Coming
Europeans are coming. EFP and eurimages are coming to Toronto
Venice Memories
Publisher and film historian Peter Cowie brings insight and humor to his compact history of the Mostra del Cinema.
3 Questions for Alberto Barbera
Alberto Barbera, director of the 80th Venice International Film Festival, reflects on the future of cinema.
The Film Verdict at 1,000 Reviews
How The Film Verdict has grown since its first public bow in Venice.
48th Toronto International Film Festival Shines A Light On European Cinema
European cinema and international films load the Toronto slate.
The Happiest Man in the World
Teona Strugar Mitevska’s surrealistic vision of a Sarajevo dating event turned lab for reconciliation is refreshing and offbeat in grappling with the Siege’s legacy.
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.
The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival Awards
Elene Naveriani’s wry celebration of feminist non-conformity from Georgia took topped the awards at Sarajevo.
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.
Sarajevo 2023: The Verdict
Emotional highs and lows marked a politically charged Sarajevo edition that saw one day cancelled in solidarity against gender-based violence.
Requiem to the Hot Days of Summer
The quietude of a bucolic life, and the deep wordless bonds between a mother and son, lie at the heart of Giorgi Parkosadze’s serene doc, ‘Requiem to the Hot Days of Summer.’
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.
Sarajevo Film Festival Halts Schedule, Discusses Femicide
Sarajevo Film Festival shut down its Wednesday schedule to honour a National Day of Mourning after a femicide in Gradacac and protests.
“Cinema can change things”: an interview with ‘Between Revolutions’ director Vlad Petri
The prize-winning Romanian director discusses his found-footage docu-fiction hybrid film ‘Between Revolutions’, clandestine screenings in Iran, and the political power of cinema.
Fran and Verka; or A Usual Day in an Abandoned Village
The long fingers of the Kosovo War reach into the present in Sovran Nrecaj’s patient and stark documentary about Fran and Verka’s isolated life in an abandoned village.
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.
Heart of Sarajevo honoree Mark Cousins on the cities that shaped him
Belfast-born documentarian Mark Cousins, returning to Sarajevo after 29 years, gave a masterclass on his career and creative inspirations.
From the Corner of My Eyes
Domonkos Erhardt’s student short ‘From the Corner of My Eyes’ uses the malleability of the animated image to great effect to capture a miniature moment of connection.
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,
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,
Kudos to Lynne Ramsay
Globally feted Scottish writer-director Lynne Ramsay has carved a slender but unique body of work shaped by uncompromising attitude and aesthetic flair.
“I wish I was hated by smarter people”: an interview with feminist psycho-horror director Jennifer Reeder
Jennifer Reeder discusses her new mind-bending avant-horror film ‘Perpetrator’, kick-ass gender-queer heroines, and the subversively surreal power of genre cinema. Showing in Sarajevo International Film Festival
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
Locarno 2023: The Verdict
Critics’ faves by Ali Ahmadzadeh and Radu Jude took home top prizes at a strong Locarno Film Festival.
The 76th Locarno Film Festival Awards
Critics and public alike applauded the top 76th Locarno Film Festival Awards to Iran and Romania.
The Invisible Fight
Estonian director Rainer Sarnet’s ‘The Invisible Fight’ is an idiosyncratic tale featuring monks, metal rock, and a manically superb performance from Ursel Tilk.
Quality TV Competes at Sarajevo
Once again, the Avant Premiere Series lineup aims to explore the best of regional TV production in Sarajevo International Film Festival
CineVerdict: Mátalos a todos
Mátalos a todos de Sebastian Molina Ruiz combina la estética grunge en video con elementos epistolares para explorar el sentimiento adolescente de aislamiento .
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.
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.
29th Sarajevo Film Festival Opens Its Doors
Lynne Ramsay, Charlie Kaufman and Mark Cousins Are Honoured at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival.
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.
Iranian Director Ali Ahmadzadeh Pressured to Withdraw ‘Critical Zone’ from Locarno
Ali Ahmadzadeh’s third feature ‘Critical Zone’ is an outspoken reflection of the rage in Iranian society today. It is under attack.
Critical Zone
In another angry bulletin from Iran in revolt, Ali Ahmadzadeh’s ‘Critical Zone’ hits censorship out of the ballpark.
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.
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.
iNTELLIGENCE
A man learns of his own imminent death in iNTELLIGENCE, a strikingly graphic meditation on a curtailed life and the allure of immortality.
Kudos to Renzo Rossellini
Renzo Rossellini has lived an adventurous life on the cutting edge of movies and politics.
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.
Mohammed Soudani on Ticino, Filmmaking and Family
From soccer to filmmaking, Premio Cinema Ticino-winner Mohammed Soudani has lit, directed, produced and taught cinema in the Swiss region of Ticino, his home for five decades.
CineVerdict: Todos los incendios
En ‘Todos los incendios’ Mauricio Calderón cumple con el reto de hacer una película coming of age -sensible con interés LGBTQ+ y con un estilo personal.
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.
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.
Night Shift
The beguiling Night Shift follows two individuals as they meander around venerated institutions after dark, crafting an entrancing portrait of liminal existences.
The Legacy of Marco Solari
The President of the Locarno Film Festival for 23 years, Marco Solari makes a graceful bow as he steps offstage.
A Tortoise’s Year of Fate
A factory worker wrestles with a dispiriting future in this short about a fortune-telling tortoise and a desire for self-determination.
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.
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.
Kudos to Marianne Slot
Locarno’s 2023 Raimondo Rezzonico Award goes to producer Marianne Slot, who has brought the best of auteur cinema to discerning audiences around the world.
“I don’t want to make cute things”: an interview with director Radu Jude.
Prize-winning Romanian provocateur Radu Jude shares his thoughts on Jean-Luc Godard and Andrew Tate, the Barbie movie and the thrilling power of bad taste.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
If the end of the world really is approaching, Jude may be our most trenchant Cassandra.
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.
CineVerdict: Espectáculo a diario. 36 filmes en la retrospectiva mexicana en el Festival de Locarno
Espectáculo a diario. 36 filmes en la retrospectiva mexicana en el Festival de Locarno
Spectacle Every Day – 36 Films in Locarno’s Mexican Retrospective
Spectacle Every Day: The Many Seasons of Mexican Popular Cinema is a retrospective that comes to the Locarno Film Festival full of diversity, history and joy.
Tsai Ming-liang Receives Locarno’s Leopard Award
Locarno celebrates the elegant, contemplative work of renowned Asian filmmaker and artist Tsai Ming-liang.
Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro on Hollywood, Locarno and Diversifying the Lineup
Artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro show TFV how bold programming makes Locarno a memorable festival.
Optimism Emerges at Vinciquerra-Ben Ammar Fireside Chat
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra and Eagle Pictures president Tarak Ben Ammar swapped ideas at a lively encounter at the second Audio-Visual Producers (AVP) Summit in Trieste, Italy.
Karlovy Vary: The Verdict
Punk rockers, kick-ass senior citizens and fresh new cinematic voices from Iran to India made for a strong edition of the long-running Czech fest.
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’.
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.
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.
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of a film becomes a moving portrait of place and the healing power of artistic endeavour in Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano.
Thomas Imbach on his Pilgrimage to See Jean-Luc Godard
Swiss filmmaker Thomas Imbach talks about his new documentary ‘Say God Bye’, which screens in the Proxima competition at Locarno.
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’.
Karlovy Vary: A “Russian spa town” no more?
Amid political turmoil in Europe and a push to overhaul Karlovy Vary’s identity for tourists, Russia plays a lesser festival role.
Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story
A lively and engaging rock-doc. ‘Scream of My Blood’ chronicles the riotous career of “gypsy punk” band Gogol Bordello, including singer Eugene Hütz’s family roots in war-torn Ukraine.
Celine Song on Directing her First Film and Working with Producer Christine Vachon
The Korean-Canadian filmmaker is taking her directorial debut ‘Past Lives’ around the world.
Blaga’s Lessons
There’s no dignity in a market economy, as a scammed pensioner turns scammer in this caustic Bulgarian tragifarce and thriller.
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.
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.
Shorts That Impressed Us at KVIFF 57
From heart-breaking performances to queasy satire, from Pedro Costa to Christopher Lee, there was something for everyone in this year’s KVIFF shorts.
Restore Point
Death is not the end in Czech director Robert Hloz’s stylish and ambitious future-noir Euro-thriller debut ‘Restore Point’.
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.
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.
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.
Kudos to Jalmari Helander
The Finnish director is the creative force behind ‘Sisu’, one of the action cinema highlights of the year.
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.
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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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.
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’.
KINO LORBER ACQUIRES U.S. RIGHTS TO KAOUTHER BEN HANIA’S CANNES PRIZEWINNING DOC FOUR DAUGHTERS
Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Academy Award-nominee Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, winner of the L’Oeil d’Or Award for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will screen on the international festival circuit and will open theatrically via Kino Lorber this fall, followed by a digital and home video release on...
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Harrison Ford’s fond farewell to the long-running tomb raider franchise, ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ balances formulaic blockbuster elements with soulful nostalgia and an audacious time-jumping plot.
Wild Nights in Karlovy Vary
The festival’s Midnight Screenings confirm its commitment to versatile global genre cinema.
Kudos to Alexandre O. Philippe
The Geneva-born director is back in Karlovy Vary with his new William Shatner documentary.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry
The deliciously wry, gently unfurling tale of a middle-aged Georgian woman who rejects small-town conformity won the Swiss Film Prize for best film and best director.
Annecy: World Animation’s Fun Showcase
The world’s foremost animation film festival is back with another ambitious edition.
Imcine Takes a Bow
IMCINE takes a bow: The Mexican Institute of Cinematography comes to Annecy with a full hand.
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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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 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
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 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
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
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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Miguel Ángel Anaya Borja
Miguel Ángel Anaya Borja es un animador mexicano participante con k8 en el Festival de Annecy
Aria Covamonas
Aria Covamonas, artista mexicana de la animaciòn, sus cortos animados participaron en el Festival de Annecy 2023
Diego Huacuja T.
Diego Huacuja T. es un animador e ilustrador mexicano, sus cortos animados participan en el Festival de Annecy 2023
Marcos Almada
Marcos Almada en un ilustrador, autor de libros infantiles y cortos animados. Participò en el Festival de Annecy 2023
Patricio Plaza
Patricio Plaza autor de cortos animados, participò en competencia en el Festival de Annecy con Carne de DIos
Rita Basulto
Rita Basulto, creadora de cortos animados participa en competencia en el Festival de Annecy
IMCINE agradece el aplauso
Cineverdict: IMCINE el Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografìa llega a Annecy con las manos llenas de sorpresas y animaciones mexicanas
Una mirada retrospectiva a la animación mexicana
Una mirada retrospectiva a la animación mexicana, exitosa hasta fechas recientes.
CINEVERDICT: Kudos a Jorge R. Gutiérrez
CineVerdict: El creador mexicano de animación Jorge Gutiérrez habla con TFV sobre su parte favorita del proceso creativo, lo sorprendente de ganarse la vida con lo que le gusta y tiene además consejos para todo el mundo
Kudos to Jorge R. Gutiérrez
The renowned Mexican creator of animation talks with TFV about his favorite part of the filmmaking process and the awesomeness of being paid for something you love to do.
CINEVERDICT: ¡Los cortos mexicanos van a Annecy!
Los cortos mexicanos van al Festival de Animación de Annecy, imaginativos y atrevidos, esperan hacer una gran impresión
Mexican Shorts Go to Annecy
With their daring appeal, five Mexican shorts are ready to bowl over the animation festival’s audiences.
A Wolfpack Called Ernesto
Mexican documentarian Everardo González is at his best in a shockingly brutal film without a drop of blood.
CINEVERDICT: Una jauría llamada Ernesto
Un documental estremecedor, brutal pero sin una gota de sangre, muestra a un documentalista mexicano en su mejor momento
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Breathtaking maximalism, for fans of ‘RRR’ and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (not to mention the previous animated Spider-Man movie).
Cannes 2023 Awards
Women filmmakers swept most of the top awards from Competition to Un Certain Regard and Critics’ Week.
Cannes 2023: The Verdict
Anointed auteurs padded the competition while the scramble for tickets became exhausting.
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.
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.
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.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon
Pham Tien An’s first feature follows a young man’s slow spiritual journey with long takes, magical imagery and rarely seen glimpses into Vietnamese society.
The 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.
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.
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.
Terrestrial Verses
A sardonic angry look at Iran today, ‘Terrestrial Verses’ approaches the country’s malaise in a series of black comedy skits.
No Love Lost
Erwan Le Duc conjures a stylish and swoony look at the quick flame of first love and the lingering, unresolved pain of heartbreak.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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’.
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.
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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Zoljargal Purevdash becomes the first Mongolian director in Cannes’ Official Selection
The director of ‘If Only I Could Hibernate’ on script labs, working with children and bringing Mongolian cinema to Cannes.
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’.
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Banel & Adama is the only first feature in Cannes competition
The French-Senegalese director of ‘Banel & Adama’, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, talks to TFV about shooting on location, writing, and having a first film in the main competition in Cannes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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’.
Tristan Albrect has higher ambitions for Valias then the Dom at 4,545 meters
TFV first met Tristan Albrecht last March at AFCI Week in Los Angeles, when he sat down to record a podcast with Eric Mika, President and Publisher of The Film Verdict (now available on Spotify). “Filming in Valais feels like home, or perhaps even better!” says Mr. Albrecht. One of the recent completed projects supported...
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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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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.
CineVerdict: El caso Padilla
El premiado documental de Pavel Giroud desentierra imágenes ocultas durante cincuenta años en una crónica lacerante y definitiva del suicidio político del poeta cubano Heberto Padilla.
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.
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.
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.
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’).
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.
Heart of an Astronaut
This documentary about astronauts and the doctor that administers to them finds quiet profundity within the mechanics of interplanetary bodies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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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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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
Berlin 2023: The Verdict
Despite dark times on the world stage, audiences poured back to Berlin’s first post-COVID festival.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
The Fundraiser
Todd Field’s Tár supplement provides compelling extra notes to his masterfully composed film.
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.
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.
And, Towards Happy Alleys
Indian director Sreemoyee Singh’s moving documentary And, Towards Happy Alleys transcends its overly relaxed editing and sometimes dispersive focus.
Are Festivals Playing It Safe?
Festival directors of San Sebastian, the Viennale, Locarno and Berlin talk to TFV.
Living Bad
This companion to Bad Living is a repetitive exploration of deceitful mothers and toxic families that offers no new insights.
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.
Bad Living
The feel bad movie of Berlinale is a bleak and punishing look at familial decay that’s both manipulative and dishonest.
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.
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.
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.
Profile: João Canijo
Portuguese auteur João Canijo is making his Berlinale debut with a Competition/Encounters diptych set in a hotel.
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.
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.
The Plough
French director Philippe Garrel in The Plough is faithful to his intimist style, working with his three children in a classic tale.
Terra Mater – Mother Land
Set amidst a landscape of mountainous detritus, Kantarama Gahigiri’s short is an abstract but strikingly powerful rejoinder against the exploitation of Africa.
Remembering Every Night
Japanese director Yui Kiyohara’s second feature combines delicate human drama, mesmerising imagery and a reflection on personal and social history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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CineVerdict: Tótem
Tòtem, la segunda pelìcula de la mexicana Lila Avilés se estrena en competencia en el Festival de Berlín.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey into the Desert
Margarethe von Trotta’s deeply perceptive study of Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, played by a dazzling Vicky Krieps, portrays the great writer’s struggle to combine freedom and commitment.
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.
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.
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.
All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White
Babatunde Apalowo’s masterful international debut examines a real Nigerian life engaged in a denial of love and its pleasures.
The Cemetery of Cinema
‘The Cemetery of Cinema’ conveys an important point about Guinea’s deplorable relationship with film archives, despite its director’s theatricality.
Perpetrator
Cult director Jennifer Reeder’s hallucinatory high-school horror thriller ‘Perpetrator’ puts a queer feminist spin on teen slasher conventions.
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.
Kudos to Enzo d’Alò
The acclaimed Italian animator is unveiling his first English-language film at the Berlinale in the Generation section.
Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything
Director Emily Atef’s Berlin world premiere about a teenage girl’s forbidden love for an abusive older man, ‘Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything’ is beautifully filmed but fifty shades of boring.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TFV talks to Tiger Award winner Cyrielle Raingou
Raingou’s first feature, ‘Le spectre de Boko Haram’, is a moving documentary that views the horrors of terrorism through the eyes of children.
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023
As it finally returned from Covid-19 limbo under new artistic director Vanja Kaludjercic, the Dutch film festival reaffirmed its core mission to promote fresh, socially conscious, culturally rich cinema.
52nd INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM OFFICIAL AWARDS
Mixing the personal with the political, the Dutch festival made a strong post-pandemic comeback with prize-winning films on Islamist terror, border tensions, jailed teenagers and tender pregnancy dilemmas.
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.
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.
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’
Three Sparks
A sensitive, intricately layered and hand-crafted portrait of mountain life in northern Albania, women’s labour and ancient laws.
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.
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.
Não Sou Nada — The Nothingness Club
An outlandish, radical trip inside Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa’s mind, gorgeously realised as a mysterious office of alter-egos and clacking typewriters.
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’.
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.
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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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.
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.
IFFR Special Guest Profile: Steve McQueen
The Oscar-winning director and Turner prize-winning artist draws parallels between Hollywood’s historic racism and his own father’s lived experience in his latest cinematically huge art-work ‘Sunshine State’.
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.
A Primeira Idade
Banishments cannot stave off knowledge in this visually bold fable about a colony of children insulated from death and memory.
Drawing Lots
The black-humoured snapshot of a disorderly Georgian seaside community where love and crime bring scant reward.
Superposition
An isolated Danish family encounter spooky doubles of themselves in ‘Superposition’, a twist-heavy psycho-thriller from first-time feature director Karoline Lyngbye.
TFV Talks to Jolinde den Haas
Jolinde den Haas is the innovative project manager of IFFR Pro immersive, a festival showcasing the most unique and interesting new immersive narrative experiences.
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.
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.
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’.
IFFR director Vanja Kaludjercic talks to TFV
Rotterdam’s artistic director savors her first in-person festival with films from Japan, India, Indonesia and even a superhero movie.
5 Seasons of Revolution
Using photos, footage, and fragmented clips, the mononymous director Lina presents an account of the Syrian Crisis as both a national and interpersonal tragedy.
The (Physical) Return of Rotterdam
The 52nd IFFR kicks off its first full-scale, physical edition since the pandemic, amid heightened industry scrutiny after a controversial restructure.
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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TFV Talks to Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken
The filmmaker touches on the challenges of making a film about revered Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and his iconic painting, ‘The Scream’.
Cine Verdict entrevista a Patricia Ortega
La directora venezolana Patricia Ortega habla de su viaje de autodescubrimiento y los placeres del sexo en ´Mamacruz´en la competencia de Sundance.
TFV in Conversation with Lin Alluna
Danish director Lin Alluna talks about her seminal encounter with Aaju Peter, the Inuit activist who inspired ‘Twice Colonized’.
TFV Talks to Anna Hints
The director of ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ explains the origin of her film to Max Borg.
TFV Interviews Patricia Ortega
Venezuelan director Patricia Ortega talks about her journey of self-discovery and the pleasures of sex in ´Mamacruz´, competing at Sundance.
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.
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.
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
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
An intimate, visceral immersion into the rituals of the Estonian smoke sauna, a healing space where women confide in one another.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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TFV Interviews Pan Nalin
“I can believe in cinema again!” The Indian director of ‘Last Film Show’ talks about making an ode to celluloid in the digital age.
TFV Interviews Ove Musting
The Estonian filmmaker talks about the unwittingly timely release of ‘Kalev’.
Profile: Lukas Dhont
The celebrated Belgian director is once again representing his country in the Oscar race.
TFV Interviews Petr Vaclav
The Czech director discusses the challenges of making the multilingual biopic ‘Il Boemo’.
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.
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.
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.
TFV Interviews Jerzy Skolimowski
The Polish filmmaker discusses his bond with the animal star(s) of ‘EO’.
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.
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.
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.
Profile: Houman Seyyedi
Talented filmmaker Houman Seyyedi takes a ride on the dark side in Iran’s Oscar entry, ‘World War III’.
TFV Interviews Gunnar Vikene
The Norwegian director talks about his very personal epic ‘War Sailor’.
CINE VERDICT Profile: Laura Mora
Laura Mora entrega con Los reyes del mundo –primera colombiana en ganar la Concha de oro– una épica caótica y onírica que es ahora la candidata colombiana a los Oscares.
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.
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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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.
TFV Interviews Mario Martone
The busy Italian filmmaker, who is concurrently a veteran stage and opera director, describes the genesis of Italy’s international Oscar submission.
TFV Interviews He Shuming
The Singaporean director recounts his full immersion in the Oscar promotion process and looks ahead to remakes.
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.
War Sailor
An intriguing and seldom-told WWII story gets the standardized treatment in this epic-scale Norwegian drama.
Profile: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu, the celebrated director returns to his homeland with a brilliant, excessive, quasi-autobiography that will represent Mexico in the International Oscar race.
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Mexican master Alejandro G. Iñárritu (‘Birdman’, ‘The Revenant’) takes time off for a very personal project with autobiographical and cinematic undertones.
TFV INTERVIEWS LORENZO VIGAS
Venice Golden Lion winner Lorenzo Vigas talks to TFV about his latest film ‘The Box’ (‘La caja’), which has been submitted by Venezuela for the International Oscars 2023.
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.
TFV Interviews Maryam Touzani
The Moroccan director and screenwriter of ‘The Blue Caftan’ talks about the personal origins of her films.
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.
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.
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.
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2022: The Verdict
Documentaries by Lea Glob, Simon Chambers and Angie Vinchito, all major prizewinners, show the diversity and topicality of the post-pandemic Dutch festival.
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.
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.
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.
Mother Earth’s Inner Organs
Ana Bravo-Perez searches for the demons released by the extraction of fossil fuels from her native Colombia in this disquieting hybrid documentary.
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.
IDFA 2022: The Awards
Lea Glob’s ‘Apolonia, Apolonia’, an exploration of what’s at stake in an artist’s life, wins the International Competition at IDFA 2022.
Something You Said Last Night
Luis De Filippis’ laid-back tale about an embattled but loving family on vacation pops with a riveting Carmen Madonia as the trans sister.
Colette and Justin
Alain Kassanda connects Congolese history to family history in this revealing debut documentary.
Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc
Lena Ndiaye’s documentary may be the most important contemporary document on Francophone Africa’s malignant economic relations with France.
Thessaloniki International Film Festival: The Verdict
After a muted few years of Covid caution, the 63rd edition of My Big Fat Greek Film Festival was back in full Dionysian mode.
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’.
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.
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.
Awards of the 63rd Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival
Valentina Maurel’s dysfunctional father-daughter drama is the big winner at Thessaloniki.
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.
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.
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.
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?’
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.
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.
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.
IDFA’s Orwa Nyrabia on How Festivals Stay Relevant
The artistic director of IDFA speaks his mind to TFV critics Oris Aigbokhaevbolo and Carmen Gray in an interview that reveals profound thinking about what a film festival is and its importance in times of war and political despair.
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.
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.
CINE VERDICT: Maria Novaro Habla de cine
La directora del Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía habla sobre cómo el IMCINE ha fomentado el creciente número de mujeres cineastas en México y sobre el lanzamiento de las reseñas en español de TFV en Cine Verdict.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
DOK Leipzig 2022: The Awards
Theo Montoya’s debut feature ‘Anhell69’ featuring the queer young generation in Colombia wins the International Competition at DOK Leipzig.
DOK Leipzig 2022: The Verdict
The 65th edition of East Germany’s longest-running independent film festival offered a lively mix of parties and premieres, critical voices and formal experiments.
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.
The Pawnshop
Polish director Lukasz Kowalski celebrates a different kind of pawn star in his prize-winning docu-comedy debut ‘The Pawnshop’.
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.
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’.
Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels
Prize-winning Serbian director Mila Turajlic unearths a fascinating lost chapter in Cold War history in her latest archive-heavy documentary ‘Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels.’
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.
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.
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
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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Geographies of Solitude
This warm and inquisitive documentary is both a portrait of activist and self-taught scientist and the spit of land she’s called home for forty years.
Cowboy Poets
Mike Day’s gently ambling documentary offers a fragmentary look at the unique tradition of cowboy poetry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
San Sebastian: The Verdict
San Sebastian celebrated its 70th anniversary with grace and good programing.
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.
San Sebastian: The Awards
San Sebastian’s top prize went to a Colombian coproduction for the first time in its history, and to a woman director for the third year running.
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.
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.
Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures
Brexit Britain offers only hellish horrors to exploited migrant workers in ‘Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures’, a bleakly compelling social-realist thriller from Portuguese director Marco Martins.
Oldenburg International Film Festival: The Verdict
The emphatically indie small-town German fest continues to make a big splash with its eclectic mix of art-house, cult, experimental and left-field genre movies.
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.
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.
A Long Break
Years of guilt and shame are exorcised in Davit Pirtskhalava’s stagy drama tracking the aftershocks of bullying.
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.
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.
The Gravity
Social tensions and strange cosmic disturbances collide in French director Cédric Ido’s imperfect but admirably ambitious genre-blurring thriller ‘The Gravity’.
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.
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.
We Don’t Dance for Nothing
A young Filipina migrant worker in Hong Kong dreams of dancing her way to freedom in Stefanos Tai’s imaginative photo-montage musical ‘We Don’t Dance for Nothing’.
The Fabelmans
Steven Spielberg solidifies his legendary origin story playing with truth, fiction, and the magic of moviemaking.
Venice Film Festival 2022: The Awards
Strongly worded films with clear social and political attitudes took the prizes at the 79th Venice Film Festival, led by Laura Poitras’s Golden Lion winner ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.’
Daughter of Rage
Laura Baumeister’s feature debut is a critical and compassionate portrait of lives on the precarious edge of Nicaraguan society.
Venice 2022: The Verdict
A crowded, often frustrating reset of the first post-Covid festival partly obscured the high-quality programming.
I Like Movies
A caustically funny and sharply perceptive portrait of adolescence and the toxic perils of obsessive cinephilia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bobi Wine: Ghetto President
Whatever its structural defects, Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp’s documentary is an important document of political tyranny in this decade.
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.
Like Turtles
Midlife crisis meets coming-of-ager in this sensitive, elegant first film set in Rome and directed by Italian actress Monica Dugo.
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.
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.
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.
Sarajevo Film Festival 2022: The Verdict
The Balkan region’s prime cinematic gathering bounced back from pandemic shutdown with a strong film program, starry guests and plenty of party attitude.
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.
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’.
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.
That’s How The Summer Ended
Atmosphere is everything in this ambiguous, slightly absurd short that leaves a great deal left unsaid, but perfects a lingering sense of melancholy.
No Place for You in Our Town
This engrossed fly-on-the-wall style documentary follows a group of Bulgarian football hooligans, detailing their highs and lows in a changing world.
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.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
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’.
Our Lady of the Chinese Shop
Complex and a bit obscure, Ery Claver’s directing debut is a clever contemplation of religion, power, and politics in Angola.
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’.
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.
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’.
I Have Electric Dreams
There’s much to admire in Valentina Maurel’s dramatic depiction of a dysfunctional father and daughter relationship, chiefly its terrific performances
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.
A Perfect Day for Caribou
Jeff Rutherford’s debut feature film is enlivened by a screenplay packed with truths about the damage parents and partners can cause.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Love Affair With Marriage
Signe Baumane’s animated feature is so brilliant in presenting a female perspective on love and marriage that you forgive its need to tell us the science behind romance.
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.
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.
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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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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Beautiful Beings
Cruel and delicate, this Icelandic drama shows troubled kids as the product of the actions and inactions of adults.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
And Then There Was Love…
A woman seeks a fortune teller’s guidance about her ailing love life in this discursive but affecting portrait of generational trauma and self-love.
Fucking Bornholm
Polish director Anna Kazejak chronicles scenes from a collapsing marriage in her darkly comic holiday-from-hell psychodrama ‘Fucking Bornholm’.
God is a Beetle
Felix Herrmann’s hybrid film is an occasionally dry but frank examination of faith, feminism, and ambition in the modern world.
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.
Everybody Wants to be Loved
Katharina Woll handles her delightful debut feature film with the grace and sensitivity of a much more experienced filmmaker, with a hand from lead actress Anne Ratte-Polle.
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.
Elfriede Jelinek – Language Unleashed
Claudia Müller’s dense, cerebral exploration of the Austrian Nobel winner’s life and politics confirms her unique and complex place in European letters.
All Russians Love Birch Trees
A grieving young woman tries to make sense of her shattered life in director Pola Beck’s sensually rich literary adaptation ‘All Russians Love Birch Trees’.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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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Sick Of Myself
With a deft hand for black comedy, Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli takes his examination of modern narcissism to its body-horror extreme.
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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The Worst Ones
Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret’s film is a solid debut indebted to the impressive performances of its child actors.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
Pacifiction
Spanish director Albert Serra’s slow-burning, suspenseful Tahiti-set tale pitches Benoît Magimel’s quasi-colonial official against nuclear conspiracies.
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.
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.
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.
Funny Pages
Actor turned director Owen Kline’s assured debut feature is a slimy, grimy comedy of failure and awkwardness.
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.
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.
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.
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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Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind
Ethan Coen’s first solo directing project without brother Joel. ‘Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind’ is a retro-rock documentary with a whole lotta shaking going on, but not much else.
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.
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.
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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How to Save A Dead Friend
Rebellious Russian filmmaker Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s directorial debut offers dynamic imagery and damning commentary about her stifled generation.
Smoking Causes Coughing
Prolific French absurdist Quentin Dupieux delivers low-tar laughs and comic-book gore in his fun but disjointed tenth feature, ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’.
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.
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton star in ‘Mad Max’ creator George Miller’s ambitious but misfiring fairy-tale romance ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’.
The Woodcutter Story
Mikko Myllylahti’s impressive debut feature is a poetic and perplexing look at a man facing the diminishing of his life’s work with otherworldly stoicism.
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.
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.
Love According to Dalva
Director Emmanuel Nicot’s assured debut feature ‘Love According to Dalva’ navigates dark subject matter with compassion, warmth and great performances.
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.
One Fine Morning
Léa Seydoux stars in feted French auteur Mia Hansen-Løve’s slender autobiographical rumination on love and loss ‘One Fine Morning’.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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’
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.
World, Northern Hemisphere
Hossein Tehrani’s gently melancholy first feature about poor farm laborers, which won Tokyo’s Asian Future competition, reveals a strong new Iranian voice.
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.
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.
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.
When There Is No More Music To Write, and other Roman Stories
Éric Baudelaire riffs on the music and musical sensibility of Alvin Curran in this absorbing archival documentary about the revolutionary fervour of mid-century Rome.
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.
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.
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.
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
A simple premise yields increasingly complex results in Marie Suul Brobakke’s dissection of a romantic relationship between two actors rehearsing a scene.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Una Femmina – The Code of Silence
A young woman learns her family is linked to the ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate and other horrors in an authentically harrowing drama shot in Calabria.
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.
It’s Raining Frogs Outside
Apocalypse anxiety, discomfort in the childhood home, and the effects of enforced isolation make for a heady brew in Maria Estela Paiso’s multimedia fever dream.
No Simple Way Home
Akuol de Mabior’s first feature-length documentary isn’t quite cohesive, but it offers a partial portrait of a troubled country and one of its female leaders.
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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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.
North Terminal
A new documentary from Lucrecia Martel explores communal creativity and expressive performance by bringing together marginalised artists in the north of Argentina.
Happer’s Comet
Taylor Taormina’s experimental second feature captivates without telling a traditional story — or any story at all.
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.
Memoir of a Veering Storm
This grainy, tender, and contemplative film by Sofia Georgovassili approaches a potentially traumatic coming-of-age drama through a fable-like, quotidian lens.
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.
Father’s Day
Through a triptych of stories, Kivu Ruhorahoza offers a critique of masculinity and patriarchy in his most accessible film to date.
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
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.
A Little Love Package
An experimental, hybrid film that in its disjointed way expresses nostalgia for nicotine, Kaffeehaus culture and family bonds, set in present-day Vienna.
Dry Ground Burning
A gang of tough queer women controls an illicit oil refinery in this grim neorealist documentary drama, set in Brazil’s largest shanty town.
Memories of the Eastern Front
The truth lies in the spaces between recorded history in Radu Jude and Adrian Cioflânc?’s austere and through-provoking silent documentary.
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.
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.
The Passengers of the Night
French director Mikhaël Hers falls short of his Rohmer-esque ambitions in ‘Passengers of the Night’, a sprawling family drama set in 1980s Paris.
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.
Dragon Tooth
Through colourful, chemically contaminated found footage, Rafael Castanheira Parrode evocatively excavates the trauma of the 1987 radioactivity disaster in Goiânia, Brazil.
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.
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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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.
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.
Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush
An indomitable Turkish woman living in Germany battles to free her son from imprisonment in Guantanamo in Andreas Dresen’s no-surprise recreation of a true story.
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.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack form a winning pair of performers in Sophie Hyde’s watchable story of sex positivity across age categories.
Nana: Before, Now & Then
Indonesian director Kamila Andini’s gently feminist historical drama ‘Nana: Before, Now & Then’ is visually exquisite but tastefully timid.
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.
This Much I Know To Be True
Australian rock duo Nick Cave and Warren Ellis bring their recent lockdown albums to life in Andrew Dominik’s handsome music documentary.
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.
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.
Flux Gourmet
Cult director Peter Strickland’s culinary art-world satire ‘Flux Gourmet’ is enjoyably weird but ultimately undercooked.
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.
Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day?
Egyptian queer experimental cinema comes into its own with this playful, visually inventive sex-positive short feature that repurposes “One Thousand and One Nights” using gay Arab cultural signifiers.
Incredible but True
French prankster Quentin Dupieux takes a detour into midlife melancholy with his latest gloriously absurd comic fable ‘Incredible but True’.
We, Students!
Rafiki Fariala’s history-making film shifts to a more intimate story towards its end, which one wishes he had pursued from the start.
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.
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.
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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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,
Blue Has No Dimensions
Ágata de Pinho impresses both in front of and behind the camera in this visceral drama about a woman who believes she will disappear on her 28th birthday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Excess Will Save Us
French debutante director Morgane Dziurla-Petit returns to her home village for the playful and poignant docu-fiction hybrid Excess Will Save Us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages
Pedro Neves Marques follows 2019’s The Bite with another sci-fi-infused relationship story in this thought-provoking meditation on traditional gender roles and the nuclear family.
Malintzin 17
Eugenio and Mara Polgovsky gently comment on the cycle of life in an observational documentary shot through a window in Mexico City.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Neptune Frost
This frequently perplexing sci-fi musical has a lot to say about the politics of race, but its true triumph is its music and gorgeous visuals.
The Territory
This involving documentary captures the plight of the Uru-eu-wau-wau community fighting for its land in the Amazon.
The Island
Robinson Crusoe goes musical in a deliciously disorienting brain-teaser from feted Romanian animation director Anca Damian.
Egúngún (Masquerade)
Olive Nwosu’s delicate drama explores the difficulty of confronting complex notions of identity while also traversing a tender story of first love lost.
Listen to the Beat of Our Images
Siblings Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste mine the archive to visualise the transformation of 1960s French Guiana by a new space centre in this poetic documentary.
Babysitter
‘Babysitter’ steers clear of preachiness in its half-scolding and often amusing examination of sexual and sexist attitudes in the wake of #MeToo.
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.
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.
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.
A House Made of Splinters
A powerful documentary chronicle of children left abandoned by the conflict in Ukraine won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
Calendar Girls
This colorful portrait of a golden-aged Florida dance troupe doubles as a statement on friendship and female liberation.
Meet Me in the Bathroom
Adapted from Lizzy Gordon’s feted book Meet Me in the Bathroom, this archive-heavy rock documentary is a bohemian rhapsody for a lost New York.
The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future
Animal rights activists will applaud this Sundance premiere set in Chile’s rainforest, a lyrical fable that mixes ecological apocalypse, gender transition and phantasmagorical rebirth.
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.
The Headhunter’s Daughter
A young woman navigates the Cordilleran highlands to seek fame in the big city in Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan’s mysterious, Western-tinged drama.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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The Worst Person in the World
An insightful exploration of youth, ambition, romance, and meaning through the lens of a young woman you both identify with and love to hate.
Lost Flowers
In his diaristic portrait of grief during the isolation of lockdown, Fabrizio Maltese has crafted a personal documentary full of universal poignancy.
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.
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.
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.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Boasting stunning imagery and a great back story, Bhutan’s first film to make the Oscar shortlist works a well-trodden premise into a beautiful, humanist and accessible picture.
The Tender Bar
George Clooney directs Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar, a warm-hearted but flat coming-of-age drama.
A Thousand Fires
Family life in rural Myanmar is intimately explored in this earnest if somewhat obtuse chronicle.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Petite Solange
A keenly observed if somewhat underwhelming chronicle of divorce, and how it upends the life of a teenage girl.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The List of Those Who Love Me
Turkish director Emre Erdo?du’s compelling social drama The List of Those Who Love Me highlights hidden tensions among Istanbul’s arty celebrity set.
Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living
The fears and longings of four Lebanese boys on their way to lose their virginity is conveyed in interior monologues in George Peter Barbari’s poignant and deeply original first film.
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.
Listening to Kenny G
One of the best-selling instrumentalists of all time is both unaware and charming in Penny Lane’s engaging documentary.
Alice, Through the Looking: À la recherche d’un lapin perdu
Director Adam Donen’s messy but ambitious debut feature Alice, Through the Looking brings together Lewis Carroll, Jean-Luc Godard and Monty Python in a hellish post-Brexit London.
Diary of Gabrielle Street
Rashid Masharawi’s upbeat lockdown documentary set in Montmartre is a one man show full of charm and humanity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Darkness There and Nothing More
Tea Tupajic’s documentary will find its audience among those for whom Srebrenica and other European brutalities have never really ended.
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.
Day After…
The second film in Kamar Ahmad Simon’s ‘Water Trilogy’ is redeemed by its selection of characters.
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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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.
Other Cannibals
Debut feature director Francesco Sossai’s deadpan cannibalism comedy is charming, original and surprisingly humane.
In the Billowing Night
A melancholic, intimate exploration of the personal cost of migration, told by the filmmaker’s father, who left the island of Réunion in his youth.
Who is Sleeping in Silver Grey
Chinese director Liao Zihao’s debut feature Who is Sleeping in Silver Grey is a dramatically muddled but exquisitely shot monochrome fairy tale.
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.
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.
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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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.
Night Nursery
Moumouni Sanou’s award-winning documentary about the reality of working girls in Burkina Faso is marred by its lack of discretion.
When A Farm Goes Aflame
Jide Tom Akinleminu brings a light touch to a personal but political project that could easily feel overwrought in other hands.
Fati’s Choice
A Ghanaian woman makes an anti-migration decision her friends and family disagree with.
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.
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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Letters from a Distance
Juan Carlos Rulfo has composed his own “Love in the Time of Covid”, a deeply moving chronicle of Mexico’s pandemic response.
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.
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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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
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.
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
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.
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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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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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.
Oliver Black
Tawfik Baba almost ruins a good story about two Africans in a desert with a confusing ending and on-the-nose politics.
This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Jeremiah Lemohang Mosese has made a masterpiece that showcases the great talent of the late Mary Twala and announces his own genius.
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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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.
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.
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.
Once Upon a Time in Calcutta
Indian cineaste Aditya Vikram Sengupta delivers a slow-burning and delicate ensemble drama about the corrupted state of his hometown.
The Mighty Victoria
Raul Ramon’s first feature as a director is a sweet utopian fable that imagines a peaceful, united Mexico where solidarity and honesty prevail.
The Attachment Diaries
Quirky surprises abound in a stylish, suspenseful thriller set in 1970’s Argentina, when lesbians were persecuted and abortion was outlawed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic
Finnish filmmaker Teemu Nikki’s story about disability moves you for a long list of complicated reasons.
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.
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.’
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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True Things
Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke deliver an emotionally raw but refreshingly nuanced take on female desire.
Three Minutes – A Lengthening
Produced by Steve McQueen, Bianca Stigter’s experimental essay film is a rigorous exercise in forensic historical excavation commemorating Polish Holocaust victims.
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.
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.
Wild Roots
Young Hungarian writer-director Hajni Kis delivers a highly assured debut feature with non-professional actors in the lead roles.
Hinterland
This superior pulp-noir thriller has a reality-bending look that draws heavily on vintage German Expressionist art.
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.
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.