Lasse Hallström’s beautifully crafted biopic brings to life an almost unknown Swedish painter who was an avant gardiste, spiritualist and theosophist.
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Festival Reviews
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.
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...
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.
A Ballad
Bosnian director Aida Begic gives a 21st century feminist remix to a 19th century folk story in her baggy but formally ambitious ‘A Ballad’, the Oscar entry from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Alma Viva
Cristèle Alves Meira’s feature debut is an uneven work that combines anthropological and documentary details with more supernatural elements.
Eami
The plight of the indigenous Ayoreo, the last tribe to avoid contact and reclaim its territories in the Paraguayan Chaco Forest, is painstakingly and poetically rendered in this drama premiering at Rotterdam.
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.
CINE VERDICT: Argentina, 1985
El drama de Santiago Mitre sobre el Juicio a las Juntas hace justicia a este importante hito de la historia argentina.
TFV Interviews Jerzy Skolimowski
The Polish filmmaker discusses his bond with the animal star(s) of ‘EO’.
Argentina, 1985
Santiago Mitre’s drama about the Trial of the Juntas does this important milestone in Argentina’s history justice.
CINE VERDICT: Alcarràs
El segundo largometraje de Carla Simón es una mirada novelesca pero poco sentimental sobre una familia rural catalana.
Alcarràs
Carla Simón’s second feature is a novelistic yet unsentimental look at a rural Catalan family.
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: 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.
Winners
The UK’s official Oscar submission is a sweetly knowing homage to classic cinema, especially the modern masters of Iran.
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...
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.
Nostalgia
Mario Martone directs an emotional terror tour through Baroque, Camorra-ridden Naples, where actor Pierfrancesco Favino has a rendezvous with destiny.
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.
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.
The Box
The titular box that young Mexican teen Hatzin (newcomer Hatzin Navarrete) picks up containing his father’s remains may look like a simple mini-casket, but the emotional baggage that goes with it is far weightier than what’s inside. In the third and final installment...
Kalev
Estonia’s official Oscar submission ‘Kalev’ finds timely modern echoes in a true sporting saga that took place during the dying days of Russian occupation.
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.
Ajoomma
He Shuming’s feature debut ‘Ajoomma’, Singapore’s Oscar hopeful, is an amusing look at life’s second act with a warm, winning performance by Hong Huifang.
Victim
Competing forms of victimhood expose a rotten racist society in Slovak director Michal Blaško’s prize-winning Oscars submission ‘Victim’.
Narcosis
A grieving family struggle to move beyond tragedy in Martijn de Jong’s poetically filmed debut feature ‘ Narcosis’, the official Dutch submission to the Oscars.
Hilma
Lasse Hallström’s beautifully crafted biopic brings to life an almost unknown Swedish painter who was an avant gardiste, spiritualist and theosophist.
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.
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...
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.
A Ballad
Bosnian director Aida Begic gives a 21st century feminist remix to a 19th century folk story in her baggy but formally ambitious ‘A Ballad’, the Oscar entry from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Alma Viva
Cristèle Alves Meira’s feature debut is an uneven work that combines anthropological and documentary details with more supernatural elements.
Eami
The plight of the indigenous Ayoreo, the last tribe to avoid contact and reclaim its territories in the Paraguayan Chaco Forest, is painstakingly and poetically rendered in this drama premiering at Rotterdam.
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.
Awards Corner
International Oscars 2023
- No awards yet.