Reviews

Written by the world’s top critics, reviews in The Film Verdict are an authoritative guide to the most important new movies appearing on the international scene. In this section you can search for and find more than one thousand reviews that have appeared in The Film Verdict since it began in September 2021. The reviewers are a diverse group based all over the globe: Deborah Young and Jay Weissberg (Rome), Stephen Dalton and Ben Nicholson (London), Boyd Van Hoeij (Luxembourg), Jordan Mintzer (Paris), Clarence Tsui (Hong Kong), Oris Aigbokhaevbolo (Lagos), Patricia Boero (Punta del Este), Lucy Virgen (Guadalajara), Carmen Gray (Berlin), Kevin Jagernauth (Montreal), and Alonso Duralde (Los Angeles).

Hounds

Hounds

A taut, failed caper story with film noir elements set during a long night in the underbelly of Casablanca is well-paced and grittily shot.

The Old Oak

The Old Oak

After angry, affecting portraits of northern England’s working class families in his previous two films, 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.

Salem

Salem

A powerful, at times remarkable sophomore feature from Jean-Bernard Marlin that takes the usual “Romeo and Juliet” plot, drops it into the projects of Marseille, and then widens its scope with a story of an apocalyptical plague and magical redemption.

Bread and Roses

Bread and Roses

Sahra Mani’s raw documentary about the dire situation for women in Afghanistan, as well as those all but abandoned in so-called safe houses across the border, forces Western audiences to pay attention and stop averting their gaze from the Taliban’s reign of terror.

The Pot au Feu

The Pot au Feu

The pièce de résistance of unabashed culinary cinema, Tran Anh Hung’s ‘The Pot au Feu’ serves up a French country idyll in romantic 19th century sauce for audiences whose tastes run to the fine wines and 12-course meals.

Levante

Levante

Cine Verdict: La directora brasileña debutante Lillah Halla hace una película llena de entusiasmo y empatía sobre una talentosa jugadora de voleibol que resuena en el panorama actual de los derechos reproductivos.

Pictures of Ghosts

Pictures of Ghosts

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s poetic docu-essay 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

Terrestrial Verses

A fresh and angry look at Iran today approaches the country’s malaise in a series of black comedy skits that pit ordinary citizens against a wide range of bureaucratic authorities.

Kidnapped

Kidnapped

The devastating true story of a 6-year-old Jewish boy who, in 1858, was abducted by the Papal State to be raised a Catholic provides the ideal framework for director Marco Bellocchio to weave his familiar themes into a tense, edge-of-seat historical thriller.

CineVerdict: Cerrar los ojos

CineVerdict: Cerrar los ojos

“Cerrar los ojos” es una apasionada y atractiva reflexión sobre el arte, la memoria, la identidad y la recuperación del tiempo pasado. Una película del venerado maestro vasco-español Víctor Erice, contada atípicamente, pero que típicamente aborda grandes temas.

Close Your Eyes

Close Your Eyes

An atypically told, but typically big-issue film from revered Spanish maestro Victor Erice, ‘Close Your Eyes’ is a passionate and engaging reflection on art, memory, identity and recapturing time past.

The Buriti Flower

The Buriti Flower

Portuguese-Brazilian directors João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora return to Cannes with a complex, highly-charged chronicle of how different generations of a Brazilian indigenous community fight back against intruders on their ancestral lands.

The Other Laurens

The Other Laurens

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

If Only I Could Hibernate

If Only I Could Hibernate

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

Firebrand

Firebrand

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

Banel & Adama

Banel & Adama

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

The Rapture

The Rapture

In this promising feature debut, French writer-director Iris Kaltenbäck has turned what sounds like a high-concept pitch for a Hollywood comedy — a girl tries to pass off her best friend’s baby as her own — into a thought-provoking, emotionally involving look at both...

Saudi Film Biz Goes Pro

Saudi Film Biz Goes Pro

No one could have predicted that just five years after cinemas reopened in Saudi Arabia in 2018, the Kingdom would become a hub for entertainment. In fact, as part of HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud’s Saudi Vision 2030, there will be at least 300 theaters...

Four Daughters

Four Daughters

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

About Dry Grasses

About Dry Grasses

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

A Prince

A Prince

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

Black Flies

Black Flies

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

The Delinquents

The Delinquents

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

Youth (Spring)

Youth (Spring)

A document of striking social import, though not easy to watch for 3 ½ consecutive hours, Wang Bing’s intimate portrait of the Chinese youth who sew the world’s clothing for a pittance speaks truth to the global economy.

On the Edge

On the Edge

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

The Nature of Love

The Nature of Love

Ever since humans were able to grunt to communicate affection for another person, the world’s greatest minds have grappled with understanding and defining the elusive, unpredictable, and disorienting feeling of desire. If history’s deepest thinkers haven’t been able...

$100m FILM INVESTMENT FUND ANNOUNCED

$100m FILM INVESTMENT FUND ANNOUNCED

ROAA Media Ventures, Saudi Cultural Development Fund and MEFIC Capital disclosed that they have come together to establish a Film Investment Fund for the Kingdom. The agreement was announced during an exclusive industry breakfast hosted by Saudi Cultural Development...

FROM SILK ROAD TO FILM ROAD

FROM SILK ROAD TO FILM ROAD

Italy and China, two ancient lands far away from one another, have historic ties going back centuries. It is generally believed that Marco Polo, a Venetian, was the first Westerner to explore China and chronicle his journey. In more recent times, Italian filmmaker...

Monster

Monster

A gripping drama — almost a mystery — about ordinary people from Japanese master Kore-eda Hirokazu connects to viewers, despite an ambiguous ending that feels overly complex and arty.

Fast X

Fast X

This isn’t merely a sprawling, ridiculous summer blockbuster — it’s the Platonic ideal of the sprawling, ridiculous summer blockbuster, a delight for fans of the loony franchise.

Anselm

Anselm

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

One of the goals of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2023 is to position the Kingdom as a prime location and film hub for the industry worldwide. The two main pillars of this project are AlUla and Neom. AlUla is a historical area near the Hijaz Mountains in the...

The Saudi Film Festival

The Saudi Film Festival

As one drives to opening night of the Saudi Film Festival in a festival-branded, air-conditioned car, the iconic Ithra building rises up out of the encroaching desert of the Eastern Province like a mirage. The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture is a magnificent...

Ahd Kamel

Ahd Kamel

Actress and filmmaker Ahd Hassan Kamel appeared on the festival scene playing Ms. Hussa in the ground-breaking Saudi film Wajdja, followed by roles in the 2018 BBC2/Netflix series Collateral and a turn co-starring in the 2022 Amazon thriller All the Old Knives...

Fatima Al-Banawi

Fatima Al-Banawi

Already a luminous presence on the Saudi film scene, Fatima Al-Banawi is a multi-talented actress and writer who is now completing her first feature film as a director. She was selected for TIME magazine’s Young Generations Leaders List in 2018 for her storytelling...

Italian Screens

Italian Screens

By Caren Davidkhanian Led by Roberto Stabile, Italian Screens was launched jointly by Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Cinecittà for the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Ministry of Culture, and the Academy of Italian Cinema and David di...

TFV Takes Oldenburg Out Of This World

TFV Takes Oldenburg Out Of This World

In a groundbreaking collaboration that aims to set a new standard for the convergence of technology and the arts, we are thrilled to announce that the renowned Oldenburg International Film Festival has partnered with the innovative teams at MILC Platform and The Film...

There Is A Stone

There Is A Stone

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

This Is the President

This Is the President

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

From You

From You

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

Breath

Breath

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

The Padilla Affair

The Padilla Affair

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

Where Would You Like To Go?

Where Would You Like To Go?

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

Love Again

Love Again

The lazy takedown on Love Again is that it’s like a Hallmark Channel movie, but that’s not a fair comparison; I’ve seen Hallmark movies where the romantic leads have better chemistry, where the screenwriters have crafted better banter (and more skillfully summoned the...

A Brighter Tomorrow

A Brighter Tomorrow

Nanni Moretti returns to his forte, sardonic Italian socio-political commentary, in an overly meandering collage of films within the film, salutes to actors and directors, and an acidic spit at left-wing politics gone wrong.

Night Falls

Night Falls

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

Kissing the Ground You Walked On

Kissing the Ground You Walked On

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

Insight Into FESPACO

Insight Into FESPACO

As a lover of African and African Diaspora film, attending the Fespaco film and television festival in Burkina Faso for the seventh time since 2005 was an inspiring experience. As one of Africa's largest and oldest film and television festivals and markets, Fespaco...

AFCI Week

AFCI Week

Film commissioners from around the world gathered in Hollywood March 27-30 for AFCI Week 2023 – the premier global conference for film commission professionals. Held at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, the conference brought together more than 125 film...

The 28th edition of the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) was an excellent success for Burkina Faso's capital. Thousands of Burkina Faso residents and international festivalgoers packed the Palais des Sports complex in the Ouaga 2000...

Limbo

Limbo

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

Leon

Leon

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

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Michelle Yeoh plays a kick-ass Chinese-American matriarch fighting the forces of darkness across multiple universes in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’, a wildly inventive, prize-winning philosophical action comedy from writer-director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The winner of 7 Oscars, including Best Picture.

Blue Bag Life

Blue Bag Life

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

Italian Screens 2022 Delivers Results

Italian Screens 2022 Delivers Results

After years of what can be perceived as an Italian crisis of its films performing internationally, it appears that the crisis is ending and Italian films are on the uptick again, along with coproductions that have been rising after a dip caused by the pandemic....

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

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

Art College 1994

Art College 1994

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

Suzume

Suzume

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

ALLENSWORTH

ALLENSWORTH

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

Curti Mirrors Minerva

Curti Mirrors Minerva

Gianluca Curti grew up in one of the most important dynasties of Italian cinema. He is the CEO of independent Italian producer and distributor Minerva Pictures, a 2,000-title-strong company founded by his grandfather, Antonio Curti, in 1953, and headed by his father,...

In Water

In Water

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

20,000 Species of Bees

20,000 Species of Bees

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

Music

Music

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

Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool

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

In the Blind Spot

In the Blind Spot

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

Samsara

Samsara

Lois Patiño’s latest contains a fascinating cinematic experience though the work as a whole will likely receive a more mixed reception.

Letta Defines Leadership

Letta Defines Leadership

Giampaolo Letta is arguably the most powerful man in Italy’s film industry. He hails from an influential Italian family. His father, Gianni, is a well-known journalist and politician who was undersecretary of state in four Silvio Berlusconi governments. His cousin,...

The Burdened

The Burdened

A hard-pressed couple in Yemen’s port city of Aden search for a doctor to perform an abortion in Amr Gamal’s excellent, understated yet hard-hitting portrait of a family and their city in desperation.

Between Revolutions

Between Revolutions

Vlad Petri’s visually captivating yet structurally slippery found-footage film reflects on the suppression faced by young, idealistic Romanian and Iranian women under self-avowed “revolutionary” regimes.

CAPTAIN ITALIA

CAPTAIN ITALIA

by Caren Davidkhianan Roberto Stabile, Head of Special Projects of Directorate General of Cinema and Audiovisual-Ministry of Culture at Cinecittà, is the man behind ANICA’s renewed drive to revive and expand Italy’s international film markets, from bringing new luster...

Past Lives

Past Lives

A remarkably delicate, moving romance destined to be a major indie hit, boasting superb dialogue, terrific performances and an insightful understanding of how the what-ifs of life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives.

Silver Haze

Silver Haze

Dutch director Sacha Polak and British actress Vicky Knight reunite for an even looser-limbed slice-of-life story after their ‘Dirty God,’ which opened Rotterdam in 2019.

AMBASSADORS OF AN ART FORM

AMBASSADORS OF AN ART FORM

HEADLINE: AMBASSADORS OF AN ART FORM Koen Van Bockstal (1961) is a historian of Ghent University by training. After a short period as a history and aesthetics teacher in secondary education and freelance journalist at De Morgen, he worked for over 18 years in the...

Superpower

Superpower

Actor and activist Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman codirect a diary-like travelogue through war-torn Ukraine, highlighted by three brief interviews with Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky.

CINE VERDICT El Eco

CINE VERDICT El Eco

La directora mexicana-salvadoreña Tatiana Huezo regresa a su primer amor cinematográfico con este documental conmovedor y bellamente fotografiado sobre adolescentes en una comunidad de Puebla, participante en la sección Encuentros en el Festival de Berlin.

The Beast in the Jungle

The Beast in the Jungle

Had Henry James been alive and well in the 1980s, it’s unlikely you would have ever seen him getting busy on the dance floor. He probably wouldn’t have even set foot in a nightclub. And yet director Patric Chiha has had the rather novel idea to take one of the...

ATLAS  INTERNATIONAL  REACHES NEXT GEN

ATLAS INTERNATIONAL REACHES NEXT GEN

Born in Belgium, Michel Vandewalle was drawn to the world of entertainment as a very young man. He was part of an international orchestra and participated in theater and dance in school and later as a teenager started working in front of and behind the camera. There...

White Plastic Sky

White Plastic Sky

Prize-winning Hungarian director duo Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó foresee a bleak future for humankind in their visually striking debut feature ‘White Plastic Sky’, an animated eco-disaster movie with a lyrical fairy-tale edge.

The Survival of Kindness

The Survival of Kindness

Rolf de Heer’s stripped-down story of a black woman who escapes from a cage and walks through a landscape heavy with racism and pandemic fear aligns with much of his intensely humane films, yet it feels weighed down by the uncertainty of its ultimate message.

The Siren

The Siren

Iranian director Sepideh Farsi opens a revelatory and very chilling window on a city under siege by a foreign power in her powerful, animated coming-of-ager, ‘The Siren’.

Iron Butterflies

Iron Butterflies

The downing of Malaysian Airlines’ passenger flight MH17 in 2014 over Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine becomes a prophetic and highly symbolic event portending the current war and its methods in Roman Liubyi’s doc, whose poetry can seem forced but is still capable of shocking.

Natura

Natura

Matti Harju’s debut feature is a hypnotic slow-burning anti-thriller that is more interested in exploring disillusionment and social imbalance than narrative twists or action spectacle.

Kudos to Hélène Louvart

Kudos to Hélène Louvart

Established in 2020, the Robby Müller Award honors outstanding lifetime achievements in cinematography. Rotterdam has previously bestowed this prestigious award upon Diego García (Mexico), Kelly Reichardt (USA) and Sayombu Mukdeeprom (Thailand), and is now focusing on...

Munch

Munch

Unexpected formal flourishes can only spice up conventional ideas on tormented genius in this take on the life of Norway’s Expressionist painter Edvard Munch.

When It Melts

When It Melts

For her first stab behind the camera, veteran Belgian actress Veerle Baetens, who’s best known for co-starring in the Oscar-nominated country music tearjerker, The Broken Circle Breakdown, certainly hasn’t taken the easy road. By adapting writer Lize Spit’s 2016...

Animalia

Animalia

In ‘Animalia’, Sofia Alaoui’s gorgeously shot debut feature, ideas of spirituality mix with commentary on class and religion in a package that refuses to easily yield the keys to its own meaning.

CINE VERDICT: Mamacruz

CINE VERDICT: Mamacruz

Kiti Manver interpreta a una abuela religiosa que accidentalmente descubre el porno en Internet, dando lugar a una comedia que empodera a las mujeres mayores al tiempo que ironiza sobre la disminución de fieles católicos en España.

Mamacruz

Mamacruz

Kiti Manver plays a religious grandmother who accidentally discovers online porn, igniting a comedy that empowers older women while poking fun at Spain’s dwindling Catholic faithful.

Cinema Sabaya

Cinema Sabaya

Low-key but engrossing, this study of Jewish and Palestinian women who take a beginners’ filmmaking class together sidesteps the threatened stereotypes, as Orit Fouks Rotem creates an atmosphere of quiet realism in her first feature film.

Cairo Conspiracy

Cairo Conspiracy

Sweden’s shortlisted International Oscar hopeful, formerly known as ‘Boy from Heaven’, is a solid though cautious, slow-burn loss-of innocence tale wrapped around the struggle between State versus Religion, designed for Western consumption.

Babylon

Babylon

Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead a starry cast in ‘Babylon’, Damien Chazelle’s huge, ambitious but flawed love letter to Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties.

CINE VERDICT: Eami

CINE VERDICT: Eami

La difícil situación de los indígenas ayoreo, la última tribu en evitar el contacto y reclamar sus territorios en la selva del Chaco paraguayo, se plasma de forma minuciosa y poética en este drama que se estrenó en Rotterdam y es candidata al Oscar Internacional 2023 por Paraguay.

CINE VERDICT: La caja

CINE VERDICT: La caja

Lorenzo Vigas continúa con su visión crítica de las figuras paternas y las implicaciones más amplias de la ausencia paterna en esta sutil historia de madurez anclada en la excepcional presencia de su joven protagonista.

The Box

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...

CINE VERDICT: Utama

CINE VERDICT: Utama

Sundance estrena un fascinante retrato de la vida en los Andes bolivianos, donde una sequía amenaza el sustento de una pareja de ancianos quechuas y su rebaño de llamas.

Far from the Nile

Far from the Nile

Cairo awarded its best documentary prize to this broadly appealing fly-on-the-wall documentary about a group of musicians from countries bordering the Nile who go on a demanding hundred-day-tour of the U.S.

Alam

Alam

Writer-director Firas Khoury refreshingly normalizes the lives of a group of Palestinian teens in Israel and then adds a political overlay in this notable debut that deserves more attention than accorded in Toronto.

Light Upon Light

Light Upon Light

Danish director and anthropologist Christian Suhr’s feature documentary offers a respectful yet compelling peek into the surprisingly diverse communities of Sufi worshippers within the Islamic tradition of Egypt.

19B

19B

Ahmad Abdalla’s latest is a handsomely produced, effective drama about a redundant Cairene house guard, the sole resident of a dilapidated mansion, trying to stave off the encroaching collapse of his world.

Houria

Houria

Young actress Lyna Khoudri sparkles as an Algerian dance student forced to reorder her priorities after she is physically assaulted in an emotion-clad feminist drama directed by Mounia Meddour (‘Papicha’).

Stuntwomen

Stuntwomen

A fascinating and troubling behind-the-scenes look into the work of female stuntwomen, who must frequently portray victims at the hands of violent men.

Manifesto

Manifesto

A profoundly disturbing found-footage assemblage portraying a young Russian live-streaming generation brainwashed by militarised education and normalised violence.

Iman

Iman

A Greek-Cypriot family fall apart against a backdrop of terrorism and racial tension in ‘Iman’, a glossy thriller from writer-director duo Corinna Avraamidou and Kyriacos Tofarides

All You See

All You See

A highly stylised, thought-provoking meditation on being stared at without being truly seen, as female immigrants to the Netherlands reflect on their experiences across generations.

Cavewoman

Cavewoman

Director Spiros Stathoulopoulos reimagines the ancient Greek drama ‘Electra’ as a World War II revenge thriller in ‘Cavewoman’, a boldly experimental mix of close-up acting and rich sound design.

Endangered

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.

Home is Somewhere Else

Home is Somewhere Else

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.

The Film Verdict launches CINE VERDICT

The Film Verdict (TFV) is proud to announce the debut of CINE VERDICT, a section featuring Spanish language content written by Spanish language critics for the international marketplace. CINE VERDICT is conceived as a tool for Spanish language professionals who buy,...

One Mother

One Mother

French director Mickaël Bandela reassembles his broken family history into a multi-media memory mixtape in his messy but stylish bio-documentary ‘One Mother’.

Subtraction

Subtraction

Two of Iran’s biggest actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, play double roles in Mani Haghighi’s chilling, fast-paced thriller with allegorical overtones about life in contemporary Iran.

A Life Like Any Other

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 Dependents

The Dependents

Canadian diplomat’s daughter Sofia Brockenshire assembles a rich mosaic of memories from her family’s globe-trotting history in her visually impressive essay-film debut ‘The Dependents’.

The Hamlet Syndrome

The Hamlet Syndrome

A few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country began, a group of five young Ukrainian men and women, not all of whom were professional actors, collaboratively developed a theatrical production. They examined their experiences of armed conflict and...

Klokkenluider

Klokkenluider

Featuring a strong ensemble cast including Tom Burke and Jenna Coleman, Neil Maskell’s directing debut ‘Klokkenluider’ is a chilling comedy conspiracy thriller about whistleblowers on the run from mortal danger.

She Said

She Said

Director Maria Schrader’s timely and gripping newsroom drama ‘She Said’ stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the campaigning reporters who helped bring Harvey Weinstein to justice.

The Visitor

The Visitor

Martin Boulocq’s timely drama exposes a complex web of family, class, and economic codependency in modern Bolivia, where evangelical churches recruit and exploit indigenous communities.

Pretty Red Dress

Pretty Red Dress

In ‘Pretty Red Dress’, the vibrant debut feature from British writer-director Dionne Edwards, a troubled family of black Londoners learn to express their true selves with a little help from Tina Turner and a fabulous frock.

Black Night

Black Night

A man’s search for redemption after participating in a group murder neatly exposes a community’s moral rot in Ozcan Alper’s rugged mountain thriller, winner of the best Turkish film award at Antalya.

The Origin

The Origin

A nomadic tribe clashes with mysterious monsters in director Andrew Cumming’s gripping, stylistically bold Stone Age survivalist horror thriller ‘The Origin’.

Marlowe

Marlowe

For the 100th film of his career, Liam Neeson switches from action thriller to classic film noir in a flyweight but generally entertaining post scriptum to Raymond Chandler’s immortal detective series, co-starring Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange.

The Black Guelph

The Black Guelph

Actor turned director John Connors makes a powerful statement with his debut dramatic feature ‘The Black Guelph’, a gritty Irish crime thriller about secrets, lies and trauma passed down the generations.

Raw

Raw

The atmosphere is thick in this humid Andalusian-set drama in which a teenage boy encounters the first pangs of his burgeoning homosexuality.

Parsley

Parsley

Jose Maria Cabral’s historical drama about the appalling 1937 ‘Parsley massacre’ in the Dominican Republic is a well-mounted but utterly harrowing picture of atrocity.

Junk Space Berlin

Junk Space Berlin

Debutant director Juri Padel’s low-budget cyberpunk thriller ‘Junk Space Berlin’ elevates its scrambled plot and fuzzy intentions with dazzling digital glitch-art visuals.

Linoleum

Linoleum

Director Colin West’s soulful sci-fi comedy drama ‘Linoleum’ balances its sentimental message with sharp jokes, strong performances and deft plot twists.

Still Is

Still Is

This ambiguous single-take drama poignantly depicts a mundane morning in a family home, subtly exploring grief and the ways we hold on and move on.

Brasier

Brasier

An 11-year-old girl has a sexual awakening when she joins an older girls’ football team, but she struggles to understand and control taboo desires.

Brothers

Brothers

A gory, suspenseful debut from Kazakhstan’s Darkhan Tulegenov offers a moody, pessimistic take on the crime thriller that interrogates class inequality and hypocrisy.

Way Out Ahead Of Us

Way Out Ahead Of Us

A vague, dreamlike lyricism is prioritised over socio-political critique in Rob Rice’s collaboratively-minded doc-fiction portrait of a family facing uncertain futures in the Californian desert.

Look at Me

Look at Me

Javier Bardem and Chris Rock star in this febrile melodrama, directed by Sally Potter, about an explosive moment in a relationship.

No Bears

No Bears

The world premiere of Jafar Panahi’s simple but militantly engrossing ‘No Bears’, which comes to grips with the thin line between art and reality, took place in Venice competition while the director remained in prison in Tehran after his second arrest on July 11.

Our Ties

Our Ties

The sixth feature from French actor-director Roschdy Zem, co-written by co-star Maïwenn, feels like it’s on autopilot most of the time.

Clare

Clare

Susanna Nicchiarelli’s biopic of Saint Clare seems less interested in religion than a lesbian-nun spectacle like Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Benedetta.’

Venice Immersive

Venice Immersive

The Venice Film Festival was the first major film festival to dedicate a special section to Virtual Reality (VR) that wasn’t an ad-hoc event. The entire VR community of producers, artists, buyers, sellers and exhibition people now congregate in Venice each year to...

Tria

Tria

A family is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice in this stomach-churning dystopian tragedy about the chilling effects of social control.

Blonde

Blonde

Pre-release hype will be the biggest friend to this mess of a pseudo-biopic that reduces Marilyn Monroe to a disturbed child-woman with Daddy issues, never offering a glimpse of the screen magic notwithstanding Ana de Armas’ impressive recreation.

Beyond the Wall

Beyond the Wall

A shattering drama that courageously portrays Iran as a violent Big Brother police state, Vahid Jalilvand’s third film is a shrill, breath-taking mind-trip driven by between two exceptional actors, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Diana Habibi.

The Son

The Son

French playwright-turned-film director Florian Zeller (‘The Father’), again adapts his own play, here starring Hugh Jackman, and the result is a solid drama that unravels in the home stretch.

Vera

Vera

Award-winning documentary team Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel plunge deep into the heart of the adult daughter of spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma in a wonderfully touching film portrait that tips its Stetson at the illusory side of documentaries.

Call of God

Call of God

A young woman’s first love turns out to be a bad dream in the final film of South Korean master Kim Ki-duk, a visually striking if (for Kim) restrained relationship film that was posthumously completed by Estonian producer and director Artur Veeber.

When the Waves Are Gone

When the Waves Are Gone

Philippine auteur Lav Diaz offers a damning and doomed critique of the violent state of his country through the on-screen physical and psychological disintegration of a policeman weighed down by the guilt of his officially-sanctioned murderous past in ‘When the Waves Are Gone’.

In Viaggio

In Viaggio

Italy’s premier documaker Gianfranco Rosi turns his attention to Pope Francis and his non-stop foreign travels, stressing the ecumenical core of his messaging as he comments on the world’s horrors.

The Whale

The Whale

In a career-best performance, Brendan Fraser turns Darren Aronofsky’s apartment-bound drama about an unhappy English teacher crippled by obesity and his daughter’s distance into a classic piece of filmmaking whose emotions are truly immense.

Immensity

Immensity

Penélope Cruz is a joy as a 1970s mother whose free spirit is frozen by her husband’s stereotyped insensitivity, yet other elements of Emanuele Crialese’s film, which is equally focused on the daughter’s certainty she was born the wrong gender, are less transcendent.

August Sky

August Sky

This deft and low-key drama uses fires raging in the Amazon to explore how a young woman is drawn to religion in search of some form of stability.

North Pole

North Pole

A teenage girl’s sense of isolation is writ large across the screen in this frosty Macedonian coming-of-age short that is warmed by a compelling lead performance.

5pm Seaside

5pm Seaside

Two men share in intimate and intense moment on a deserted shoreline in this short drama about violence, emancipation, and the fine lines between the two.

Nezouh

Nezouh

Touches of magical realism aren’t enough to hold together this well-meaning yet clumsy story of an adolescent girl in war-torn Damascus whose father refuses to accept that changed circumstances make his pose as the family guardian irrelevant.

Master Gardener

Master Gardener

A timely occasion to foreground the growing role of American extremists like the Proud Boys is largely manqué in Paul Schrader’s unconvincing story about a marked man trying to redeem himself, starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver.

Blue Jean

Blue Jean

Georgia Oakley’s debut feature is at times a little clumsy but it’s also the work of an interesting new voice in British cinema with a flair for expressive images.

Casa Susanna

Casa Susanna

Sébastien Lifshitz’s latest documentary explores a U.S. hideout for cross-dressing men and trans women but beyond the subject itself, which is interesting, not much of the director’s usual rigour can be found.

Padre Pio

Padre Pio

Abel Ferrara’s total misfire aims to merge the story of a 1920 class-related massacre with the contemporaneous crisis of faith of Italy’s most popular 20th century saint, but the poor script, bad acting and overall lack of cohesion make this just a time-waster.

Banu

Banu

War and patriarchy deprive Azerbaijani women of their sons in an intimate, courageous drama that intertwines personal and political plot lines, directed and acted by first-time director Tahmina Rafaella.

White Noise

White Noise

Noah Baumbach and an inspired cast headlining Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig enjoyably bring Don DeLillo’s “unfilmable” novel about America in the Eighties to life with retro gusto, while straining to make it relevant.

Princess

Princess

A rare fictionalized look at a Nigerian sex worker in Italy that celebrates its subject, flaws and all, with a spirited central performance and a laudable sensitivity destined to find welcoming arms worldwide.

The March on Rome

The March on Rome

Mark Cousins’ thought-provoking examination of the rise of Fascism through a detailed analysis of a 1922 propaganda film that signaled the start of a far-right ideology whose insidious roots continue to find fertile ground.

Love Dog

Love Dog

This debut feature from Bianca Lucas is an unusual portrait of contemporary America and an incredibly intimate, heart-wrenching depiction of grief.

Ribs

Ribs

Farah Hasanbegovic uses a beautifully simple hand-drawn animation style to bring to life this meditation on physical limitations and finding acceptance in our own bodies.

Atonal Glow

Atonal Glow

This portrait of a musical prodigy brims with the same energy as its subject’s piano playing while depicting the boy as well as the talent.

Another Spring

Another Spring

Serbian director Mladen Kovacevic finds echoes of the current Covid pandemic in Europe’s last smallpox outbreak in his artful, atmospheric found-footage documentary ‘Another Spring’.

Men of Deeds

Men of Deeds

A murder cover-up in a corrupt town is the catalyst for an inept police chief’s crisis of conscience in Paul Negoescu’s downbeat portrait of masculinity in meltdown ‘Men of Deeds’.

Matter Out of Place

Matter Out of Place

Award-winning documentary director Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest exquisitely composed opus looks at the global garbage crisis, from Maldive palm groves strewn with plastic to festering landfills, encompassing community rubbish collections and recycling plants in a cinema-essay style whose noninterventionist approach caters to audiences already committed to the cause.

Little Ones

Little Ones

Debuting director Julie Lerat-Gersant imbues tremendous sympathy for her 16-year-old pregnant protagonist in this unpretentious, heartfelt drama whose overall predictability doesn’t detract from its modest strengths.

Stone Turtle

Stone Turtle

An intriguing though not always well-integrated attempt to engage with different forms of storytelling, including traditional Malaysian folklore, at the service of a feminist revenge tale.

Lola

Lola

A pair of eccentric bohemian sisters build a machine that can change the future in Irish director Andrew Legge’s flawed but admirably ambitious lo-fi sci-fi oddity ‘Lola’.

My Neighbor Adolf

My Neighbor Adolf

A misfire of perplexing obliviousness, in which we’re meant to believe that Udo Kier’s character once bore a striking resemblance to Hitler. The best that can be said about this limp comedy is that it could have been far more offensive.

Declaration

Declaration

Class inequality, corruption and power dynamics between the sexes is the background to this working-class Malayalam drama anchored by the nuanced female lead, played by Divya Prabha, and mesmeric images in a latex glove factory.

Pamfir

Pamfir

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s debut is a propulsive drama employing folkloric elements and mythic overtones in its portrayal of a man trying to navigate a provincial criminal underworld.

Karlovy Vary: The Verdict

Karlovy Vary: The Verdict

The masks were off and the parties were on at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 1-9) in a 56th edition brimming with street music, audiences hungry for edgy new movies and civilian crowds gaily mixing with festival-goers in what felt like the first...

Karlovy Vary 2022: The Awards

Karlovy Vary 2022: The Awards

CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION Grand Prix – Crystal Globe SUMMER WITH HOPE Directed by: Sadaf FOROUGHI   Special Jury Prize YOU HAVE TO COME AND SEE IT Directed by: Jonás Trueba   Best Director  Beata PARKANOVA for WORD   Best Actress (jointly awarded) Taki...