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.
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.
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.
Gagaland
A street dance craze becomes a way of life for kids live-streaming from the social margins, in this psychedelic celebration of self-expression.
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...
Luka
Director Jessica Woodworth’s monochrome anti-war drama ‘Luka’ is visually stunning but weighed down by its ponderous, pretentious tone.
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.
Tito
Filmed on a tiny camera smuggled into Haiti’s National Penitentiary, this portrait of an inmate is upsetting, enraging, and deeply moving.
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.
Birdland
Revolution is coming in this intricate, densely layered vision of the burning of a forest and the girl who harnesses the technology of dissent.
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.
The Store
Director Ami-Ro Sköld blends live action with stop-motion animation in ‘The Store’, an impressive social drama which takes place in a Swedish supermarket.
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.
ALiEN0089
Valeria Hofmann’s uncanny and unsettling film explores the collisions between a video game and the real world, when a young woman attempts to call out online harassment.
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...
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.
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.
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
And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine
Sweden-based documentarians Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck’s first joint feature has lofty ambitions but fails to make any kind of coherent argument.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
An intimate, visceral immersion into the rituals of the Estonian smoke sauna, a healing space where women confide in one another.
Slow
Lithuanian director Marija Kavtaradze’s second feature is an involving drama that centres on a new relationship, tackled in a refreshingly honest and complex way.
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
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
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.
Hilma
Lasse Hallström’s beautifully crafted biopic brings to life an almost unknown Swedish painter who was an avant gardiste, spiritualist and theosophist.
Darkling
Dusan Milic’s psychological thriller-cum-horror set in post-war Kosovo excels in creating an unsettling atmosphere, but its conclusion doesn’t quite deliver on its promise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TFV Interviews Petr Vaclav
The Czech director discusses the challenges of making the multilingual biopic ‘Il Boemo’.
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: 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.
CINE VERDICT Los reyes del mundo
La premiada road movie de la escritora y directora colombiana Laura Mora es una carta de amor desordenada pero con gran corazón para los que carecen de afecto
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 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.
CINE VERDICT Domingo y la niebla
El realismo mágico se encuentra con la degradación ambiental en un austero relato costarricense sobre la resistencia de un viudo contra los constructores sin escrúpulos.
War Sailor
An intriguing and seldom-told WWII story gets the standardized treatment in this epic-scale Norwegian drama.
Profile: 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.
CINE VERDICT Profile: Alejandro González Iñárritu
CINE VERDICT El célebre director regresa a su país con una quasi autobiografía brillante y desmesurada que representa a México en la carrera internacional por los Óscares
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.
CINE VERDICT: Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades
El maestro mexicano Alejandro G. Iñárritu (‘Birdman’, ‘The Revenant’) hace un paréntesis para un proyecto muy personal con matices autobiográficos y cinematográficos.
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 ENTREVISTA A LORENZO VIGAS
El ganador del León de Oro de Venecia, Lorenzo Vigas, habla con TFV sobre su última película, La Caja, que ha sido presentada por Venezuela como candidata para el premio Oscar Internacional 2023.
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 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.
TFV Interviews Maryam Touzani
The Moroccan director and screenwriter of ‘The Blue Caftan’ talks about the personal origins of her films.
Profile: Saim Sadiq
A young Pakistani director sets records with his first feature film.
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.
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.
Riverbed
Lebanese actress Carole Abboud brings a sense of wistful loneliness to the role of an independent woman estranged from her adult daughter in Bassem Breche’s sketch-like feature debut.
Victim
Competing forms of victimhood expose a rotten racist society in Slovak director Michal Blaško’s prize-winning Oscars submission ‘Victim’.
Cairo 2022: The Verdict
A modern and glam festival continues under new management.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Colette and Justin
Alain Kassanda connects Congolese history to family history in this revealing debut documentary.
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’).
Merkel
The rise and tenure of Germany’s first female leader gets favourable treatment in this politically star-studded documentary by Eva Weber.
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.
Paradise
In stunning images, Alexander Abaturov’s debut shows global warming heroes in far-flung northeastern Siberia, abandoned by the Russian government.
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.
Bastards
A youthful gathering in a sunny Greek villa becomes an orgy of sex, drugs and violence in ‘Bastards’, a flawed but lively debut feature from director Nikos Pastras.
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
A profoundly disturbing found-footage assemblage portraying a young Russian live-streaming generation brainwashed by militarised education and normalised violence.
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?’
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Retreat
A father and son share a tense, creepy mountain holiday in Swiss director Leon Schwitter’s minor-key but atmospheric debut ‘Retreat’.
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
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
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.
Venus
Catalonian director and horror specialist Jaume Balaguero’s latest offering is a messy and almost incoherent tale of demonic uprising.
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.
Morelia 2022: The Verdict
Women directed most of the Mexican films in Morelia this year, diving into tough subjects like violence, the position of women and LGBTQ issues.
Red Shoes
Eichelmann Kaiser’s feature, which bowed at Venice and Morelia, is a modest but promising debut.
Wheatfield
Mexican writer-director Anabel Caso’s debut is a languid, beautifully observed coming-of-age story.
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.
CINE VERDICT: Mi casa está en otra parte
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.
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,...
Huesera
A fascinating if uneven story of motherhood and body horror from Mexico.
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.
Sub Terra
Life is seen through the eyes of a mysterious creature living beneath the soil in this curious but at times unsettling underground animation from Jeffrey Zablotny.
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...
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.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
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’.
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
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.
Rheingold
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s Wagnerian hip-hop biopic ‘Rheingold’ tells a lively but familiar raps-to-riches story.
The Origin
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.
Winter Boy
French veteran director Christophe Honoré’s latest is a study of grief and teenage exploration with great performances but a somewhat messy screenplay.
Maternal
A cocky 14-year-old rebel becomes a mother in Pilar Palomero’s closely observed and vibrant tale, whose mixed pro/non-pro cast is convincingly upbeat.
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.
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.
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.
Runner
Writer-director Marian Mathias celebrates small acts of kindness and empathy in her opaque but haunting debut feature ‘Runner’.
Walk Up
Emotions are delicately explored over drinks in South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s beguiling and deceptively simple relationship tale.
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.
Il Boemo
The life and loves of 18th century Czech opera composer Josef Myslivecek, and his dazzling Italian career and fall into obscurity, are lovingly and authentically reconstructed in Petr Vaclav’s sumptuous period production.
Thunder
Carmen Jaquier’s powerful debut feature ‘Thunder’ chronicles a stormy collision between religious faith and sexual rapture in early 20th century Switzerland.
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.
Sparta
Screening in San Sebastian competition after it was pulled from Toronto, Ulrich Seidl’s most controversial film to date underlines the sleaze and creepiness of pedophilia so forcefully it is painful to watch.
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.
Raw
The atmosphere is thick in this humid Andalusian-set drama in which a teenage boy encounters the first pangs of his burgeoning homosexuality.
The Sound of Dreaming
Lucid dreaming and entangled destinies give an otherworldly aspect to Kalani Gacon’s intoxicating and bittersweet tale of romantic longing in Kathmandu.
Aberrance
Director Baatar Batsukh raises the bar for Mongolian genre cinema with his twist-heavy, visually impressive psycho-horror debut ‘Aberrance’.
Prison 77
Director Alberto Rodriguez grippingly reconstructs the post-Franco years, using historical riots and prisoners demanding human rights as a microcosm of Spain as it made a screeching transition from fascism to democracy.
Radio Silence
A silly joke on a quiet weekend away becomes a painful indicator of impending doom in this low-key Norwegian break-up drama.
A Long Break
Years of guilt and shame are exorcised in Davit Pirtskhalava’s stagy drama tracking the aftershocks of bullying.
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
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
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
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.
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’.
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.
Blanquita
A complex thriller based on a true sexual abuse scandal involving Chilean politicians, priests, businessmen and homeless children, where nobody is wholly innocent or guilty.
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.
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.
Look at Me
Javier Bardem and Chris Rock star in this febrile melodrama, directed by Sally Potter, about an explosive moment in a relationship.
Venice Immersive: Part Two
Reviews of the XR experiences on offer in Venice.
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.
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
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.
Christopher at Sea
Inspired by Schubert’s song cycle Die schone Mullerin, Christopher at Sea is a dizzying animated odyssey into solitude and obsessive, unrequited desire.
Clare
Susanna Nicchiarelli’s biopic of Saint Clare seems less interested in religion than a lesbian-nun spectacle like Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Benedetta.’
My Girl Friend
A harmless ruse to enable some teenage fumbling upsets the equilibrium of a relationship in Kawthar Younis’ pointed chamber piece.
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.
Goliath
Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s reinvention of the western is a cutting political allegory, a taut revenge tale and a visual extravaganza rolled into one.
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
A family is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice in this stomach-churning dystopian tragedy about the chilling effects of social control.
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.
Snow in September
A teenage boy’s worldview is unsettled by a confusing encounter with an older woman in this riveting Mongolian coming-of-age drama.
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 Damned Don’t Cry
Fyzal Boulifa’s sophomore feature after festival hit ‘Lynn + Lucy’ is too narrow in scope and yet not precise enough.
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.
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.
Anhell69
Debuting director Theo Montoya offers up an ambitious slice of atmospheric and resonant queer punk.
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.
The 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’.
Love Life
A young couple dealing with the tragic loss of a child finds their love for each other challenged in a deeply original drama from Koji Fukada (‘Harmonium’).
Amanda
Writer-director Carolina Cavalli paints a charming picture of a charmless heroine in her confidently quirky debut feature ‘Amanda’.
The Banshees of Inisherin
The latest comedy-drama from Martin McDonagh, which reunites the stars of ‘In Bruges,’ Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is darkly entertaining but never quite believable.
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
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
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.
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.
Other People’s Children
Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest drama stars Viriginie Efira (‘Benedetta’) and incisively explores issues of parenthood and generational transmission.
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
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.
The Baldwin Archives
A 1963 BBC interview with James Baldwin, and conducted by Peter Duval Smith, is recreated in this polished and energising narrative short.
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.
The Water Murmurs
Story Chen’s Palme D’Or-winning short is a mesmerising journey through memory and melancholia as a woman takes a farewell tour of her hometown.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Athena
An eye-popping, eardrum-piercing action film in which the more serious social and mythical elements are pretty on the nose.
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.
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.
A Couple
A monologue on love, marriage, devotion and utter deception that will play best to fans of either Leo Tolstoy or Frederick Wiseman — perhaps to both.
The Origin of Evil
A wicked French thriller that goes overboard but does it in fun and clever ways, with nods to both Hitchcock and Chabrol.
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.
TÁR
A finely controlled film about a woman of flawed greatness, portrayed by a rarely-better Cate Blanchett.
Three Nights a Week
A supposedly straight man finds himself in a drag wonderland that feels strangely sanitised in Florent Gouëlou’s debut feature.
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.
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
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’.
Love Dog
This debut feature from Bianca Lucas is an unusual portrait of contemporary America and an incredibly intimate, heart-wrenching depiction of grief.
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.
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.
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.
Six Weeks
A rebellious teenage mother gives her newborn baby daughter up for adoption in Noemi Veronika Szakonyi’s emotionally raw, elegantly shot drama ‘Six Weeks’.
Riders
Two unlikely Balkan bikers and a Slavic Pixie Dream Girl share an eventful road trip in ‘Riders’, director Dominik Mencej’s slight but sweet semi-homage to ‘Easy Rider’.
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.
Babajanja
This personal essay film inflected with horror movie motifs delves into childhood notions of bogeymen and the sobering truth behind them.
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...
Liturgy of Anti-tank Obstacles
This deceptively simple documentary explores the nature of creation by juxtaposing the work of Ukrainian sculptors who’ve turned their hands to the war effort.
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.
Bachelorette Party
The celebration of a forthcoming marriage is depicted with poignancy and subtlety in Lola Cambourieu and Yann Berlier’s intimate short.
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’.
Rule 34
Julia Murat’s film about a law student with a pornographic pastime is a brave, immoral, and important work.
Matadero
Director Santiago Fillol revisits the brutal political climate of 1970s Argentina through the lens of cinema in his dry but elegant period thriller ‘Matadero’.
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.
A Woman
Past the rather dull international title, Jean Paul Civeyrac’s ‘A Woman’ is a serviceable drama with thriller-esque features and Sophie Marceau in the lead role.
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.
Fairytale
Alexander Sokurov indulges his fascination with the corrosiveness of power in this mesmeric, bewildering and often tedious phantasmagoria combining deep fake technology with the graphic arts.
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.
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
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.
LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL AUG. 3-13, 2022
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.
June Zero
Director Jake Paltrow’s multi-character drama about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, ‘June Zero’ is a bold but muddled patchwork.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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’.
The Trees
The nature of loss both personal and planetary become intertwined in Ramzi Bashour’s mordantly comic drama about a man returning home after his father’s death.
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.
Rubikon
Austrian director Magdalena Lauritsch’s sci-fi eco-disaster movie ‘Rubikon’ is an admirably ambitious but dramatically flawed debut.
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.
Banger
Drugs, rap music and reckless hunger for fame prove to be a potent cocktail in Czech writer-director Adam Sedlák’s enjoyably cartoonish comedy thriller ‘Banger’.
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.
Fools
Tomasz Wasilewski’s oblique new drama is a slowly unwinding puzzle in which a couple’s life is thrown into disarray when one of them brings her ill son to live with them.
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.
Ramona
A layered, mellow rom-com follows an aspiring, insecure actress torn between two love interests and careers in modern-day Madrid.
America
Ofir Raul Graizer’s sophomore feature is a novelistic exploration of duty and companionship that is as vibrant and colourful as it is humane.
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.
Lynch/Oz
Director Alexandre Philippe’s undisciplined but insightful documentary ‘Lynch/Oz’ explores the influence of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ on David Lynch’s surreal cinematic universe.
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’.
The Uncle
A family celebration in 1980s Yugoslavia turns out to be anything but in this unnerving chamber piece that peppers farcical notes into an otherwise stomach-churning thriller.
The Word
A small-town notary and his unbending wife put honor and honesty first in an uplifting if under-dramatized story from the Czech Republic’s Communist past, directed by Beata Parkanova.
Pietà
Baroque stylings and meticulous composition create a hermetically sealed world in Eduardo Casanova’s ornate tale of overbearing matriarchal control.
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.
Horseplay
Argentinean director Marco Berger turns his queer eye on the straight guys in ‘Horseplay’, a darkly funny critique of homophobic machismo.
The Night
Tsai Ming-liang is a master of the meditative short and he’s on exemplary form again with this nocturnal moment of rest in a restless Hong Kong.
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.
Vesper
Engrossing and full of credible Euro SFX, the Lithuanian-French sci fi fantasy featuring Raffiella Chapman as a 13-year-old, self-taught scientist looking for a way out of a socially and environmentally sick world, seems targeted at imaginative YA audiences.
Fucking Bornholm
Polish director Anna Kazejak chronicles scenes from a collapsing marriage in her darkly comic holiday-from-hell psychodrama ‘Fucking Bornholm’.
Sideral
Brazil’s first manned rocket launch provides a catalyst for transformation and a leftfield opportunity for escape in Carlos Segundo’s bittersweet and dryly absurdist short.
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.
Mother
German writer-director Carolin Schmitz takes a journey from here to maternity in her fresh but slight docu-drama hybrid ‘Mother’.
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.
Performer
An otherwise solid examination of a young man’s masculinity dircted by newcomer Oliver Grüttner isn’t quite sure if it seeks to praise or condemn.
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’.
Carajita
Class and race intersect in a suspenseful drama set in the Dominican Republic, where loyalties get tested when a Black nanny raises the spoilt brat of a wealthy white family.
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’.
Paloma
Actress Kika Sena takes director Marcelo Gomes’s story of a young trans woman to another level as Paloma, a romantic mother and farm worker who dreams of a formal church wedding,
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.
One Day in Ukraine
Ordinary Ukrainians — soldiers, civilians and volunteers — make gripping subjects in Volodymyr Tykhyy’s utterly realistic doc, depicting life in post-apocalyptic Kyiv as the populace braces for a very long war.
Sirens
Director Rita Baghdadi’s engaging, ear-bashing documentary ‘Sirens’ chronicles the emotional and political struggles of Lebanon’s first all-female thrash metal band.
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.
Son of Man
A transgender man whose teenage daughter is about to learn his well-kept secret is at the heart of a serviceably shot but deeply felt Iranian drama directed by Sepideh Mir Hosseini.
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...
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...
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...
Don Juan
Director Serge Bozon offers up a dour, quirky Don Juan (played by Tahar Rahim) for the age of #MeToo.
Harka
Documentary director Lotfy Nathan’s prize-winning dramatic debut ‘Harka’ is a powerful if slightly heavy-handed take on injustice and protest in the Arab world.
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...
Godland
Magisterial in the manner of 19th century epic novels and visually influenced by that era’s photography, Hlynur Pálmason’s third feature is a stunning, psychologically rich tale set against Iceland’s awe-inspiring landscapes.
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.
Close
CANNES GRAND PRIX, JOINTLY AWARDED – REVIEWED MAY 27 Lukas Dhont’s gut-wrenching second feature is a stunning ode to adolescent same-sex friendship and a powerful critique of the ways society normalizes aggression while demonizing physical tenderness.
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’.
Joyland
Winner of the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard, Sadiq’s delicate first feature explores the destructive force of patriarchy in a Pakistani family and the fallout from a long-unemployed man’s work at an erotic dance theatre.
Feminist Riposte
Newcomers Marie Perennes and Simon Depardon’s documentary looks at feminists across France whose posters and slogans try to reclaim public spaces and denounce sexism, violence and femicides.
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.
Persona
A young woman wrestles with the duality of her private self and her public persona in this brief but highly effective South Korean animation.
Tsutsue
Two boys struggle with the loss of their older brother in this liminal and haunting Ghanian drama from director Amartei Armar.
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.
Broker
Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s first film lensed in South Korea, about a well-intentioned gang who sell motherless babies, is a minor work with only distant echoes of his 2018 Palm d’Or winner Shoplifters, but still imbued with the filmmaker’s militant humanism.
The Innocent
Louis Garrel’s latest feature as an actor-director is a romp reminiscent of the crime comedies from Stanley Donen.
Pacifiction
Spanish director Albert Serra’s slow-burning, suspenseful Tahiti-set tale pitches Benoît Magimel’s quasi-colonial official against nuclear conspiracies.
Elvis
Baz Luhrmann restores The King to his throne in his subjective but generous, imaginative and visually opulent rock’n’roll biopic ‘Elvis’.
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.
The Pass
Pepi Ginsberg’s riveting drama tackles the combustible nature of repressed sexuality when a spot of wild swimming takes an unexpectedly dangerous turn.
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.
Continental Drift (to the South)
Swiss director Lionel Baier directs a comedy-drama about a mother, her son and the European Union’s refugee crisis that’s unexpected, to say the least.
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.
The Dam
Lebanese artist-filmmaker Ali Cherri delivers a visually mesmerising and quietly political first feature, set among Sudanese bricklayers working on the biggest hydroelectrical dam in Africa.
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.
Tori and Lokita
The latest from the Belgian Dardenne brothers is yet another one of their dramas of stripped-back social realism, this time about two immigrant minors who try to pass as siblings.
A Male
Gender construction is denounced in a raw, slow-burning exposé of toxic masculinity among Colombia’s street thugs.
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...
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.
The Super-8 Years
Director David Ernaux-Briot and his mother, novelist Annie Ernaux, dive into the family’s Super-8 footage collection for this gentle rumination on times past.
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...
Amo
Emmanuel Gras’ aesthetically minded short is an abstract vision that blends planetary movement and physical intimacy, playfully meditating on where exactly we come from.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Documentary magicians Paravel and Castaing-Taylor turn their cameras to the human body and the hospitals in which they are treated in their provocative new film.
The Five Devils
The second feature as a director from in-demand screenwriter Léa Mysius tries to be about five different films at once, and ends up being one right mess.
Men
Jessie Buckley and multiple versions of Rory Kinnear co-star in writer-director Alex Garland’s impressively weird feminist folk-horror thriller ‘Men’.
Return to Seoul
There’s a lot of raw energy in Davy Chou’s second feature, set in Korea, but the lead character is just too exhausting to watch.
How to Save A Dead Friend
Rebellious Russian filmmaker Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s directorial debut offers dynamic imagery and damning commentary about her stifled generation.
Forever Young
Actress-director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s feature about young actors studying under Patrice Chéreau (Louis Garrel) is her best work to date.
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’.
Summer Scars
French rookie director Simon Rieth’s feature debut contains some arresting images and ideas, but doesn’t quite fully come together.
Falcon Lake
Quebec actress-turned-director Charlotte Le Bon’s feature debut as a filmmaker is a sensitive, gorgeously filmed and performed coming-of-age story.
R.M.N.
Cristian Mungiu’s excoriation of xenophobia in multiethnic Transylvania is a classic example of the director’s dedication to naturalism and boasts several superb sequences, but it tries a bit too hard to encompass more topics than it can comfortably handle.
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.
Paris Memories
Alice Winocour’s fascinating if occasionally problematic drama follows a woman’s emotional and psychological journey in the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
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’.
Aftersun
Writer-director Charlotte Wells combines great performances, poetic visuals and bittersweet personal memories in her dazzling debut feature ‘Aftersun’.
Brother and Sister
Arnaud Desplechin’s latest is a hard-to-like drama that stars Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud as siblings divided by intense hatred.
The Night of the 12th
Dominik Moll directs this fascinating story of an unsolved French criminal case in a solid but workmanlike way.
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.
Enys Men
Experimental lo-fi director Mark Jenkin finds a rich seam of pagan folk-horror buried in the rocky terrain of England’s weird wild west in ‘Enys Men’.
Plan 75
The first feature from Japanese female director Chie Hayakawa seethes with violence under its soft-spoken exterior.
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.
Corsage
Director Marie Kreutzer and star Vicky Krieps give a famous 19th century Austrian empress a subversive feminist remix in their joyously imaginative Cannes premiere ‘Corsage’.
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’.
EO
Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s mix of beauty and bombast makes a donkey of a promising premise of making audiences observe a chaotic, cruel world through a braying animal’s eyes.
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.
Harkis
A fiery and timely reflection about a dark episode in French history at the risk of being written out of the books with the normalisation of far-right politics in the country.
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...
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.
The Eight Mountains
Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch adapt Paolo Cognetti’s novel for the big screen and while the film takes too long to get going, its final hour impresses.
Scarlet
Pietro Marcello’s disappointing follow-up to “Martin Eden” combines uncharacteristically saccharine visuals with a weak narrative and treacly score.
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.
Final Cut
‘The Artist’ director Michel Hazanavicius tackles the zombie comedy genre for his Cannes opener and delivers the laughs, if not quite something substantial.
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.
Wake Up Punk
Fashion icon Vivienne Westwood and her son Joe Corré attempt to reclaim punk’s radical roots in director Nigel Askew’s scrappy but engaging documentary ‘Wake Up Punk’.
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.
Navalny
Director Daniel Roher’s gripping documentary about the poison plot against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny gains extra urgency in the light of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
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.
Mangrove School
Filipa César and Sónia Vaz Borges explore the decolonising power of education in this tale of rebellious scholarship in the tangle of Guinea-Bissau’s mangrove swamps.
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...
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.
Abyss
In partnering with Google’s Image Recognition AI, Jeppe Lange has constructed a 100mph frenzy of match-cutting that is strange, rhythmic and at times somewhat profound.
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...
Belfast
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 13, 2021 Kenneth Branagh won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for this warm, funny, visually sumptuous autobiographical drama.
The Locust
Iranian filmmaker Faeze Azizkhani portrays the hazards of making a movie about yourself in a self-referential drama packed with anxiety and irony.
The Bride
An often poetic and fragmentary course on what it means to be a woman, Tiziano Doria and Samira Guadagnuolo’s The Bride is a demanding project that resists conventional storytelling and yet manages to be engaging.
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.
Hostile
Sonita Gale’s documentary is an important examination of Britain’s devastating immigration practices over several decades.
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.
Rhino
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 13, 2021 Ukrainian activist Oleh Sentsov directs a hard-boiled gangster tale set in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose over-the-top violence is starkly undermotivated.
Trenches
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 3, 2021 An intimate visit to the Donbas trenches, where men (and one oddly portrayed woman) become the latest soldiers in history to experience trench warfare.
Olga
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON OCT. 25, 2021 Elie Grappe’s sober drama about a teenaged Ukrainian gymnast sent abroad for her safety mixes sports and politics with coming-of-age elements, and represented Switzerland in the Oscar race.
Bad Roads
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 21, 2021 Writer-director Natalya Vorozhbit’s insightful documentary play-turned-film was Ukraine’s Oscar submission.
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.
Heroines
Communal mythologies and the importance of historical forebears are explored in Marina Herrera’s quietly humorous hybrid documentary about a rebellious Indigenous woman.
Berlinale 2022: The Verdict
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Fogaréu
Debuting director Flávia Neves throws far too many elements into her overstuffed Gothic-tinged plot, intriguing enough to hold attention but too convoluted to withstand criticism.
Taurus
Musician Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly, plays a drug-damaged pop star in director Tim Sutton’s ‘Taurus’, a stylishly sleazy but self-indulgent depiction of toxic fame.
Haulout
Evgenia and Maxim Arbugaeva’s astonishing documentary captures the annual arrival of thousands of walruses on a remote beach in the Russian Arctic in awesome intimacy.
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.
Unrest
Cyril Schäublin’s Berlin prize-winner ‘Unrest’ is a playful, gently subversive, precision-tooled drama about anarchist watch-makers in 19th century Switzerland.
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,...
Axiom
Jöns Jönsson’s intriguing slow-burner about a charismatic fabulist occasionally challenges our suspension of disbelief, but its exacting evocation of atmosphere nicely plays on the tension between normality and disruption.
Nelly & Nadine
The latest from Swedish documentary director Magnus Gertten (‘Becoming Zlatan’) has an incredible true romance at its heart that is almost overwhelmed by less interesting material.
Northern Skies Over Empty Space
Mexican director Alejandra Marquez Abella’s latest is a robust rural drama that’s nonetheless lean and mean.
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.
Trap
Anastasia Veber’s prize-winning drama is an evocative exploration of the lives of young people in contemporary Russia caught between aggression and eroticism, isolation and intimacy.
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.
No U-Turn
Another documentary subtly but clearly discouraging African migration, with the good sense to find camera-friendly subjects who imbue the film’s trite theme with humour and energy.
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
That Kind of Summer
French-Canadian director Denis Cote’s latest dives into the lives of three hypersexual women and their summer-retreat therapist in fascinating ways.
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.
Mutzenbacher
Men talk about sex in director Ruth Beckermann’s latest documentary, but the results aren’t very impressive.
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,...
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.
Call Jane
Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver play abortion rights activists in director Phyllis Nagy’s worthy but timid debut feature ‘Call Jane’.
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.
Sonne
Gen Z’s creative use of video and chat powers Kurdwin Ayub’s knowing take on a teenage girl in Vienna forced to negotiate the tensions and expectations arising from her Kurdish identity.
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.
Coma
French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello’s work has often toed the line between narrative and the avant-garde, with plots that are chopped and screwed into a melee of images, sounds and music — the latter often beautifully composed by Bonello himself. His movies are less...
Everything Will Be OK
France-based Cambodian director Rithy Panh returns with a hard-hitting film that’s part figurines, part shocking archive footage, much like his Oscar-nominated ‘The Missing Picture.’
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.