Written by the world’s top critics, reviews in The Film Verdict are an authoritative guide to the most important new movies appearing on the international scene. In this section you can search for and find more than one thousand reviews that have appeared in The Film Verdict since it began in September 2021. The reviewers are a diverse group based all over the globe: Deborah Young and Jay Weissberg (Rome), Stephen Dalton and Ben Nicholson (London), Boyd Van Hoeij (Luxembourg), Jordan Mintzer (Paris), Clarence Tsui (Hong Kong), Oris Aigbokhaevbolo (Lagos), Patricia Boero (Punta del Este), Lucy Virgen (Guadalajara), Carmen Gray (Berlin), Kevin Jagernauth (Montreal), and Alonso Duralde (Los Angeles).
“Only fools and dead men don't change their minds,” American industrialist John H. Patterson once said. It’s perhaps a strange quote for a single mother in small town France to know, but Jule isn’t easy to pin down. Neither is The Courageous, the assured feature debut...
Half an acre measures just over one-third the size of an American football field. But it’s enough land that a dispute over its ownership leads to deadly consequences in Dmitris Nakos’ domestic, slow burn thriller Meat. The filmmaker’s feature debut carves off the fat,...
Caught in the fraught battleground of divorce and parental rights, there is usually a child or children hoping their best interests aren't forgotten. Guillaume Senez’s tender and potent melodrama A Missing Part explores the painful limbo that both parent and child,...
The long, hot summer seemed reluctant to end as crowds returned to the Lido to see the stars and the Venice film selection.
The birth of Italian porn films in the 1980’s is told as a sentimental, gently humorous biopic about porn entrepreneur Riccardo Schicchi in ‘Diva Futura’, a well-written romp made to cash in on its airbrushed sketches of adult film stars Moana Pozzi, Cicciolina and Eva Henger.
The unknown can be simultaneously a frightening and exciting proposition. Its between those scales that the Bulgarian military finds themselves in Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva’s absurdist dramedy Triumph. Set against the backdrop of the newly democratic...
Animator Chris Sanders concocts a sweet fable about love, parenting, and finding your own path.
There’s not many teenagers that would have posters of Susanne Bier’s A Second Chance and the Danish thriller 3 Things on their wall. But then again, there’s no one quite like Elvira. The Sami 15-year-old clings to the fantasy that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is her father,...
“It was a country road turned very blue, and in the summer we used to walk there.” That was the sentence that changed everything for acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien. The blue road described in that opening salvo of an early draft of a short story was both the...
Is fighting for the future of your country worth the cost of giving up your family? That’s the question at the heart of Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Seven Days. Offering a powder keg premise that promises a deep dive into the complex politics of democracy, feminism, and human...
Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature ‘The Room Next Door’ was a dignified winner of the Golden Lion: a quietly profound meditation on love and death, pain and glory, buoyed by knockout performances from TIlda Swinton and Julianne Moore.
Taiwan-born and New York-based producer Alex C. Lo seems to be everywhere on the A-list festival circuit.
Dag Johan Haugerud’s trilogy about relationships in present day Oslo continues with the cleverly moving ‘Love’, screened in Venice’s main competition.
Film festivals can often feel like sitting down to eat your vegetables. While that kind of nutrition can be enjoyable and good for soul, sometimes you want to push the salad aside for the pleasures of a thick, medium-rare steak. Frederik Louis Hviid’s chiseled, no...
While The Overlook Hotel and Bates Motel wear the cinematic crown when it comes to establishments that you’ll want to keep driving past on the highway, the unnamed hotel in Mr. K gives them a run for their money. In her fantastical feature film, Tallulah H. Schwab...
Wang Bing brings his documentary trilogy to a strong close with ‘Youth: Homecoming’, first screened in Venice’s main competition.
A kidnap thriller rooted in surveillance, voyeurism and the unkindness of strangers, Yeo Siew Hua’s third feature ‘Stranger Eyes’ is the first ever Singaporean film to compete for the Golden Lion in Venice
Director Elizabeth Lo explores China’s novel solutions to infidelity and marital crisis with her intimate love-triangle documentary ‘Mistress Dispeller’.
Over two and half years have passed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Headlines from the region continue to unfurl on a daily basis, while President Volodymyr Zelensky has worked tirelessly on the world stage to maintain allied support in his fight against Vladimir...
Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza put their own compelling spin on a true Mafia story with ‘Sicilian Letters’, a Venice competition premiere.
Coming of age is tough in Almost Certainly False, a deft exploration of identity and duty in the life of a young Syrian immigrant dreaming of leaving Istanbul for Europe.
A professional friend-for-hire wakes up to the horrors of his soul-destroying job and hollow lifestyle in Austrian writer-director Bernhard Wenger’s sharp-witted, superbly acted black comedy ‘Peacock’.
Choosing a narrative style as austere and unforgiving as her OB-GYN heroine, rising Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili (‘Beginning’) plumbs the depths of female suffering and self-sacrifice in ‘April’, a festival film which, like its protag, is destined to be admired more than loved.
In this love/hate letter to Cairo, Khalid Mansour’s sensitive debut feature ‘Seeking Haven for Mr Rambo’ pays tribute to a generation of young Egyptians shackled by economic and societal frustrations.
“In This Darkness I See You”, a work-in-progress film project by Lebanese director Nadim Tabet won El Gouna Film Festival Award in the Final Cut program at the Venice International Film Festival. Final Cut is a program dedicated to supporting Arab and African film...
Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips return to their billion-dollar killer-clown origin story with the music-stuffed, lavishly staged but dramatically flawed sequel ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’.
Three Keenings is a darkly comic character portrait depicts an actor presenting a facsimile of grief that is a thin veneer over the real thing waiting to erupt.
Delphine and Muriel Coulin deliver a compelling family drama with their third feature ‘The Quiet Son’, screened in Venice’s main competition.
Claudia Varejao’s experimental documentary, Kora, is a soulful glimpse into the lives of female refugees and the power of photographs in connecting diasporas with home.
Daniel Craig stars in Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous adaptation of the cult William Burroughs novel ‘Queer’, a trippy erotic fever dream that mostly hits the target, despite some narrative flaws.
Strewn with beauty, sadness and food for thought, Rachel Tsangari’s gripping adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel ‘Harvest’ is an allegory on how modernity has rapidly destroyed our natural relationship with the world.
The 25th anniversary of the Sebastiane award at the San Sebastian Festival will include the special screening of the film ‘120 Beats Per Minute’, winner of the Sebastiane Award in 2017, on Sunday 22nd at the Príncipe Cinemas (18:15), attended by its director, Robin...
The Oldenburg film festival will honor German filmmaker Dominik Graf, who made his debut in the late 1970s. He is part of a generation of filmmakers that aimed to revolutionize mass entertainment with straight forward and economical storytelling, Additionally, heis an...
Maura Delpero’s visually resonant, close-to-nature second feature ‘Vermiglio’ follows a large family living in a tiny Alpine village as WW2 draws to a close, emphasizing the changing role of women in society.
Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature ‘The Room Next Door’ is a minor-key but quietly profound meditation on love and death, pain and glory.
A closed, patriarchal community begins to transform as the cries of a legendary forest beast foreshadow social revolution in the spirited short, The Poison Cat.
A retired military sniper tries to atone for his murderous past in ‘Phantosmia’, Philippine auteur Lav Diaz’s poetic, reflective, modest yet visually captivating study of guilt and redemption.
Romanian filmmaker Bogdan Muresanu delivers sharp holiday-themed satire with his feature debut ‘The New Year That Never Came’, screened in Venice’s Orizzonti section.
It takes the combined power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to maintain interest in this paper-thin farce about rival crime-scene cleaners.
Maura Delpero returned to her native region for her second feature film, choosing most of the locations between South Tyrol and Trentino as the backdrop for her film debuting at the 81st Venice Film Festival. VERMIGLIO is competing in Venice as the first South...
Ageing bad-boy auteur Harmony Korine’s latest experimental art-punk feature ‘Baby Invasion’ is a visually impressive but ultimately hollow exercise in jaded hipster nihilism.
Director Walter Salles and actress Fernanda Torres relive the terrors of Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and one woman’s resistance to silence in ‘I’m Still Here’, a gripping, elevating drama about making truth known and rebuilding a life when all seems lost.
Writer-director Brady Corbet’s monumental period drama about a tortured genius of modernist architecture, ‘The Brutalist’ is ponderous and bloated, but visually stunning and superbly acted.
The surrealism of images created by artificial intelligence evokes the unreliability of memory and elusive nature of a dystopian plague in the sci-fi short, ‘The Eggregores Theory’.
White-supremacist violence in the US is an evergreen subject, but this docudrama about an FBI takedown of a racist cell plays like countless other feds-versus-terrorists thrillers.
Three doctors of different political views struggle to treat soldiers returning from the front during WWI and combat a new menace, the Spanish flu, in director Gianni Amelio’s grimly shocking film about war’s after-effects, ‘Battleground’.
French writer-director duo Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma go back to the 1990s with their operatic but flawed coming-of-age saga ‘And Their Children After Them’, adapted from a prize-winning novel.
The Film Verdict had the opportunity to speak with the Amministratore Delegato of Rai Cinema, Paolo Del Brocco, just before he was leaving for the Venice Film Festival. TFV: Paolo, your mandate has been renewed and you have just had a significant year that brought to...
A trio of French couples exchange partners while they search for love in Emmanuel Mouret’s professionally crafted but unsurprising salute to a great French film genre, ‘Trois amies.’
Nicole Kidman delivers another emotionally and physically fearless performance in Halina Reijn’s provocative, kink-themed coming-out story.
A horse racing champion embarks on a surreal gender-blurring ride in Luis Ortega’s bumpy but stylish, colourful, enjoyably goofy comedy thriller ‘Kill The Jockey’.
Jo Mühlberger began working for European Film Promotion (EFP) in 1998 after working for the Berlinale, the European Film Market and Filmfest Hamburg. As EFP’s Deputy Director he is part of the strategic team within EFP, developing activities to promote the spirit of...
The life, politics, music and relationship of cultural idols and revolutionary artists John Lennon and Yoko Ono are brilliantly blasted onscreen amid exploding shards of 1970’s Americana in Kevin Macdonald’s and Sam Rice-Edwards’ irresistibly original and high-energy documentary, ‘One to One: John & Yoko’.
Alexandre O. Philippe pays tribute to a classic on its 50th anniversary with the heartfelt documentary ‘Chain Reactions’, screened in Venice’s Classics sidebar.
Brazilian director Petra Costa explores how religious faith can become a dangerous political weapon in ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’, the gripping sequel to her Oscar-nominated ‘The Edge of Democracy’.
Pablo Larraín’s third portrait of the private pain of a public woman exists most effectively as a platform for Angelina Jolie’s diva-as-diva performance.
The film auteur of Nazi Germany par excellence, Leni Riefenstahl and her controversial legacy are examined in fascinating depth in the new German doc ‘Riefenstahl’ by Andres Veiel.
The 2024 Venice Immersive selection featured some interesting variations on the usual VR experience, involving the body and senses in new ways.
French writer-director Aude Léa Rapin’s dystopian cyber-thriller ‘Planet B’ is an ambitious but muddled mix of virtual reality and timely political issues.
TIFF’s slate of European cinema ranges from provocative documentaries to pulse-pounding genre thrills.
Tim Burton’s energetically grotesque sequel proves you can go home again, even when that home is haunted.
The Japanese franchise celebrates its 45th anniversary with the VR film ‘Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom’, shown in the Venice Immersive lineup.
Valerio Mastandrea makes good use of his gruff persona in his second directorial feature ‘Feeling Better’, screened in Venice’s Orizzonti competition.
European Film Promotion (EFP) is highlighting 17 European titles from a long list of outstanding European films that will be part of this years‘ line-up at the Toronto International Film Festival. Some 17 national film promotion institutes plus five world sales...
Marvel Studios makes it VR debut with ‘What If…? An Immersive Story’, based on the animated series dealing with alternate realities.
The international jury for the Venezia 81 competition of the 81st Venice International Film will consist of nine international film personalities, who will award the Golden Lion for Best Film and the other official awards. French actress Isabelle Huppert will act as...
La Biennale 2024 Masterclass series will unfold 29 August - 6 September. The classes and conversations will take place at the Match Point Arena, set up at the Tennis Club Venezia on the Lido (Lungomare Marconi, corner via Emo, in front of the Hotel Excelsior, free...
The feature film ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ by Mohammad Rasoulof will represent Germany at the 97th Academy Awards® for Best International Feature Film. This decision was made by an independent jury of experts appointed by German Films from the 13 films submitted...
Sarajevo Film Festival’s 30th edition was a starry affair, balancing stories from the Balkan region’s dark past with signposts to a brighter future.
The Romanian ‘Three Kilometers to the End of the World’ by director Emanuel Pârvu took home the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Feature Film.
Mirjana Karanovic shines as both creator and star of Mother Mara, a nuanced drama about a middle-aged woman navigating loss, adapted from elements of a Tanja Sljivar play.
We spoke to Saule Bliuvaite, fresh off her dual triumph in Locarno with her debut feature ‘Toxic’.
Teens scrutinise each other on a hot summer’s day at the river and drift off into the wilderness in this unique, mysterious German coming-of-ager.
This year marks the 30th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. SFF is the largest and most premier festival in Southeast Europe. The festival was launched during the siege of the Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. The first Sarajevo Film Festival was held from 25...
Zoë Kravitz makes an impressive directorial debut with a twisty, topical thriller in the Jordan Peele/Ira Levin vein.
Fresh from awards in Locarno, Georgian director Tato Kotetishvili spoke about integrating reality and trusting in magic with debut feature Holy Electricity.
A father and son heading home from football practice face the realities of bureaucracy and the lure of migration in Samir Karahoda’s finely tuned short, On the Way.
Documentarist Maja Prelog follows her partner on an arduous post-leukemia cycling trip in Cent’anni, a deeply personal reflection on the emotional effects of serious illness.
Santa Claus is not coming to town in Emir Kapetanovic’s bittersweet comic road movie ‘When Santa Was a Communist’, which is based on an absurd true story in the Balkan region’s ongoing culture wars.
Beloved American actor John Turturro spoke of depicting eccentrics, early typecasting, and the realities of mental health care to a rapt masterclass audience in Sarajevo.
A passenger train witnesses an act of ethnic cleansing in ‘The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent’, a well-drawn portrait of the wary silence of complicity that allows evil to triumph. Winner of the Palme D’Or – Short Film at Cannes.
This year marks the 30th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. SFF is the largest and most premier festival in Southeast Europe. The festival was launched during the siege of the Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. The first Sarajevo Film Festival was held from 25...
A man fastidiously records his electrical energy consumption, gradually counting down to his demise, in this strangely compelling and poetic 16mm short, 3 MWh.
The Oscar-winning director of ‘Sideways’, ‘About Schmidt’, ‘Nebraska’ and ‘The Holdovers’ came to Sarajevo Film Festival for a masterclass talk and gala screening.
This year marks the 30th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. SFF is the largest and most premier festival in Southeast Europe. The festival was launched during the siege of the Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. The first Sarajevo Film Festival was held from 25...
Kamal Aljafari reclaims and re-envisages looted images from Beirut’s Palestine Research Centre in his moving and enigmatic intervention into the territory of memories.
Belgian filmmaker Leonardo van Dijl makes a strong feature debut with sports drama ‘Julie Keeps Quiet’, which premiered in Cannes.
All is disquiet on the eastern home front in Ukrainian director Lesia Diak’s scrappy but emotionally engaging debut documentary ‘Dad’s Lullaby’.
Andrei Cohn’s stark and brutal historical drama on the cycle of bloodshed in nineteenth-century Romania is a resonant study of how hatred is spawned.
The Oscar-winning writer-director of ‘American Fiction’ gave a lively masterclass and hosted a gala screening as part of the Balkan-region film fest’s 30th anniversary edition.
The 2024 Locarno Film Festival spotlighted the future in more ways than one.
A lively documentary from Greek director Fil Ieropoulos, ‘Avant-Drag!’ salutes the radical roots and ongoing bravery of queer performers who defy gender norms, especially in more conservative societies.
‘Toxic’ (‘Akiplesa’), the first feature directed by Lithuania’s Saulé Bliuvaité, swept two top awards at the 77th Locarno Film Festival.
Marco Tullio Giordana deals solidly with family drama and music in Locarno premiere ‘The Life Apart’.
Slovenian writer-director Sonja Prosenc explores the tragicomic extremes of wealth and privilege in her sprawling but impressive social satire ‘Family Therapy’.
Lithuanian teens pin hope on an exploitative modelling school as a way out of their dead-end town in Saule Bliuvaite’s acerbic, striking coming-of-ager.
The selection committee appointed by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture has included REINAS by Klaudia Reynicke and DOG ON TRIAL by Laetitia Dosch in the preselection. Both films are currently enjoying Swiss premieres at the Locarno Film Festival on the Piazza...
A young woman learns some bittersweet life lessons about love and family in Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic’s latest sunny but slight glum-com ‘My Late Summer’.
Like a Sick Yellow is a fragmentary portrait of place that blurs fact with fiction to create an elusive and unnerving meditation on memory and the Kosovan war.
Southwest Europe’s biggest film festival is marking its landmark anniversary with a feast of premieres, new locations across the city, plus starry guests including Meg Ryan and John Turturro.
Alice Lowe returns behind the camera with her second feature ‘Timestalker’, a century-spanning rom-com screened in Locarno’s Piazza Grande.
Radu Jude teases the profound out of the profane with a manic, comical collage of material drawn from TV commercials produced in Romania after the collapse of its Communist regime in 1989.
The Film Verdict (TFV) launches the industry’s first trade audio film reviews with THE FILM VERDICT ON POINT (TFV On Point), a new podcast series that will turn TFV film reviews into audio broadcasts, hosted by Sarah Vianney.
This year, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s Masterclass program offers the opportunity to gain insights from experienced film professionals. The Masterclass series will be held from August 17th to 21st, with sessions taking place at the Festival Center (Bosnian Cultural...
Finding universal emotion in a singular case study, director Maja Novakovic’s painterly debut feature ‘At the Door of the House Who Will Come Knocking’ is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on loss and loneliness.
One last memory of a Yugoslavia that no longer exists becomes a site of obsessive return in Iva Radivojevic’s elegantly narrated reconstruction.
The European Film Academy has announced their selection for this year's feature film section, Part 1.The selection includes 29 productions as the first part of the Academy’s Feature Film Selection process. There are 26 European countries represented – both EU and...
A young woman acclimatises to the rhythms of a new city while reflecting on those of her lifestyle in looking she said I forget, the heady short from Naomi Pacifique.
A sensitive mind struggles with esoteric encounters in the Istanbul gloom in Gurcan Keltek’s spectacularly atmospheric horror.
Although ‘Hanami’ leans a bit too hard on its magical realism elements, talented director Denise Fernandes makes up for it with an affecting coda.
On September 26th, Pedro Almodóvar, the director, screenwriter, and producer, will be honored with the Donostia Award at the 72nd edition of the San Sebastian Festival. The award recognizes his extraordinary contribution to the world of cinema. The presentation will...
Fede Alvarez returns to the well of the original 1979 Ridley Scott hit while adding a few space-screams of his own.
In a quasi-political thriller, Ala Eddine Slim translates a nightmare of two sleeping animals into a mysterious multilayered investigative story referring to a morally and environmentally corrupt Tunisian village.
In the impressive ‘Listen to the Voices’, Maxime Jean-Baptiste presents a sobering look at trauma, blackness, and violence in a Guianese neighbourhood.
TFV speaks to Oscar winner Ben Burtt, the 2024 recipient of the Vision Award at the Locarno Film Festival.
Ascona-Locarno is a decidedly green destination. To preserve the stunning landscape of the Ascona-Locarno region, the area is served by an extensive network of public transportation, a comprehensive bike-sharing system, and numerous cable cars, allowing visitors to...
The selection of the German entry for the 97th Oscar® Competition in the category "Best International Feature Film" will take place with an independent jury of experts on August 21 and 22, 2024 in Munich. The following thirteen German films were submitted to German...
Open Doors, Locarno Pro’s co-production and talent development program for artists from underrepresented communities around the world, has announced its 2024 winners. Eight projects in development were selected for its coproduction platform, the Projects Hub, and were...
An innocuous question intended to be sexy and intimate probes at relationship boundaries in Freak, a short film about what it means to be truly honest and truly accepted
Kurdwin Ayub’s sophomore feature about a mixed martial arts trainer on peculiar assignment to housebound sisters in Jordan offers sensationalist suspense but few layers of depth.
The First Look awards were presented by an international jury consisting of Beatrice Fiorentino (Artistic Director, Venice's International Film Critics’ Week), Kerem Ayan (Director, Istanbul Film Festival), and Mercedes Martínez-Abarca (Programmer, International Film...
México 86 es el sobrio y sincero segundo largometraje del ganador de la Camera D´Or 2019 César Díaz. al que le falta pasión para ser un relato político convincente.
Acts of faith, plunder and resistance deep in the Amazon are the territory of a majestic and hallucinatory but heavy-handed anti-colonial thriller from Pia Marais.
‘Mexico 86’, the sober, sincere second feature from 2019 Camera D’Or winner César Díaz, lacks the passion to be a compelling political narrative.
Sara Fgaier’s feature debut is an account of love and loss that retains a poetic fragmentary appeal, while concealing a more powerful tale.
Tato Kotetishvili’s Georgian debut is a scrappily episodic and freewheeling, dry-humoured celebration of down-and-out margins brimming with eccentric personality.
Freddy Macdonald delivers Alpine thrills with his feature debut ‘Sew Torn’, part of Locarno’s Piazza Grande selection.
A woman processes the death of her father, a controversial inventor of healing gadgets in a conspiracy-prone America, in this droll, intriguing docufiction.
Kevin Jerome Everson’s latest short – Practice, Practice, Practice – is yet another perfectly calibrated examination of the aspects of African-American labour that packs a powerful punch.
A family derailed by a swimming accident struggles to make sense of the trauma in Laurynas Bareisa’s haunting and profoundly disorienting drama.
Ascona-Locarno is a real paradise for outdoor enthusiasts, thanks to its lake, rivers, mountains, breathtaking hills and wide plains. With over 2,300 hours of sunshine a year and a mild climate, the region is ideal for outdoor adventures, offering a wide range of...
Ramon Zürcher’s utterly distinctive talent for twisting the domestic into the uncanny gains intensity in a cutting psychological horror as thrilling as it is elliptical and dark.
Meg Ryan will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award. She will also present a special screening of her 1998 hit romantic comedy 'You've Got Mail' at the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema. The actress will greet the audience at the same venue where the film was screened...
Lotfi Achour’s engrossing psychodrama ‘Red Path’ (‘Les enfants rouges’) is a powerful investigation into the traumatized mind of a young shepherd who witnessed the beheading of his cousin by an extremist group.
Taboo histories of violence against women in Ireland are excavated in Aislinn Clarke’s chilling, over-the-top Irish-language folk horror.
Ben Rivers revisits hermit Jake Williams in Scottish woodland for a sparse, mysterious and music-oriented doc on life off the grid in gathering crisis.
Mar Coll returns to the Locarno Festival to explore the limits of modern motherhood in Mothers Don’t (Salve María), an intimate and empathetic film.
Christoph Hochhäusler’s Brussels-set neo-noir about a female assassin sets up wild ideas about futuristic crime which a convoluted plot never quite delivers.
La directora catalana Mar Coll explora los límites de la maternidad moderna en Salve María, largometraje íntimo y empático con el que vuelve al Festival de Locarno
This Alpine resort has everything: mood, creepiness, mood… and… well, that’s about it.
Gianluca Jodice’s Locarno opener is a handsome but airless portrait of obsolescence, as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette sit out their last months imprisoned in a Paris chateau.
The special feature of Lake Maggiore is that it is accessible practically everywhere. There are an incredible number of beaches, lidos and bathing spots along the lakeshore. Some are accessible free of charge; others require a fee - but all are beautiful. Lake...
Italian author Paolo Cognetti returns to his filmmaking roots with ‘A Flower of Mine’, an ode to nature bowing in Locarno’s Piazza Grande.
The Locarno Film Festival pays tribute to Claude Barras, a major name in contemporary Swiss animation.
Founded after the Second World War, the Locarno Film Festival stands as one of the oldest and most prestigious in Europe and is the most significant in Switzerland. During the eleven days, over 300 films are screened in 13 venues and the winning film is awarded the...
Too few surprises and too many endings makes for a tension-free thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, despite Josh Hartnett’s best efforts.
Ryan Reynolds fires off quips and bullets with equal precision, but both the meta-comedy and the exaggerated violence wear thin before the film’s denouement.
San Sebastian International Film festival announces eleven moviemakers from Argentina, China, France, Georgia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and the USA will show their first and second films in the Festival’s New Directors section. All of them, together with the remaining...
The Locarno Film Festival is honored to pay tribute to Alfonso Cuarón with the Lifetime Achievement Award, accompanied by the screening of Alain Tanner’s Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000 (Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, 1976), personally selected by Cuarón....
This 28-years-later sequel delivers the weather-porn thrills of its predecessor, while managing to be the tiniest bit less silly when the actors open their mouths.
Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet, two stars of French cinema, will be the joint recipients of the Excellence Award Davide Campari at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival. Guillaume Canet has acted, directed and written over 100 films throughout his career, spanning from...
The acting president of RTVE, Concepción Cascajosa, and the San Sebastian International Film Festival director, José Luis Rebordinos, signed an agreement to strengthen their almost two-decade-long collaboration. RTVE will be the official sponsor of the film festival...
The official selection of the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival has been announced. For eight decades, Locarno has been at the forefront of the international festival circuit, premiering films by both established auteurs and rapidly rising talents. Among the...
The 58th edition of KVIFF featured Kafka-esque comedy, a strong international program and some controversial prize choices.
Karlovy Vary’s two big standouts when awards were handed out Saturday night were ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things’ directed by prolific Irish documentarian Mark Cousins and Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s Norwegian drama ‘Loveable’ (Elskling).
The space race is back in the peppy, bouncy ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, but a sparky face-off between NASA launch director Channing Tatum and marketing wizard Scarlett Johansson can’t disguise an outdated feeling.
A backwoods bachelor party becomes a fight to the death in Canadian writer-director Annick Blanc’s uneven but gripping feminist thriller ‘Hunting Daze’.
A legend of Czech cinema receives the tribute she deserves in the documentary ‘Actress’, screened at Karlovy Vary.
In writer-director Abdellah Taïa’s ode to youthful rebellion ‘Cabo Negro’, two heartbroken queer Moroccans take refuge in a luxury villa to confront old traumas and share solidarity.
Director Omer Tobi’s debut feature ‘Tropicana’ is a relentlessly dark but grimly compelling portrait of repressed lives and sexual outlaws in a small Israeli desert town.
Porcelain War is a beautifully crafted documentary on the creative resistance of Ukrainian citizens under Russian invasion, and the paradoxes of patriotism.
Prolific documentarian Mark Cousins has dedicated himself to foregrounding underseen films from around the globe, especially those directed by women sidelined from cinematic history. in some of his best-known work, including the fifteen-hour The Story of Film: An...
Nature takes center stage in Ivana Gloria’s subtly off-kilter coming-of-age debut ‘Chlorophyll’, screening in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition.
Ori Yardeni's feature film The Man Who Saved the Internet with a Sunflower, the true story of American entrepreneur Rob Ryan, was awarded the Competition Features Audience Award at the closing ceremony of Dances With Films 2024. The film recounts the dramatic story of...
Writer-director Noaz Deshe’s ambitious horror-tinged drama about the surreal absurdism of life in a refugee camp, ‘Xoftex’ is messy and muddled but commendably orginal.
The island of Malta adds a Mediterranean-themed film festival in its quest to make the film industry a pillar of its economy.
A group of young men must endure the hardships of a rigorous military training programme in Night Has Come, Paolo Tizon’s intimate and revealing documentary.
Tiny Lights is a keenly observed portrayal of a six-year-old girl’s experience of her parents breaking up, built around a captivating performance from the young Mia Banko.
KVIFF Eastern Promises, the festival's Industry section and film market’s mission is bridging the gap between talented filmmakers and their potential co-production partners, festivals, and audiences. “This year has once again brought a diverse selection of strong...
Even die-hard Minions fans may come away disappointed from this half-hearted fourquel.
A marriage unravels in the solid Norwegian drama ‘Loveable’, presented in Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe Competition.
This tender, often humorous film Second Chance is about a young woman recovering from trauma is a deftly rendered depiction of convalescence and our ability to heal one another.
Anna Cornudella Castro’s mesmeric debut imagines an esoteric woodland world where humans hibernate, their supremacy among animals a delusion of the past.
Full of atmospheric gloom, Bruno Ankovic’s powerful, decades-spanning feature debut shows how wartime violence and desperation seep through a Croatian village like a contagion.
A son returns to Bulgaria from abroad to settle the affairs of his estranged father in Windless, a confined drama about confronting the past and the act of memorial.
Louise Courvoisier makes a confident, vibrant debut with the rural coming-of-age story ‘Holy Cow’.
Turkish auteur Zeki Demirkubuz’s ‘Life’ (‘Hayat’) with its caustic social critique and a quietly angry feminist message won the top prize at the second edition of the Mediterrane Film Festival.
Overcome with grief at the sudden loss of her grandparents, filmmaker Paula Durinova’s expressive documentary Lapilli finds solace in the geological formations of the Aral Sea.
Former political prisoner turned army commander Oleh Sentsov captures a raw slice of Ukraine frontline combat in his accidental “found footage” war documentary ‘Real’.
George Sikharulidze’s debut on masculinity and identity in today’s Georgia is an unusual coming-of-age drama alive with ideas and a bold political imagination.
A Hungarian dressmaker does what she can to survive and resist the power abuses of the ‘40s Slovak State fascist militia in Iveta Grofova’s dark, evocative drama.
Dutch writer-director Peter Hoogendoorn’s autobiographical second feature ‘Three Days of Fish’ finds both humour and melancholy in a painfully awkward father-son relationship.
Viggo Mortensen’s tender and offbeat drama, The Dead Don’t Hurt, is led by a magnetic Vicky Krieps and cultivates something beautiful amongst the arid plains and rocky outcroppings of the old west.
British-Maltese musician, soundtrack composer and record label boss James Vella talks to The Film Verdict about his deep connections to Maltese music, cinema and culture.
In the setting of a Portuguese plantation on Principe in the early 20th century, Margarida Cardoso crafts a haunting and unsettling portrait of colonial destruction in the form of Banzo.
An enthralling doc on Czech photographer Libuse Jarcovjakova, whose candid, diaristic images show a communist Prague on the margins, and life on her own terms.
A brutal rape and murder case in rural India shines a light on deeper problems of corruption, misogyny and inequality in Sandhya Suri’s ponderous but impressive police drama ‘Santosh’.
Confronting the world refugee crisis head-on in highly dramatic scenes that refuse to let go, Brandt Andersen’s etched-with-an-axe ‘The Strangers’ Case’ is a human disaster movie that passionately describes a chain reaction of real-life horror.
The 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival freshens up and renews its commitment to a new generation of viewers.
Italian actor-director Michele Riondino transforms a notorious real-life case of mass workplace bullying into a boisterous social satire in his lively debut feature ‘Palazzina Laf’.
Representing the younger generation of Maltese filmmakers, Fabrizio Fenech hopes for an uptick of local productions in the future.
Expert location manager and line producer Joseph Formosa Randon has worked on the top foreign shoots in Malta.
Not much here that the earlier two films didn’t already establish more effectively; its only depth comes from Lupita Nyong’o’s intuitive lead performance.
Currently head of the jury at Mediterrane Film Festival, the UK-based writer-director Jon S. Baird talks to The Film Verdict about his upcoming projects, his Scottish roots and his personal connections to Malta.
The historical documentary Pirates of the Mediterranean combines an operation to uncover a 16th century shipwreck with re-enactment and talking heads to explore an overlooked element of Europe’s past.
The colourful back story behind Frank Sinatra’s signature song ‘My Way’ gets the all-star biopic treatment in this slight but engaging French documentary.
On a break from Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival, The Film Verdict takes a rare peek inside the studio complex where Game of Thrones, Troy, Assassin’s Creed, Napoleon and both Gladiator films were shot.
In this scene, having stayed behind to collect the shell casing from the first killing, Clara (Claran Hinds) arrives at the rendezvous point at an outdoor café in Rome where he meets Avner (Eric Bana) and the rest of the team. Munich was released by Universal Pictures...
A father attempts to create some kind of life and legacy for his blind son in this tender but bittersweet Maltese drama, Beautiful Lie.
The Locarno Film Festival is honoring Ben Burtt, the legendary sound designer, editor, and voice actor behind the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. He has won four Academy Awards and will be receiving the Vision Award Ticinomoda, which is dedicated to creatives...
At the end of the Basque armed conflict, a young woman waits to flee across the border in ‘Negu Hurbilak’, an atmospheric and rigorously shot but mystifying tale that leaves too much to the viewer’s imagination.
Award-winning British actor Clive Owen, known for his roles in film, television, and stage, will be a special guest at this year's 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF). At the festival's closing ceremony, Owen will receive the KVIFF President’s Award....
Uncompromising Turkish low-budget auteur Zeki Demirkubuz ruminates on toxic masculinity, ingrained sexism and existential despair in his ponderous but sporadically absorbing drama ‘Life’.
In this scene, Praetorian guards, sent by Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), surround Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) after his excape in an attempt to reunite with his former servant Cicero (Tommy Flanagan) as part of a plot to over Emperor Commodus....
Mediterrane Film Festival’s new artistic director, Teresa Cavina, turns her attention to Malta and the Mediterranean in this interview with TFV.
Mysterious personal dramas unfold off-stage when a modern dance company has a bus break-down traveling to Marrakech in Tunisian codirectors Afef Ben Mahmoud and Khalil Benkirane’s intelligently avant-garde on-the-road drama, ‘Backstage’.
Produced by Emma Stone, writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s uneven but impressively bold passion project ‘I Saw the Tv Glow’ celebrates gender-queer liberation using cult TV homages and hallucinatory horror elements.
The Film Verdict is at Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta for the next week talking to key players in the Maltese film industry.
In this scene, Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) dressed in a guard’s uniform and after killing the abusive guard Hamidou (Paul Smith) walks out of the Turkish prison after spending five years locked up for dealing drugs. The prison drama was directed by Alan Parker and...
An engaging Romeo and Juliet romance between rich and poor Punjabis slowly reveals its darker side in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s laid-back but ultimately devastating social critique. ‘Dear Jassi’.
Dutch-Bosnian director Ena Sendijarevic’s playful, surreal, stylish second feature ‘Sweet Dreams’ finds a rich seam of darkly absurd comedy in Europe’s murky colonial history.
The 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this year will include the presence of Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director and producer. The filmmaker will be in town to introduce two of his films, "Kafka" and "Mr. Kneff," as part of the festival's Kafka...
In this scene, Popeye (Robin Williams) sends the local Taxman (Donald Moffat) down the shoot of the fishing dock after he tries to get Popeye to pay a tax for moving in after he moved out of Olive Oyl’s (Shelley Long) boarding house, and a baby tax for having Swee’Pea...
The second edition of Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival is paying tribute to art-rock icon David Bowie’s cinematic legacy with a dedicated sidebar.
The hunters get captured by the game in ‘Hunters on a White Field’, Swedish writer-director Sarah Gyllenstierna’s classy horror-tinged thriller about the dark side of macho bloodsports.
Writer-director Jeff Nichols relies more on mood than narrative to capture the rebellious spirit of 1960s biker gangs.
Filmed in Malta: In this scene, Achilles (Brad Pitt) walks along the coast of ‘Greece’ looking for his mother, the Sea Nymph Thetis (Julie Christie), in order to ask her advice about joining Odysseus (Sean Bean), the King of Ithaca, in the siege on Troy. The epic...
Tricia Tuttle, the Director of Berlinale, has appointed two highly respected programmers to serve as Co-Directors of Film Programming. Jacqueline Lyanga, former US-delegate to the Berlinale, and Michael Stütz, head of the Panorama section, will take on these roles...
Locarno Pro's international networking initiative Match Me! has selected 36 emerging producers from 14 different countries. From August 9 to 11, Match Me! will organize individual meetings and tailor-made networking activities with potential creative and business...
The 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will honor Viggo Mortensen with the Festival President's Award and present his film 'The Dead Don't Hurt,' which he wrote and directed, at the festival's opening ceremony. The versatile actor started his career in the...
The 40th Annual IDA Documentary Awards Call for Entries will open this Friday, June 21, and close on Monday, August 5. You can find all entry deadlines and key announcement dates on the website. There have been some changes to entry categories this year, so please be...
The third edition of Italy’s international Audiovisual Producers Summit (June 10-12, 2024) wrapped at the Altafiumara Resort & Spa last week. The AVP Summit is a three-day conference dedicated to the Italian and international entertainment industry with attendees...
The Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta will present the Career Achievement Golden Bee Award to BAFTA-winning writer-director Mike Leigh, known for films like 'Vera Drake', 'Another Year', and 'Happy-Go-Lucky'. Leigh, a seven-time Academy Award nominee, will also lead...
The German film The Teachers' Lounge by ?lker Çatak has won the Latin American Critics' Award for European Films, which is being presented for the first time by European Film Promotion (EFP) in cooperation with the Guadalajara International Film Festival. TFV Critic...
Producer Stacey Sher will be presented with the Raimondo Rezzonico Award at this year’s edition of the Locarno Film Festival. The award, dedicated to outstanding personalities who have played a major role in international production, honors this pivotal figure in the...
This Pixar sequel brings its protagonist into puberty and examines, with humor and poignancy, the complicated process of building an identity.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence radiate real “I’d rather be playing golf” energy in this fourth entry of a played-out franchise.
Annie Leibovitz has been a highly sought-after international photographer for the past fifty years. She is best known for her portraits of prominent figures such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Queen Elizabeth II, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Meryl...
This biopic of the first woman to swim the English Channel is total Disney corn, but it goes down easy.
TFV Chief critic, Deborah Young reviewed 20,000 species of Bees at Berlin 2023, where newcomer Sofia Otero was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. Young called the film “Extraordinary for its sensitivity and perception, Estibollz Urresolo Sologuren’s...
Tawfik Alzaidi’s classically narrated, slow-burn drama ‘Norah’ is a tribute to art and artists in socially conservative societies like 1990s Saudi Arabia.
Participant Media is gone, but values-based storytelling is more urgently needed than ever.
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (‘I Am Not Your Negro’) once again makes masterful use of the documentary form as a vehicle for social and political commentary in ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’, an intense viewing experience that leaves its mark long after the last photo fades.
The winners of the 2024 French Riviera Film Festival, which celebrates short films and short-form content from around the world, have been announced. The event featured special award presentations to Argentine actor Martin Rodriguez (from Netflix's "Griselda"), who...
A French classic gets new, ambitious life on screen with the ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, from the same team as 2023’s ‘The Three Musketeers’.
Women’s films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema’s elder statesmen fell out of favor.
Sean Baker’s fizzy Cinderella tale about a Brooklyn lap dancer who falls for a Russian playboy won this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Michel Hazanavicius’s (‘The Artist’) long-cherished animation project ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’, bowing in Cannes competition, nimbly combines a classic, grim fairy tale with the horrors of the Holocaust in a well-made but sentimental tale whose audience is unclear.
Dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof denounces the bloody repression of protests by Iranian authorities and the Revolutionary Guard in ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’, his most angrily outspoken film yet.
A newly married Mumbai housewife unleashes her inner monster in writer-director Karan Kandhari’s stylish, punky, compellingly strange comedy thriller ‘Sister Midnight’.
Featuring nuanced performances from its leads, Payal Kapadia’s tender relationship drama ‘All We Imagine As Light’, about three women working in a Mumbai hospital, is the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in more than three decades.
In ‘Beating Hearts’, Gilles Lellouche has produced a gorgeous film that is an epic rumination on love, revenge, class, and the inescapable pull of a certain kind of romance.
When ‘The Village Next to Paradise’ bowed in Un Certain Regard, Mo Harawe became the first Somali filmmaker to compete at Cannes.
Another genre-bending fantasy from Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, ‘Grand Tour’ takes the viewer on a dreamy ride through colonial Asia in 1918, though the present day often pushes through the whimsical story of two characters chasing each other across Asia.
Mahdi Fleifel’s masterful feature debut ‘To a Land Unknown’ marks a new chapter in Palestinian cinema with its harsh yet empathetic walk in the brutal world of being an Arab refugee in Greece.
Switzerland is the 2024 Country of Honor at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
Blending autobiographical elements with heartfelt homages to Iranian cinema, writer-director Matthew Rankin’s charmingly surreal comic fable ‘Universal Language’ reimagines Canada as a Farsi-speaking dreamland.
Bowing in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Truong Minh Quy’s third feature ‘Viet and Nam’ leans more on innovative imagery and historical allegory than its underwritten story and characters.
The Palestinian-Danish director Mahdi Fleifel, in Cannes with a brutally realistic exile story, opens up about the difficulty of exiles making films in exile about other exiles.
In the lush ‘Parthenope’, which he has called his first “feminine epic”, Paolo Sorrentino captures the passion and decadence, the misery, tragedy and baroque riches of his native Naples.
Low on laughs and with a thin plot, Christophe Honore’s ‘Marcello Mio’ is a quirky tribute to one of European cinema’s most famous filial relationships.
Mo Harawe’s story of a Somali family attempting to make ends meet in a troubled environment is visually striking and masterfully told.
In this scene: Sam (Robert De Niro) and Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) walk along the waterfront, posing as a touring husband and wife. to get a look at the area around the hotel where they plan to steal the suitcase. Ronin is a 1998 American action thriller directed by...
A Brooklyn lapdancer falls for a super-rich Russian playboy in ‘Tangerine’ and ‘Red Rocket’ director Sean Baker’s latest walk on the wild side, ‘Anora’.
Music has the power to transform violence and heal the soul in ‘Headhunting to Beatboxing’, a rare glimpse into India’s remote Nagaland.
Veteran cult Canadian director David Cronenberg channels personal feelings of grief, loss and enduring love into his latest underpowered but absorbingly weird techno-gothic thriller, ‘The Shrouds’.
Boris Lojkine’s tale of a Guinean immigrant in France, ‘The Story of Souleymane’, is a vigorously edited piece of cinema with an outstanding performance by first-time actor Abou Sangare.
With unconventional yet captivating storytelling, Nabil Ayoush’s ‘Everybody Loves Touda’ champions female empowerment through a young woman who is passionate about the traditional Moroccan folk music of Aita.
Ali Abbasi’s portrait of a young monster, ‘The Apprentice’, wisely chooses a humorous key in which to chronicle Donald Trump’s formative years as a businessman and how lawyer Roy Cohn helped his empire get its crooked start, though well-informed viewers will find nothing much new.
Jonas Trueba creates a warm and winning ode to love and letting go in the sun-kissed dog days of summer.
IEFTA Founder Marco Orsini Announces New Film Fund
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley co-star in French director Coralie Fargeat’s wild Cannes contender ‘The Substance’, a gloriously tasteless but finely crafted feminist body-horror fairy tale.
Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section showcases emerging Scandinavian talent with ‘Armand’, an enigmatic first film from Norway.
Selena Gomez y Zoe Saldaña presumen sus habilidades de canto y baile en el audaz thriller musical mexicano de Jacques Audiard, una lujuriosa celebración de lo queer multicultural y la redención del transgénero.
La lucha de los yanomami, chamánica y ambientalista, es retratada con respeto y conocimiento en este visualmente atractivo documental
The Australian actress and producer is the Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency.
AL-TAKDIR is the first bilingual global source of Arab film and entertainment news and film reviews for both the region and international industry.
The shamanic and environmentalist struggle of the Yanomami tribe is treated with knowledge and respect in this visually attractive documentary.
Despite a few bumpy moments, actor-director Noémie Merlant’s gory feminist horror comedy ‘The Balconettes’ paints a rowdy, richly imagined portrait of three ladies on fire.
In ‘Limonov: The Ballad’, director Kirill Serebrennikov turns up the volume on his already explosive style (Petrov’s Flu), which is really the only way to recount the mad, violence-tinged rise of Russian poet and political extremist Eduard Limonov.
Re-shuffling footage from films he has shot over the last 23 years, Jia Zhang-ke places his awe-inspiring cinematic mastery on full display in ‘Caught by the Tides’, though its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story.
In ‘The Brink of Dreams’, Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir deliver a fierce, against-all-odds documentary about a group of young women artists in southern Egypt out to prove their independence as theater performers and independent women in a male-dominated society.
Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña show off their song-and-dance skills in French director Jacques Audiard’s audacious Mexican musical thriller ‘Emilia Pérez’.
Filming has commenced this week on Silvio Soldini’s new movie, The Tasters, in the province of Bolzano in the South Tyrol. The film is based on Rosella Postorino’s novel of the same name, an international bestseller published in 46 countries with over a million copies...
In this scene, after winning a raffle, Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) finally reaches the beach in Cannes, fulfilling his dream after a long and roundabout journey to the south of France. Mr. Bean’s Holiday is a comedy movie released in 2007. It was directed by Steve...
The Richard Gere-Cannes starrer ‘Oh, Canada’ gives us good and bad Paul Schrader in its dry tautness and weirdly unsatisfactory ending.
Freestyle Digital Media, the digital film distribution division of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group, has acquired North American VOD rights to the drama/thriller feature THE GHOST TRAP, which will be available to rent/own on all digital HD internet, cable, and...
Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe reunite with ‘Poor Things’ director Yorgos Lanthimos for ‘Kinds of Kindness’, a slight but fun triple-decker sandwich of macabre absurdism.
Yuumi Kawai delivers a storm of a performance as a young bipolar woman struggling with Japan’s unspoken social norms in “Desert of Namibia”, Japanese filmmaker Yoko Yamanaka’s stunning sophomore effort.
The backwardness of a Romanian country village catches 17-year-old Adi in a homophobic trap in Emanuel Parvu’s justly indignant but conventionally scripted ‘Three Kilometers to the End of the World’.
Quiver Distribution acquires North American rights on Film Mode Entertainment’s g horror film based on true unexplained events, DON’T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS (fka BLUE LIGHT), directed by Andy Fickman. The deal was negotiated between Clay Epstein of Film Mode...
The ITALIAN SCREENS conference was held at the Italian Pavilion (Majestic Hotel- Cannes), May 17th with Lucia Borgonzoni, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture, Maria Tripodi, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation,...
Lou Ye’s 2024 Cannes entry, ‘An Unfinished Film’, takes too long but comes across with some genuinely emotional moments.
Sergei Loznitsa follows up his landmark 2014 doc ‘Maidan’ with a more recent portrait showing the impact of Russian aggression on his country in ‘The Invasion’.
John Krasinski’s sledgehammer whimsy kills whatever charm this celebration of childhood imagination might have possessed.
Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating neo-Roman epic ‘Megalopolis’ is a muddled misfire of overcooked kitsch and undercooked ideas.
Rithy Panh’s unnerving screen adaptation of U.S. war correspondent Elizabeth Becker’s real-life 1978 visit to Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia vaunts intense performances, a diverse visual palette and an ominous sound design.
TIFF has announced the launch of a new official content market at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. This market is envisioned as the North American hub for buying and selling screen-based projects, intellectual property, and immersive and innovative...
In ‘Bird’ Andrea Arnold once again shows she has the magic keys – in this case Franz Rogowski’s piercingly tender bird-man, and Barry Keoghan’s manically affectionate drug-dealer dad — to extract drama, fantasy and authentic emotion from characters living on the lowest rungs of English society.
Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner will serve as jury president of the Concorso Internazionale, overseeing the jury that will decide the winner of the Pardo d’Oro – the Golden Leopard – at the 77th Locarno Film Festival this August. Jessica Hausner was born in Vienna...
Fails to meet the impossible task of matching, let alone surpassing, its legendary predecessor, but George Miller’s action sequences still pack a punch, even when they reek of déjà vu.
Swedish writer-director Magnus von Horn’s Cannes competition contender ‘The Girl with the Needle’ is a gripping historical true-crime thriller cloaked in deliciously dark Nordic Noir visuals.
French writer-director Agathe Riedinger’s coming-of-age Cannes contender ‘Wild Diamond’ is an unpolished gem, but it sparkles with lusty energy and strong performances.
Profilic French prankster Quentin Dupieux finds the funny side of cancel culture, AI and actorly vanity in his meta-comic Cannes film festival curtain-raiser ‘The Second Act’.
In this scene, Elton John (played by Taron Egerton), marks his continued efforts to gain control over his struggles with physical and mental health, performing on the beach in the music video for for his hit song “Im Still Standing". The video serves as a tribute to...
Microsoft, in partnership with the Marché du Film & Festival de Cannes, is launching a new, vibrant hub at the Majestic Beach, inviting festival and market attendees to immerse themselves in the the world of AI and the potential it holds for the film industry. During...
In this scene, Anne Lockwood (Diane Lane), takes a last glance at the scenic French Riviera before heading to the Cannes Film Festival with her husband, a film producer (Alec Baldwin). Unfortunately, her husband is too absorbed in business matters to appreciate the...
The 30th Sarajevo Film Festival will pay tribute to Palestinian director Elia Suleiman in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of film. The filmmaker will be presented with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award and honored with a retrospective of his...
Berlinale Festival Director Tricia Tuttle has appointed Tanja Meissner to join her Executive team as the Director of Berlinale Pro*. This reshaped role encompasses the directorship of the European Film Market (EFM), and she will also lead the Berlinale Pro*...
The Festival de Cannes is introducing a new Immersive Competition, aimed at highlighting the next generation of international artists who are redefining storytelling through new narrative-driven experiences that transcend the traditional two-dimensional cinema screen....
In this scene: John Robie/Conrad Burns (played by Cary Grant) and Francie Stevens(played by Grace Kelly) stroll through the gardens of the Sanford Villa pretending to look for a property to buy. However, Francie is more interested in discussing John’s choice of women,...
Cinéma de la Plage 2024 Schedule: This year’s schedule includes films by Jackie Chan, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Rachid Bouchareb, Tony Gatlif, Danny Boyle, and continuation of the tribute to Studio Ghibli. Tuesday May 14 TRAINSPOTTING (4K Restoration) Danny...
Thanks to its solid, diverse line-up of first and second features, Jeonju International Film Festival consolidated its standing as the premier platform for the discovery of new voices in Korean cinema.
A prestigious award and well-earned recognition goes to a sensitive and communicative film critic.
A Palestinian and an Israeli boy bond over surfing in a vivid if familiar story from the Second Intifada that today feels more than slightly unread.
Scooping three awards at the Jeonju International Film Festival, Namkoong Sun’s ‘Time To Be Strong’ is a winning drama about three traumatized losers in the brutal K-pop rat race.
If there’s a valid reason to return to this simian franchise, this latest entry never finds it, despite the craftsmanship on display.
Nada Alhaidan takes us through the 10th anniversary edition, which is spotlighting Indian cinema and a Science Fiction Hub along with its focus on local production.
One of Jeonju’s annual trio of self-produced titles, ‘When Clouds Hide the Shadows’ is Chilean director José Luis Torres Leiva’s affectionate, contemplative visit to the southernmost outpost of South America.
Entertainment Oxygen, also known as eoFlix, a digital networking and self-distribution platform for the entertainment industry has recently announced a strategic partnership with médiaClub, the largest association of media professionals in France. This partnership is...
This valentine to action-packed moviemaking works best when it ignores the plot and focuses on stunt craft and the explosive rom-com banter between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
Slamdance Organization announced that its annual film festival will move to Los Angeles. The festival will run February 20-26, 2025 at venues in Hollywood, and the surrounding area. Theatres include the Landmark Theatres and the DGA Theater Complex, with more...
The winners will be revealed at a special ceremony on May 18th at the Cannes Film Festival.
Edgy Media is a new film distribution and sales company, aiming to make its mark with a fresh and ambitious approach. The company is founded by Adam Ghobrial, an industry veteran with 20 years of experience. The company's goal is to link groundbreaking storytelling...
The sixth annual French Riviera Film Festival (FRFF), scheduled to take place from May 17-18, 2024, celebrates short films and short-form content from all over the world. The festival co-founders, Nicole Goesseringer Muj and Gotham Chandna, have announced the finalist...
Karlovy Vary IFF will hold a special retrospective titled "The Wish To Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema". This showcase will offer cinematic reflections on the work of one of the most influential figures of 20th-century literature. Works from filmmakers such as Orson...
Nestled on the shores of Lake Geneva, , Visions du Réel has developed into a small gem for documentary cinema, screening 128 films in its main programs.
Atmospheric, compelling and timely, Swiss documentarian Nicole Vögele’s ‘The Landscape and the Fury’, about migrants trying to cross the Bosnia-Croatian border to reach Europe, won Visions du Réel’s top prize.
Guy Ritchie displays his usual skill at stylized violence, cheeky repartee, and bespoke costuming, but the build-up in this WWII action saga outshines the climax.
The Cannes Film Festival is presenting its Honorary Palme d'Or award to Studio Ghibli. This studio, led by storytellers Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, has introduced a breath of fresh air in the world of animated films over the last forty years, creating a host of...
Lynne Ramsay checks in from Stockfish, where she received the festival’s Honorary Award, with new films starring Julianne Moore and Jennifer Lawrence on the horizon.
A nun weighs up the freedoms and limits of a Belarusian convent after heartbreak and heroin addiction in this sublime and sensorial debut feature doc.
In the slantwise ethnographic documentary ‘Empathfridges’, Rakel Jonsdottir explores the concept of shared fridges in Iceland to create microcosmic portraits of place and community.
The 10th anniversary edition of the Icelandic festival Stockfish brought professionals and casual audiences together in a warm, intimate manner.
The tale as old as time gets a stylish Icelandic makeover in ‘Belle’, the closing film of Stockfish 2024.
The Balkan landscape is a witness to cycles of time and displacement in Nicole Vögele’s atmospheric, compelling and very human doc, winner of the top prize at Visions du Réel.
Haunting and multi-layered, this is a stunning debut doc on death, female resistance and knowledge in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Maria Stoianova draws on her figure-skater father’s ‘80s and ‘90s VHS archive in a poignant debut doc on a Ukraine caught between the illusions of two systems.
Luca Guadagnino’s twisty, sexy, adult tennis saga entwines three players who understand each other (and themselves) on the court but have a harder time working outside the lines.
Scott Cummings explores the Church of Satan through theatrical vignettes in his inventive, irreverent documentary portrait of a maligned American outsider culture.
The experimental short If I die, will I go home? unnervingly explores the psyche of a young man wrestling with how to survive as an adult when bound by the long grip of childhood trauma.
Alex Garland can mount a battle sequence as well as any filmmaker working today, but the lack of political context and specificity undermines this ambitious film.
The 77th edition of the Festival de Cannes announced. Opening film THE SECOND ACT (LE DEUXIÈME ACTE) by Quentin DUPIEUX – Out of Competition In Competition THE APPRENTICE by Ali ABBASI MOTEL DESTINO by Karim AÏNOUZ BIRD by Andrea ARNOLD EMILIA PEREZ by Jacques AUDIARD...
Hats off to the grande dame of the film world.
A young women who suffered a stroke at the age of thirteen, Hafey reconnects with the use of her body through dance in this moving and affirming documentary portrait.
Kevin Costner will present the first part of "Horizon, An American Saga" as a World Premiere, Out of Competition at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. “I’d like to thank the Festival de Cannes for including my film Horizon, An American Saga in this year’s...
George Lucas is set to receive the Honorary Palme d’Or during the Closing Ceremony of the 77th Festival de Cannes, which will be broadcast on French TV channel France 2 on May 25, Saturday. The Festival is “delighted to pay tribute to one of the greatest figures of...
Dev Patel makes a dazzling directorial debut that mixes stylish ultra-violence with a provocative political point of view.
In partnership with MILC Metaverse, The Film Verdict (TFV) will launch screening rooms in the metaverse for acquisition executives who want to easily screen films at Cannes and around the world. Off the back of the successful launch of the very first MILC Metaverse...
By Richard Flynn Is the metaverse DEAD? The metaverse exploded onto the scene like the hottest new Hollywood A-lister, bringing with it the promise of revolutionising the way we live, communicate, and consume content online. But today, “metaverse” has become a dirty...
TFV y CineVerdict le da al cine en español una muy merecida atención
TFV is proud to give Cinema in Spanish some well-deserved attention.
TFVN is a trailblazing podcast platform focusing on the global film industry, delivering dynamic audio content tailored for professionals, creatives, enthusiasts and students, revolutionizing the way industry insights are accessed and fostering valuable connections within the international film community.
A trade magazine is only relevant when a film community values its content and when it provides a bridge for filmmakers to reach the wider film industry of acquisition executives and festivals.
International films are emerging from a bleak winter of disregard, thanks to the power of professional reviews.
Al-Takdir, a new bilingual film platform spotlighting the cinema of the Middle East, is about to bow at Cannes.
One of the better American Godzilla movies delivers the giant-monster-fighting goods, even if waiting for the grand finale occasionally feels like a chore.
On Wednesday, 27 March the Movies that Matter Festival announced the winners of its 16th edition during the award ceremony at Theater Aan het Spui in the Dutch city of The Hague. The Grand Jury Fiction Award, worth € 5.000 was awarded to Mexican comedy-drama 'Radical'...
Stockfish Film and Industry Festival announces its 10th anniversary celebration. To mark the occasion, Stockfish is offering free admission to this year's festivities. The festival offers a diverse program for professionals in the industry. Emphasis is placed on...
The expansion at Shepperton Studios in Surrey is now open and Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix are in occupation. The state-of-the-art development will add to Shepperton’s world-class amenities and provide an additional 17 sound stages, 548,000 sq ft of production and...
Hafsia Herzi extends a smile and a gaze to Nina Meurisse, in Iris Kaltenbäck’s first feature film ‘The Rapture.’
The lineup boasts 88 world premieres and 14 international premieres among 128 selected films.
A franchise once built on comedy with some creepy ghosts on the side now feels more committed to nostalgic brand-building, sprinkled with forgettable scares and half-hearted attempts at humor.
Artists protest the festival’s military and defense sponsorship as the war in Gaza continues.
The production will have the largest total qualified expenditures in the history of the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program.
Brisk, exciting and genuinely funny, ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ is the highlight of this
long-running franchise, furthering the hero’s journey to enlightenment, working wonders
with its ensemble cast, and embracing the philosophical spirit of kung fu.
A new production agreement between the United States and Italy is in the works that could mean significant advantages to projects of Italian origin.
The Arab Cinema Center turns ten this year, continuing to offer networking opportunities to Arab filmmakers and their counterparts around the globe.
When her lover of forty years suddenly dies, Angie discovers she has no rights even to her own apartment in Ray Yeung’s Teddy Award-winning ‘All Shall Be Well’, a heartfelt though unexceptional drama revealing Hong Kong’s unjust inheritance laws for same-sex couples.
Berlin’s transitional year unfolded uncertainly amid a dire world political situation and an imminent leadership change at the festival.
The Berlinale awards celebrated cultural differences, with the Golden Bear going to Mati Diop’s poetic and thoughtful documentary on colonialism ‘Dahomey’, which follows the return of looted cultural artefacts to Benin.
By Liza Foreman This week’s European Film Market in Berlin had buyers buzzing about big projects. Jason Resnick, consultant and former acquisitions exec at Universal said: “There were a lot of commercial projects with big stars which got the buyers excited. Post the...
Crypto-currencies and cryogenics become intertwined in Gala Hernandez Lopez’s illusory dual-screen collage which ruminates on humanity’s speculative relationship with the future, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world.
Italy was 2024’s Country in Focus at the Berlinale’s European Film Market.
Nepal’s first-ever competition title at the Berlinale, Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala is a visually breathtaking, emotionally engaging relationship drama about a young Tibetan’s physical and mental journey across the Himalayas in search of her vanished husband.
A filmmaker explores her struggles with motherhood and artistic stimulus through a correspondence and a short film about birdwatching in That’s All from Me, a deft epistolary short.
Three generations of Russified women in Ukraine come to grips with their identities and displacement in Svitlana Lishchynska’s rough-edged, absorbing film-as-therapy documentary.
Bowing in the Berlinale’s independently curated Forum programme, Indian filmmaker Siddartha Jatla’s second feature, ‘In the Belly of a Tiger’, combines social critique with magical realism to depict the struggles of India’s rural poor.
BY Liza FOREMAN The year 2018 was a special Cannes for women filmmakers in several ways. Nina Menkes, the iconic feminist director of films like 'Queen of Diamonds', (restored by Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation), stood on stage at The Members Club to hold court...
Gustav Möller returns to the thriller genre with his second feature ‘Sons’, bolstered by terrific performances.
Wang Xiaoshuai, controversially without an official screening permit, returns to Berlin with another superb picture about Chinese politics (and peasantry) featuring outstanding performances and stellar dialogue.
Featuring wordless performances by a heavily disguised Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, ‘Sasquatch Sunset’ is a boldly surreal Bigfoot comedy with surprising emotional depth.
A misguided narrative full of ill-thought-out atmospheric twists spoils the cinematic attractions of Tunisian-American Meryem Joobeur’s debut feature about a family torn apart when two sons join Daesh.
A man has his heart removed in an attempt to lessen his existential anguish in Fanny Sorgo and Eva Pedroza’s expressive, lingering animation, Tako Tsubo.
BY LIZA FOREMAN This year’s European Film Market has been awash in big titles sold by a slew of independent sales companies that are creating momentum going into 2024. At this week’s EFM, buzz titles like 'Oh Canada' from Paul Schrader, Oscar nominee Celine Song’s...
The gap between African and Chinese culture proves easier to breach than the perspectives that separate a woman and a man in acclaimed director Abderrahmane Sissako’s ‘Black Tea’, a fascinating love story set in China but one that sadly gets lost in the telling.
Aliyar Rasti’s contemplative fable searches for a better future in the vast Iranian countryside.
The outmoded bleach sellers of Tangier offer a window to a simpler time and a resistance against rampant growth in Hicham Gardaf’s tranquil documentary, In Praise of Slowness.
This lumbering lesbian road-trip “comedy” lurches its way toward nowhere in particular.
Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Ngoc Lan’s first feature, ‘Cu Li Never Cries’, is an absorbing, beautiful ode about a pensioner’s nostalgia for her past and a young couple’s uncertainty about their future.
The Undersecretary of the Culture Ministry, Lucia Borgonzoni hosted a private meeting Tuesday at The Italian Pavilion between Italian cinema representatives and the US Motion Picture Association. Lucia Borgonzoni in a closed door meeting with Charles Rivkin, President...
An elderly couple retreats from the outside world in preparation for the launch of three artificial moons in the strange and meditative experimental documentary, The Moon Also Rises.
Nelson Makengo’s beautifully shot and observed documentary ‘Rising Up at Night’ captures the darkness of Kinshasa after severe flooding and electricity cuts, along with the resilience of its people.
Ukrainian director Oksana Karpovych’s quietly powerful documentary ‘Intercepted’ combines bleakly beautiful, defiantly hopeful images of her war-ravaged homeland with recordings of phone calls made by invading Russian soldiers.
The second chapter of Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation delivers on the visual grandeur and political intrigue, even if the characters tend to be reduced to their plot function.
Santiago, Chile is both brought into focus and dreamily abstracted in Towards the Sun, Far from the Centre, a languid city symphony featuring a queer couple looking for a space in which they can express themselves.
A joyful feminist fantasy set in Venice in 1800, in which music unchains an orphanage full of talented girl musicians, ‘Gloria!’ will split audiences into two distinct camps.
Martin Scorsese pays personal homage to visionary film-maker duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in David Hinton’s formally traditional but thorough documentary ‘Made in England’.
Real historical murder cases inspired ‘The Devil’s Bath’, a relentlessly grim but atmospheric psychological horror thriller from Austrian writer-director duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.
A wonderfully observed sketch of a family lunch in late-1990s China, Remains of the Hot Day not only captures period mood but is compiled from glimpses of myriad miniature dramas.
A depressed Chinese woman tired of her unaffectionate family and middle class life heads towards a breakdown in ‘Some Rain Must Fall,’ the first feature by Qiu Yang, whose minimalist storytelling is full of atmosphere and foreboding.
A young girl avoiding her home and a woman returning to hers after a long absence form a brief but profound bond in Selin Oksuzoglu sparkling short, Bye Bye Turtle.
Three people in Beirut representing the past, present and future of Lebanon experience the hopes, disappointments and decimated sense of stability in Myriam El Hajj’s sad yet defiant documentary tracing the country’s ups and downs since 2018.
Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’s fanciful exploration of the inner life of one of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos, Pepe, is an idiosyncratic affair as piercing and beguiling as it is confounding.
Hong Sang-soo’s third collaboration with Isabelle Huppert is the weakest outing for both the director and actor so far.
Las voces de tres mujeres dan autenticidad a una película a punto de rebasada por propósitos didácticos. Memorias de un cuerpo que arden que se estrena en la sección Panorama en la Berlinale.
The voices of three women give authenticity to ‘Memories of a Burning Body’, premiering in the Panorama section at the Berlinale.
TFV attended a Berlinale networking event for German talents and asked them about their experiences.
In her first solo directing stint ‘Langue étrangère’, Camera d’Or winner Claire Burger cleverly evokes the fears and anxieties of two middle-class 17-year-old European girls about to inherit a world racked with violently diverging political opinions.
Shot over 15 years, Birgitte Stærmose’s deeply empathetic documentary, focused on child survivors, is an intimate and diligent depiction of the lingering aftermath of war.
A young girl draws a circle on the ground and people are drawn to stand within its borders in Joung Yumi’s typically mannered and strangely engrossing monochrome animation.
Another stunning documentary from Victor Kossakovsky full of gob-smacking immersive images of the natural world, pitched this time as a call for a harmonious alliance between nature and architecture.
The Italian Ministry of Culture, with Cinecitta’, are hosting a series of events in the Gropius Dome at the Italian Pavilion. Organizers of the Italian film industry say the focus-event aims to introduce a new format yet unseen at international festivals that will not...
Mischievous writer-director Bruno Dumont combines visually dazzling ‘Star Wars’ parody with small-town French farce in his admirably ambitious but muddled space opera ‘The Empire’.
The living haunt the dead in Yorgos Zois’s sexy glumfest ‘Arcadia’, an aching, downbeat tale about loss and lingering grief, told from the ghosts’ POV.
Santiago Lozano Álvarez encontró una manera original -lírica y exuberante- de hablar sobre los asesinatos, desapariciones y ecocidio en Colombia en Yo vi tres luces negras
The true story of Latvian-born German silent film diva Maria Leiko and her fateful journey to Stalin’s USSR in 1937 is retold in Davis Simanis’s ‘Maria’s Silence’ with a tragic depth that is engrossing and emotional.
Santiago Lozano Álvarez finds an original way – lyrical and exuberant – to talk about the murders, disappearances and ecocide in Colombia in ‘I Saw Three Black Lights’.
German director Matthias Glasner’s autobiographical, darkly funny, emotionally raw ensemble drama ‘Dying’ plays like a three-hour family therapy session.
Jeremy Clapin follows I Lost My Body with Meanwhile on Earth, another high-concept exploration of loss occupied by expressive ethical wrangling and intangible alien lifeforms.
Mati Diop’s thought-provokingly cerebral-poetic documentary follows the return of 26 looted cultural artefacts and their welcome home to Benin, encompassing the celebrations as well as larger debates around colonialization and how to reintegrate such potently spiritual objects into a society 130 years after they were plundered.
Filmmaker Inadelso Cossa uses sensory evocation to delve into the lingering impact of Mozambique’s civil war (1977 to 1992) in ‘The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder’.
Olivier Assayas’s semi-autobiographical reverie ‘Suspended Time’ on his stay in the family home during lockdown, is likely his weakest work, playing like a parody of an intellectualized director’s banal ruminations.
Corporate scientists use memory technology to bring back the dead for a brief reunion with their loved ones (played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Bérénice Bejo), in Piero Messina’s clever but often perplexing ‘Another End’, whose futuristic love story beyond the grave is a mighty challenge to unravel.
Although a bit too dry for a wide audience, Mamadou Dia’s ‘Demba’ has moments of visual grace, a great central performance, and a compelling subject at its core.
German director Andreas Dresen’s biopic of anti-Nazi activist Hilde Coppi, ‘From Hilde, With Love’ is diligent and thoughtful but too tastefully restrained.
Beginning in 2019, a quartet of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers in the Occupied Territories start documenting Israel’s appropriation of the land and its escalation until just after the start of the current juggernaut in Gaza.
A disappointing, maddeningly self-indulgent plunge into the tensions and inequities in the kitchen of a Times Square eatery, designed as an anti-capitalist diatribe messily juggling personal and choral storytelling but saved to some degree by excellent chiaroscuro camerawork and a strong cast.
In the week between the Grammys and the Super Bowl, Human Rights Watch announced that Vladimir Putin and other military officials should be investigated for war crimes following Russia’s assault on Mariupol. On Valentine’s Day it was reported that UNESCO calculated...
Michael Fetter Nathansky, with assistance from lead actress Aenne Schwarz, inspects a shaky relationship in the shadow of work pressures in this adequately sensitive, surreal, and discomfiting look at marriage and its dissatisfactions.
by Liza Foreman For our daily column Market Voices, The Film Verdict will be checking in with the peeps peopleing the shop floor at this week’s European Film Market in Berlin, to give readers a feel for the first major film market of the year. Stay tuned. Pedro Peira,...
Jennie Livingston’s seminal Paris is Burning was probably the first hit film to show what LGBTQ+ people have always known: we make our own families. They’re often not biological but they are carefully chosen, proving that genetics is no determinant of unconditional...
A teenager navigates the social pressures of school and the expectations of family in Muna, a thoughtful coming-of-age drama about personal desires and dislocated grief.
A small jewel of an Iranian romantic comedy, ‘My Favourite Cake’ pits an older woman determined to find a measure of happiness against the restrictions of the Islamic regime and the loneliness of aging, while the film’s creators Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha have been banned from traveling to Berlin.
The devastating impact of Alzheimer’s disease on a couple becomes an engaging, moving chronicle in the skillful hands of documentarian Maite Alberdi.
El devastador impacto de la enfermedad de Alzheimer en una pareja se convierte en una crónica que cautiva y conmueve en las hábiles manos de la documentalista Maite Alberdi.
Cillian Murphy follows his huge ‘Oppenheimer’ success with glum but powerful personal project ‘Small Things Like These’, a soulful literary psychodrama about mercy, empathy, complicity and dark misdeeds in 1980s Ireland.
Celebrated stage dramatist Annie Baker paints childhood as a midsummer daydream full of tragicomic adult behaviour in her droll, charming film debut ‘Janet Planet’.
By Liza Foreman PARIS - The Hôtel du Collectionneur is awash with French cinema talent and journalists buzzing between interview rooms at the tail end of the annual UniFrance Meetings in Paris a few weeks ago. But Daniela Elstner, the Executive Director of the French...
Aaron Schimberg’s darkly funny body-horror fairy tale ‘A Different Man’ takes a satirical scalpel to the beastliness of beauty.
Berlinale 74 presents the International Jury, who will be presenting the awards for:Golden Bear for Best Film (awarded to the film’s producers), Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, Silver Bear Jury Prize, Silver Bear for Best Director, Silver Bear for Best Leading...
Despite a tangled narrative web, this arachnid superhero saga makes a far better would-be tentpole in Sony’s Spider-verse than ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ or ‘Morbius,’ thanks mainly to Dakota Johnson.
Carlo Chatrian is about to unleash his fifth and final Berlinale.
TFV speaks to Simone Baumann, Managing Director of German Films.
The Berlinale European Film Market (EFM) this year spotlights the artistry of Italian filmmakers and will offer industry participants opportunities to network with a variety of Italian producers, distributors, investors and experts. The 2024 EFM kicks off February 15...
The start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is captured with total professionality by AP correspondent Mstyslav Chernov and his team in ’20 Days in Mariupol’, in iconic images that strike the heart forcefully in a classic, masterful documentary on war.
This female-gaze take on 1980s teen movies must have looked great on paper, but it never comes to life on screen.
European Film Commissions Network (EUFCN) member film commissions had the opportunity to submit one location from a feature film or a TV series shot in their territory and released between Oct. 3rd 2022 and Sept. 11th 2023. The Location Award Jury selected the five...
Rotterdam Film Festival’s 53rd edition balanced an uneven competition program full of sombre three-hour dramas with more adventurous sidebars, essay films, experimental video art and pop superstar guests.
Scattered over different sections with few ripples in the media, four films detailing the Palestinian experience stood out at Rotterdam.
Indian director Midhun Murali’s prize-winning animated shadow-puppet epic ‘Kiss Wagon’ is loopy and confusing but still a dazzling, highly original visual feast.
Daniele Luchetti’s ‘Confidenza’ (Trust), from the Domenico Starnone novel about a dangerous confidant, features a noteworthy performance from Elio Germano.
Language is an instrument of oppression and a tool to combat it in Tevin Kimathi and Millan Tarus’ charming tale of childhood resistance, Stero.
Earlier this month, the Berlinale announced the selection of the Iranian film My Favourite Cake by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha in Competition at this year’s 74th edition of the festival. Since then, the festival has learned that Iranian writers/directors...
This is an establishing shot of the hotel where Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) and Gus Waters (Angel Elgort) stay while on their trip to Amsterdam. The Fault in Our Stars is an American coming of age romance film directed by Josh Boone, based on the novel of...
Three very different films from Japan, India and Australia won Rotterdam’s Tiger Awards, underlining the festival’s range of new talent.
Awash in a luxuriant atmosphere of passion and emotional discovery created by exquisite b&w images of seas rivers and jungles, Marcelo Gomes’s three characters struggle to shake off the past and move forward post-WW2 in ‘Portrait of a Certain Orient’.
Ilir Hasanaj’s deeply empathetic documentary ‘Workers’ Wings’, is centred on manual labourers who have suffered workplace injuries, is a tender and intimate marvel.
Dmytro Moiseiev’s laconic portrait of a solitary beekeeper with an evolving political consciousness in the “grey zone” of Donetsk is sage and affecting.
TFV interviewed outspoken Hong Kong director Scud, who brought his tenth and perhaps final film to Rotterdam.
The Arab Cinema Center (ACC) will bestow its 5th Arab Cinema Personality of the Year Award to Mohannad Al-Bakri during the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
Fumbling first love stirs up a frenzy in this indie debut that gets further away the closer you get.
Using the aesthetics of home video, with 78 Days Emilija Gasic crafts a poignant coming-of-age drama set amidst the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO.
Throughout the month of February, the Locarno Film Festival will showcase 29 dazzling short films as part of the Locarno Shorts Weeks, one of its most highly awaited online spin-off events for audiences around the world, with the leap year bringing one extra day and...
In this scene, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), Rusty Rusty (Brad Pitt) and the rest of Ocean’s team arrive at their hotel in Asterdam in preparation for a big heist they hope will pay off their debt to Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). Ocean’s Twelve is the second...
Kazakh writer-director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s stylish but brutal neo-western thriller ‘Steppenwolf’ takes place once upon a time in the Wild East.
Yet another star-packed, high-gloss caper lacking in wit, stakes, charm, or a reason to exist.
In the spritely and tactile essayistic ode to a heroine of Greek myth Daphne was a torso ending in leaves, Catriona Gallagher reflects on the legacy of an ancient arboreal transformation.
TFV correspondent Max Borg investigates the Manetti-verse and how the Italian duo scored a Focus program at this year’s IFFR.
The traumas of Cambodia’s past stretch their icy fingers into the present in Tenement, a deeply unsettling psychological horror set in a rundown Khmer-era housing block.
Using a blend of stop-motion animation and live-action, Niles Atallah gorgeously crafts a mesmeric, dying world of analogue detritus and vestiges of magical knowledge, in which a half-amphibian being dreams of survival.
IFFR’s co-production market CineMart presented seven awards to projects presented during the IFFR Pro Awards Ceremony on Tuesday 30 January, which was co-hosted together with Catalan Films. The winners were selected from the 16 features and 4 immersive projects in...
A solitary artist rents her Tehran house out to a film crew, in an ingeniously layered, droll reflection on how we construct memory and community.
The cast shines, but this adaptation of the popular Nigerian novel could use a little more life.
Damien Hauser’s enchanting, sun-baked drama ‘After the Long Rains’ has bigger questions beneath its welcoming glow.
The feted Scottish film and video artist Rachel Maclean talks Barbie, James Bond, pink-punk maximalism and the subversive power of bad taste.
IFFR awarded 3 films from among the the 21 competitng Tiger Shorts of 2024. The jury included former Tiger Short Award-winner Mónica Lima, writer, programmer, and researcher Yasmina Price and distributor, curator and festival producer Jade Wiseman. The KNF (Circle of...
A cryptic Deborah Levy novel is stylised for the screen as an elusive and surrealistic dance of the subconscious, as an uninvited guest crashes a poet’s family vacation.
In this scene, Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) is forced into taking a training run while the team is in Amsterdam. He makes the best of it by taking his coach and mentor Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) to the location of the Skinny Bridge from the James Bond movie, Diamonds...
A major piece of Finland-Swedish literature comes to life with epic results in Tiina Lymi’s dramatic adaptation, ‘Stormskerry Maja’,
Australian director Jaydon Martin’s debut documentary ‘Flathead’ is a feast of gorgeous monochrome cinematography and a compassionate, humane, quietly spiritual work.
Veredicto: ‘La historia se escribe de noche’ es un retrato inusual de los apagones que han azotado a Cuba durante los últimos años y un ejercicio exquisito de atmósfera cinematográfica
‘History Is Written at Night’ is an unusual portrait of the blackouts that have plagued Cuba over the past few years and an exquisite exercise in atmosphere.
The iconic Blondie singer narrates and appears in Kramer’s new documentary ‘So Unreal’, a mind-bending deep dive into prophetic cyberpunk cinema.
Set in the Negev Desert where action blockbuster ‘Rambo III’ was shot, ‘Under a Blue Sun’ is an intricately layered doc scrutinising the intersection of war simulation, oppression and entertainment.
From Aay Liparoto’s powerful ‘Small Acts of Violence’ to Rachel Maclean’s darkly surreal ‘I’m Terribly Sorry’, Rotterdam kept Immersive Media viewers up-to-date.
Danish director Ulaa Salim’s romantic sci-fi weepie ‘Eternal’ is a glossy but underpowered inner-space odyssey that falls short of its Christopher Nolan-sized ambitions.
Finnish director-screenwriter-actress Tiina Lymi. whose ‘Stormskerry Maja’ had its international premiere in Rotterdam, reflects on making the spoken word realistic on screen.
Baffling, free-ranging and mesmeric, ‘Moses’ roams through a text on religion by Freud with deadpan Finnish humour that grounds its kooky performance art.
Director Billy Woodberry’s documentary portrait of Angolan poet, revolutionary and Pan-African icon Mário Pinto de Andrade offers an austere but absorbing history lesson.
In this scene of A Bridge Too Far, a German soldier (Lex van Delden) returns from an attempt to surrender to the Allied forces, but has to tell his Lieutenant (Maximillion Schell) that the enemy said, “No, thank you.” A Bridge Too Far is an epic war film directed by...
In the 16-minute short DUCK, visual artist Rachel Maclean co-opts the inherent suspicions of cinematic espionage to craft this surreal mash-up about the escalating media paranoia.
A young woman challenges the superstitious fears of her cult-like patriarchal community in Swiss director Sophia Bösch’s ambitious but uneven dystopian fairy-tale debut ‘Milk Teeth’.
A joyous Kiwi midnight-movie oddity that channels ‘80s fantasy and DIY gumption in a cosmic quest for a hyper-dimensional crystal.
Showing films by Chilean directors in exile, IFFR’s Focus on ‘Chile in the Heart’ helps us better understand the country and the 1973 coup d’état that changed it.
With a focus on the Central and South American continent, European Film Promotion will be launching the Latin American Critics’ Awards for European Films for the first time. Following the model of the well-established and successful Arab Critics’ Awards introduced in...
Al mostrar filmes de directores exiliados, el Focus Chile en el corazón de IFFR 2024 nos ayuda a entender mejor el país y el día en que cambió de golpe.
An absurdist, Gothic twist takes Jonathan Ogilvie’s coming-of-age comedy and New Zealand post-punk subculture origin story into delightfully uncharted territory.
Amanda Kramer’s debut documentary ‘So Unreal’ revisits classic sci-fi movies and vintage cyberpunk thrillers looking for cautionary clues about our current age of digital dystopia.
Entertainment Oxygen (eo) unveiled eoFlix, a comprehensive festival streaming and networking platform “eoFlix stands at the forefront of the industry, offering an unmatched, seamless blend of networking, dynamic live and online streaming, empowered self-distribution...
The Swiss director is bringing his new film ‘Bisons’ to Rotterdam.
The mainstream and the niche coexist at IFFR this year under artistic director Kaludjercic and managing director Stewart.
Johan Grimonprez’s complex, cacophonous ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ is a feat of design, narration, sound, and cinema about an important chapter in Congo’s tragic relationship with the UN, the U.S., and Belgium.
In ‘Sebastian’, Mikko Mäkelä presents a frank and graphic portrait of a writer as a young sex worker in literary London.
An intimate and profound study of a child’s need for maternal love, with outstanding acting from 6-year old Louise Mauroy-Panzani and her nanny, Ilça Moreno Zego.
Reinas, dirigida por Klaudia Reynecke es una buena película coming of age que confirma la presencia de una voz con sello propio en el cine latinoamericano
Reinas, directed by Klaudia Reynicke, is a coming of age film that confirms her unique voice in the Latin American Cinema.
International Film Festival Rotterdam offers the Tiger Short Competition Program. For the 2024 edition there will be twenty-one short and mid-length films compete for one of three equal awards. Qualifying films are between 1 and 63 minutes long, and they will be...
The Europeans were in form at Sundance, where they showed their first new films of 2024.
Thea Hvistendahl’s half-Stephen King, half-Kafka first feature, ‘Handling the Undead’, is a confident three-pronged narrative on the irreversibility of death.
Computer games offer a severely disabled young man an emotionally rich alternative life in Norwegian director Benjamin Ree’s moving, visually impressive documentary ‘Ibelin’.
In a Norwegian doc world premiering at Sundance, a moving family story is occasionally snagged by unconvincing dramatic contrivances.
Grimm Vandekerckhove is a Belgian cinematographer known for his collaborations with directors such as Bas Devos, Stephan Streker, Jeremy Guez and Fien Troch. After graduating from the LUCA – School of Arts in Brussels (2011), he started as a second unit camera...
The Tiger Competition Jury consists of Marco Müller, former director of Locarno, Venice, and IFFR (1989–1991); Ena Sendijarevi?, a Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker known for her acclaimed debut Take Me Somewhere Nice (IFFR 2019) and the Netherlands’ Oscars submission Sweet...
Facts come with chills in this cautionary doc overview of an ethically thorny new reality: the sale of immortality via AI simulations of the dead.
Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann’s ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ is an incredibly clear-eyed take on the absolute power the rich have in a capitalist society.
Berlin Film Festival has announed the films for the Panorama, Forum and Generation sections. The 2024 Panorama: Bridges Between Lived Experiences and Cinematic Possibilities Afterwar by Birgitte Stærmose | with Gëzim Kelmendi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Shpresim Azemi,...
In collaboration with the Sundance Film Festival and with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA of the European Union, EFP provides a meeting space for the European film industry at the DoubleTree Hotel, The Yarrow, to promote and celebrate the diversity of European...
Santa Barbara. International Film Festival will showcase 45 world premieres and 77 U.S. premieres from 48 countries, along with tributes featuring the year’s top talent, panel discussions, and free community education and outreach programs. “We have a wonderfully...
The Duhok International Film Festival held a successful, vibrant 10th edition in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The Film Verdict announces it's 2024 Film Festival coverage. EFP European Films at Sundance Jan 18 – 28 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) Jan 25 - Feb 4 Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) FEB 15 – 25 Hong Kong International Film Festival March...
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Cold-War-in-space thriller benefits from a lean-and-mean B-movie sensibility crossed with seamless effects work and potent performances.
More reviews, more coverage in the new year.
Será un año lleno de descubrimientos y más cobertura de las películas.
Per il 2024, continuiamo con innovazione e crescita; ancora più recensioni e festival.
TFV offre des opportunités équitables aux cinéastes du monde entier.
A pleasant-enough musical reworking of the 2004 comedy, hitting the big screen on its way to becoming a slumber-party staple for decades to come.
Entertainment Oxygen (eo), announces three new international festival partners - Soho London Independent Film Festival (January 25-28, 2024), Auroville Film Festival in India (January 22-28, 2024) and Utah International Film Festival (February 12-17, 2024)....
This haunted-swimming-pool thriller goes from creepy to ridiculous and back again, but as January-dumped horror films go, it’s a cut above.
Taking place just two months after the onset of the horrendous war in Gaza, the El Gouna Film Festival’s ‘Special Edition’ was a sober but not gloomy affair that paid its respects to the Palestinian people and their cinema.
The El Gouna Film Festival awards this year included ’Goodbye, Julia’, a Sudanese film by Mohamed Kordofani about two women divided by their cultures, which won the Cinema for Humanity Audience Award, while Egyptian director Ibrahim Nash’at’s ‘Hollywoodgate’ won as best documentary and Hong Sang-soo’s latest ‘In Our Day’ got the best narrative nod.
This superhero sequel represents something never-before-seen in cinema: a boring James Wan movie.
From personal journeys of discovery to man’s inhumanity to man, the stories shared in the films of 2023 speak to our moment in history and will continue to do so for generations to come.
East End Studios, located in Sunnyside, Queens has begun construction. Just minutes from Midtown Manhattan via the 59th Street Bridge, Sunnyside will feature three large 37’ clear state of the art stages and one purpose-built flex 27; clear stage. The flex stage...
Netflix announces ‘Too Much’, a new rom-com series created by multi award-winning writer, director, producer and actor Lena Dunham (Girls/Catherine Called Birdy) and her husband Luis Felber. The series will begin shooting in the UK in 2024. Megan Stalter (Hacks) will...
Flemish Economy Minister doubles budget; Screen Flanders invests three million in 14 new projects. Due to the high demand and high quality of the submitted dossiers, Flemish Minister of Economy Jo Brouns has doubled the 1.5 million euros budget initially allocated to...
Two of El Gouna Film Festival’s leading ladies discussed Yousra’s film career in a special masterclass.
Egyptian filmmakers stand out in El Gouna’s official Short Film Competition.