December 7, 2022
Deborah Young
Ali Abbasi’s Iranian-set noir, based on a real serial killer of prostitutes, explores the social and religious culture that is often used as an excuse for violence against women.
December 7, 2022
Stephen Dalton
The UK’s official Oscar submission is a sweetly knowing homage to classic cinema, especially the modern masters of Iran.
December 2, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Estonia’s official Oscar submission ‘Kalev’ finds timely modern echoes in a true sporting saga that took place during the dying days of Russian occupation.
November 30, 2022
Kevin Jagernauth
He Shuming’s feature debut ‘Ajoomma’, Singapore’s Oscar hopeful, is an amusing look at life’s second act with a warm, winning performance by Hong Huifang.
November 25, 2022
Deborah Young
Lebanese actress Carole Abboud brings a sense of wistful loneliness to the role of an independent woman estranged from her adult daughter in Bassem Breche’s sketch-like feature debut.
November 24, 2022
Patricia Boero
Jealousy, betrayal and revenge weave through Sergio Machado’s sultry, fatalistic melodrama set in the Amazon, where a woman becomes the object of desire of three passionate brothers.
November 22, 2022
Jay Weissberg
Writer-director Firas Khoury refreshingly normalizes the lives of a group of Palestinian teens in Israel and then adds a political overlay in this notable debut that deserves more attention than accorded in Toronto.
November 18, 2022
Deborah Young
Luis De Filippis’ laid-back tale about an embattled but loving family on vacation pops with a riveting Carmen Madonia as the trans sister.
November 14, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Greek-British director Spiros Jacovides transforms an eccentric Athens family’s secrets and lies into warm-hearted comedy in his prize-winning debut feature ‘Black Stone’.
October 20, 2022
Deborah Young
Two of Iran’s biggest actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, play double roles in Mani Haghighi’s chilling, fast-paced thriller with allegorical overtones about life in contemporary Iran.
October 17, 2022
Kevin Jagernauth
Mike Day’s gently ambling documentary offers a fragmentary look at the unique tradition of cowboy poetry.
October 11, 2022
Deborah Young
A man’s search for redemption after participating in a group murder neatly exposes a community’s moral rot in Ozcan Alper’s rugged mountain thriller, winner of the best Turkish film award at Antalya.
October 8, 2022
Stephen Dalton
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s Wagnerian hip-hop biopic ‘Rheingold’ tells a lively but familiar raps-to-riches story.
September 27, 2022
TFV Staff
San Sebastian celebrated its 70th anniversary with grace and good programing.
September 26, 2022
Deborah Young
For the 100th film of his career, Liam Neeson switches from action thriller to classic film noir in a flyweight but generally entertaining post scriptum to Raymond Chandler’s immortal detective series, co-starring Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange.
September 23, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Oscar-winning director Sebastien Lelio’s handsome literary mystery thriller ‘The Wonder’ stars Florence Pugh as a kick-ass nurse fighting fake news and dubious miracles in 19th century Ireland.
September 19, 2022
Deborah Young
Screening in San Sebastian competition after it was pulled from Toronto, Ulrich Seidl’s most controversial film to date underlines the sleaze and creepiness of pedophilia so forcefully it is painful to watch.
September 18, 2022
Deborah Young
Katrin Brocks’ feature debut takes full advantage of its exotic setting in a highly dramatized if not always convincing story about a devout young woman who’s about to become a nun when her violent brother turns up at the convent.
September 17, 2022
Deborah Young
Director Alberto Rodriguez grippingly reconstructs the post-Franco years, using historical riots and prisoners demanding human rights as a microcosm of Spain as it made a screeching transition from fascism to democracy.
September 16, 2022
Kevin Jagernauth
Years of guilt and shame are exorcised in Davit Pirtskhalava’s stagy drama tracking the aftershocks of bullying.
September 12, 2022
Kevin Jagernauth
Steven Spielberg solidifies his legendary origin story playing with truth, fiction, and the magic of moviemaking.
September 10, 2022
Patricia Boero
Director Carlos Lechuga sends a powerful farewell letter to a country adrift in depression and despair in this heartbreaking chronicle of the post-Cuban revolution.
September 9, 2022
Deborah Young
The world premiere of Jafar Panahi’s simple but militantly engrossing ‘No Bears’, which comes to grips with the thin line between art and reality, took place in Venice competition while the director remained in prison in Tehran after his second arrest on July 11.
September 8, 2022
Clarence Tsui
Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s reinvention of the western is a cutting political allegory, a taut revenge tale and a visual extravaganza rolled into one.
September 7, 2022
Jay Weissberg
Alice Diop’s superb fiction debut is a marvel of control and depth, using the trial of a Senegalese woman guilty of killing her infant to honestly explore the complexities of motherhood while foregrounding it all within France’s racist currents.
September 6, 2022
Deborah Young
Award-winning documentary team Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel plunge deep into the heart of the adult daughter of spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma in a wonderfully touching film portrait that tips its Stetson at the illusory side of documentaries.
September 5, 2022
Deborah Young
A young couple dealing with the tragic loss of a child finds their love for each other challenged in a deeply original drama from Koji Fukada (‘Harmonium’).
September 4, 2022
Deborah Young
In a career-best performance, Brendan Fraser turns Darren Aronofsky’s apartment-bound drama about an unhappy English teacher crippled by obesity and his daughter’s distance into a classic piece of filmmaking whose emotions are truly immense.
September 3, 2022
Deborah Young
A timely occasion to foreground the growing role of American extremists like the Proud Boys is largely manqué in Paul Schrader’s unconvincing story about a marked man trying to redeem himself, starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver.
September 2, 2022
Jay Weissberg
Luca Guadagnino again proves his understanding of the yearning for a fellow soul that defines all feelings of difference in this beautifully played road trip movie which uses cannibalism as metaphor.
August 31, 2022
Deborah Young
Noah Baumbach and an inspired cast headlining Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig enjoyably bring Don DeLillo’s “unfilmable” novel about America in the Eighties to life with retro gusto, while straining to make it relevant.
August 31, 2022
Jay Weissberg
A rare fictionalized look at a Nigerian sex worker in Italy that celebrates its subject, flaws and all, with a spirited central performance and a laudable sensitivity destined to find welcoming arms worldwide.
August 15, 2022
Carmen Gray
Raw, authentic emotion and inventive lyricism combine in Juraj Lerotic’s sensitive, devastating reckoning with an acute mental health crisis in the family.
August 14, 2022
Carmen Gray
A murder cover-up in a corrupt town is the catalyst for an inept police chief’s crisis of conscience in Paul Negoescu’s downbeat portrait of masculinity in meltdown ‘Men of Deeds’.
August 12, 2022
Stephen Dalton
A twisted sister at an all-girl Catholic school pushes her fanatical faith to dangerous extremes in Ruth Mader’s gripping psycho-horror thriller ‘Serviam – I Will Serve’.
August 10, 2022
Jay Weissberg
Award-winning documentary director Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest exquisitely composed opus looks at the global garbage crisis, from Maldive palm groves strewn with plastic to festering landfills, encompassing community rubbish collections and recycling plants in a cinema-essay style whose noninterventionist approach caters to audiences already committed to the cause.
August 9, 2022
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Past the rather dull international title, Jean Paul Civeyrac’s ‘A Woman’ is a serviceable drama with thriller-esque features and Sophie Marceau in the lead role.
August 7, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Debut director Thomas Hardiman’s off-beat single-shot murder mystery ‘Medusa Deluxe’ is a dazzling catwalk show of spiky comedy, fluid camerawork and fabulous hair.
July 12, 2022
Deborah Young
Japanese director Masaaki Kudo turns a compassionate eye on a 17-year-old nightclub hostess with a toddler, sent skidding toward prostitution in a heart-felt story set on Okinawa.
July 11, 2022
Ben Nicholson
Ambiguity abounds in Emmanuel Tardif’s elusive Québécois drama about a family’s self-imposed isolation after an unexpected event and the spreading fractures in their fragile status quo.
July 10, 2022
Ben Nicholson
Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s debut is a propulsive drama employing folkloric elements and mythic overtones in its portrayal of a man trying to navigate a provincial criminal underworld.
July 9, 2022
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Cruel and delicate, this Icelandic drama shows troubled kids as the product of the actions and inactions of adults.
July 5, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Director Alexandre Philippe’s undisciplined but insightful documentary ‘Lynch/Oz’ explores the influence of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ on David Lynch’s surreal cinematic universe.
July 4, 2022
Ben Nicholson
A couple decide to broaden their sexual horizons with increasingly complicated results in Tomasz Winski’s knotty and intimate examination of honesty within relationship dynamics.
July 3, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Argentinean director Marco Berger turns his queer eye on the straight guys in ‘Horseplay’, a darkly funny critique of homophobic machismo.
July 2, 2022
Deborah Young
Engrossing and full of credible Euro SFX, the Lithuanian-French sci fi fantasy featuring Raffiella Chapman as a 13-year-old, self-taught scientist looking for a way out of a socially and environmentally sick world, seems targeted at imaginative YA audiences.
June 29, 2022
Deborah Young
Maksym Nakonechnyi’s carefully calibrated drama about a young Ukrainian woman soldier who returns home in a prisoner exchange, tortured and pregnant, projects a more human, less heroic view of the Ukraine-Russia war while it affirms a woman’s right to choice vis-à-vis maternity.
June 27, 2022
Stephen Dalton
A richly satirical sci-fi allegory with an edge of biting social commentary, writer-director Sophie Linnenbaum’s impressive feature debut ‘The Ordinaries’ is anything but ordinary.
June 26, 2022
Deborah Young
In writer-director Anna Jadowska’s sensitive whydunit, veteran Polish actress and Tribeca winner Dorota Pomykala plunges the viewer into psychological depths in her deftly nuanced portrait of a 60-year-old who tries to rob a bank with a kitchen knife.
June 24, 2022
Stephen Dalton
Director Alexandre Philippe’s latest essay-film ‘The Taking’ is a thoughtful, visually ravishing, politically charged rumination on American cinema’s oldest rock stars.
