In 1999, Fabrício Nobre created the Festival Bananada in Goiânia, Goiás, a city near the country’s capital, Brasília. Despite its proximity to the center of Brazil, the town was not a place where bands, especially Rock and Punk bands, would play. The festival surged as part of the counterculture movement, …
The most shocking thing in Parallel Tales is Isabelle Huppert lighting a cigarette with a toaster. There’s a sense of unpredictability in that one moment that the rest of Parallel Tales was aiming for and somehow didn’t achieve. It’s hard to say why it falls so flat, since there is …
Movie revisionism runs on a very simple premise: give a flop enough time, and somebody will eventually decide it was misunderstood. The bombs of yesteryear will be embraced as bold pieces that were ahead of their time. There are many avenues through which revisionism takes place: a key anniversary that …
Alicia Vikander has had an impressive year of making extremely interesting choices but, with the noble exception of Hope, unfortunately those choices have not worked out. Some of that is because of the difficulty of the topics, but in the case of The Echo Chamber it’s because of its frightful …
Director Matt Sukkar is probably best known for the acclaimed documentary short, Durango, but he has recently turned his eye to features. In Sukkar‘s debut, The Deputy, viewers follow Toby, a very unprepared small-town lawman. Over the course of an endless night that starts with a missing dead body, he …
When a documentary film is about a filmmaker and their own family, there is really no way to critique the work of art without critiquing the people in it. That caveat, or concern, is especially important for Remake, the new documentary by Ross McElwee, who single-handedly changed the world of …
In the UK Sense and Sensibility has a U rating – suitable for all – which is the equivalent of an American G rating. For a movie about the romantic choices of two adult sisters this is an incredible achievement, even if it’s an adaption of a Jane Austen novel. …
It’s officially fall, and that means it’s Christmas movie season in my house. So it was an instant watch when I saw A Royal Date for Christmas in the Netflix carousel. This film originally aired on the Great American Family channel around Thanksgiving in 2023. Directed by Bradley Walsh and …
There was an unusual preoccupation with performance art at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Perhaps this is because performance art is by definition tied to a specific place, people and moment, providing an experience that can never be replicated. On the other hand, in a world where all our moments …
In the rich history of Brazilian filmmaking, animation is a medium that does not have as profound a filmography as others. Before the 2000s, there were very few examples, like Meow by Marcos Magalhães and Frankenstein Punk by Cao Hamburger and Eliana Fonseca. However, in the 2000s, the animation sector …
Emmanuel Marre won the Best Screenplay Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for A Man of His Time aka Notre Salut, because it does the impossible: it is a comedy about the slide into fascism. But the film is clearly of personal as well as professional importance to Mr. …
One of the most culturally talked-about moments of 2026 was the Super Bowl Halftime Show performed by Bad Bunny. Despite the political opposition from the far-right groups, who considered his choice as non-American (even if Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States), the fifteen-minute show was a success. …
The end credits confirm genAI was used for parts of Titanic Ocean. This is a disgraceful choice by writer-director Konstantina Kotzamani because it insults all the hard work of her cast and crews. This is especially unforgivable because the young actresses had to do a large amount of underwater work …
The oeuvre of Denis Côté is uncomfortable, answerless. His multiple works approach the mundane, the psyche, leaning towards complicated places. Paul, his latest film, is a documentary on a simp, a man who pleasures himself through humiliation from women. Now, he returns to the Locarno Film Festival with an intriguing …
Quentin Dupieux is a cinematic rascal. A troll, even. He delights in getting a reaction, and his impish films are more or less shaggy dog stories with just enough bite to get people riled up. So, in a way, my dislike of Full Phil, his bloated-in-more-ways-than-one farce, is exactly what …
French family film Words of Love aka Quelques Mots d’Amour is about a tough but ordinary topic: how a child comes to terms with the fact the family they have is not the family they want. It features a single professional actor, Hafsia Herzi, as Erika the mother. All the others …
The Difficult Bride is rare on two counts: it is a Bangladeshi film, and its director, Rubaiyat Hossain, is a woman. It is rarer still for being both incredibly supportive and furiously critical of its heroine, who is also both a traditional woman (getting married very young) and a modern …
In 2018, the Chilean duo Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña made a splash with their creepy animated film, La Casa Lobo (The Wolf House). It became a sensation, especially during the pandemic, even leading to their invitation to contribute to Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid. Two years ago, their sophomore …
You don’t realise how tough it is to make a good documentary until you see ones which fall short. For a documentary to succeed, it needs to back up its assertions in ways which will stand up in court, access to the people who will give you that backup, and …
Following the trend of selecting young filmmakers in the competition, as with Nelson Yeo’s The House on the Moon, Locarno also presented Lê Bảo’s Hearing (Thính Giác) in the main section. The project is a continuation of his works involving the senses; he released Scent (Mùi) in 2014, and Taste …