The Brazilian experimental filmmaker Ana Vaz is probably best known for her 2022 project É Noite na América (It is Night in America). The project premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and she has now returned to it with Fire Flower (Hanabi). Shot over the last ten years, her latest …
It’s rare that the context of a movie’s making is as important to appreciating it as that of A Girl’s Story. It’s not only that the writer whose story has been adapted, Annie Ernaux, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. Ms. Ernaux has spent her life documenting, well, …
In the recent history of the Brazilian society, despite the majority in numbers, the Black population is a minority economically. This fact reflects the hundreds of years of slavery that exploited those coming from the African continent, and after their freedom, led them to the margins of the society. One …
Memorizu is an incredible movie about the power of the image and the way images keep us connected to each other. It also does this within the context of a three-generation family which loves and likes each other and wants very much to stay connected, even if each generation has …
It’s hard to believe that a movie which begins with a suicide pact is able to feel so heartwarming, but What Is To Come is about a woman moving from the lowest point of her life into – well, something else. This Israeli movie about the importance of never giving …
Before discussing Greenland 2: Migration, it’s best to take this review a step back in time. As in, taking viewers back to 2020, when Greenland was released during the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon release, the film’s core ideology was a Gerard Butler action movie that mostly succeeded. Yet in the pantheon …
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a lot of the greatest artists of our time were dealing with mental health issues. It is a further truth that these mental illnesses are handled are not always handled well in film biopics. This can be even more sensitive when the artist …
The Singaporean director Nelson Yeo is a fascinating new name in the country’s younger generation. In 2023, he presented Dreaming & Dying (Hao jiu bu jian) at the Cineasti del Presente in Locarno. Two years later, he took his shorts Durian, Durian to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Through …
The title comes from a song; this isn’t really a Christmas movie. There are ups and downs in every career, but Pedro Almodóvar has been on a downswing lately. He commented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 that he is no longer interested in exploring human sexuality onscreen, though …
“You see how this looks, right?” rehearses Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson), as he’s set to trap and apprehend a sexual predator who has been talking to a decoy for what will become the hit NBC television series To Catch a Predator. Throughout Lance Oppenheim’s depiction of the controversial “investigative journalist” …
Does anyone helpfully inform a family member that they are going “out” anymore? Maybe not, but Just an Illusion remembers when that was all the detail a parent required. This French movie about the run up to a boy’s bar mitzvah is the kind of gentle, low-stakes story the entire …
Filmes de Plástico is one of the most fascinating production companies in Brazil. In a sense, it is more of a collective than a traditional film producer. Composed by André Novais Oliveira, Gabriel Martins, Maurilio Martins, and Thiago Macêdo Correia, the group took the creative process from the capital, usually …
The French filmmaker Sarah Leonor returns to the Locarno competition after seventeen years, when her A Real Life (Au voleur) was in the running for the Golden Leopard. Now, she presents D’ici là, a contemplative film about three different individuals living in the Vosges valley, in France. Firstly, Lucien (Frank …
The question of how you tell an untellable story is at the heart of Agata the Writer, which was evidently a passion project for writer-director-cinematographer-editor-composer Kuba Dorabialski (who also plays the small part of Janek). Its awkward thoughtfulness sets an unusual tone that will not resonate with a lot of …
It’s always interesting, though not always for the right reasons, when a director on a publicity tour manages to undermine his own movie. At this year’s Venice Film Festival the headlines about Paul Schrader were not about The Basics of Philosophy, the movie receiving its world premiere. Oh no, he …
In her sophomore feature, Luise Donschen attended the Locarno Film Festival’s Cineasti del Presente section to present Tomorrow a Long Time Ago, Morgen vor langer Zeit. After Casanova Gene, which screened at the Berlinale Forum, the German filmmaker introduces her second film to audiences. Set in 1990, in the middle of …
The director Nikias Chryssos presents in his Bloody Tennis a tale of competitive sports. Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp), an American tennis player, is offered the opportunity to attend a camp in Europe. It is a highly exclusive club, where six players practice at a high level. Mary (Elina Löwensohn) is …
Father Joe is dumber than a box of rocks and more entertaining than a box of frogs. There is nothing to recommend Father Joe except for its commitment to being the stupidest possible piece of action entertainment. Luc Besson, who wrote and produced the film for director Barthélémy Grossmann, clearly …
In The Black Ball directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (known as Los Javis) and cinematographer Gris Jordana have created an unusually beautiful work of art. The Black Ball is kind and tender, very clear-eyed about the trauma of war and the misery of addiction. But above all it is …
Whenever you talk about aura in Indian cinema, one name pops up almost immediately: Thalapathy Vijay. If you are not familiar with his name, just Google it, and you’ll get an idea of why he is one of the biggest names in the Indian film industry. However, after working in …