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 …
Beatrice Gibson has been a fascinating voice in the film community for a while. Her work has been featured at major events worldwide, including I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead and Someplace In Your Mouth, both of which were screened at TIFF. Those works blur the line between autofiction …
The location is Reboleira, in the suburbs of Lisbon, Portugal. In the outskirts of the Portuguese capital, a robbery goes wrong. A car crashes, the police arrest the driver, and almost two hundred thousand Euros vanish. Which of the criminal groups took the money? In O Jacaré by Basil da …
In the festival circuit, with each announcement of a major festival, there is a name that people expect to hear: Hong Sang-soo. In February, he premiered The Day She Returns , which played at the Berlinale’s Panorama. Six months later, the Korean master is back with his latest, Nowhere to …
In the first seconds of Rehmat by Gurvinder Singh, a black screen explains the political context of the film. During the forced migration in the Indian subcontinent, the Punjab was partitioned. Independence in 1947 divided the country along religious lines: Hindus and Sikh east in India, Muslims in the west …
In a small Romanian town, Marius (Adrian Văncică) is the medical chief at the local hospital. He just lost his wife, and his son, Ioan (Teodor Butănescu), is almost finished with high school. This is the setting of You Don’t Belong Here (Nu e locul tau aici) by Florin Şerban. …
The Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani has a massive short film haul in her career, most of which have played at the world’s central events. Washingtonia premiered at the Berlinale. Yellow Fieber and What Mary Didn’t Know were at Locarno. Electric Swam was at the Venice Film Festival, and Limbo was …
The journalist and documentary filmmaker Daniel Lombroso has been consistently releasing shorts and features that reflect on two central themes: beauty and the American society. In the previous years, he released Denial, Hold the Line, American Scar, and White Noise, which all portray the history of the United States and …
When discussing pioneers in cinema, Barbara Hammer’s name is quintessential for any discussion. The avant-garde filmmaker is essential for the feminist cinema alongside names like Chantal Akerman, Lizzie Borden, Barbara Loden, and Sally Porter. In a sense, all of those directors provided different multitudes for the feminine representation on the …
As the discussions surrounding Artificial Intelligence sparked the daily conversations of society, mostly of the aesthetically different artistry might be appointed as GenAI by the untrained eye. Our difficulty in absorbing the artistic content of unconventional art leads us to confuse the various artistic styles with a new, harmful tool …
The prolific filmmaker and theorist Mark Cousins returns to the festival circuit with his 16-part project, The Story of Documentary Film. Recently, he presented the segment 1970s at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a two-halves project that narrates the production of non-fiction in the decade. Firstly, in the …
Two decades after his extensive and impactful work with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chidgasornpongse presents his debut feature, 9 Temples to Heaven (9 วัด สู่สวรรค์). The film is a selection of the Quinzaine des Cineastes of the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows a huge family of 9, who take their dying …
Dominga Sotomayor is one of the biggest names of the new generation of the Chilean cinema. Alongside Pablo Larraín and Sebastian Lelio, her films achieved the international recognition and received attention for their boldness. Her debut feature, De Jueves a Domingo, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her most …
In 2011, in the context of the Arab Spring, the Yemeni revolution took place in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. Thousands of protestors organized themselves in the streets of the city, and the government murdered dozens of them. The result was the popular uprising against the state’s violence, which led to the …
The French director Lila Pinell presented her first feature film, Kiss and Cry, at the Cannes Film Festival in the ACID parallel section, which she co-directed with Chloé Mahieu. Four years later, she released Le Roi David (King David), a short film that premiered at the prestigious Vila do Conde …
The Semaine de la Critique is a spotlight for the debut feature at the Cannes Film Festival. One of the 2026 selections in Flesh and Fuel (Du fioul dans les artères) by Pierre le Gall, whose last effort is the 2018 short Doubout. It tells the story of Étienne (Alexis …
In 2022, the debut feature film Tengo Sueños Eléctricos (I Have Electric Dreams) by the Costa Rican filmmaker Valentina Maurel made a potent appearance at that year’s Locarno Film Festival. It won the directing, actor (Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez), and actress (Daniela Marín Navarro) awards in the main competition. Later, the …
Sports dramas are a sub-genre that allows filmmakers to take multiple different approaches. They can narrate the Cinderella story of an underdog team, the individual evolution of its players, or the downside of being an athlete. In her debut feature, Charlotte Glynn takes the latter approach. The Gymnast is a …
Throughout the history of documentary filmmaking, the observational type captures a story through the absence of direct interference by the director. It is a format that allows the audience to understand the subject more profoundly. An observational film is the one that rejects the talking head interview scheme to create …
At Cannes, L’ACID presents a range of indie films, including the 2D animation Blaise by Jean-Paul Guigue and Dimitri Planchon. The film is the sophomore effort by Guigue, following his 2024 The Darwinners (Silex and the City, le film), which also premiered at the same festival previously. The director’s latest work, …