Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake is a difficult film to watch. For 105 minutes, the Iraqi filmmaker’s directorial debut puts us in the middle of Saddam Hussein’s despotic reign and shows us harsh realities that many Western viewers are unfamiliar with. Even with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and economic sanctions …
It is no surprise that Nuisance Bear won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, because it does what all good movies should, and even fewer documentaries achieve: it is not really about what it’s about. The ability to succeed on a double level is …
Hard work should always be enough, and yet we all know it never is. The excellent Shame and Money makes it clear what we lose when that’s not the case. Late in the film, about an ethnic Albanian family’s financial struggles in Kosovo, there’s a street scene in downtown Pristina …
As award season descends upon us, the winners and losers already feel set in stone. 2025 was a strong year for film, and not every performance can make the cut, but just because they didn’t earn a nomination doesn’t mean they aren’t worth checking out. From unknown queer biopics to …
In this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a post-screening reaction surprised tons of cinephiles following the festival’s attendees. Despite premiering after a veteran French filmmaker, Dominik Moll, with his Case 137, the most talked-about film of the second day of the festival was Sirât by the French-Spanish director, Oliver Laxe. In …
It was Stephen Sondheim who wrote a song about the two things people can leave behind: children and art. What the Shakers, a small religious movement which began in the mid-1700s, left behind was their art. Some of this is their highly influential style of furniture, made plainly to emphasise …
Dolores Fonzi is a veteran actor in Argentina, working in both television and films. She appeared in works like The Summit, Paulina, and others. In 2023, she released Blondi, which she also wrote and acted in. Two years later, she released her new feature, Belén. Based on the famous case …
Since his debut feature in 2006 with Reprise, Joachim Trier has become a relevant author in the arthouse circuit. His films gathered attention for the humanity, but centered on the use of Oslo, Norway, as a prominent character. Hence, Trier is mainly associated with his “Oslo Trilogy”, composed by Reprise, …
I was 40 before I got my first tattoo. Since then, I have added to my collection, but I have avoided many pop culture references because I have seen too many of my favorites fall over the years. But the one that I have is of the Vince Gilligan show, Breaking …
Throughout the complicated formation of Latin America, Catholicism became the norm for the so-called civilization of native populations. Hence, ever since its inception, the new continent has been a Catholic region, colonized mainly by the Portuguese and Spanish. Despite the colonial wounds, the imperial process carries severe traumas, particularly in …
It seems that Train Dreams is so named because of how spectacular and innovative the technology of train travel was to the life at the centre of the film. It is set almost entirely in Idaho and western Washington state and shows a style of living that might as well …
Following its Sundance world premiere in early 2025, The Things You Kill, the third feature from Iranian filmmaker Alireza Khatami, is set to screen in Philippine theaters as part of the 2025 QCinema International Film Festival. Selected as the Canadian submission for the 2026 Oscar Best International Feature Film category, …
Selected as Italy’s official contender for best international feature film at the 2026 Oscars, Francesco Costabile’s sophomore feature Familia carries the thematic preoccupations of their directorial debut Una Femmina: The Code of Silence, a crime drama loosely based on Italian journalist Lirio Abbate’s investigative book, which wrestles with women victims …
There are only so many ways one can put up a facade, and yet every time Matthias (an unassumingly effective Albrecht Schuch) takes on a different life in different social scenarios, in front of total strangers, it’s as if all the pretense is infinite. Matthias has faked it so real …
Rosemead deals with one of life’s most significant challenges. What happens to our loved ones after we leave? Will they be in a safe position as we depart? The film focuses on a mother played by Lucy Liu, who sees the world that she knows coming to a close. But …
There is a fascinating new trend in cinema gathering steam: action movies with hardly any dialogue. Finland’s Sisu from 2022 shows Nazis being slaughtered without saying much about it, while America’s No One Will Save You from 2023 has a young woman fighting off an alien attack. And now Detroit …
Frankenstein is a masterpiece, an instant classic and a complete and utter triumph. It sticks very close to the source material while managing to be something fresh and new, it maintains its historic setting while never forgetting the current moment, and it all hangs on two extraordinary central performances that …
Lydia Tár is a b*tch. That’s what a student calls Cate Blanchett’s Lydia, the sociopathic lead of Todd Field’s visceral psychological thriller Tár. They’re not wrong. She is the sort of damaged soul that has hit the heights of her conducting profession, who flies so close to the sun and …
In 2021, while the world was still heavily facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sundance Film Festival introduced its hybrid version with drive-ins in different states of the country, an online option, and the traditional Park City venue in Utah. Coming off a year of complicated production for the film industry. …
In Cuerpo Celeste, the symbolically loaded debut feature from Chilean writer-director Nayra Ilic García, the past not only fractures the present and future but actively exists along with it as if they are all one and the same. The film explores that threshold, the possibility to re-encounter even something we …