The movie with the best title at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is also the kind of movie filmmakers love to make: a movie about making a movie. But less joyously, the setting here is present-day Egypt, a nation not currently enjoying the delights of democracy. The creatives involved, beginning …
The French/Polish director Julia Kowalski recently premiered her Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite (Her Will Be Done). It is a Quinzaine Des Cineastes selection and the director’s sophomore full-length feature, Crache Cœur (Raging Rose). The film narrates the story of Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), a girl from rural France whose parents …
This Japanese movie is named after an art print a preteen girl buys her terminally ill father. This strange misdirection fits this quietly misguided film, about how that girl passes the time while her parents are too preoccupied for her. This includes some topics on the very edge of what …
Bold, primary colours take centre point within the animated tale Death Does Not Exist (La mort n’existe pas) which convey the film’s blunt messaging effectively. Political in nature and economic in scale, the film lays bare its stance within its opening sequence leaving no doubt about its eat the rich …
Japanese director Masayuki Suô’s 1996 romantic comedy, Shall We Dance? Follows Shohei Sugiyama (Kôji Yakusho), an accountant who is surprisingly discontented. Despite his successful career and a wife and daughter who love him dearly, there’s something missing in Sugiyama’s life. On his daily commute, he spies from the train a …
For his next trick – not his follow-up to Anora, since he did not direct – Sean Baker has co-written, edited and co-produced this Taiwanese movie about a family of three women trying to make it in Taipei. The director (and co-writer) is Shih-Ching Tsou, who has worked with Mr. …
Caravan (Karavan) is the debut feature by Zuzana Kichnerová and is another selection of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. The film narrates the story of Ester (Anna Geislerová), a forty-five-year-old woman who spends most of her time caring for her special needs son, David (David …
The Un Certain Regard section is the second most significant section of the Cannes Film Festival. It presents rising directors who already have a presence in world cinema. It is the case of Un Poeta (A Poet), directed by Simón Mesa Soto. The Colombian filmmaker presented his last film, Amparo, …
The ripped-from-the-headlines Case 137 (Dossier 137) combines two genres everybody loves. The first is the detailed bureaucracy of justice and how much easier it is to find objective truth since we all started carrying recording devices (our mobile phones) around at all times. Think Anatomy of a Fall and Saint …
The Portuguese director Pedro Pinho presents his latest film, O Riso e a Faca (I Only Rest in the Storm), at the Un Certain Regard section in this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The author’s last full-length feature, A Fábrica de Nada, had its premiere at the Quinzaine des Cineastes in …
The Semaine de la Critique (Critics Week) is a crucial sidebar at the Festival de Cannes. It focuses on debut and sophomore films. A Useful Ghost (Pee Chai Dai Ka) by the Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke is another hyped first-time directorial effort. The semaine is responsible for unveiling buzzy titles …
In French director Emmanuel Courcol’s comedy drama, The Marching Band (En fanfare), the celebrated orchestra conductor, Thibaut Desormeaux (Benjamin Lavernhe) is diagnosed with leukemia. To his surprise, the tests to identify a bone marrow donor reveal that he was adopted. The search for his brother leads him to Jimmy (Pierre Lottin), …
The grand Austrian director Michael Haneke famously stated, to paraphrase, that a film is 24 lies per second in service of the attempt to find the truth. In this sense, cinema is a mere representation of the reality. This conceptualization allows multiple directors to experiment with the understanding of the …
The sophomore effort in the Napo River (Toroboro) in Manolo Sarmiento’s diptych about the local communities is La Consulta Popular, or The People’s Referendum. He focuses on the political aspect of the situation. With this film, he shifts his lenses to the isolated tribes, who decided to continue far from …
When it comes to the Indian film industry, there are only a few actors who don’t need to do extravagant promotional events to sell tickets. One such actor is Suriya, and fans go berserk whenever he announces his next movie. However, some of his previous films haven’t turned out to …
Zeitgeisty trends combine in Peacock: how it mocks the vapid wealthy with lives so comfortable they must manufacture problems for themselves is clearly inspired by the work of Ruben Östlund. The problem is that social satire works best with a strong opinion about the behaviour being mocked. Are you teasing …
Director Erico Rassi has become one of the most fascinating voices of the newest Brazilian cinema. He combines the classical codes of the Western genre and gives them another significance. In his debut feature, the 2016 Comeback, he narrates the story of a man who lost the magnificence of his …
Acting as a true, unapologetically enthusiastic celebration of Hong Kong action icon Jackie Chan, Kung Fu Rookie (or Timuchin), is a fun homage to a significant figure in martial arts cinema. With Chan’s Karate Kid: Legends releasing in a few months and his classic Rumble in the Bronx celebrating its …
Content Warning: This is a review of the movie Baby John, and it includes disturbing topics, including discussion of rape, torture, and violence against women and children. No matter where you are in the world, police propaganda has the same problem: how to justify violence meted out by cops with …
There is a clear point of view in No Other Land: what is happening in the West Bank is wrong. Frankly it’s all the more powerful for its righteous commitment to this line. But just because something is an unusual, well-made and remarkable documentary doesn’t make it a crucial piece …