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 …
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 …
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 …
In 2018, the Spanish director Meritxell Colell Aparicio presented Con el viento (Facing the Wind), which played at the Berlinale Forum section. Four years later, she presented Dúo at the Málaga Film Festival. Now, she has been upgraded to the Locarno Film Festival competition with her latest work, Far From …
Writer-director Katharina Rivilis is clearly telling an personal story with I’ll Be Gone in June, an observant film about one German girl’s year as an exchange student in New Mexico. (How personal? According to the press notes some of the costumes are her own clothes from the time.) The southwestern …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …