The director Sebastian Brameshuber presents his new film at this year’s Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section. London portrays the life of a seventy-two-year-old man, Bobby Sommer, who drives back and forth between Vienna and Salzburg, in Austria. He gives lifts to people traveling to these cities and he …
On the weekend of August 21st, the Festival Bananada moved from multiple venues to the Centro Cultural Oscar Niemeyer, a traditional multicultural center in the city. The arena, the name of that space, hosted the most hyped bands and acts, drawing a massive crowd to the festival after a seven-year …
In 1999, Fabrício Nobre created the Festival Bananada in Goiânia, Goiás, a city near the country’s capital, Brasília. Despite its proximity to the center of Brazil, the town was not a place where bands, especially Rock and Punk bands, would play. The festival surged as part of the counterculture movement, …
The most shocking thing in Parallel Tales is Isabelle Huppert lighting a cigarette with a toaster. There’s a sense of unpredictability in that one moment that the rest of Parallel Tales was aiming for and somehow didn’t achieve. It’s hard to say why it falls so flat, since there is …
In the rich history of Brazilian filmmaking, animation is a medium that does not have as profound a filmography as others. Before the 2000s, there were very few examples, like Meow by Marcos Magalhães and Frankenstein Punk by Cao Hamburger and Eliana Fonseca. However, in the 2000s, the animation sector …
One of the most culturally talked-about moments of 2026 was the Super Bowl Halftime Show performed by Bad Bunny. Despite the political opposition from the far-right groups, who considered his choice as non-American (even if Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States), the fifteen-minute show was a success. …
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 …
The Difficult Bride is rare on two counts: it is a Bangladeshi film, and its director, Rubaiyat Hossain, is a woman. It is rarer still for being both incredibly supportive and furiously critical of its heroine, who is also both a traditional woman (getting married very young) and a modern …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …