During the Berlinale I swung by photography museum C|O Berlin to look at their exhibit of work by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (running until June 2026, and recommended). Her most famous photograph, “Mujer Ángel, Sonoran Desert, 1979,” shows an indigenous woman in traditional dress on the side of a hill, …
In the inception of filmmaking, cinema was similar to magic. It is the illusionism of the images that impressed dozens of people gathered in a room watching a machine that projects photos. In that first showing in Paris, filmmaking was a new form of witchcraft, the combination of chemical processes …
I am a sucker for movies which involve the leads wandering around a city at night instead of sleeping together. The trouble that the concept is easy but making it interesting is tough. The leads must be personable enough and the obstacles in their way must be intriguing enough that …
The LA-Based director and actor Lauren Noll made a splash in the short film circuit, leading the award-winning film The Heart of Texas by Gregory J.M. Kasunich. Besides working as an actor, she presents her first feature as a director, an effort funded through crowdfunding campaigns that allowed her to …
There’s a myth that knowing your death approaches brings out the best in you. In these circumstances you will simply rise above the horror of your looming demise to love your family, be kind to your neighbours, save kittens from trees and generally be all excellent until you perish. Anyone …
In recent years, documentaries have become a space for personal histories. Filmmakers saw the non-fiction form as an opportunity to reflect on their lives and eternalize the memories, shadows, and complexities of their backgrounds. Therefore, throughout archival, diary, and poetic structures, directors expose their intimacies, unveiling their emotions and the …
When the world is a smorgasbord of tastes and sensations you can’t blame someone for wanting to sample it all, but at a certain point you’ve got to admit you know what you prefer. The gimmick of the novel Allegro Pastell is a very good one: it’s the text and …
Documentary filmmaking also works as a personal chamber for filmmakers to pour their hearts into films. Throughout the diary or poetic non-fiction, the directors can discuss their personal lives, the formality of cinema, and themes they are passionate about. It is a chance to unveil themselves and the world surrounding …
The central couple at the heart of this complex Pakistani movie have known each other from around the village since childhood. They are thrown together because everyone else considers them damaged goods. The way they deal with their damage, separately and together, enables an unusual depiction of the power struggles …
The main value of A Second Life is that parts of it were shot on the street in Paris on the day of the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony. This is therefore a movie that will be revisited fifty years from now as an important document of that moment. The rest …
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Europe was boiling with ideas and cultural movements. Modernism, Brutalism, and the Belle Epoqué bloomed with multiple currents that provoked changes in the cultural and societal landscape in the world. In 1919, a particular school in Germany taught and shaped artists whose work …
It’s been a while since a movie has been so good at textures, both visual and aural. In Satisfaction you get an extremely clear sense of the sensations the characters are experiencing and the world through which they are moving. The plot in itself is much less pleasant, as it’s …
The Mexican director Nicolás Pereda has proven himself as one of the most prominent filmmakers of the new generation. In the last three years, he released three films. Lázaro de Noche premiered at the 2024 FIDMarseille, and Cobre was also a world premiere at the French experimental film event in …
Throughout the social formation of the Americas, religiosity is fundamental to understanding the rooted traditions of the multiple Latin cultures. In a sense, the moral compass, the ethics, and the comprehension of the world reflect the influences of the Portuguese and Spanish Catholics, who, through the genocidal project, spread the …
A clip has recently done the rounds of British social media of a well-known pundit asking a woman who she plans to vote for in an upcoming election. The woman says she doesn’t know, but she certainly won’t be voting for a particular candidate who she recently saw leaving a …
In the Brazilian cinema history, there are classic examples of road trip films. One of them is Iracema by Jorge Bodansky and Orlando Senna, a time capsule on the Northern region of the country during the military dictatorship. Regionally, a landmark of the sensorial cinema in the country is Viajo …
Cinema works as a personal diary for filmmakers. The camera as an instrument substitutes the pen, words shift to images, and the stories build upon a different logic. Similar to the process of writing in a journal, there is a process involved in the act of storytelling. The written story …
Filipino filmmaker Carl Joseph Papa’s latest film 58th is a gripping animated docudrama on the infamous 2009 Maguindanao massacre, now known as the single deadliest attack on journalists in recorded history. Recently screened in the Harbour programme of the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the director’s critically acclaimed Iti …
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 …
This documentary is about the power of community in healing from grief, through the method of Gaelic psalm singing. The dialogue is almost entirely in Scots-Gaelic – the indigenous language of Scotland and a cousin to Irish Gaelic, the indigenous language of Ireland – and centers the journey of one …