The American indie director Albert Birney has had a prolific career in the last few years. He is releasing his sixth feature film, OBEX. Birney released before Strawberry Mansion, Tux and Fanny, Sylvio, Eyeballs in the Darkness, and The Beast Pageant. The director uses the 1980s setting to tell his …
Lurker is the debut feature by Alex Russell. He is an Emmy winner for his work as a supervising producer in Netflix’s miniseries, Beef. Besides the show with Ali Wong and Steve Yeun, the young screenwriter penned episodes of FX’s Dave and The Bear. In 2017, Russell wrote a feature …
There are movies, and there are movies, and then there are the wild and experimental films that use the cinematic form to tell a story in a way that only filmmaking can. Buffet Infinity is one of this third type. Set in a small town in Alberta, Canada, Buffet Infinity …
The duo of directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is known for their approach to genre cinema, especially the giallo, an Italian sub-genre of slasher films marked by its distinctive visual style. They are back with their latest film, Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un diamant mort), a …
Five minutes into Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea, the latest documentary from Filipino filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama, we are presented with a patchwork of news headlines, archived footage depicting Filipino and Chinese maritime vessels ramming into each other, and graphics mapping the Philippines’ nautical borders. A propulsive …
The Slovak director Miro Remo presents an alternative way of living in his film Better Go Mad in the Wild. In his fifth feature-length film, the director closely observes the twin brothers František and Ondřej Klišík. They live in the inner countryside of the Czech Republic, in the Sumava. The …
I Am Frankelda (Soy Frankelda) is the debut feature by Arturo and Roy Ambriz. It is also the first stop-motion animation feature ever produced in Mexico. Mexican cinema has a growing animation industry, it is internationally recognized, with names such as Jorge R. Gutierrez (Book of Life & Maya and …
This documentary about the continuing phenomenon of Rocky Horror is directed by the son of the man who created the phenomenon. Normally this would lead to calls of nepotism, but somehow here the closeness to the material is appropriate. The stories within Strange Journey have clearly been told and revisited …
Running from July 16 through August 3 in Montréal, Canada, the Fantasia International Film Festival is back for its 29th edition, featuring a massive slate of over 125 features and 200 short films, programmed across various sections and accompanied by workshops, exhibitions, artist talks, and more special events. Screenings will …
In the first minutes of Copan, by Brazilian director Carine Wallauer, we watch her observe her prior empty apartment. Letters on the screen explain where she is. The Copan building in downtown São Paulo is a monument of Brazilian modern architecture. Designed by the legendary Oscar Niemeyer, it is a …
Veteran documentary filmmakers Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI and Citizen Ashe) and Daniel Junge (Challenger: The Final Flight and A Lego Documentary) come together to direct I Was Born This Way. Borrowing the title name from the 1975 song by Valentino, globally famous through the voice of Carl Bean in 1977. The …
In her first full-length feature, Louise Hémon presents L’engloutie (The Girl in the Snow). A selection in the Quinzaine des Cineastes of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hémon designs a vibey film. She narrates the story of Aimée (Galatea Bellugi), a volunteer teacher from an unspecified big French city. She …
The veteran indie director Stephanie Laing (Irreplaceable You and Family Squares) teams up with Rose Byrne to present Tow. The film tells the true story of Amanda Ogle (Byrne), a woman who left her child, Avery (Elsie Fisher), to find a better life condition as a veterinary technician. However, she …
In her debut feature premiering at this year’s Tribeca, Lillian T. Mehrel narrates about the relationship between a mother and daughter in Honeyjoon. In the film, June (Ayden Mayeri) and Lela (Amira Casar) travel to Açores in Portugal to celebrate the first anniversary of the family patriarch’s death. In their …
Australian director Charles Williams presents his debut feature: Inside. Williams won the short film Palme d’Or in 2018 at Cannes for All These Creatures and soon became a potential talent for the future. Six years later, the director narrates the story of a young man, Mel (Vincent Miller), who is …
After working on their respective short films and co-directing the documentary short Dollar Pizza Documentary, Brooklyn-based filmmakers Travis Wood and Alex Mallis are upping the ante as their debut feature The Travel Companion is having its world premiere in the US Narrative Competition section of the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. …
There are some shots of actress Suzu Hirose in A Pale View of Hills that are so gorgeous the audience at the Cannes Film Festival gasped aloud. Cinematographer Piotr Niemyjski clearly made heavy use of visual effects in his work – not least for the many gorgeous shots of Nagasaki …
The generic title underplays the importance of this French war film, which does something utterly shocking from an American perspective: it pays respect to France’s allies, too. Not since the days of World War II movies have any American films bothered to mark our allies, even in passing. (A brief …
In the USA, the Italian actress Valeria Golino is mainly famous for two very different roles: as Tom Cruise’s sexy girlfriend in the incredibly serious Rain Man from 1988, and then as Charlie Sheen’s sexy love interest in the incredibly silly Hot Shots! movies in 1991 and 1993. Ms. Golino …
No one quite knows what to do with director Fatih Akin. His explosive early movie Head-On was about the complex convergence of immigration and mental health issues between two Turkish-German punks. It’s one of the most violent and romantic movies ever made and also one of the smartest about intersectional …