Playing out of competition at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, Nova ‘78, from the directing duo of Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias, functions both as a moving paean to the enduring greatness of eminent writer and iconoclast William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) and an electrifying snapshot of a bygone period of …
Juror #2 could not have come out at a stranger time in world events towards the end of 2024. As a director, Clint Eastwood’s interests have been captured by the contradictions of life and justice in the United States: there are often clear-cut guilty and innocent parties, but who prevails …
Nicholas Hoult had a theme in 2024. The Order, director Justin Kurzel’s latest dramatic feature based on true events, puts his character in a very similar situation as in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2. Both Bob Mathews (The Order) and Justin Kemp (Juror #2) are morally compromised men making bad (desperate, …
There are other directors who are better, there are others who are more stylish, but there is no director anywhere in the world who is more interesting than Werner Herzog. He was once shot on camera during an interview for British television and actually called the wound “insignificant” as the …
The first episode of Mike Judge’s King of the Hill aired just a week after my first husband and I got married. We were big Judge fans from years of Beavis and Butthead, and we thought that this new show looked interesting. I always loved it and appreciated the way that the Hill family cared about one another. A few years ago, I rewatched the first season and was …
In the following effort for the Croatian director Hana Jušić, she presents God Will Not Help in the Concorso Internazionale of the 2025 Locarno Film Festival. Following her debut at the Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori with Quit Staring at My Plate, the Croatian author takes a look at the …
The experimental director and visual artist Ben Rivers is a respected name in the film festival circuit. The director debuts his works in principal events, such as the Locarno Film Festival, where he premiered his 2024 film Bogancloch and his new work, Mare’s Nest, both in the Concorso Internazionale. In …
In her fourth directorial effort, the Serbian director Ivana Mladenović returns to the Locarno Film Festival, where she premiered her 2019 film Ivana the Terrible, now with Sorella di Clausura. The director, who currently resides in Romania, presents a story about a wasted Romanian talent – someone who never reached …
The Austrian director Elsa Kremser and the German director Levin Peter are known for their documentaries Space Dogs and Dreaming Dogs, which approach the reality of stray dogs in Moscow. In Kremser’s fiction debut, they present White Snail, a romantic drama set in Belarus. The film narrates the story of …
The Vietnamese director Trương Minh Quý was one of the highlights of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival with his film Viet and Nam. The film had an extensive festival season, including a main slate slot in the New York Film Festival and a Wavelength selection in the Toronto International Film …
A competitive entry in the Filmmakers of the Present program of the Locarno Film Festival’s 78th edition, Fantasy, the feature directorial debut from Slovenian musician and director Kukla, at times credited as Katarina Bogdanović, is a hypnotic, surreal expansion of the story the filmmaker initially sketched in her award-winning short …
There has been a disturbing recent trend of setting stories in the afterlife, with the position that growth and change is really only possible after you are dead. This removes our agency, and posits that our situation is more important than our free will. This is especially aggravating when you …
The Paper is coming to Peacock, and comedy lovers should be excited. Fans of The Office are an extremely devoted group. Any mention of a remake or reboot is typically met with a swift and forceful reaction of cynicism, which is ironic considering the Steve Carell-led series was, itself, a …
In recent years, films that set out to explore non-traditional relationships or unconventional family dynamics have become more common, but they don’t always manage to do so with the necessary depth. Most fall into the trap of using the theme as a mere gimmick, without delving into the genuine emotions …
Life has been hard for Sabrina Parry. Her older sister is the pretty one, the sweet one, the one everyone loves. Sabrina is the difficult one, the exasperating one, the one everyone dislikes. When their father has to leave he gives Sabrina instructions “Keep Ceridwen and Gran safe…and stay out …
Frankenstein is a masterpiece, an instant classic and a complete and utter triumph. It sticks very close to the source material while managing to be something fresh and new, it maintains its historic setting while never forgetting the current moment, and it all hangs on two extraordinary central performances that …
In its third year, Rally festival finally became what it was meant to be. Two years of running on the only wet day in August because of freak storms would have caused any small festival to close and you wouldn’t blame them; despite capturing star zeitgeist acts like early career …
I wasn’t familiar with the work of James Sweeney (Straight Up), but there’s always something fascinating when a filmmaker decides to take on so many roles in a single project: writing, directing, producing, and, on top of that, playing one of the main characters. That kind of total exposure naturally …
The Indian Film & TV industry hasn’t managed to come out with a spy thriller that not only hits hard, but also makes viewers realize how these people put themselves on the line to protect their country. That’s where Netflix series Saare Jahan Se Accha steps in, finally delivering the sharp, …
An incommunicable solitude pulsates at the heart of Tabi to Hibi — also titled Two Seasons, Two Strangers — the bifurcated drama from Japanese writer-director Shô Miyake, who just won a career-defining Pardo d’Oro (Golden Leopard) for the movie, following its world premiere in the Concorso Internazionale section of this …