The emotional rollercoaster Giacomo Covi’s character undergoes in A Year of School is so relatable it’s obvious why he won the Best Actor prize in the Orrizonti strand of this year’s Venice Film Festival: a new prince has been crowned. In fact all four of the main actors in A …
In 2021 a small French movie called The World After Us played the festival circuit because it was one of the first modern movies to address life in the modern gig economy. It was a direct precursor to At Work, in that they are both about a novelist in Paris …
This comedy-thriller manages to be both very funny and gruesomely violent, with an appetite for the strange and startling that had the Venice Film Festival audience barking with shock as often as laughing. For the most part, the bold mood swings work, largely thanks to a setting which includes several …
There is a fascinating new trend in cinema gathering steam: action movies with hardly any dialogue. Finland’s Sisu from 2022 shows Nazis being slaughtered without saying much about it, while America’s No One Will Save You from 2023 has a young woman fighting off an alien attack. And now Detroit …
One of the central figures of the newest generation of Brazilian cinema, Gabriel Mascaro, is already a well-known name on the international festival circuit. His 2015 film, Neon Bull (Boi Neon), premiered at the Venice Film Festival. His next work, Divine Love (Divino Amor), world premiered at the 2019 Sundance …
Of course the London Film Festival is the right place for the world premiere of Moss & Freud, a movie about two British people who understood more than most the power of an image. But since Kate Moss is one of its executive producers, Moss & Freud is unwilling to …
Winner of the Orrizonti Award for Best Film at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, On the Road (En el Camino) is, at its core, a poignant tale of repressed desire bursting in the most undesirable of places. It’s the fifth feature from Mexican writer-director David Pablos, and it’s the …
There are only so many ways a film like Sweetheart, originally titled Gioia Mia, pans out. Special Jury Prize winner at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmakers of the Present competition, Margherita Spampinato’s debut feature is a predictably compelling take on the coming-of-age genre: a schmaltzy drama about grief and …
Jude Law’s first appearance as Vladimir Putin is so eerily accurate the Venice Film Festival audience around me laughed in surprise. Who would have thought he could do it? Well congratulations to director Olivier Assayas and his casting director Antoinette Boulat, because the performance Mr. Law gives here is one …
It’s summertime. The glowing sun is out, and the air is calm. It’s the perfect excuse to take a swim or lie still on the grass and wonder about what’s next in your life. It’s certainly the case, or at least initially, for a group of working-class teenagers in Ion …
Since its first exhibition, film has played a crucial role in portraying memory and the feeling of daily life. Directors utilize cinema as a tool to immortalize places, stories, and people. It is the case for Amir Aziz, who delivers a homage in the nostalgia-heavy Daroon-e Amir, or Inside Amir. …
There’s a little scene late in Silent Rebellion (À bras-le-corps) where a disgusting boss offers the young heroine, Emma (a wonderful Lila Gueneau), a “chance” at promotion, but is prevented from molesting her by an older female colleague making a scene. The other woman is punished, but she and Emma …
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Toronto International Film Festival’s wavelength section is the combination of local talents with internationally prestigious names in experimental and bold efforts. The programming team, led by Andréa Picard, balances the most courageous work with more unconventional efforts that compose the best section …
Forty-four minutes into Magellan, we see the eponymous Portuguese navigator at the film’s center, deftly portrayed by Gael García Bernal, sitting still inside a 16th-century tavern, his mind drifting elsewhere. He grips a walking cane on one hand, then an oversized hat on the other. Lit candles beside him quietly …
The new Disney+ series Marvel Zombies builds on a single episode from season one of What If…?, What If…Zombies?, which first imagined a world where Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had become its greatest threat. Directed by Bryan Andrews and written by Zeb Wells, the four-episode miniseries introduces a new group of …
It’s not really a surprise that Jim Jarmusch has won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival for Father Mother Sister Brother. He has always been a major filmmaker working in a minor key, and here we have another one of his portmanteau films, this time three thematically …
There is a needle drop in Mother so insane that it either singlehandedly turns the movie into a triumph or ruins it completely, and I still can’t decide which it is. But this is precisely the point director Teona Strugar Mitevska is trying to make with her fictionalised biopic of …
Every episode of House of Guinness, Steven Knight’s newest television creation for Netflix, begins with a disclaimer and promise: “This fiction is inspired by true stories”. While based on many real people and events of 1860s Dublin (and further afield), House of Guinness is first and foremost concerned with being …
Adapted from Tove Jansson’s beloved novel, The Summer Book is a delicate and poignant film about growing up and growing old. The movie centers on young Sophia (Emily Matthews) as she spends the summer at her family’s secluded home on a Finnish island, exploring the natural world with her father …
Benedetta Porcaroli won the Best Actress prize in the Orrizonti strands of the Venice Film Festival simply because this ridiculous movie would not have been possible without her spectacular performance. The Kidnapping of Arabella (Il rapimento di Arabella) does indeed involve a kidnapping but one in which we are not …