Oedipus Shrugged: Schanelec Finds Tragedy is the Song That Doesn’t End
There’s little use clinging to the description of Angela Schanelec’s latest film Music as...
The Secret Life of Bees: Solaguren’s Warm Debut Explores the Communal Dictation of Gender Identity
Our relationship to our gender and sexual identities is...
Goodbye, First Love: Atef Explores Pangs of Passion Amidst Detached Reunification
For her sixth feature film, Germany’s Emily Atef returns to themes of circumstance...
Keeper of the Flame: Polak Reckons with Reconciliation vs. Retribution in Conventional Drama
Dutch director Sacha Polak continues to explore the difficulties of acceptance and...
Mal Travaille: Abbruzzese Finds the Rhythm of the Night in Hypnotic Debut
“E’en hell hath its peculiar laws,” remarked Faust in Goethe’s eternal classic, the...
Among the titles competing for the Golden Bear at the 2023 Berlinale, the sophomore feature by Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés brims with vitality. It...
Wrecked Ralph: Trengove Gazes into the Weaponization of Masculinity in Unsettling Character Study
Playwright and activist Eve Ensler commented on a 2017 panel regarding how...
Guilty of Romance: Miller Weaves a Wacky and Disarmingly Charming Love Tapestry
To those who think the possibilities of heartfelt romantic comedies dried up in...
Pleasure to Burn: Petzold Stokes the Flames in Diffident Drama
A fragile male ego finds itself dismantled in Afire (Roter Himmel), the second chapter...
Hold the Phone: Johnson Delivers the Ballad of the BlackBerry
Exposing the accidental alchemy which generated the titular BlackBerry, the world’s first Smartphone (and as...
Night Boos: Hochhäusler Bungles Black Market Crime Thriller
Blending fatal romanticism and B-movie genre tropes, it’s not difficult to see where a certain Fassbinder sensibility...
Lady in a Cage: de Heer’s Dystopia Explores the Enduring Echoes of Colonialism
Dutch-born director Rolf de Heer has been a mainstay of Australian cinema...
The Mirror Has Two Faces: Canijo’s Customers Are Always Blight with Inverse Melodrama
“Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it...
The Best Exotic Portugal Hotel: Canijo Examines Motherhood as Misanthropy in Masterful Familial Miasma
The women handling the specialty boutique hotel in Joao Canijo’s Mal...
Father Knows Best: Garrel’s Family Affair Flounders in Banality
Although co-credited to the late, great Jean-Claude Carrière and starring a whole gaggle of the Garrel...