Tag: World Cinema review
La bola negra | Review
The Play’s the Thing: Ambrossi & Calvo Connect the Dots
“Dark love is the love that is never named,” wrote Federico Garcia Lorca in Sonnets...
A Long Winter | 2026 London BFI Film Festival Review
A Gentle Thaw: Haigh’s Measured Drama is Glacial but Rewarding
A distinctly snowy spin on a coming-of-age yarn, Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter uses a...
Animol | 2026 London BFI Film Festival Review
Mismanaged Masculinity: Walters’ Gritty Debut Lacks Impactful Style Over Its Solid Substance
After himself leading the long running Channel 4 turned Netflix smash hit Top...
Fjord | Review
Uncanny Valley: Mungiu Explores Liberated Prisons
Totalitarian mentality is driven to logical extremes in Fjord, Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu’s first foray outside of his native...
Alpha Gang | 2026 Toronto Intl. Film Festival Review
Close Encounters Of The Biker Gang Kind: The Zellners’ Alien Comedy Probes For Laughs
If you tell a joke and it doesn’t land, telling it...
Children of the Monkey (I figli della scimmia) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Favorited Son: Landucci Looks at How Love Can Tear Us Apart
While it never explicitly dwells on the feeling that the film's patriarch may...
Back to Buenos Aires | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Doctor and the Devils: Bechis Explores the Agony of Atonement
The title for Argentinian director Marco Bechis’ latest title, Back to Buenos Aires, is...
A Bit of Light | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Under the Cherry Moon: Asgari Lets the Sun Shine In
Ali Asgari continues to highlight the precariousness of navigating modern day Tehran with his latest...
One Minute to Midnight (Un peu avant minuit) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Man Who Snubbed Women: Pariser Performs a Patriarchal Audit
There’s something that feels a bit ‘too little, too late’ in Nicolas Pariser’s latest film...
The Fire Within You (Il fuoco che ti porti dentro) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Shrill Seekers: De Angelis Turns to Comedic Caricature
For his latest venture, The Fire Within You, Edoardo De Angelis seems to be employing the...
A Good Little Soldier (Un bon petit soldat) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
A HR Manager Never Cries: Brize Takes on Executive Hypocrisy
When he’s not exploring intimate relationship melodramas, French director Stéphane Brizé has been one of...
DAU | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Darkness Visible: Khrzhanovsky Reformulates Saga of Shattered Scientists
If ex-Attorney General and fascist sentinel Pam Bondi was ever credited as uttering anything worth repeating, it...
Bunker | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Atlas Dug: Zeller Teases the Comedy of Obligation
It’s become increasingly clear celebrated writer Florian Zeller has a difficult time killing his darlings when it...
The Spiral (L’Estranea) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Devil is a Woman: Strippoli Concocts an Elegant Parent Trap
As far as horrific moral fables about Catholic guilt and resisting temptation go, director...
Look Back | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Broken Heart Art: Kore-eda Builds Bittersweet Elegy to Friendship
Art is both the impetus for destruction and creation in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest, Look Back, a...
London | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Magnificent Obsession: Di Marco & Picoli Patrol the Poison of Perfection
Our conditioned notions regarding beauty standards maintains our insidious and unhealthy fixation with obtaining...
Agata the Writer | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Blindness of Strangers: Dorabialski Stings the Storyteller
“In the end, we’ll all become stories,” per Margaret Atwood, a sentiment which is ultimately at the...
Woman Unknown | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Penile Code: el-Toukhy Explores the Gendered Paradox of Liberation
Something is certainly rotten in the state of Denmark following the country’s liberation from Nazi...
The Echo Chamber | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
An Affair to Disremember: Pallaoro Explores the Unbearable Bleakness of Being
Love is hardly a many-splendored thing in The Echo Chamber, the fourth feature directed...
Oase (Oasis) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Child Inside: Lenz Explores the Virtues of Violence
For his narrative feature debut Oasis, Jannis Lenz channels contemporary intergenerational neglect and the inherent apathy...
Possible Love | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Blue is the Warmest Collar: Chang-dong Prepares a Touch of Class
Boiled down to its core essence, Possible Love, the first feature from South Korean...
It Will Happen Tonight (Succederà questa notte) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Birds, the Bees and the (Displaced) Italians: Moretti Tries Amour For
In the latter half of his career, revered Italian director Nanni Moretti has...
Un détour par Diane | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Even Cowgirls Gets the Clues: Sirot/Balboni Rewrite the Past...in the Future
Belgium tandem Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni take the machinery of the western —...
Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
How Awful About Allen: Tsukamoto Continues Charting Casualties of War
“Ain’t war hell?,” asks the door gunner to Matthew Modine’s protagonist in Stanley Kubrick’s Full...
The City of the Living | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Autopsy Audit: Gabbriellini Examines the Choices Before the Mistakes
Those left behind to pick up the pieces are rarely the center of film dramas —...
A Place To Heal (15/18) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Teenage Wasteland: Kahn Gets Clinical with Familiar Procedural
Picture this: A bustling medical ward in a top performing French facility with specialized treatment protocols where...
House of the Wind (La maison du vent) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
If You Build It, They Won't Come: Yanghu Offers Alternate Version to Home Improvement
Working through migration, isolation and the complicated meaning of home, Auguste...
Wild Horse Nine | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
They Shoot Agents, Don’t They?: McDonagh Morosely Reflects a Pernicious Empire
Americans can’t quite seem to directly engage with their ills of the present by...
Bucking Fastard | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Sisters Doing It For Themselves: Herzog Returns with Theater of the Bizarre
Until quite recently, it was a foregone conclusion legendary director Werner Herzog would...
Ink | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
The Sun Also Rises: Boyle Explores the Origins of Media Sensationalism
If, as Alan Moore posits, “It is the job of the artists to give...
The Girl with the Leica | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review
Coupins D’abord: Marazzi Documents Love in Times of Capa
Dually exploring the construction of an image and of a brand, the story of Gerda Taro...
How to Divorce During the War | Review
Invisible Missiles: Blaževičius Offers Chilly Portrayal of a Couple & Country in Crisis
Given its title, Andrius Blaževičius’ third outing, How to Divorce During the...
Her Private Hell | Review
What Have They Done to Your Daughters?: Refn Returns with Vacuous Vengeance
After disappearing into television for the past decade, Nicolas Winding Refn once again...
Sheep in the Box | Review
I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK: Koreeda Explores Cruise Control with AI
Somehow, despite being set in the ‘not too distant future,’ Hirokzau Kore-eda’s twee...
A Sad and Beautiful World | Review
No Man is an Island: Aris Explores Childhood, Couplehood and Parenthood with Flip Book Speeds
Lebanese filmmaker Cyril Aris utilizes the three distinct yet related...
Rosebush Pruning | Review
The Killing of a Sacred Dogtooth: Ainouz Paints with Contempt
Karim Aïnouz doesn’t so much eat the rich as he does regurgitate them in his...
Black Money for White Nights | 2026 Karlovy Vary Film Festival Review
Steal Big, Steal Little: Grozeva & Valchanov Deliver Just Deserts
It’s difficult not to feel a sense of schadenfreude in following the drastic downfall of...
The Guest | 2026 Karlovy Vary Film Festival Review
You’ll (Dis)Like My Mother: Mengel Mars a Celebration
With his directorial debut The Guest, director Mads Mengel seems to have turned to the manifesto of...
A Happy Family | 2026 Karlovy Vary Film Festival Review
She’s Come Undone: Mack Concocts an Empathetic Chaos
It’s clear from the opening moments of Jan-Eric Mack’s narrative debut A Happy Family the title is...
Chica Checa | 2026 Karlovy Vary Film Festival Review
The Next Best Thing: Holy Hits the Sweet Spot with Tender Drama
There’s a short list of feature length queer films in Czech cinema, and...
Two Prosecutors | Review
Ordeal by Innocence: Loznitsa Mines the Terrors of Naïveté
A good man is hard to find, and if one were to be found, he’s likely...
The Most Precious Of Cargoes | Review
The Zone of Disinterest: Hazanavicius Reanimates the Holocaust in Moral Fable
What’s most interesting about director Michel Hazanavicius are his valiant attempts at dabbling in...
Romería | Review
Blood Relatives: Simon Treads Familiar Water with Continued Autofiction
After winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for her 2022 sophomore film Alcarras,...
La petite dernière (The Little Sister) | Review
The Lost Daughter: Herzi Passes Up Potency in Standard Adaptation
“My name is Fatima,” is one of the constant refrains utilized in Fatima Daas’ celebrated...
Renoir | Review
Family of Straw: Hayakawa Paints Busy Coming-of-Age Portrait
Going in the opposite direction of her 2022 debut Plan 75, a sci-fi meditation on Japan’s aging...
The Wizard of the Kremlin | Review
The Russians Are Killing the Russians Are Killing: Assayas Bungles Political Espionage
Of the many significant issues severely hobbling The Wizard of the Kremlin, the...
The Birthday Party (Histoires de la nuit) | 2026 Cannes Film Festival Review
Bird on a Wire: The Past Haunts the Present in Mysius’ Thriller
For her third feature film, Histoires de la nuit (aka The Birthday Party),...
Coward | 2026 Cannes Film Festival Review
Bent Knee, Limp Wrist: Dhont Explores Love at the Frontline
“We have so much to say and we shall never say it,” is one of...
A Man of His Time (Notre salut) | 2026 Cannes Film Festival Review
Lost Illusions: Marre Administers Plodding Portrait of an Opportunist
“There’s nothing worse than being bored with a boring man,” according to French writer Antoine Laurain....
Titanic Ocean | 2026 Cannes Film Festival Review
Deep Sea, Baby: Kotzamani Goes Down Where It’s Wetter
Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani heads to Japan for her directorial debut, Titanic Ocean, its fanciful title...
