The very best instances of allegory are those that allow themselves to be completely ignored. Too often, an artist only pretends to be interested in…
Toward the beginning of Too Many Beasts, aging farmer Raoul Brun (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) intentionally runs over several large boars, packs their bodies in the trunk…
Long before Russia commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the winter of 2022, preeminent cineast Andrey Zvyagintsev already saw dark clouds gathering over his…
Sometimes the first shot of a film tells you enough to know you’re in the hands of a great director. Arthur Harari’s The Unknown —…
Karim Lakzadeh seems to be someone who takes his competition titles very seriously. His latest film, Living Twice, Dying Thrice (LTDT from now on), premiering…
Out of the diamond-blue depths of the night sky over southern France, Jean Moulin parachutes down. By the time the film opens in 1943, the…
While possessing the backdrop and aesthetics of a social realist drama, the narrative foundation of writer-director Pierre Le Gall’s debut feature Flesh and Fuel takes…
Surely critics will be quick to note that The Beloved (El ser querido) strongly recalls last year’s Sentimental Value, as Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s seventh feature film…
In The Diary of a Chambermaid, Radu Jude returns to one of his favorite subjects: Europe, as a bad joke. This time, the joke comes…
A great way to insult the Circassian men in Butterfly Jam is to say they’re weak. Even worse is to call them a “pussy.” Somewhat…
Character-driven documentaries place their subjects in a vulnerable position, allowing filmmakers to construct the version of life that will remain attached to them forever. In his…
When Blerta Basholli premiered her debut feature Hive in 2021, it played like a small miracle. The Kosovar Albanian director broke records at Sundance, taking…
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, except for Leos Carax’s bizarro musical Annette (2021), the last decade of the Cannes Film Festival has boasted some…