“I don’t give a shit about politics or elections” screams Yeon-hong (Son Ye-jin) at her husband, Jong-chan (Kim Joo-hyuk), near the halfway point of The…
“Life is others” writes the central character of The Long Excuse, Sachio (Masahiro Motoki), near the end of the film. And How Sachio goes from…
In Blood of Youth, a convoluted tale of revenge by Chinese director Yang Shupeng, a young man (Yan Haoqi) suffers a traumatic injury defending…
Reconfiguring a classic pinku film as a somewhat more tasteful modern-day indie melodrama seems like a terrible idea, and guess what, it is. Kazuya…
A fanciful period piece set just after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Chen Yu-Hsun’s The Village of No Return may have an ominous sounding…
“I hope we’ll have fun and party, that’s why I’m here!” This is what Lilly (Laure Calamy) tells an excited crowd of French retreaters in…
Ala Eddine Slim’s The Last of Us is the type of film that’s inevitably described as “spare,” “rigorous,” and “conceptually bold.” Unfolding over a distended…
If there’s one noticeable (and troubling) trend in this year’s ND/NF , it’s a pointless rigor exerted in an effort to appear more “serious.” Case in point,…
With Maliglitut, which literally translates to “the followers,” director Zacharius Kunuk embarks on an approximate remake of John Ford’s The Searchers, relocating the action…
Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman and Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation navigate similar thematic territory—that of patriarchs finding their ethical boundaries pushed when their self-perceived altruistic defense of family becomes…
When her son is killed in Nagasaki by the atomic bomb that ended World War II, Nobuko (Sayuri Yoshinaga), an elderly midwife faces life…
The most bluntly political of Japanese filmmakers, Masao Adachi returns to a comfortable controversy with his latest, The Artist of Fasting. Loosely based on a…
Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s filmography represents various generations’ desires for individual expression in a repressed Japanese society. His 1993 debut, A Touch of Fever, follows two…
Sourcing material from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr certainly lends Yoshifumi Tsubota’s second film a certain pedigree—and indeed, The Shell Collector looks as if it…
Kako: My Sullen Past is a film that tells you life is boring. Even with the numerous odd events taking place, our titular character (Fumi…
Set in low-income housing and offering glimpses into the hardships of the working class—the central couple’s son was killed by an overworked truck driver—Junji…
“Filmmaking is a battle we can’t lose,” says a possible investor to director Tetsuo (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) in Lowlife Love. If that’s the case, then…
A film about the love affair between an anthropomorphized goldfish (Fumi Nikaidô) and an aging writer (Ren Ôshugi), Gakuryû Ishii’s Bitter Honey is less…