A former student of Michael Haneke’s, now operating under the Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion banner, Peter Brunner seems primed (and positioned) to be Austria’s next internationally…
For many depressing reasons, it’s not surprising to see a film like The River in competition at Locarno in 2021: it’s helmed by an artist…
Training for riots in blue and red gear, the police force, as depicted in Il Legionario, are made to look like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em…
The Sacred Spirit, Chema García Ibarra’s feature-length debut, asks a weighty and fitting question for these unstable times: Is there an unknown force in the…
Snuck into Locarno’s Histoire(s) du cinéma section (generally reserved for restorations and works explicitly about film history), husband/wife directing duo Riccardo Spinotti and Valentina de…
Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It sounds like the name of a failed American sitcom from the ‘50s, and true to that shape, this comedy/horror hybrid…
Unlike the booming fame and splendor of Tokyo’s Shinjuku and Shibuya districts, sister neighborhood Shimokitazawa is most well-known among the young locals for its trendy…
Ohku Akiko’s Hold Me Back is, like her 2017 film Tremble All You Want, a portrait of a lonely young woman whose inner life manifests…
Last August, fresh from the premiere of time-bending action thriller Tenet, Tom Cruise giddily proclaimed: “Big movie. Big screen. Loved it.” Nolan’s movie may have…
A documentary whose goofy, DIY sensibility matches its endearingly amateur subject matter, Lucy Harvey and Danielle Kummer’s Alien On Stage is the quintessential homegrown hero.…
Emblematic of kitchen-sink realism, Jesse Dvorak’s feature debut is a paradigmatic unfurling of anticipated beats and narrativity. Baby, Don’t Cry, written by and starring Zita…
Shunji Iwai is one of the most reliably adventurous mainstream directors in world cinema today. A quick look at his recent output: After his epic…
1982’s supernatural horror flick The Entity — based on a true story, mind you — concerned a woman who was repeatedly assaulted and raped by…
Following the success of a documentary based on their experiences as addicts, two of the subjects and the director of Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland take…
There’s a rich history of indie filmmakers getting their start with low-budget crime pictures. It’s easy to see why: The genre gives ample opportunities for…
After a mediocre attempt at reviving the jiangshi hopping vampire movie as one half of the directing team behind Vampire Cleanup Department, Hong Kong actor…
Hong Kong director Ann Hui joins several of her most illustrious peers as the subject of a biographical documentary, Keep Rolling. Unlike Hou Hsiao-hsien, Jia…
Despite the fact that Hand Rolled Cigarette (no hyphen) is the directorial debut of Chan Kin-long, it’s a film steeped in the golden age of…
On August 24, 2010, legendary filmmaker, screenwriter, and manga artist, Satoshi Kon passed away unexpectedly at the age of 46, shortly after being diagnosed with…
A stop-motion animated epic over seven years in the making, Junk Head is the work of one obsessively dedicated man, Takahide Hori. An interior decorator…
An astounding six years went into the making of Frank and Zed, writer-director Jesse Blanchard’s magnum opus of friendship and bloodshed. But this is no…