In Sentimental Value, there’s a scene where the veteran filmmaker Gustav Borg, played by Stellan Skarsgård, explains to his newly discovered lead actress, Rachel Kemp,…
Despite its almost apologetic title, the latest feature from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi bears a highly incendiary load. Not quite a call to arms against…
The Plant from the Canaries The canary, a songbird of the finch family, occupies an eminent place in avian symbolism, not least for its melodious…
Isolationism breeds a variety of affects that spur those involved toward indelibly discrete action. In many, Sho Miyake’s latest, Two Seasons, Two Strangers, courses the…
Aquatic and crispy shades of green, ochre, and blue dominate Park Sye-young’s apocalyptic The Fin. The title serves a double-entendre, referring not only to the…
The canary, a songbird of the finch family, occupies an eminent place in avian symbolism, not least for its melodious birdsong, which in turn underscores…
Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light (2007) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, where it won the Jury Prize, and has since remained one of…
The Dead of Winter The cold is often a conduit for ardent symbolism, whether in the frozen recesses of repressed memories or in the merciless…
The cold is often a conduit for ardent symbolism, whether in the frozen recesses of repressed memories or in the merciless invocation of human hubris…
Unlike the big three international film festivals (Cannes, Venice, and Berlin), Locarno does not traditionally feel an obligation to elevate domestic product into its competition.…
Tamara Stepanyan’s film In the Land of Arto begins with a service interruption that functions as a metaphor. Céline (Camille Cottin) is traveling by train…
Jérôme Reybaud’s concise, lacerating film A Balcony in Limoges appears at first to be an odd-couple comedy, albeit with unresolved psychological trouble churning under the…
Delicately unfurling as an introductory vocabulary lesson, one informed by the portraiture at the film’s core — that of the formidable Thi Hau Cao, a…
In the late 1950s, Brazilian footballer Didi introduced a new technique for kicking the ball, the so called “dry leaf.” Much like a leaf falling…
Dry Leaf Seeking to reduce a filmmaker’s chief thematic preoccupation is usually a waste of time, for any one worth their stuff works in a…
Seeking to reduce a filmmaker’s chief thematic preoccupation is usually a waste of time, for any one worth their stuff works in a storm of…
The decadent luxury and moral rot of extreme wealth; a location as isolated as it is idyllic; lithe young bodies glistening in sunlight; the churning…
In her first feature-length, solo directorial outing, Maureen Fazendeiro poses one of the most fundamental cinematic questions: how can we depict time? In 2021’s The…
Credit where it’s due: Dane Komljen is one uncompromising director. After his debut feature, 2016’s All the Cities of the North, enjoyed widespread acclaim from…
Blue Heron Sophy Romvari has used cinema to mine the fractured, seemingly incomplete nature of her family history since her first short film, Nine Behind.…
If the end of the world left the children in charge, what kind of future might they build? This question simmers underneath a surface of…