Sinhalese filmmaker Rajee Samarasinghe has been making exquisite short films for the past several years, works that hold out the suggestion of narrative meaning but…
In her fifth feature film, Turkish director Pelin Esmer adopts a self-reflexive approach to storytelling. While the attempt is admirable and occasionally intriguing, And the…
This time last year, few would have expected that we’d spend the end of 2024 relitigating Robbie Williams. But the release of Better Man has…
Six years ago, Mike Leigh produced his first war film, Peterloo, in which domestic unrest in 1819 led British troops to slaughter protesting civilians. At…
The Girl with the Needle, the third feature film by Swedish director Magnus von Horn, wastes no time in announcing to the viewer that it…
Andrea Arnold is not without talent, but she has some of the worst instincts of any allegedly major director. Take Fish Tank, for example. Not…
While the experimental “sidebar” screenings at larger film festivals receive more than their share of critical attention, they only have so many slots to program.…
The Gloria of your Imagination, the new experimental feature from Jennifer Reeves, arrives at a moment when the future of women’s autonomy is an open…
Before making her feature film debut with 2019’s Atlantics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop produced a series of poetic short films, all of which explored a…
The new documentary from Brett Story (The Hottest August) and Stephen T. Maing (Crime + Punishment) is an imperfect film, in that it often raises…
Since his out-of-nowhere debut feature Tales from the Gimli Hospital in 1988, Winnipeg-based director Guy Maddin has become synonymous with a very particular brand of…
In a way, it’s odd that Coppola decided that The Cotton Club required a concluding fantasy sequence. Yes, as a movie musical, The Cotton Club…
Who’s a Fredo? The Godfather Part II Against the New Right 1. In what amounts to the coda of The Godfather Part II, the final…
Until 2019, the Toronto International Film Festival had a section called Masters. As you might assume, it was a space for major filmmakers with significant…
With four features and twice as many short films under his belt, writer-director Kazik Radwanski has become one of the leading lights of Canadian cinema.…
Because of the sheer breadth of work on display — 10 programs, with an average of seven or eight films per program — the annual…
Director Christoph Hochhäusler arrived on the international scene in the early aughts, as the film world began discovering a plethora of unique, formally inventive movies…
British filmmaker Ben Rivers is competing in the 2024 Locarno Film Festival with his newest film, Bogancloch. It is Rivers’ second feature about Jake Williams,…
For a certain type of documentary, intimate access to one’s subject is a double-edged sword. Leila Amini’s debut film is a close look at her…
There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of André Forcier, the writer-director of the new comedy Ababooned. But he is actually one of the grand…
Anyone who follows any artform closely — in this case, cinema, but it’s equally true for music, painting, sculpture, literature, what have you — knows…