Film

Love and humour gives way to bitterness and rancour in this slick and involving portrait of an Iranian family in turmoil from Saeed Roustaee. It’s hard to imagine that you could go from loving a person deeply to loathing their guts and wanting them dead within a matter of seconds. Yet that sorry notion sits

Belgium’s Dardenne brothers return with a typically emotive film about a group of very young women dealing with the dramas of childbirth. The opening ceremony of this year’s Cannes Film Festival acknowledged the recent death, at just 43 years of age, of Émilie Dequenne, who won Best Actress for her role as the title character

The second instalment of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s lesbian genre film trilogy manages to just about snag a passing grade. Ethan Coen has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants when it comes to making art. Whether that translates to whatever the hell WE, the audience, want is another matter entirely,

Sebastián Lelio’s musical take on Chile’s MeToo movement is a misjudged gum-smacking mess. There is a delicate threshold separating self-awareness from petulance, and the directors who know how to best thread it understand that saying less often does the most. With The Wave, Sebastián Lelio offers a staunch, loud example of the opposite, crafting a

As her debut receives a UK premiere as part of the BFI’s Black Debutants season, Miami filmmaker Monica Sorelle reflects on the making of Mountains. For the people who live in South Florida, everything seems in flux. Every bit of landscape, every building we cherish, every person we walk by – they all seem to

We speak to the mastermind behind The Phoenician Scheme about family, fathers-in-law, and the great, grand plan of all things Wes Anderson. The Phoenician Scheme marks Wes Anderson’s twelfth feature film, starring Benicio Del Toro as Zsa-zsa Korda, a rich, ruthless businessman who sets out on a complex journey to secure his legacy with his

An art theft spells disaster for Josh O’Connor in Kelly Reichardt’s excellent Vietnam-era heist dramedy. It’s difficult to say what truly motivates James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) to blow up his own life. Frustration, perhaps, with an uninspired suburban existance with his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and their two rambunctious sons Tommy and Carl (Jasper

Bi Gan’s third feature is an epic in every sense of the word, taking viewers on a sprawling odyssey through cinema. Bi Gan’sResurrectionopens with a title card that sets the scene for his third feature: we’re in a future where the secret to eternal life has been discovered. It’s simple – don’t dream! Humans who

Arab and Tarzan Nasser’s thriller transports us to 2007, where two friends running a drug dealing business out of a falafel cart soon come into conflict with a corrupt police officer. As of 2007, the Levantine nation of Palestine had already been under Israeli occupation for exactly forty years. This precise era is where twin

June Squibb plays a spirited nonagenarian who moves back to New York from Florida in Scarlett Johansson’s underwhelmed directorial debut. When 94-year-old Eleanor’s (June Squibb) best friend of 70 years and roommate Bessie (Rita Zohar) passes away, she decides it’s time for a change, and moves back to her native New York. In an attempt

Iranian director Jafar Panahi delivers a Palme-ready thriller exploring the high price of revenge on a potentially evil man. You’d be right to want to exact cold revenge on a person who tortured you and planted nightmare imagery of death and suffering in your mind for life. Yet would you go so far as to

Russian exile filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov selects Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death“ as the subject of the first film made in his new home, Germany. Kirill Serebrennikov had a film in competition for the Palme d’Or at three of the first four Cannes Film Festivals post-COVID, a period immediately following his unjust conviction, in his native Russia,

Two musicians set out to record the folk songs of rural America in Oliver Hermanus’ restrained but affecting drama. When Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal) and David White (Josh O’Connor) meet over the top of a piano in a Boston college bar, the spark between them is instant. One is a talented vocal student, the other

Renate Reinsve plays an actress struggling with the sudden return of her estranged father in Joachim Trier’s latest drama. Nothing brings a family together like a funeral, and at the wake for Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes’ (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) mother, their estranged father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) strolls through the door as though nothing has

A brilliant young academic struggles to come to terms with the aftermath of a sexual assault in Eva Victor’s moving dramedy. Something very bad happened to Agnes. It’s hinted at in the first segment ofSorry, Baby, when her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) arrives for a visit, and asks Agnes (Eva Victor) if she feels

Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis deliver a spirited western ballad about a young woman seeking freedom and her daring lover. Opening with a tattered journal, damaged by water and fire and containing the writings of an unknown hand, Heads or Tails? will be “quite a story,” as promised in the opening voiceover narration

This semiautobiographical drama from Golden Bear-winner Carla Simón makes for a heartfelt exploration on the joys and pains of extended family. In her Golden Bear-winning Alcarrás, Carla Simón meets a family standing on the brink of a monumental life change, chronicling the minutia of their lives as it begins to morph into something foreign. In

A young J-pop singer must choose between love and stardom in Koji Fukada’s gentle romantic drama. It’s no secret that the young stars of Japanese pop music are held to extremely high standards, both by fans and their labels. The members of upcoming J-pop band Happy Fanfare are acutely aware of what is expected of

Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys navigate parental fears in Babak Anvari’s gripping yet shaky psychological thriller. Dread is a constant in this Babak Anvari directed chamber piece mostly set inside a car on a late night journey. Hallow Road is written by William Gillies and stars Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as parents who are

A phenomenal and unique portrait of a group of thrill-seeking ravers entering into a spiritual abyss in this extraordinary new film by Oliver Laxe. Euphoria and devastation are the twin emotional poles that prop up the lopsided big top that is Oliver Laxe’ Sirât, a film about life, death, and music that’s not made for