Festivals Reviews
Rotterdam 2026 Review: NO HIT WONDER Scores Quite A Few Hits
Crack jokes all you want about the concept of German comedy films, but they exists and are often quite good. Case in point: Florian Dietrich's comedy No Hit Wonder, which played at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this year and...
Berlinale 2026 Review: LIGHT PILLAR Casts a Melancholic Glow on Disconnection
In his animated feature debut, Zao Xu applies a production designer's precision to a near future fable that examines precarious labor, mediated intimacy and the fragile architectures, both physical and digital, that shape contemporary isolation.
Rotterdam 2026 Review: GUNMAN Is One Shot That Hits
Festival people are the best. At the International Film Festival Rotterdam, a filmmaker I met for the first time almost immediately recommended I should watch Cris Tapia Marchiori's thriller Gatillero, released internationally as Gunman, and it turned out to be...
GHOST ELEPHANTS Review: Werner Herzog Reconciles Pragmatism and Poetry in the Angola Highlands
In 1955, Hungarian born Angolan rancher, businessman, and big game hunter, Josef J. Fénykövi, tracked down and killed the largest land animal on record. He was lauded by Sports Illustrated at the time for this sportsman prowess, although Fénykövi...
Berlinale 2026 Review: IN A WHISPER (À VOIX BASSE) Unearths the Queer Stigma in a Tunisian Family and Beyond
Eya Bouteraa, Hiam Abbass, and Salma Baccar form a familial portrait across three generations confronted with an unspoken secret.
Berlinale 2026 Review: FOREST HIGH (FORÊT IVRE), Life in an Alpine Hut
Forest High (orig. Forêt Ivre) takes place almost entirely in and around a hut in the Swiss mountains. Subtitled Three Stories, director Manon Coubia's film follows three volunteers who work there over four seasons. Officially the Refuge d'Ubine des Amis...
Berlinale 2026 Review: A CHILD OF MY OWN (UN HIJO PROPIO), Documentary Reenacts a Kidnapping
Based on a notorious crime in Mexico, A Child of My Own (Orig. Un hijo propio) examines how and why a nurse kidnapped a baby for her own. As she did in The Mole Agent, director Maite Alberdi mixes fact and fiction...
Berlinale 2026 Review: SOUMSOUM, THE NIGHT OF THE STARS, Romanticised Fable for the Tainted Dead in Chad's Immense Desert
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun tells a poetic yet haunting story of life and death driven by female agency.
Berlinale 2026 Review: LALI, Newlyweds Confront Demons in Pakistani Drama
The lavish wedding ceremony keeps hitting snags, especially when future mother-in-law Sohni Ammi (Farazeh Syed) is accidentally shot in the leg during a fireworks celebration. It's just another sign of the bad luck that dogs bride Zeba (Mamya Shajaffar), an...
Berlinale 2026 Review: YELLOW LETTERS, Golden Bear Winner Traces an Artist Couple Caught in Political Turmoil
Özgü Namal and Tansu Biçer star in İlker Çatak's portrait of a pair ensnared in political turmoil in Turkey.
Berlinale 2026 Review: FOUR MINUS THREE, Grief Drama Navigates Loss and Mourning Through Clowning
Valerie Pachner stars, as Austrian filmmaker Adrian Goiginger continues his cycle of true story adaptations with an emotional rollercoaster of a grief drama.
Rotterdam 2026 Review: PELELIU, GUERNICA OF PARADISE
Anime was well represented at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this year. The selection included Hosoda Mamoru's Scarlet (reviewed here), Aoki Yasuhiro's ChaO (reviewed here), and this peculiar one: Kuji Gorō's war drama Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise. Based on a...
Sundance 2026 Review: ROCK SPRINGS Excavates a Forgotten American Atrocity
Vera Miao's horror debut stars Kelly Marie Tran, Benedict Wong, Jimmy O. Yang, Aria Kim, and Fiona Fu in a story that links a grieving Asian American family to the 1885 massacre.
Available Light 2026 Review: CARIBOU COUNTRY (Wədzįh Nəne'), Exemplary Arthouse Activism
There are oh so many, singular, memorable images in Luke Gleeson’s Wədzįh Nəne’ (aka Caribou Country). The film is so beautiful, and meditative in its execution, that it is almost possible to forget that it is a call to action...
Rotterdam 2026 Review: TEKENCHU, THE RITE OF THE NAHUALES, Beware Of The Were-Birds
Mexico has a rich tradition of genre films, both serious and outrageous, and that shouldn't be a surprise because the country has an incredible selection of mythologies and histories to pull inspiration from. Back in 2020, the Mexican director Carlos...
Sundance 2026 Review: UNION COUNTY, Will Poulter Leads Devastating Examination of Opioid Addiction
By one estimate, more than 550,000 people have lost their lives to the opioid epidemic over the first quarter of the 21st century. That number doubles or even triples when it includes those who’ve fallen prey to opioid addiction...
Available Light 2026 Short Film, Short Review: MY KNITTING CIRCLE
Perhaps the most cozy short film on the festival circuit this year, My Knitting Circle puts on the kettle for a cup of tea and surveys the fibrous wares and spinning equipment of Itsy-Bitsy Yarn Store. A small group of...
Sundance 2026 Review: THE GALLERIST, Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega Co-Star in Ambitious Art-World Satire
Art-world satires come (The Square); art-world satires go (Velvet Buzzsaw). Few, if any, art-world satires leave any impression whatsoever beyond the transient or the ephemeral. Writer-director Cathy Yan’s (Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,...
Sundance 2026 Review: HANGING BY A WIRE, Fascinating Documentary Leaves You Wanting More
On the morning of August 22nd, 2023, eight young men, six of them still in school, climbed into a cable car to traverse a valley 900 feet above the remote foothills of Pakistan, a trip the young men took at...
Rotterdam 2026 Review: I SWEAR Is The Ultimate Crowd Favorite
This year's winner of the Audience Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam is I Swear, Kirk Jones' biopic about John Davidson. To say it is a crowdpleaser is an understatement: from hundreds of votes, the film got a mean...
