International: Middle East
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT Review: Darkly Comic Social, Moral Examination
Jafar Panahi's new film.
Playback: Jafar Panahi, Cinema Under Pressure, from THE WHITE BALLOON to IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
Jafar Panahi makes films under immense pressure. The Iranian filmmaker's conditions of censorship and surveillance have become the grammar of his storytelling. Out of those limits, he's built one of the most radical bodies of work, where love for one's...
Toronto 2025 Review: UNIDENTIFIED, Justice Is Not Easy to Find
True crime might be the cornerstone of the podcast industry, or so it would seem by the number of people who engaged in amateur detecting. Murder is an intriguing (and obviously horrific) crime; perhaps it's not surprising that an unintended...
Locarno 2025 Interview: IRKALLA: GILGAMESH'S DREAM Director Mohamed Al-Daradji on Casting Real Orphans, Filming Amidst Baghdad's Unrest
Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji reflects on the wounds that shape his cinema, the ethical complexities of working with traumatized children, and the quiet defiance of making films in a country where storytelling can still be an act of survival.
CAIRO STATION Blu-ray Review: An Egyptian Classic Gets the Proper Treatment
It's impossible for any one film to complete define a particular country at a specific moment in time. Countries and cultures are too vast, too multiple, too varied to be quantified in 90 minutes. But a film can capture a...
Locarno 2025 Review: IRKALLA: GILGAMESH'S DREAM Confronts Iraq's Haunted Present Through Myth, Memory and Children as Collateral Damage
Director Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji constructs a fragmented, myth-infused portrait of post-ISIS Baghdad, where the traumas of a lost generation unfold through the eyes of a silent child wandering between memory, violence, and ancient legend.
Karlovy Vary 2025 Review: IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT Takes Justice for a Ride
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi delivers a political revenge thriller infused with absurdist comedy in his latest work, using the framework of post-authoritarian reckoning to examine the moral ambiguities of justice, memory, and collective trauma.
Criterion in August 2025: FIRES ON THE PLAIN, THE BURMESE HARP, CAIRO STATION Lead Summer Sizzlers
Plus: Vittorio De Sica's 'Shoeshine,' Edward Yang's 'A Confucian Confusion' and 'Mahjong,' Zeinabu irene Davis's 's 'Compensation,' and Alice Wu's 'Saving Face.'
THE WIND WILL CARRY US Blu-ray Review: Poetry in the Hillsides, Cows Underground
A man from the city comes to a rural village. His real reasons for being there, he keeps to himself, while keeping up a friendly yet elusive story to the locals. They, too, are friendly yet elusive. Among misses connections,...
Berlinale 2025 Review: 1001 FRAMES Exposes Power, Performance, and Control
Mehrnoush Alia's audition thriller examines the blurred boundaries between artistic authority and coercion in an Iranian take on a casting couch.
Berlinale 2025 Review: CONFIDANTE, Power and Morality Collide in Chamber Thriller
Çağla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti craft a restrained chamber thriller, merging socio-political inquiry with genre filmmaking to explore agency, entrapment, and power dynamics within the confines of an erotic call center in late-1990s Turkey.
Rotterdam Video Interview: ME, MARYAM, THE CHILDREN AND 26 OTHERS Blurs Boundaries Between Fiction And Reality
What happens when the boundaries between fiction and reality blur, not only on screen, but also during filmmaking itself? In Fiction & Reality – Vice Versa, journalist and filmmaker Ronald Glasbergen sits down with Iranian director Farshad Hashemi, actress and...
Criterion: KILLER OF SHEEP Headlines May 2025 Releases
Plus: 'Withnail and I,' 'How to Get Ahead in Advertising,' 'The Wind Will Carry Us,' 'The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers,' and in 4K: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,' 'In the Heat of the Night.'
TWO CUCKOLDS GO SWIMMING, UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, and More at the Inaugural Edition of Montreal Critics Week
A new film festival is always cause for celebration, and in winter in Montreal, I and other cinephiles looking for a reason to get out of the house. It's long overdue that this city have a critics week, and we're...
European Film Awards 2024: Mohammad Rasoulof on THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, Political Cinema, Censorship, and Artistic Resilience
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig has received international recognition, while its production and release have highlighted the challenges faced by its director, cast, and crew amid political and social pressures in Iran.
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG Review: Bold and Decidedly Unsubtle
Mohammad Rasoulof's film 'grapples with mistrust and paranoia' in Iran.
New York 2024 Review: THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, Striking Tale of Violence and Moral Compromises
Iman (Misagh Zare) has just gotten the much-desired promotion, but asks his family to keep quiet about his new job: he is now an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. So, while the very real protests against the...
New York 2024 Review: NO OTHER LAND Chronicles Living Under Occupation
The suffering of people in this film is staggering, but so is their resilience.
Venice 2024 Review: THE WITNESS Sees a Family Drama Become Political in Iranian Minimalist Thriller
Iranian filmmaker Nader Saeivar crafts a quietly intense narrative that intertwines personal and political conflicts, offering an exploration of power, repression, and resistance within the framework of contemporary Iranian society.
Amman 2024: Prizes For Moroccan Gangster Drama HOUNDS, Lebanese Q, Jordan - Armenian MY SWEET LAND and Jordanian OUR MALES AND FEMALES
The closing awards ceremony of the fifth edition of the Amman International Film Festival – Awal Film were held on the 11th of juli at the Royal Film Commission – Jordan, one of the most scenic movie theatres in the...
