Review: “The History of Concrete”

A man whose job is to blast pieces of gum off of sidewalks. A neighborhood who cares for a small fish pond on their block. A business that preserves dead people’s tattoos. A group of spiritualists who spend 52 days out running a 3,100 mile race in a loop around one city block in Queens. […]

SSIFF 2026: “Will You Still Be My Friend,” “Cute”

These two dramas premiering in this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival‘s New Directors category both tackle relationships, albeit in very different shades: Lu Po-Shun’s Will You Still Be My Friend, a safe but tender portrayal of adolescent male friendship crumbling under outside influence, and Marlene Emilie Lyngstad’s bold and controversial Cute, which deals both […]

SSIFF 2026: “Sants,” “Border”

This is the first year I’ve dipped my toes into the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the long-standing event on the Spanish coast that’s celebrating its 74th edition this year. I can’t say that I’m surprised that the films I’ve watched thus far have made bold swings in both content and form, with mixed results. […]

TIFF 2026: “IDDA,” “The World Before”

Premiering in the Platform section at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, these two films tackle women growing up and confronting their changing feelings, whether it’s a contentious friendship in Irene Dionisio’s Italian drama IDDA, or a young girl’s newfound romantic yearnings for her childhood friend in Yoon Dan-bi’s Korean drama The World Before. While […]

TIFF 2026: “Head to Head,” “Salvation”

These two films, blending drama with shades of black comedy, premiering in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival‘s Discovery section tackle current trends, with varying degrees of success: Ghasideh Golmakani’s self-reflexive film about filmmaking and the oppressive restrictions imposed on women in Iran, Head to Head, and Tom Nicoll’s anxiety-inducing study of the dark side […]

TIFF 2026: “Children Untold”

Miwa Nishikawa’s riveting historical drama Children Untold stems from rather unique origins: the story for the writer and director’s feature film is derived from her own, as yet unpublished, novel, inspired in turn by research and archival testimony she began gathering while working on her 2020 movie Under the Open Sky, whose protagonist was modeled […]

TIFF 2026: “Ah Girl,” “Memories of a Forest,” “Nosotros”

The burden of expectations- those of family, culture, and society- permeate these three films screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, tackling the topic in very different stories across different continents. All first features, Katharina Rahl’s Memories of a Forest and Joaquín Ruano’s Nosotros, make their international and world premieres, respectively, in the festival’s […]

Venice 2026: “Lovers in the Blue Night,” “What Belongs to Others”

The Venice Film Festival‘s Orizzonti section- which typically spotlights new voices in international cinema- has been particularly exciting this year (the delightfully quirky Diane in the Loop, which I also recently reviewed, just won the category’s prize for best film). Loneliness, whether in love or family or community, has been a common theme I’ve picked […]

Venice 2026: “One Minute to Midnight”

Sometime around Léo’s (Melvil Poupaud) third encounter with a different woman in Nicolas Pariser’s One Minute to Midnight, I asked myself a desperate question: Why should I care about this man? The French drama, premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival, abandons a plotty narrative in favor of the walking-and-talking structure that can be […]

Venice 2026: “No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman”

At the end of writer and director Halkawt Mustafa’s propulsive war thriller No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman, Vyan (Avan Jamal), the Kurdish sniper whose harrowing journey to save her sister forms the backbone of the film, states that “Only when we face death do we understand the value of life.” It’s […]