Berlinale 2026: “Yellow Letters”

At the start of Yellow Letters, Ilker Çatak’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated drama The Teacher’s Lounge, celebrated Turkish actress Derya (Özgü Namal) is taking her bows to thunderous applause, having just completed the opening night performance of a new play penned by her playwright husband Aziz (Tansu Biçer), who waits for her in the wings. […]

Berlinale 2026: “Nina Roza”

It’s been 30 years since Mihail (Galin Stoev) left his home country of Bulgaria behind for Canada, emigrating with his young daughter Roza following the loss of his wife. Now, he’s a Montreal-based art consultant, his validation of new talents prized by curators and collectors. He’s wholly left his Bulgarian roots behind; when the now-adult […]

Berlinale 2026: “Paradise,” “Narciso,” “A Russian Winter”

The Berlinale‘s Panorama sidebar is typically home to the festival’s most daring works in contemporary international cinema, spotlighting both debut filmmakers and established directors. The following films making their world premieres in this year’s Panorama section run the gamut from lyrical character studies to historical dramas to documentaries about global conflicts in the news right […]

Review: “Wuthering Heights” (2026)

The opening titles of Wuthering Heights— writer and director Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel— dance across a black screen, accented by the sound of quick creaking, and a man’s increasingly heavy groans and sighs. It proves to be a moment of black amusement when the final credit cuts away to the […]

Berlinale 2026: “I Understand Your Displeasure”

Do you ever think about who tidies your workplace? Who scrubs the toilets? Who takes out the trash? Most people don’t. It’s a thankless business, but also an extraordinarily cutthroat one, at least as evidenced by director Kilian Armando Friedrich’s debut feature, I Understand Your Displeasure. Heike (Sabine Thalau) is the customer service manager of […]

Review: “By Design”

With a lucidity that’s amusingly reflected in the lyrics of the Gershwin tune that recurs over the course of its runtime— “There’s a saying old, says that love is blind”— writer and director Amanda Kramer tackles the absurdity and tragedy of objectification in her latest feature film, By Design, the way that only a filmmaker […]

Review: “The President’s Cake”

The opening title card of The President’s Cake presents a paradox so absurd, it can only be real: following the start of the Gulf War in 1990, UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq greatly restrict the country’s resources, causing even the most common household staples to become not only expensive, but scarce, for average citizens. And yet […]

Review: “Send Help”

About a third of the way into Sam Raimi’s Send Help, Rachel McAdams’ purportedly meek office drone Linda Liddle stabs the wild boar she’s been tracking to provide food for herself and Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), the obnoxious colleague she’s stranded on a remote island somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand with, in the face, […]

Review: “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”

It’s difficult to watch, and even enjoy, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple without feeling increasingly aware of its, shall we say, apparent lack of need to exist. A direct sequel to last year’s 28 Years Later that forms a bridge to a pending trilogy capper, director Nia DaCosta’s horror thriller pulls together characters from […]

Review: “Dead Man’s Wire”

Dead Man’s Wire is as lean and taut as they come, launching into action with little preamble. And yet, the film opens not with Tony Kiritsis (a live-wire Bill Skarsgård) entering the downtown office of his mortgage broker Richard Hall (Darce Montgomery), who he will very soon be taking hostage, believing that Hall and his […]