True/False 2026: “A Place of Absence”

Halfway through her lyrical documentary A Place of Absence, director Marialuisa Ernst claims that ambiguous loss is the worst kind of suffering. The void your missing loved one leaves behind weighs you down. It’s a weight that only becomes heavier by the lack of answers or closure. But it’s the admirable women who push through […]

True/False 2026: “Landscapes of Memory”

Leah Galant’s slippery and sobering documentary Landscapes of Memory begins with two things: her father, and her pending move to Germany, where she intends to study Holocaust memory. Her dad, Allen, is the primary keeper of their family’s history; his parents— Galant’s grandparents— were Holocaust survivors, and few physical documents of their past remain. The […]

True/False 2026: “Who Moves America”

The title of Who Moves America, Yael Bridges’ galvanizing crowd-pleaser, poses the film’s central thesis statement with succinct clarity: that the world runs on the labor of the most underpaid and undervalued workers, whose inability to walk away from a consistent, decently paying job— regardless of the long hours and inhumane working conditions— keeps them […]

True/False 2026: “The Queen and the Smokehouse”

Łeba, the seaside resort town situated in northern Poland, is known for its verdant landscapes and sunny beaches, which attract 80,000 tourists every summer. Only around 1500 residents remain in the off-season, however. They’re the folks who run the many attractions that crowd the shoreline: the mock pirate ship that transports visitors back and forth, […]

True/False 2026: “How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps”

It’s like something out of a fairy tale: in 1998, in search of better opportunities, Beatriz Valencia immigrated to the United States from her home country of Colombia. She took on a job as a domestic worker in Florida, cleaning the absurdly spacious homes of the wealthy, sending most of her income to her husband […]

Review: “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert”

There are few greater pleasures in life than watching Elvis Presley when he’s completely in the zone. And while the singer’s earlier career appearances in Hollywood musicals, concert specials, and TV shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show certainly capture the seductive charisma and animalistic physicality that sent teenagers’ hearts thumping and older folks’ moral […]

Review: “WTO/99”

Astonishing, incendiary, and eerily prescient, Ian Bell’s documentary WTO/99 may depict one single event in American history, but does so in manner that reveals the ripple effects that globalization and anti-environmental, anti-labor practices— far from mainstream, hot button issues at the brink of the new millennium— have had on our current climate, economic, and human […]

Review: “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk”

Sepideh Farsi couldn’t enter Gaza. From Cairo, where she traveled in the hopes of crossing the Egypt/Palestine border to document the ongoing war in Gaza, an Israeli-imposed blockade obstructed all paths. But while speaking to Palestinian refugees in Cairo, Farsi met a man who suggested that she speak to Fatma (Fatem to those close to […]

Review: “Percy Green: Man of ACTION”

I’m not from St. Louis, but I’ve lived here long enough that it feels egregious that I’d never heard of activist Percy Green before. And I wonder how many other St. Louisans possess that same gap in their knowledge of local history. It’s a hole that director Joseph Puleo seeks to fill with his documentary […]

Review: “Trains”

Trains opens with a quote by Franz Kafka: “There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope…but not for us.” Those are characteristically bitter words from the Jewish Czech writer, attributed to a conversation between Kafka and his writer friend Max Bond when the latter asked the former his thoughts on hope outside the […]