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 […]

Venice 2026: “Diane in the Loop”

Harnessing the traditionally masculine language of westerns and applying it to a fierce and funny tale of feminine rage and reckoning, writer/director duo Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s third feature Diane in the Loop opens with an image that feels immediately iconic: the back of their protagonist, Diane’s (Ninon Borsei), head as she dons a […]

Venice 2026: “House of the Wind”

“You know, children bring a house to life.” Josette (Josette Kwanya) utters those words to her son Benoît on one of their many Zoom calls, the only method by which she ever sees or speaks to her adult children, who long since left their native Cameroon in search of better opportunities in Western countries. House […]

KVIFF 2026: “Robert Richardson: The White Devil,” “The Hanging of Stuart Cornfeld”

I generally enter biographical documentaries— especially ones centered on Hollywood figures— with arms crossed and an eyebrow raised, but I thought both of the industry docs I watched at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this week, programmed as part of the festival’s Special Screenings sections— Robert Richardson: The White Devil (the thrice Academy Award-winning […]

KVIFF 2026: “The Guest,” “Lover, Not a Fighter,” “Incinerator”

This year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival concluded with numerous worthy films being awarded, from directing honors for the cringe-inducing family drama The Guest in the Crystal Globe Competition, to recognition for two very different coming-of-age stories in the festival’s Proxima competition: the appealing comedy Lover, Not a Fighter and the mysterious and mesmeric Incinerator. […]

KVIFF 2026: “Only Beautiful Things to Look At”

In communist Czechoslovakia, the state encroached on its citizens’ lives in the most horrifying way imaginable: coerced sterilizations and abortion control was exerted over thousands of women, particularly Romani women. Abortions would only be approved after the women laid bare the intimate details of their lives and relationships before a committee, while other women were […]

KVIFF 2026: “Tycoon,” “Five Years, Four Months,” “Against Nature”

This year marks my first time attending the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and I’ve been amazed not only by the beauty of the Czech spa town where it takes place, but the diversity of its programming, which has been exciting to experience whether I’ve gelled with a film or not. The three films reviewed […]

KVIFF 2026: “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has just settled into her room in a sleepy hotel in a rural town, bordering a forest that’s blanketed with snow. If that remote environment sounds rather too quaint for a seemingly savvy young person, know that this trip isn’t purely for pleasure. At 29 years old, Kris is a Sundance wunderkind […]