True/False 2025: “Seeds,” “Deaf President Now!,” “The Track”

Inspiring stories make great fodder for documentaries, and such is the case with the following three films that screened at the 2025 True/False Film Festival: Seeds, a gorgeous and moving portrait of Black farmers in the American South, and Deaf President Now!, a rousing tale of student protest told through a bounty of archival footage, […]

True/False 2025: “The Wolves Always Come at Night,” “The Silence of My Hands,” “Make It Look Real”

Image are an integral part of any movie, but particularly the following three films that screened at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri this past week. The Wolves Always Come at Night blends documentary with fiction to craft a haunting and contemplative portrait of a Mongolian family’s past and present lives. The Silence of […]

True/False 2025: “Wishing on a Star”

It’s like something out of a fairytale: the tall tower of a rustic Italian castle framed against a sunny sky. Suddenly, a chair flies out of an open window, crashing to the ground below. Other objects follow: more chairs, and other bits of furniture and knickknacks. Accented by a breezy, horn-driven score, this opening sequence […]

True/False 2025: “Writing Hawa,” “Requiem for a Tribe,” “A Want in Her”

Among the many reasons why the True/False Film Festival, Columbia, Missouri’s annual celebration of the documentary form, is my favorite festival to attend is that it highlights fresh (and frequently side-lined) perspectives. The three films I’ve written about below— Writing Hawa, Requiem for a Tribe, and A Want in Her— all swirl around topics of […]

True/False 2025: “How Deep is Your Love”

It’s funny that so many people are fascinated— perhaps even obsessed— with the notion of looking to the stars to locate life beyond Earth, when 70 percent of our planet is covered with water, the majority of which remains untouched and unseen by humans. That may not be the case for long, however: the alien-like […]

True/False 2025: “Valentina and the MUOSters”

Valentina is adrift. Nearing 27 years old, she still lives with her parents in her hometown of Niscemi, Sicily, a place whose natural landscape is slowly deteriorating thanks to wildfires that ravage the forests, and MUOS (Mobile User Objective Systems) that dot the landscape. The satellites, part of an American base and— as cuts to […]

True/False 2025: “River of Grass”

“I remember nature always creeping in.” Those words, spoken by writer and director Sasha Wortzel in her debut documentary feature River of Grass in reference to how growing up in Florida, the natural world existed in tandem with the human one— she speaks of finding tree frogs in the toilet, opossums in the yard— immediately […]

Review: “The Room Next Door”

A red door, whose eventual closure will mark a turning point in the lives and relationship between Martha (Tilda Swinton) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore), is just one of many simple yet strong visual markers placed throughout director Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door. Martha is dying of cancer and— unwilling to spend the rest of […]

Review: “Emilia Pérez”

Jacques Audiard has been directing movies for 30 years, often playing with genre— from the crime picture A Prophet to the romantic drama Rust and Bone to the western The Sisters Brothers— but I wish I could be more impressed by the supreme confidence with which he pulls off his most audacious feature to date, […]

Fantastic Fest Review: “The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee”

“On the seventh of June in the year 2015 I passed away at the age of 93. By then I had become quite accustomed to dying.” Christopher Lee rises from the grave to narrate a documentary about his own life in Jon Spira’s The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee. That statement, uttered at the […]