Review: “The Voice of Hind Rajab”

It’s difficult to rate a film that dramatizes a real life event that is so recent and raw, and the product of a conflict that is still ongoing. It’s also difficult to deny the daring nature and beating heart of The Voice of Hind Rajab, which opens with the following title card: “The film is […]

Review: “Hamnet”

Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet opens with a quote from a 2004 article by Stephen Greenblatt titled “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet”: “Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.” It’s a plain, matter-of-fact statement, not the sort of […]

Review: “Die My Love”

Die My Love opens on an unexpected scene of stillness: a static camera trained on the interior of a rural Montana home, quietly observing the two people maneuvering around inside it: Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson), who inherited the dilapidated house from his uncle, who committed suicide there. Perhaps that doesn’t […]

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: “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)”

An anthology movie that drifts by with the laziness of a summer day on the lake where it is set, writer and director Sierra Falconer’s debut feature never builds to a profound crescendo, but it’s accomplished in style and substance all the same. A loosely autobiographical series of stories set around the Michigan lake near […]

Review: “The Mastermind”

He looks at the art, but he isn’t really looking at it. As he slowly slopes around the museum galleries, one of his young sons chattering animatedly in the otherwise silent place as the guard snoozes in his chair nearby, it’s clear from his furtive glances that he’s searching for something. Eventually, he sets his […]

TIFF 2025: “Aki”

You won’t hear a word of spoken dialogue in Darlene Naponse’s Aki, an observational documentary depicting life in the indigenous Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory of Northern Ontario. But the movie is far from silent. Naponse— a native of the region— uses her connection with the community to craft a sonically and visually rich story of the […]

TIFF 2025: “Ghost School”

At the start of Seemab Gul’s debut feature film Ghost School (Pakistan’s sole entry in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival), curious 10-year-old Rabia (Nazualiya Arsalan), backpack slung over her shoulders, sets off for school like any other day. But what awaits her there is a far from average sight: a guard standing outside the […]

Venice 2025: “Made in EU,” “Silent Rebellion,” “Songs of Forgotten Trees,” “Divine Comedy”

I’ve reached the end of my time covering the Venice Film Festival (and sitting on the beach on the Lido), my first visit not only to that event, but to Italy. As exciting as it is to experience the big, buzzy premieres at the kickoff to awards season, I tend to find discovering movies in […]

Venice 2025: “Ghost Elephants,” “Nuestra Tierra,” “Cover-Up”

In this dispatch from the Venice Film Festival, I’m looking at three terrific documentaries from established auteurs that premiered out-of-competition at the fest: Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants (which the director received a lifetime achievement award in conjunction with), Lucretia Martel’s Nuestra Tierra, and Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’ Cover-Up. On a remote plateau in the […]