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 […]

Venice 2025: “The Tale of Silyan”

In Macedonia, there’s an ancient folk story about a rural farm boy named Silyan. Sick to devoting his life to strenuous farm work, he decides he wants to leave and go elsewhere, but his father, displeased, casts a spell that turns him into a stork. No longer human, and not accepted by the other storks, […]

Venice 2025: “Mother,” “Hijira,” “Milk Teeth”

The Venice Film Festival may be a beacon for its buzzy premieres and starry red carpets, but there are plenty of other intriguing projects making their world premieres here that could easily be overlooked. The three films I’m highlighting in this dispatch involve crisis of family and faith: Mother and Milk Teeth, which both premiered […]

Venice 2025: “Calle Malaga”

There’s a stigma around growing old, isn’t there? A perception that the elderly lack purpose in the absence of a job, lack their full cognitive abilities, lack physicality, lack sensuality. It’s such ageist notions that writer/director Maryam Touzani’s Calle Malaga— both a warm hug and a sorrowful reflection on the passing of time— seeks to […]

Venice 2025: “The Kidnapping of Arabella”

The Kidnapping of Arabella isn’t about a kidnapping— at least, not in the usual sense. For one, the parties involved have their roles reversed. Arabella (Lucrezia Guglielmino, a great find with her crooked smile and discerning squint), the little girl who’s supposedly captured, not only willingly goes with her captor— she begs her to take […]

Review: “Sorry, Baby”

A few weeks ago, while rummaging around a cabinet in my office in search of a notepad with some blank pages that I could bring with me to the theater, I stumbled across a morbid little artifact: a thick notebook with gilt-edged pages and a soft, textured pink cover held in place by a metal […]

Review: “Dead Lover”

Dead Lover isn’t shy about its status as a Frankenstein riff. In fact, it opens with a quote from Mary Shelley’s novel: “There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.” In the story, this line is delivered by the doctor Victor Frankenstein, as he ponders what force may be compelling […]

Review: “Sally”

Many things can be attributed to Sally Ride. She was the first American woman in space. She was also the youngest at the time of her initial flight in 1983. Before that, she served as the ground-based CapCom for the second and third space shuttle flights, and helped develop the shuttle’s robotic arm; after that, […]