The pitfalls of always providing entertainment are perfectly probed in Animal, Sofia Exarchou’s excellent sophomore film.
Animal Oozes with Summertime Sadness
Category: Festivals
Reviews and dispatches exploring the best new cinema premiering around the world.
Filmmaking is Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
A film goes into pre-production in Beirut the day after the infamous 2020 port explosion in Cyril Aris’ gripping doc Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano.
Keeping Mum. Keeping Schtum.
Keeping Mum investigates the difficulties of breaking generational trauma with open-heartedness and a willingness to embrace the cringe.
Empty Nets. Empty Catch.
Love fights the forces of economics and corruption in the underwhelming Iranian drama Empty Nets — live from Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Unexplainable Orthodoxies in Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife.
The paradoxes at the heart of the Romanian Orthodox Church are teasingly explored in Alexandru Solomon’s latest hybrid documentary — live from KVIFF.
Underseen Festival Favourites 2023
Taking stock of all the excellent films that have played at festivals in 2023 that you most probably haven’t heard of yet. From Cannes, Berlinale, and more.
Transylvania International Film Festival Day Four: No Bad Scenes, No Good Scenes
A film that uses every scene to tell a story and a film that uses every scene to bore the viewer to tears. A tale of contrasts, live from TIFF!
Transylvania International Film Festival Day Three: Slănină and Sinking Time
Both tasty cured pork fat, generous, curious documentaries and a moment of pure cinema magic, made for a good day at Translyvania International Film Festival.
Transylvania International Film Festival Day Two: Lángos, Loneliness, Landfills
The food in Translyvania has been uniformly excellent. The films at TIFF, spanning Austria, Greece and Nicaragua, have yet to match its quality.
Transylvania International Film Festival Day One: Nord-Rhein-Transylvania
I spent all day travelling to Romania — but somehow my first day at Transylvania International Film Festival turned out to be all about Nord-Rhein-Westphalia.