Evi Kalogiropoulou’s deeply disappointing Gorgonà leans so heavily into fascist aesthetics it starts to resemble the very thing it criticises.
Empty Incel Nonsense
Festivals
Reviews and dispatches exploring the best new cinema premiering around the world.
Mother Is A Disappointing and Inconsequential Portrait of Mother Teresa
Noomi Rapace is highly forbidding as the Saint of the Peripheries in Mitevska’s Mother Teresa biopic, yet this seven-day narrative ends up disappointing.
Otec Brutally Shows How the Mind Can Rewrite Reality
A father makes a devastating mistake in Tereza Nvotová’s Otec, bleak and hellish depiction of every parent’s worst nightmare.
THAT GIRL
A transgender Macedonian woman radically transforms the lives of a group of tomboys in Kukla’s assured and heartfelt Fantasy — live from Locarno!
Mosquitoes Is Big, Bold and More Than a Little Messy
Not everything in Mosquitoes lands, but its big, and bold swings show off the ambition of Nicole and Valentina Bertani’s off-kilter coming-of-age vision.
Two Seasons, Two Strangers. Wistful and Intimate Compassion.
Two distinct, writerly stories emerge from Sho Miyake’s pen in his wistful adaptation of Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga Mr. Ben and His Igloo, A View of the Seaside.
Dry Leaf. A Bold Grasscutter.
Dry Leaf, Alexandre Koberidze’s much anticipated follow up to What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, is another meandering exploration of family and football.
Sorella di Clausura. Refreshingly Unserious.
Ivana Mladenović’s mordantly funny Romanian film Sorella di Clausura offers a welcome comic contrast to Locarno’s usual so-so-serious fare.
Balearic Can’t Find The Beat
Ion De Sosa’s dreamy follow-up to horror hit Mamántula is a disappointment, despite all those lovely 16mm images.
With Hasan in Gaza. Palestinian (Non-)Existence
Kamal Aljafari’s urgent With Hasan in Gaza might be shot in the autumn of 2001, but its images speak firmly to the present onslaught by the Israeli regime.