Underseen Festival Favourites 2023

Two-thirds through the year, it’s always good to take stock of all the movies so far. This is especially true as arthouse or unusual efforts can easily be lost under the onslaught of summer blockbusters and the upcoming Oscar season. Whether they have distribution or not, minor success, or are simply completely unseen, I’ve made a point of highlighting all the decent festival favorites that played this year worth putting on your radar. Expect no “big” names (Petzold, Hong, Cronenberg, Ceylan, Jude etc) but do expect a variety of underappreciated movies to watch out for! 

Rotterdam 2023 (January) 

Opening Movie 

• Shape-shifting, time-warping biopic Munch (Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken, 2023, above)

Tiger Competition 

• Queer paradises in Forum-esque hybrid Playland (Georden West, 2023)  

Big Screen Competition 

• Effective social issue drama Endless Borders (Abbas Amini, 2023) 

Berlinale 2023 (February)

Encounters/Competition 

• Portuguese Diptych of misery Bad Living and Living Bad (João Canijo, 2023) 

Encounters 

• The transcendent Samsara (Lois Patiño, 2023, feature image)  
• Trans talent in Orlando: My Political Biography (Paul B. Preciado, 2023)
• Pixar formula, Hungarian style: White Plastic Sky (Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó, 2023)

Competition: 

• The hilarious, weirdly, widely-panned Manodrome (John Trengove, 2023)
• The completely jury-snubbed Tótem (Lila Avilés, 2023)

Perspektive Deutsch Kino 

• Kurdish-German Coming-of-age story Elaha (Milena Aboyan, 2023, above) 
• Tough feminist Iranian documentary Seven Winters in Tehran (Steffi Niederzoll, 2023) 

Generation 

• The problematically-entertaining Kurdish women’s army doc Dreams’ Gate (Negin Ahmadi, 2023) 

Forum 

• The Nathan Fielder-esque Iranian doc Where God Is Not (Mehran Tamadon, 2023)
• Benning being Benning in ALLENSWORTH (James Benning, 2022) 
• The greatest living documentarian? Claire Simon’s Our Body (2023)
• The End of History in Notes From Eremocene (2023)
• Epistolary epiphanies in Between Revolutions (Vlad Petri, 2023)

Berlinale Shorts 

• Bear trouble in metafictional Ours (Morgane Found, 2023)
• Lebanese silk road drama Les Chenilles (Michelle & Noel Kaswewany, 2023)
• Bizarre animation A Kind of Testament (Stephen Vuillemin, 2023)
• Syrian emigre drama Back (Yazan Rabee, 2023) 

Panorama 

• Generous Iranian doc on filmmaking (and Ph.D. project) And, Towards Happy Alleys (Sreemoyee Singh, 2023) 
• Excellent rape revenge Western Sira (Apolline Traoré, 2023)
• Gripping Yemeni social drama The Burdened (Arm Gamal, 2023) 
• Horror-thriller-hybrid-pleasure The Teachers’ Lounge (Ilker Çatak, 2023) 
• Aesthetically-unique Mexican army drama Heroic (David Zonana, 2023) 

CPH:DOX (March) 

Main Competition: 

• Nature tone poem doc Songs of Earth (Margreth Olin, 2023) 

New:Vision 

• Forest-focused 16mm images in Drifting Woods (Pia Rönicke, 2023, above) 

Science Section

• The melancholy/minimalist Intruders (David Krøyer, 2023)

BFI Flare (March) 

• Turning trauma into the light in Winter Boy (Christophe Honoré, 2022, above)
• Uncomfortable gay drama Swallowed (Carter Smith, 2022) 

Visions du Réel (April)

Burning Lights

• Chasing down history in Tommaso Santambrogio’s Taxibol (2023, above)
• Soviet Union shame in Astrakan 79 (Catarina Mourao, 2023)
• Dangers of cinematic memory in Still Film (James Kienitz Wilkins, 2023)

goEast (April)

Competition 

• Highly disturbing Russian found-footage doc Manifesto (Angie Vinchito, 2022)
• Animation hybrid on Armenian genocide Aurora’s Sunrise (Inna Sahakyan, 2022)
• Startling Ukrainian postmodern criminal investigation La Palisiada (Philip Sotnychenko, 2023
• Fun Hungarian Twin drama Not A Thing (Fanni Szilágyi, 2022)
• Islamic Kazakh Western Goliath (Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 2022) 
• A Serbian mining town sold off to the Chinese in Flotacija (Eluned Zoë Aiano, Alesandra Tatić, 2023) 

Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen 

• Mesmerising Belarusian rediscovery Orange Vests (Yuriy Khashchevatskiy, 1993, above)

Cannes (May) 

ACID

• Touching musical portrait Caiti Blues (Justine Harbonnier, 2023, above) 
• Ikiru 2.0 Dreaming in Between (Ryutaro Ninomiya, 2023)
• A good doctor in On The Edge (Nicolas Peduzzi, 2023)

Director’s Fortnight 

• Watching Creatura (Elena Martín, 2023) once is more than enough (positive)
• Pure cinema poetry in Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Elene Naveriani, 2023) — interview with Elene here. 

Critic’s Week 

• Slight yet amusing relationship drama The (Ex)perience of Love (Raphaël Balboni, Ann Sirot, 2023)
• Touching, tough Jordanian social drama Inshallah A Boy (Amjad Al Rasheed, 2023)

Transylvania International Film Festival (June) 

What’s Up Doc? 

• Folly or genius in The Cathedral (Denis Dobrovoda, 2022)  
• Artificiality or heightened reality in Knit’s Island (Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’Helgouac’h, 2023, above)

Competition 

• Devastating Montreal-based sex worker drama Noemie Says Yes (Geneviève Albert, 2022)

Karlovy Vary 2023 (July)

Proxima Competition: 

• Open-hearted, effective cringe with salty doc Keeping Mum (Emilie Brisavoine, 2023)

Crystal Globe Competition:

• A worthy companion to Herzog and Coppola with filmmaking doc Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (Cyril Aris, 2023, above)

Locarno 2023 (August)

Concorso Internazionale:

• The dark side of Greek tourism with the standout Animal (Sofia Exarchou, 2023)  — interview here.

Concorso Cineasti del Presente:

• A free-wheeling Godardian road trip in On The Go (Julia de Castro, María Gisele Royo, 2023)
• The delightfully nostalgic French Young Adult bliss of Bitten (Romain de Saint-Blanquat, 2023)
• The first good feature-length coronavirus film Family Portrait (Lucy Kerr, 2023)

Venice 2023 (September)

Giornate degli Autori: 

• The spirit of Bolaño comes alive in cinematic form in Foremost By Night (Víctor Iriarte, 2023)

International Critics’ Week: 

• A spirited look at trans ppl in sports with Life Is Not a Competition, But I’m Winning (Julia Fuhr Mann, 2023)
• Massive, terrifying, evil spiders in brilliant, class-conscious French creature-feature Vermin (Sébastien Vanícek, 2023)

Orizzonte/Orizzonte Extra: 

• A sweet, kitchen-sink Swedish coming-of-age story in Paradise Is Burning (Mika Gustafson, 2023)
•  Yuppies go to hell and back in compelling Indian thriller Stolen (Karan Tejpal, 2023)
• A lovely rethink of beauty standards with The Dreamer (Anaïs Tellenne, 2023)

New York Film Festival 2023 (October)

Currents: 

• Filmmaking that repudiates borders with Miko Revereza’s Nowhere Near (2023)
• Learning about Lepidoptera with The Night Visitors (Michael Gitlin, 2023)