The film festival circuit is relentless, especially in the summer when the events seem to pile on top of each other with alarming speed. Some critics barely return home as they breathlessly rush from Locarno to Sarajevo to Venice to Toronto. Films screen. Q&As are held. Journalists write their reviews. Then many films, at least for a short while, are completely forgotten about, especially when autumn comes along, and with it, a vast deluge of capital A-auteur works, big Oscar-bait films and famous actors trying their hand at directing.
This is why I started Underseen Festival Favourites in 2023, our yearly exploration of many brilliant (or at least noteworthy) films that are worth keeping an eye on. Smaller names, but still packed with style, emotion and important things to say. Read and click the links for views and reviews from the Journey Into Cinema team.
(Will be updated as the year progresses.)
Sundance 2024 (January)
Next
- Time travelling trans lives in Desire Lines (Jules Rosskam, 2024, above)
- Taking the Realm of Satan seriously (Scott Cummings, 2024)
Rotterdam 2024 (January)
Bright Future
- The future of video game filmmaking(?) with Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust (Ishan Shukla, 2024)
- Found footage of sisters under war with 78 Days (Emilija Gašić, 2024)
Tiger Competition
- The radical archeology of Praia Formosa (Julia De Simone, 2024)
- Assaying surrealist legacies with essayistic images in The Ballad of Suzanne Cesaire (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, 2024)
Harbour
- Making use of limited locations in Small Hours of the Night (Daniel Hui, 2024)
- Nazi history lessons in The Light (Alexander Lind, 2023)
Berlinale 2024 (January)
Panorama
- Love and photography, Czech-style in I’m Not Everything I Want To Be (Klára Tasovská, 2024)
- Running away from it all in Swiss-Spain-sex-sun-shocker Paradises of Diane (Carmen Jaquier and Jan Gassmann, 2024)
- Breaking female taboos with Memories of a Burning Body (Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, 2024)
- The travails of being a criminal freelancer in Scorched Earth (Thomas Arslan, 2024)
- Defying the darkness in Kinshasa-set Rising up at Night (Nelson Makengo, 2024)
- Saltburn (Emerald Fennel, 2023), Chinese-style in Brief History of a Family (Jianjie Lin, 2024)
Encounters
- Postcards from the past in the elastic Sleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz, 2024)
- Navigating the liminal space between poetry and prose with Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski, 2024)
- Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990) in Greece with Arcadia (Yorgos Zois, 2024)
- Angry expat gets mad at Croatian Nazis in Through the Graves The Wind is Blowing (Travis Wilkerson, 2024, feature)
Berlinale Special
- Making film studies mandatory in Subject: Filmmaking (Edgar Reitz, 2024)
Competition
- Best German film in years? Sterben (Matthias Glasner, 2024)
- Long live Pepe (Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias, 2024, above)
Forum
- Difficult, but necessary: Intercepted (Oksana Karpovych, 2024)
Forum Expanded
- Counting the devastating cost of police brutality in hold on to her (Robin Vanbesien, 2024)
Generation
- Afghani Resilience in Maydegol (Sarvnaz Alambeigi, 2024)
- Identity and memory in Madagascar with Disco Afrika: A Malagasy Story (Luck Razanajaona, 2023)
- Alpacas in the Andes with Through Rocks and Clouds (Franco García Becerra, 2024)
CPH:DOX 2024 (March)
NEXT:WAVE
- Sort of a first film with My First Film (Zia Anger, 2024)
- Filmmaking as self-actualisation in To Be An Extra (Henrike Meyer, 2024, above)
New Directors/New Films (April)
- History meets fabrication in docu-fiction Otro Sol (Francisco Rodriguez Teare, 2023)
- Bouting Brazilian Bohèmes in Malu (Pedro Freire, 2024)
- A lovers diptych in All, or Nothing At All (Jiajun Zhang, 2023, above)
Visions Du Réel (April)
- A Ukrainian rhapsody at the so-called end of history with Fragments of Ice (Maria Stoianova, 2024, above)
- Bold black-and-white nun study in Mother Vera (Marie-Cecile Embleton, Alys Tomlinson, 2023)
Internationales FrauenFilmfestival (April)
- Prize-winner Turkish-German hit Ellbogen (Asli Özarslam, 2024, above)
- Deconstructing identity with Face of the Jellyfish (Melisa Liebenthal, 2022)
- People in places: King Coal (Elaine McMillion Sheldon, 2023) and The Night of the Factory Girls (Kim Geonhee, 2023)
- 13-years-in-the-making Apolonia, Apolonia (Lea Glob, 2022)
Cannes (May)
Directors’ Fortnight
- Stop-motion Nazi occult madness in The Hyperboreans (Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña, 2024)
- Shitposting Plastic Guns (Jean-Christophe Meurisse, 2024)
- The Other Way Around (Jonás Trueba, 2024) is repetitive. The Other Way Around is repetitive.
Critics’ Week
- Re-purposing Greek Myths in What we ask of a statue is that it doesn’t move (Daphné Hérétakis, 2024, above)
- Hotly anticipated bathroom sequel Sauna Day (Anna Hints, 2024)
- Busting queer sex worker stereotypes with Baby (Marcelo Caetano, 2024)
Un Certain Regard
- The everyday migrant hustle in The Story of Souleymane (Boris Lojkine, 2024)
The Tribeca Festival (June)
- The fate of real Belarusian journalism in Under The Grey Sky (Mara Tamkovich, 2024, above)
Golden Apricot Film Festival (July)
Regional Competition
- Rough and ready fly-on-the-wall doc Orbita (Yervand Vardanyan, 2024)
International Competition
- Juvenile Lithuanians in Bogdanas Longs to Stay (Marat Sargsyan, 2023)
- Religion, iconography, prostitution: The Gospel According to Ciretta (Caroline von der Tann, 2024)
Armenian Shorts
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.