Cannes etc.

“Paweł Pawlikowski’s love letter to his parents is a sweeping tale of passion and politics set in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. Paweł Pawlikowski won the best director award at Cannes in May for this sweepingly intimate love story about a star-crossed couple falling together and apart through the Iron Curtain of postwar Europe. [...]

“The film starts with the audacious, hooky premise of a young boy who sues his parents for having him, and over the course of its two hours, it makes its case relentlessly, devastatingly, and uncompromisingly. (...) In the slums of Beirut that Labaki’s characters inhabit, people, especially children, come to be a part of that [...]

“Do you still remember how long ago we trained our thoughts? Most often we’d start from a dream… We wondered how, in total darkness colours of such intensity could emerge within us. In a soft low voice Saying great things, Surprising, deep and accurate matters. Like a bad dream written on a stormy night Under [...]

„Good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives” – at a young age Kena learns what is expected of girls and women in her country: to behave and to obey the orders of men. Or she will end up like her single-mother, who finds herself taking the blame for the separation from her husband, who has [...]

“A gangster’s ex-girlfriend struggles to adapt to life and find her way in the new "capitalist" China after five years in prison, in the latest from Festival favourite Jia Zhang-ke. More than any filmmaker of his generation, Jia Zhang-ke has crafted a body of work that holds a mirror to contemporary China in all its [...]

“The latest from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows) begins with the mischief and intrigue of a heist movie, but Shoplifters is much more. Osamu (Lily Franky), a middle-aged man, and Shota (Kairi Jyo), a young boy, walk into a grocery store. They play it cool, not speaking but, rather, signalling to each other with [...]

“Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is a stark, mysterious and terrifying story of spiritual catastrophe: a drama with the ostensible form of a procedural crime thriller. It has a hypnotic intensity and unbearable ambiguity which is maintained until the very end. This is a story of modern Russia whose people are at the mercy of implacable forces, [...]

“Following his much lauded iPhone-shot Tangerine, director Sean Baker has lost none of his fire and exuberance working with a larger budget and some well-known cast members. Indeed, Willem Dafoe, as the reluctant father-figure manager at the Orlando motel where this movie is set, gives one of the best film performances of his entire career. [...]

“On one level, the film can be classified as a journey of discovery, but what deepens interest is the way Barbosa constantly asks the viewer to question what it means to travel. Gabriel (João Pedro Zappa) bristles at the idea that he’s a tourist, insisting on the more egalitarian word “traveler.” He believes he can [...]

“A fable-like story about a young African girl banished from her village for alleged witchcraft, it blends deadpan humor with light surrealism, vivid visuals and left-field musical choices. (…) With smart marketing, Nyoni's bold fusion of folklore, social comment, magical realism and her own family heritage could even translate into breakout word-of-mouth success akin to [...]