Green Border (Zielona granica)
Agnieszka Holland is one of Poland's most distinguished directors with multiple Oscar nominations. Her most famous film is probably Europa Europa, set in WWII-era Poland. In it the protagonist is…
Io Capitano
16-year-olds Seydou and Moussa live in Senegal. They are cousins and best friends who write songs and dream of being big stars in Europe. Unknown to their families they are…
Perfect Days
The IMDB description of Perfect Days reads: "A janitor in Japan drives between jobs listening to rock music." Not exactly an exciting premise for a film, but that is mostly…
Poor Things
I have a favorite film of 2023! I've been a big fan of director Yorgos Lanthimos since The Lobster. His films are always convention shattering. And Poor Things continues that…
The Banality of The Zone of Interest
German philosopher Hannah Arendt famously said in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil", which she wrote after covering the trial of the Nazi war…
Mami Wata
Nigerian writer-director C.J. Obasi has taken an old West African folktale about a water deity who looks out for her land-lubbing followers through a priestess and crafted an absorbing fantasy-thriller…
El Conde
In this new dark satire from Pablo Larraín (Spencer, Neruda), Chilean general and dictator August Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) is a vampire. It's not a stretch. He did suck the country…
Scrapper
Georgie (Lola Campbell) is just 12-years-old, but she's been living alone since her mom died not too long ago, faking an uncle named Winston Churchill when need be to fool…
The Owners (Vlastnici)
This Czech comedy written and directed by Jiří Havelka is based on his award winning play, The Society of Owners. Produced in 2019, it is just now making its way…
Men of Deeds
A couple of years ago, I saw a very funny little film from Romania called Two Lottery Tickets that takes place in a little backwater inhabited by odd characters. That film's…
Amanda
Amanda (Benedetta Porcaroli) is 25. She has no friends and doesn't really have much of a life. She lives alone in a tiny, dingy room. Refuses to work in the…
L’immensità
Set in 1970s Rome, L'immensità is a semi-autobiographical look at one summer in director Emanuele Crialese's youth. In the film, the eldest child in the family is a teenage Adri…
The Worst Ones (Les pires)
Set in Picasso, a gritty, working class town in the north of France, The Worst Ones is a film-within-a-film. Belgian director Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh) comes to the town to shoot…
Review: Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
A couple of weeks before I saw this film, I read filmmaker Werner Herzog’s first novel "The Twilight World,” which draws on his meeting 25 years ago with Hiroo Onoda,…
Reviews: She Said and Women Talking
I saw these two films just days apart and they seemed to speak to one another. Both take on sexual predation, but from very different viewpoints. She Said is a…