Ioncinema

Spanish filmmaker Ian de la Rosa makes his big entry onto the film festival circuit with Iván & Hadoum – a TorinoFilmLab workshopped project that was selected for the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama section. The feature debut a contemporary love story set in his native Spain, in the exclusive clip we find Hadoum (Herminia Loh) showing Iván (Silver Chicón) the ropes in the distribution portion of the greenhouse. Iván falls in love with his newly hired co-worker, Hadoum. But his long-awaited promotion interferes with their relationship, forcing Iván to decide what kind of person he wants to be.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Earlier this year, first-time filmmaker Hasan Hadi arrived in Cannes, conquered the Croisette landing the coveted Caméra d’Or prize and the newly minted Directors’ Fortnight audience award that Artistic Director Julien Rejl created the year before. Riding the film festival circuit and acquired by the Sony Pictures folks, The President’s Cake is among those in the running for that first short list for the Best International Film for the Oscars.

An ode to Neorealism, based on the memories of 1990s Iraq under sanctions and authoritarian rule — we have a simple premise but the consequences for determined nine-year-old girl, Lamia could be life threatening and determining.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

In his debut You Are All Captains (2010), Óliver Laxe blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction, probing questions of authorship and control, with creative agency at the core. Half a dozen years later, with his sophomore feature Mimosas, he shifts toward the spiritual testing grounds of the metaphysical, where characters grapple with doubt and destiny. Three years after that, in Fire Will Come (read review), Laxe moves from Morocco to the Galician region of Spain, exploring exile and ancestral ties through themes of guilt and forgiveness. His gut-wrenching, heart-filling fourth feature, Sirāt (read review)—critically acclaimed at Cannes—turns its attention to humility and humanity in the face of something vast and ineffable.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Óliver Laxe has been on a whirlwind promotional tour for his fourth feature ever since it premiered to thunderous critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival this past May. After briefly speaking with him the week prior (see our virtual interview), and again following the announcement of an impressive slate of European Film Award nominations—recognizing casting, editing, production design, sound design, and cinematography—I had the opportunity to sit down with him (with the Atlas Mountains in the backdrop) once more for a short conversation at the Marrakech International Film Festival. Morocco, a longtime second home for the filmmaker, has served as a recurring backdrop in his work, including Sirāt.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

A Bridge Too Far: Laxe Enters the Zone

“The Zone wants to be respected. Otherwise it will punish.” Aleksandr Kayadonvsky’s line from Tarkovsky’s existential sci-fi classic Stalker (1979) comes to mind when viewing Sirat, the fourth and arguably most accessible feature from French-Spanish director Óliver Laxe, who once again returns to the metaphorical glories of a spiritual odyssey as previously explored in 2016’s Mimosas. But his latest is a pulsating, techno drenched mixture of mythological soul searching and contemporary intentional drug use all catalyzed by the search of a missing young woman. Layered, almost kaleidoscopic metaphors evolve through religious and politically minded themes, and the end result feels like a Gaspar Noe adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Set against the awkwardness of early adolescence, 8 minuter 1981 plunges the viewer into a moment when curiosity, fear, and desire collide without warning. What begins as a seemingly innocuous suburban rite of passage quietly mutates into something far more unsettling, capturing the strange elasticity of memory and the way certain experiences lodge themselves permanently in the body.

Selected for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival’s Animated Short Film Program, filmmaking duo Andy & Carolyn London weave memory through the exploratory possibilities of rotoscope, balancing the film with an expressive musical palette—most notably the inspired use of “Crimson and Clover.” Casting their son, Alexei London, they construct a world where adult permissiveness and youthful vulnerability exist without safeguards, reframing childhood not as a sanctuary but as a fragile, confusing, and irrevocably formative threshold fashioned with Bruce Lee’s six-pack and all the titillation and trimmings we could expect from Long Island circa 1981.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Seriousness Sensationalized: Marczak Uses a Father in Turmoil to Showcase His Style

The winding, seemingly endless Vistula River, the longest in Poland (and ninth longest in Europe) is at the centre of Michał Marczak’s brooding doc Closure. Following a father caught in the limbo between grief and hope, Daniel trudges up and down the Vistula every day until days turns into months and then years to locate his missing 16 year-old son Krzysztof (who also goes by Chris). He vanished after walking to a looming bridge over the river, maybe he jumped? There’s no trail or evidence and Daniel doesn’t think he’s that way inclined.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Creature Discomfort: Docu Explores the Long Rift Between Neighbors

Adding to the docu sub-genre of our ecological collapse, more of an observational docu than indictment, Nuisance Bear carries an unsettling air of accommodation toward a new reality shaped by dumb tourism, government oversight, and the slow erosion of Inuit traditions. A decade-long journey filled with alarming images of two things that should not be part of the same frame, Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman offer a fascinating account about the thin line between protector and intruder — a shared space between the species where the polar bear community are indeed the collateral damage.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Following a thunderous world premiere, Beth de Araújo’s sophomore feature quickly emerged as Park City favorite, confirming the narrative we had anticipated. Josephine was crowned with both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award from the U.S. Dramatic competition section. The film is now headed to the Berlinale where it will compete for the Golden Bear. We imagine that a distributor will emerge from the pack of interested buyers in the week to come.

The other major kudos went to A24’s Nuisance Bear which won the U.S. Documentary Competition, Shame and Money — winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, and To Hold a Mountain from the World Cinema Documentary Comp.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Strictly Soft Gloom: Wladyka’s Bereft Bliss Puts Spotlight on Rinko Kikuchi

Healing comes in baby steps — and dance steps in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s warm and rebellious third feature film outing. Conjoining the absurd with reality-check seriousness, like a trendy fusion restaurant, Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! blends cultures, genres, languages, tones and various states of melancholy with unexpected buoyancy making for a film where the past tense exists in the present. Playing the one left behind, Rinko Kikuchi is in exquisite comedic form, anchoring the film with a character who is open, wounded, and flawed. Its flirtation with schmaltz, paired with an overuse of humor, blunts what might otherwise be a more piercing reckoning with grief, however, on the flip-side, the Japan-set, trilingual tug-of-war with memory is deeply in tune with ideas of rebirth and the subtle, interior work of renewal and emerges as a cathartic charmer.… Read the rest

Continue reading…