Every edition, the Doha Film Institute lands some bold global filmmaker folk to offer mentorship and masterclasses for the next generation of filmmakers and this year’s Qumra have selected the likes of Alice Diop, who gave us the masterwork Saint Omer (read review) Ambulante’s Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, Moroccan actor-filmmaker Faouzi Bensaïdi (he last gave us the Cannes-selected Deserts), and Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla. The incubator event takes place between March 27th to April 1st. Beyond these masterclasses, the 12th edition of Qumra gives one-on-one mentorship sessions and curated industry meetings with the full programme being announced shortly.… Read the rest
Finnish director Hanna Bergholm adds to the subgenre of motherhood body horror with Nightborn (Yön Lapsi), an arguably more contained palette than her 2022 debut Hatching, which similarly dealt with female body image expectations and dysfunctional kinship roles. Her latest feels more like situational comedy, whereby a woman’s ‘madness’ is triggered by a couple’s move to an isolated, dilapidated family home in the eerie thickness of a fairy style primed Finnish forest. Settling into a familiar groove, it’s a film wherein the idiosyncratic wavelength’s success depends solely on the increasingly untethered lead performance from Seidi Haarla, who certainly throws herself admirably into full tilt weird.… 
With his first narrative feature in nearly a decade, French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis formulates a complex tapestry with Dao, which is defined as “a perpetual and circular movement which flows in everything and unites.” The key words here are ‘flow’ and ‘unites,’ as Gomis throws everything and the kitchen sink into a freewheeling docudrama which feels akin to navigating a Cristi Puiu ensemble. Impressively assembled with much to admire, there are moments which often suggest the film could be a masterpiece. However, there’s also often a meandering, even lethargic pacing as the narrative flits between two key events in Paris and Guinea-Bissau, and it often feels like a more fastidiously edited cut might assist in honing its three-hour plus running time into something more elegant.… 
Following his Academy Award nominated The Teacher’s Lounge (2023), Turkish-German director Ilker Çatak conjures a more overt political exercise in Yellow Letters (Gelbe Briefe). Set in Ankara and Istanbul (with German cities Berlin and Hamburg standing in for Turkey), a well-heeled artistic family finds themselves unnecessarily maligned by the state amidst a growing wave of fascism in the country. The exact political ramifications aren’t exactly spelled out as the family scrambles to regain their bearings after their views find them receiving the titular correspondences which run them out of their professions and then their home, but it’s clear any sort of criticism or resistance to those in power is cause enough.… 
Even in the democratic and social federal state of contemporary Germany, all is not sublime in the low-wage sector, relayed with an agonizing spasm in director 
Much like the shifting ideals and hard won identities defining the protagonists of 
