Tunisia submitted relatively few submissions for the International Academy Award, but thanks to director Kaouther Ben Hania, the country recently received a nomination for The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020) and a place on the shortlist for Four Girls. (2023). This year’s submission, Take My Breath, comes from another director, Nada Mazni Hafeez, but … Read more
What is a place if it is not on the map? What are people if they are not recognized? Felipe Holguin Caro’s La Suprema asks these questions in an intimate drama set in a remote Caribbean town in Colombia. La Suprema is not on any map and its Afro-Colombian population feels similarly erased. Modest in … Read more
Stories about survivors in a post-apocalyptic world continue to fascinate viewers in streaming series like “Fallout” and “The Last of Us,” but “Homestead” likely marks the first time such a scenario has been used in a faith-based film. . This is certainly the first time that a theatrical film of this type has been designed … Read more
Traveling through the underground airwaves, Kurt Cobain landed in Havana, Cuba, in the turbulent early 1990s. During the island nation’s period of severe economic hardship after the fall of the Soviet Union, the “Special Period” prompted thousands of Cubans to emigrate, risking their lives at sea. Those who remained suffered from great scarcity (the American … Read more
In Bangladesh, sports Polly horses – or the game of wrestling – is a methodical and precise affair, a tone that Iqbal Chaudhry reinvented in his first film, “The Wrestler.” Stretching the line between observational and indirect, the film seems designed to dazzle and frustrate in equal measure, gesturing toward masculine boundaries in an often … Read more
The shattering of a childhood dream is a symbol of the cruel fate of the Messi Baghdad nation. Belgian-Kurdish director Sahim Omar Khalifa has expanded his highly acclaimed 2012 short film into a poignant social drama that unfolds amid violence and fear in Iraq in 2009, during the Second Gulf War. Messi Baghdad, about a … Read more
An entertaining wedding switcheroo, “Laapataa Ladies” (or “Lost Ladies” in some areas) makes effective use of Bollywood’s broad social messaging. This style of storytelling can be clunky in order to draw in audiences, but director Kiran Rao deftly combines the literal and the symbolic, resulting in the audience being filled – for better or worse … Read more
Looking back seems to offer insight into the future in “The Hungarian Tailor,” Iveta Gruvova’s compelling adaptation of Peter Krzystovec’s novella “Emma and the Death’s Head” set in Slovakia during World War II. At that time, local residents had to navigate uncharted territory of authoritarianism, when the far-right Slovak People’s Party came to power (…)
History, when told well, is a muddy and confusing thing. There are no elegant narratives or happy endings. Philip Sotnychenko’s “La Palisiada” takes this truism and twists it into a suitably complex form: this 1996 film noir chronicles a pivotal moment in Ukrainian history by focusing on the investigation of a murder. But as it … Read more
Engaging, yet baffling, contemporary drama Drowning Dry presents a non-linear portrait of two sisters, their marriage and children while depicting a family tragedy during a summer vacation. While the events unfold in a kaleidoscopic fashion, the narrative becomes quite clearer as the film ends. It’s the second feature from Lithuanian multi-hyphenate writer Lorinas Pareša, who … Read more