The prolific Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda is back with his second feature of the year. After the disappointing Sheep in the Box premiered in Cannes, he has arrived on the Venetian Lido with something altogether more affecting, and his best film since Shoplifters. A live-action adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s beloved manga, previously brought to the screen as an anime in 2024, Look Back is, above all, a film about drawing, friendship and the strange ways art can bind t

There are ambitious film projects. There are insane film projects. And then there is DAU. An unprecedented social experiment co-written, co-produced and directed by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, DAU may be the craziest, gargantuan and most daring cinematic undertaking of the past few decades. Loosely inspired by the life of Soviet physicist Lev Landau, nicknamed Dau, the film follows a genius living through some of the darkest chapters of history. Dau would like to decypher the laws

A cocktail of Parasite and No Other Choice, Possible Love is less playful than either and considerably more mature. Where those films turn class anxiety into satire, thriller and dark comedy, Lee Chang-dong prefers something quieter: he simply watches the distance between people grow until it becomes impossible to ignore. In Korea, losing your job can mean losing far more than a salary. Employment is so closely tied to identity that laid-off workers are literally referred t

After making his name with a string of acclaimed documentaries, Lance Oppenheim makes his fiction debut with Primetime, and it is immediately clear that he has brought his documentary instincts with him. He remains fascinated by people behaving badly in front of cameras, by the strange machinery of spectacle, and by the thin line between observation and voyeurism. He has the eye of someone who has spent years watching real people reveal themselves, and now gets to construct t

Friendship has always been at the heart of Martin McDonagh’s cinema. Beneath the bloodshed and sharp banter, his films are about people who desperately need each other- although, often, they’d rather shoot each other than admit it. His latest, Wild Horse Nine, which galloped onto the Lido at the Venice Film Festival, is no exception. Its CIA agents are hardly the sleek, omniscient operators of the spy-movie imagination. Sent to Chile to destabilise Salvador Allende’s govern

I arrived at the LOCO London Comedy Film Festival with modest expectations, a wagging tail, and the unanswered question about why humans insist on sitting quietly in dark rooms for fun. The invitation read: Dog With A Movie Camera, a documentary chronicling the making of Blondi, the first film in cinema history to be shot by a dog. Finally, after more than a century of human domination of the medium, someone had the courage to put a camera into paws that actually know where t

There are chapters of history that seem too extraordinary to have been forgotten. Yet somehow they disappear, overshadowed by the myths that came before them. That's because history tends to concern itself with the great figures, the icons that end up on posters and T-shirts. But what happens to those on the periphery? The people who played a crucial role, yet were ultimately eclipsed by larger protagonists? That is the question at the heart of Christophe Dimitri Réveille's f

This has arguably been the queerest Cannes in the festival’s history. Queer desire, identity, repression, and liberation echoed through nearly every section of the lineup, and a motif in most films. Yet speaking too concretely about La Bola Negra, one of the strongest films in Official Competition, almost feels like a disservice. Not because the film lacks substance, quite the opposite, but because Los Javis, the popular Spanish directing duo, unravel its story with such pati

The 79th Cannes Film Festival is over, and, strangely enough, it already feels forgettable. An underwhelming and disappointing edition defined less by discovery or cinematic revelation than by absence: absent auteurs, absent risks, absent cinematic epiphanies. Whether it was the diminished American presence, major filmmakers increasingly gravitating toward streaming platforms, or simply a weak year from the very directors Cannes has spent decades cultivating, the result was a

1949. Germany has lost the war, and with it, its identity. The country lies physically shattered and ideologically severed, carved in two by the victorious powers, suspended between American optimism and Soviet control. Into this fractured landscape returns one of its most celebrated exiles: Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, played with weary grandeur by Hans Zischler. After years in the United States, Mann returns to the homeland he fled during the rise of Nazism, emba

The greatest discoveries at Cannes are never the obvious ones. They’re the films that materialise out of nowhere and suddenly become impossible to avoid: the titles whispered about in queues, passionately dissected over midnight drinks, or overheard between strangers while drying your hands in the Palais bathrooms. Every edition has one. This year, that film is Club Kid. With his feature debut, Jordan Firstman writes, directs, and stars in this charming crowd-pleaser, effortl

Rodrigo Sorogoyen finally arrives in Competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival with El Ser Querido, and he does so with confidence, precision, and absolute command of the medium. The film rests on the monumental shoulders of Javier Bardem, delivering one of the finest performances of his career as Esteban Martínez, a legendary Oscar-winning filmmaker returning to his native Spain to shoot his latest project: a colonial-era epic unfolding in the Saharan desert. But beneath

As expected, 2025 has not been kind for the silver screen. The recent news of Netflix buying out Warner Bros felt like the final nail in a year defined by mediocrity, corporate overreach, and cinematic disappointments. And yet. Among the rubble, a handful of films sparked genuine life back into the projector, at least for me. Against all odds, they reminded me why we still sit in the dark. Curiously, this year’s standouts came from a surprisingly balanced spread of festivals:

You must remember this… The flickering light scorching the darkness. The velvet reclining seats. The smell of popcorn, the soft chuckles, the sensual electricity of sharing something emotional with a randomly assorted room of strangers. Remember it, because cinema is at a checkmate that could prove fatal. Most people don’t seem to grasp the true scale of the catastrophe. Studios have collapsed before, merged, been swallowed whole, weathering storms that once threatened to tur

This is not an easy review to write. Normally, I might lace my words with humour, but here that feels impossible. How can you even rate a...

Benny Safdie flies solo in his first feature without his brother, Josh, and I’ll admit I braced myself for the post-Coen effect: the...

After the Hindenburgian crash of The Dead Don’t Die , Jim Jarmusch redeems himself with a triumphant return to form. Rest assured, he...

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is the cinematic equivalent of watching a child let loose in a toy shop: you can’t deny the glee, but...

After the deliriously brilliant Poor Things and the unnecessarily indulgent Kinds of Kindness , Yorgos Lanthimos is already back at it...

“People like shit,” mutters Ethan Coen, quoting Miles Davis from a hotel room overlooking the French Riviera. Slouched in his chair,...