Reviews

NYFF 2026: “Artificial” and Closing Thoughts

“Brilliant. And scary.” That was my instant reply to a text from a friend the morning after we saw the world premiere of Luca Guadagnino ’s “Artificial” at the New York Film Festival.

Amanda Kramer: ‘Being a beautiful woman has fear inside it’

Imitation, gender and Joanna Hogg fandom are key inspirations for the restless writer/director/artist behind the absurdist comedy By Design.

What the Image Hides: Tai Katō and the Art of Partial Vision

LOOKING THROUGH THE ROOM Blood of Revenge (Tai Katō, 1965). In Blood of Revenge (1965), Hatsue, a young woman bound by contract to a pleasure house, wants to see her dying father.

In “VisionQuest,” Identities Might Change, but Family Is Forever

The trilogy that started with “ WandaVision ” and continued in “ Agatha All Along ” culminates in Marvel Television’s “VisionQuest.” And that title is more than wordplay.

By Design review – seat of learning

The always-interesting American filmmaker Amanda Kramer ponders what it would be like to make a body-swap movie, though involving a human and a chair.

Cinema Femme Short Film Festival to Close with “Ugly Cry”

The Cinema Femme Short Film Festival has been unfolding at the Music Box Theatre this week, starting yesterday, October 11, 2026.

Devotion is Deeply Human: Bassam Tariq and John Cho on “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother”

Far from excessive, and not a copy-and-paste error, each “Your Mother” in director Bassam Tariq ’s “ Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother ” carries pointed weight.

Tunnel 26 Postponed as Bhutan-Nepal Horror Film Plans Worldwide Release

Tunnel 26 has postponed its October 9 release as the Bhutan-Nepal zombie horror film prepares for a worldwide release in four languages.

This Week in Asian Horror: New Releases – October 12 to October 18, 2026

Discover this week’s Asian horror releases for October 12–16, 2026, including Cambodian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Japanese and Indian horror films.

“Water Lilies” in One Shot

One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, 2007).

New Asian Horror Trailers Released This Past Week: Oct 5 – Oct 11

New Asian horror trailers from October 4–11, 2026, including Where's My Head? 2, Rambut Sewu, The Doll Ghawiah and Juku.

Ray Gunn – first-look review

Brad Bird returns to animation with an absolute humdinger of noir-inflected retrofuturist thrills in a film that boasts stellar voice work from Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Waits.

Le jour se lève: Along the noir continuum

Looking at Marcel Carné’s Le jour se lève (Daybreak, 1939), it’s easy to see how American films noir ended up with a French name.

Thérèse Raquin

A dark domestic interior suffused with an insidious pall; a world aghast at the horrors of an existentialism fashioned by disenchantment and pessimism.

Les Portes de la nuit

“They’re all the same. You warn them, but they won’t listen. If you don’t warn them, when it happens, they blame fate.

NYFF 2026: At Night, Foreign Travel, Joy of Joys

One of my favorites at the New York Film Festival this year is “At Night,” a meditative film from British director Beatrice Gibson.

Busan 2026: Satoko Always, The First Taste of Loneliness, Shaving

I’ve been in Busan for a couple of days now, just enough time to shake off my jet lag, try a few delicious food trucks outside the festival’s cinema center, and catch a few titles in the festival’s…

Michelle Yeoh – Pre-Millennium Actress

As Ann Hui’s Stunt Woman turns 30, it provides a window into the fearless, physically precise peak of Michelle Yeoh in her Hong Kong action days, along with the perils that might have steered her…

Review: “Fatherland” Is Stunning, Somber, and Seriously Sleepy

Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski's "Fatherland" is an exquisitely shot, snoozy meditation on the legacy of fascism in post-war Europe.

Chicago History Museum to Premiere “Christian Holder: My Life is Dance”

The Chicago History Museum, in partnership with The Joffrey Ballet, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Gerald Arpino Foundation, presents the premiere of Christian Holder: My Life Is…

Print Out: A portrait, in our own way

The French writer and Catalan filmmaker discuss their shared muse, the great actress and singer Ingrid Caven

“Cupertino” is a Smart Big Tech Procedural

Movie theaters are currently inundated with major motion pictures that examine and/or indict the behavior of wealthy Silicon Valley leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (“The Social Reckoning”)…

Ambitious “Control Resonant” Challenges Expectations, Rewards Creativity

Even though people often love to point out this site’s namesake’s opinion on video games, since we began this coverage, we’ve tried to write about where the form intersects with film in cinematic…

Elsinore – first-look review

Andrew Scott has his eyes on the prize as Ian Charleson, the British actor who played Hamlet at the National while fighting an AIDS diagnosis.

Know Thyself: Eric Rohmer’s “Élisabeth”

Éric Rohmer in Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (Jacques Rivette, 1971). In 1946, the prestigious French publishing house Editions Gallimard published a novel called Élisabeth by a man named Gilbert Cordier.

Review: “Fjord” Is a Provocative, Probing Examination of Cultural Assimilation and Clashing Values

Winning a second Palme d'Or for director Cristian Mungiu, "Fjord" stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as two parents accused of child abuse.

Which side are you on? – Harlan County, USA at 50

50 years on, Barbara Kopple's directorial debut remains vital documentary viewing, but we should resist the urge to see it as a relic of the past – and ask who benefits when we do.

The Social Reckoning review – a diluted version of a far better film

Aaron Sorkin’s belated sequel dramatises Frances Haugen’s whistleblowing at Facebook, but lacks the bite of its predecessor.

Lit from Within: Eva Marie Saint (1924-2026)

There’s a famous scene in “ On the Waterfront ” (1954) that shows Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy flirting with Eva Marie Saint ’s convent-trained Edie Doyle in his palooka-like way, and what people…

Small Talk

The latest features from NYFF regulars Hong Sangsoo and Pedro Almodóvar excavate the complicated layers of their sly autofictions

Rushes | Paramount Officially Acquires Warner Bros., Social Media Platforms Reject “Musk,” “You Can See Everything” Trailer Drops

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on X and Instagram .

Interview: Alain Gomis on Dao

The filmmaker discusses the making of his epic docudrama, a viscerally intimate document of the African diaspora

The Lost Children Of Tuam review – a sombre retelling of Ireland’s buried past

Monica Dolan excels as an amateur historian investigating mass child abuse at a former mother and baby home in Tuam.

Trouble in Paradise: Ikarie XB 1’s Music and Sound

“…nothing in the world is easier than writing utopias” – Leszek Kolakowski1 Philip Glass declared that there were two ways to compose film music: the first, “to comment on the image”; and his…

This Week in Asian Horror: New Releases – October 5 to October 11, 2026

This week’s Asian horror releases include new films from Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, Bhutan and Nepal, with October 8 the busiest day.

Tenzing review – a familiar story reaches new heights

Jennifer Peedom’s mountaineering biopic offers a much-needed change of perspective on the famous 1953 ascent of Mount Everest.

Bumper-to-Bumper Traffic

2026 Toronto International Film Festival sponsorship ad by Rogers. At Cannes, competition screenings are preceded by nothing more than a computer-generated set of red-carpet stairs ascending out of…

ZOTTO BOX: Japanese Comedians Turn Their Strange Ideas Into Three Short Horror Films

ZOTTO BOX is a new Japanese horror anthology from SAMANSA, turning strange ideas from three comedians into three unsettling short films.

New Asian Horror Trailers Released This Past Week: Sept 27 – Oct 4

This week’s Asian horror trailer hunt brings new trailers from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and India, including some smaller releases worth knowing about.

There’s an App for That

Two highlights of the NYFF's Currents section—John Torres’s The Remotes and Sebastian Brameshuber’s London —are road movies in different gears

Interview: Nicolás Pereda on Everything Else Is Noise

The Mexican-Canadian filmmaker talks about the gentle absurdism of his new film

Life at Its Wildest: Werner Herzog on “Bucking Fastard”

From left to right: Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, director Werner Herzog, and stars Rooney Mara and Kate Mara shooting Bucking Fastard (2026). Courtesy of Gateway to Orkney LLC.

Landscape Collector: The scout behind Hollywood’s changing landscapes

Location scout extraordinaire, Lori Balton, tells us about the shifting nature of her globe-trotting craft.

On the Threshold

Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva and Sandra Wollner’s Everytime grapple with adolescence and grief in sensitive, surprising ways

Amie Song interview: “Cinema is great for ghosts and dreams and myths”

The director of Gu Shi talks memory, isolation, and storytelling… After premiering her short film Three at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in the La Cinef Official Selection, Chinese filmmaker Amie…

Kinki Archive: Complete Edition Gets 2-Disc DVD Release in Japan

Kinki Archive: Complete Edition gets a 2-disc DVD release in Japan on December 2, 2026, with four episodes of strange found-footage horror.

Sex and Zen II

An over-the-top erotic sex comedy starring Loletta Lee and Shu Qi… The original Sex and Zen (1991) was an enormous success at the box office and told the story of lustful scholar who replaces his…

Members Only: Cabal-Core Horror in the 21st Century

Salò: Or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975). In 2005, during a television interview in Italy, Giuseppe “Pino” Pelosi—AKA “The Frog”—recanted his confession about murdering Pier Paolo…

Interview: Mariano Llinás on Life of Jorge Luis Borges

The Argentine director discusses his shape-shifting, gleefully reflexive portrait of the famously enigmatic writer

First Asian titles at Lund Fantastic Film Festival

Lund Fantastic presents a Japanese genre retrospective in collaboration with TOEI… Lund Fantastic Film Festival returns for its 32nd edition from 28 October to 4 November in Lund, Sweden.

This Week in Asian Horror: New Releases – September 28 to October 4, 2026

New Asian horror releases this week include films from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Pirating the Pirates

Home video release images from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966). Clockwise from top-left: Arrow Video (4K UHD, 2025), Kino Lorber (4K UHD, 2021), MGM (4K Blu-ray, 2014), MGM (DVD…

5 New Asian Horror Trailers Released This Past Week: Sept 21 – Sept 27

Another week of Asian horror trailers brings new footage from Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand, including Death Whisperer 4 and Pirunduk.

Hope

Na Hong-jin’s latest is a high-octane sci-fi actioner that thrills and baffles in equal measures… Though not exactly prolific, writer director Na Hong-jin has become a real favourite of the…

Movie Poster of the Week | The Posters of the 1976 New York Film Festival

French grande for Small Change (François Truffaut, France, 1976). Design by Jouineau Bourduge. Another year, another Truffaut, another Fassbinder, another Visconti, another Renoir revival.

Samurai Vengeance

Revelry and renunciation of the samurai spirit swirl into a yin yang of intrigue in the latest hit jidaigeki epic… 16th of January 1810, Kobiki-chō district — modern-day Ginza — Edo.

Sealed Video 86: Jinmenmushi Gets December 2026 DVD Release in Japan

Sealed Video 86: Jinmenmushi arrives on DVD December 2, 2026, with four new Japanese found-footage horror segments. Trailer and details.

Bakemono

A grotesque monster haunts a Tokyo Airbnb in this practical effects-driven creature feature… A throwback to the gory glory days of messy practical effects, Japanese creature feature Bakemono pits a…

The Tournament

Angela Mao must enter the Thai Boxing ring to restore her father’s reputation… The Tournament is a 1974 Golden Harvest film directed by Huang Feng.

Rushes | Venice and TIFF Announce Awards, Paramount Settles Antitrust Lawsuit, “Cliff Booth” Trailer Drops

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on X and Instagram .

Summer/Fall 2026 Festivals

Possible Love (Lee Chang-dong, 2026). Throughout the summer and fall festival season, we'll be publishing a wide array of interviews, dispatches, and surveys from Il Cinema Ritrovato, Locarno…

Arrested Memory

A detective loses himself in absurd situations while battling amnesia, cops, and criminals… An operation gone wrong leaves police captain Lee (Ethan Juan) with stress-induced amnesia.

Toronto Filmmaker Survey: Just One Moment

Tender Loving Care (Mike Leigh, 2026). Courtesy of Joseph Lynn. Midway through the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Canadian prime minister Mark Carney hosted the Canadian Investment…

Interview: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi on All of a Sudden

The director discusses the genesis and inspirations behind his luminous new film, the remarkable chemistry between its two leads, and more

Interview: James Gray on Paper Tiger

The director talks painting and cinema, the art of sound design, and how crime films are a vessel for autobiography

Travelin’ Thru: Dolly Parton

On screen, the late singer-songwriter’s characters were peroxide angels, rhinestone cowgirls, and doe-eyed working girls with hearts of gold

Revisions: Caraxmaxxing

For his quarterly column that revisits and reconsiders the Film Comment archive, our intrepid critic explores the magazine’s amour fou for French auteur Leos…

Family Business: Paper Tiger

With breath-holding, nails-in-palms suspense, James Gray’s latest explores how far we go to protect our loved ones

A Way with Words: All of a Sudden

Rich with language, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s latest is his most hopeful film—and his most romantic

A Story Beginning With Kuniko: Japanese Found-Footage Horror Arrives on DVD in October

Japanese found-footage horror A Story Beginning With Kuniko arrives on DVD October 2, 2026, from director Hiroki Iwasawa.

This Week in Asian Horror: New Releases – September 21 to September 27, 2026

This week's Asian horror releases include new films from Vietnam, Cambodia, India, and Indonesia, plus new theatrical releases across Asia.

The House on the Moon

Singapore’s first wuxia is a stunning but narratively fractured reimagining of the myth of Chang Er, the fairy maiden on the moon… Long ago, the legend goes, ten suns rose together in the sky…

Toronto Dispatch: The War Against Memory

Life of Jorge Luis Borges (Mariano Llinás, 2026). Words mean things, but that meaning is always changing.

9 New Asian Horror Trailers Released This Past Week: Sept 14 – Sept 20

This week’s Asian horror trailers bring supernatural folklore, haunted families, murderous spirits, cursed technology, forest nightmares and more from across Asia.

Video Turns a YouTuber Horror Trip Into a Kannada Found-Footage Nightmare

Video is a Kannada found-footage horror where a YouTube crew vanishes at a haunted Odisha school during a lunar eclipse.

Dahaan: The Evil Within Brings an Old-School Possession Horror to Odia Cinema

Dahaan: The Evil Within is an Odia supernatural horror film about an ancient evil, a haunted mansion and a possession that took more than a decade to reach cinemas.

The Curse Gets Japanese DVD Release This October

The Japanese-Taiwanese horror The Curse (ザ・カース) gets a limited Japanese DVD release on October 7, 2026, following its January cinema release.

Short Takes: The History of Concrete

In John Wilson’s debut feature, heavy industry makes for heavy topics

Welcome to the Fall 2026 issue

Introducing the second issue of the new Film Comment

Fourth Hong Kong Film Festival UK returns

From 25 September to 4 October 2026 across London venues… Hong Kong Film Festival UK (HKFFUK) returns for its fourth edition from 25 September to 4 October in London, presenting reflective and…

Tenement Gets Dark Sky Blu-ray Release This September

Cambodian horror film Tenement gets a new Dark Sky Blu-ray release in September 2026, while its limited slipcover has sold out.

Ghun Gaon Is a Bengali Horror Story About Secrets, Fear and a Black Leopard

Ghun Gaon follows a wildlife photographer into an isolated Bengali village where a black leopard may be the least of her problems.

The Action Scene | “The Raid” at 15

The Action Scene explores the form, history, and visceral power of action cinema through its set pieces.

The Origins of J-Horror Brings Six-Disc Collection of Japanese Horror to Blu-ray

Imprint Films has a rather large boxset coming that might give you a few more movies to add to the list releasing soon – The Origins of J-Horror (1989 – 2023) is a new six-disc Blu-ray collection…

Oh My Ghost! Oh My God! Mixes Taiwanese Indigenous Culture With Horror and a Lot of Very Bad Decisions

Oh My Ghost! Oh My God! is a Taiwanese horror comedy starring Naomi Watanabe, mixing supernatural chaos with Indigenous ancestral spirits.

Poon (2026) – The 13th Apostle Comes for a Family

Poon turns a Catholic religious statue into a supernatural threat as an estranged family faces buried secrets during Holy Week.

The Sacred & The Cursed: Severin Brings Four Joko Anwar Horror Films Together in Huge Blu-ray Collection

Severin Films releases a four-disc Joko Anwar Blu-ray collection with Satan's Slaves, Impetigore, Dead Time and more.

Defending the Elusive

Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961). 1 Although it’s seldom acknowledged, one of the supreme pleasures of movies is the confusion and uncertainty often prompted by the beginning of a story…

The Resident: Thai Horror, Cursed Masks and Sacrifice

The Resident is a Thai horror film about three people who enter a mansion looking for treasure and become victims of a deadly curse.

This Week in Asian Horror: New Releases – September 14 to September 20, 2026

New Asian horror releases this week include theatrical films from Indonesia, Japan, Cambodia, India, Taiwan, Vietnam and more across Asian cinemas.

Venice Dispatch: The Garden of Forking Paths

NAZA (Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, 2026). To watch my first film at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, I wore a VR headset.

Erica – Japanese Psychological Horror Gets DVD Release in October

Japanese psychological horror Erica gets a DVD release in Japan on October 2, 2026 - with bonus features and audio commentary.

Lisa and the Devil

Mario Bava entered the Italian film industry as an extremely resourceful cameraman, make-up artist, special effects worker and screenwriter way back in the late 1930s.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much

“It happened right there,” Nora says to her new friend Laura, pointing with her eyes to the place where, on her first night in Rome, she witnessed a brutal murder.

Survival Tactics: A Locarno Critics Academy Correspondence

Notebook, in partnership with the Locarno Critics Academy, presents a series of critical correspondences in which this year’s participants look back at the Swiss film festival.

Review: “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” Compellingly Reimagines the Iraq War From a Chinese Perspective

Amidst yet another real-life Middle Eastern conflict, Chinese blockbuster "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East" offers hotpot diplomacy as a tastier alternative to America's gunboat diplomacy.

Cut and Spliced: A Locarno Critics Academy Correspondence

Notebook, in partnership with the Locarno Critics Academy, presents a series of critical correspondences in which this year’s participants look back at the Swiss film festival.

Venice 2026: Hot and Cold

Standouts like May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown and Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love have emerged from an otherwise weak edition

Rushes | Remembering Dolly Parton, A24 Teases Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes Doc, the 100 Most-Screened Films in NYC

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on X and Instagram .

It Was Once Fire: A Locarno Critics Academy Correspondence

Notebook, in partnership with the Locarno Critics Academy, presents a series of critical correspondences in which this year's participants look back at the Swiss film festival.

The Final Temenos

Photo by Emma Fuchs. At sunset we move like a herd. Arms laden with blankets, we snake down the gravel path, as signs in blue spray paint warn “ΠΡΟΣΟΧΗ!

The Armchair Answer to the Troubles

Illustration by Danny Ische. The 1970s was a difficult decade for cinemas across Britain and Ireland as attendances continued their long postwar decline.

Rabid Dogs

Mario Bava’s many passionate fans are in no doubt about his status as a major auteur. He is one of the few named filmmakers whose works guarantee huge sales in new home entertainment formats…

Playful Provocation: Hypermediacy in Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik

We begin with a heist. But not quite – we really begin with an elaborate ploy, a project of misdirection.

Kill, Baby… Kill!

2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Operazione paura (Kill, Baby… Kill!, 1966), the film widely considered to be horror maestro Mario Bava’s finest.

The Faces of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath

The original Italian title for Mario Bava’s 1963 film, I tre volti della paura, which translates as “The Three Faces of Fear,” is far more appropriate than Black Sabbath – the title chosen by its…

Inherit the Wind: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “The Samurai and the Prisoner”

The Samurai and the Prisoner (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2026). Ever since he first broke into the Western cinephile consciousness with Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), Kurosawa Kiyoshi has frequently been…

MUBI Podcast: Italian Voices of Today | Season 6

What does it really mean to set off on the road? In this season of MUBI Podcast: Contemporary Italian Voices, Isabella Ragonese explores the road movie as a metaphor for transformation.

Review: Teochew Hit “Dear You” Is Great Melodrama, But Doesn’t Fix China’s Soft Power Deficits

An unexpected hit at China’s box office, Lan Hongchun’s Teochew-dialect film "Dear You" embarks on a US theatrical release after controversy in Southeast Asia.

Locarno 2026: Life During Wartime

Several standouts from this year’s edition engaged were about how the instinct for life persists during periods of upheaval and violent conflict

Home Movies: Fritz Lang Epic Collection

Home Movies: Marx Brothers Silver Screen Edition

Comic: What Have Movies Ever Done For You?

An original comic draws our summer issue to a close

From Projector to Parade: The Transformation of Movie Spectatorship in The Age of The Commercial

Industry: Why Studio Movies Don’t Make (much) Money

2001 Framed: Inessential Cinema

The 20 best released and 10 best unreleased films of 2001

2001 Framed: Interns’ Revenge and Personal Bests

The 20 best released and 10 best unreleased films of 2001

2001 Framed: Movies That Mattered

The 20 best released and 10 best unreleased films of 2001

Filmmaking at the end of the world: The Quiet Earth

Is there a more convincing definition of Aotearoa New Zealand cinema than Geoff Murphy’s three-film directorial run of Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), Utu (1983), and The Quiet Earth (1985)?

Review: “Afterword” Bridges Taipei and New York in a Metatextual Examination of Fiction

Taiwanese director Lin Yi-chiang’s feature debut “Afterword” proves a strong entrant among Sinophone depictions of immigration to New York City.

Interview: Director Brian Hung Illuminates Hong Kong’s Ethnic Minorities in “Let’s Have a Cup of Doodh Patti Chai”

Hong Kong director Brian Hung makes his feature debut with "Let’s Have a Cup of Doodh Patti Chai," which addresses stereotypes that the city's ethnic minorities face.

Crimes Against Reality: Speculation and the New Red Order

This article has been peer reviewed. It was the winter of 1637 and tulipmania was in full swing. In Holland, the price of tulips – an exotic new export from Central Asia – soared to record highs.

Feeling the Screen Story’s Pulse: Karen Pearlman’s Cutting Rhythms: Creative Film Editing

This third edition by Dr Karen Pearlman, entitled Cutting Rhythms: Creative Film Editing, marks an important revaluing of intuition as an overarching descriptor for a wide range of acquired skills…

An Interview with Giulio Bertelli

Giulio Bertelli’s remarkable feature debut, Agon, depicts three women competing in a fictional Olympics at Ludoj in 2024. But this is not an inspirational sports film.

Consent Puzzles in the Oslo Stories Trilogy by Dag Johan Haugerud

In France, Dreams, Sex and Love came out over three weeks in the summer of 2025. I was like a restless teenager in my discovery of these intricate, sustainable and secret worlds – breathlessly…

Korean Cinephilia and Its Possible Futures: The 27th Jeonju International Film Festival

Korean film festivals, like the industry itself, have wrestled with an existential crisis since the COVID pandemic, with declining audiences and many filmmakers unable to secure financing for their…

Ferrara, Abel

b. 19 July 1951, New York City, United States “I do think that filmmaking is sacred.“ – Abel Ferrara1 Discussions of Abel Ferrara – who celebrates his 75th birthday this year – have long been shaped…

Mahboobeh Kalaee: Creation as Antidote to Destruction during American and Israeli airstrikes

On what should have been an inconspicuous and inconsequential morning in Tehran, Mahboobeh Kalaee boarded a flight bound for Vienna on February 28, 2026.

The Eternal Return: The Battle of Algiers at 60

The opening title card of La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) announces that this is “the first great Algerian film production”.

Introduction

Welcome, dear Readers, to the 118th edition of the Internet’s most eclectic and serious discussion of cinema!

Review: “Akashi” Documents a Japanese Canadian Artist’s Re-Exploration of Family, Relationships, and Homeland

With echoes of "Past Lives", Mayumi Yoshida’s "Akashi" offers a disjointed chronicling of a Japanese-Canadian artist’s return to Tokyo after a decade of absence.

Review: Korean Indie Film “Journey There” Delicately Portrays Grief and Intergenerational Bonds

Korean Indie filmmaker Kim Jin-yu continues his humanist and poetic exploration of family relationships and intergenerational bonds in "Journey There".

Review: Raymond Red’s “Manila’s Finest” Depicts a Slow Yet Visceral Journey Through the 1970s Philippines

Short Film Palme d'Or-winning filmmaker Raymond Red returns to directing after a decade with "Manila's Finest," a sepia-toned drama capturing Manila during the tumultuous 1970s.