Diego Semerene

Freudians will have a field day with Markus Schleinzer’s 17th-century-set folk tale.

Leyla Bouzid’s ability to capture the complexities and contradictions of familial affection is what makes In a Whisper so impressive.

Jimpa’s exploration of non-binary identity ultimately proves superficial.

Whatever the post-colonial lessons are, I Only Rest in the Storm’s characters articulate them too evidently, as if preemptively justifying the making of a film in or about “Africa” on the condition that the white man’s presence is relentlessly denounced.

The film is a philosophical account of the shaky ground that human existence stands on.

The film truthfully hints at the sharp whirs behind the smooth façade of everyday life.

The Ice Tower is, ultimately, an aesthetic and nostalgic exercise.

Radu Jude’s cinema isn’t exactly absurdist, though it exposes the absurdities of a present reeling from the unresolved injustices of yore.

The film exposes the incontestable American art of getting more with blunt obviousness.

The film blooms in moments where, instead of literally addressing Coco's gender trouble, we’re simply allowed to inhabit it.

The film shamelessly announces from the very start that it’s an attempt at atonement for disgraced designer John Galliano.

Despite its initially familiar trajectory, Another End disarmingly and purposefully sweeps us away on a wave of apathy not unlike that which plagues its main character, challenging our sense of who we fundamentally are as humans.

The film finds its profundity in moments where not much is said and nothing is intellectualized, when language is stripped to its bare bones.

Above all, the film captures how easy it is to deposit too much hope on the few who represent dissent, or freedom, when one is trapped.

Maite Alberdi’s film slowly reveals the personal loss of the ability to remember as inextricably linked to the loss of national memory.

Our Body offers, in its unwavering commitment to staring at the fragility of life in the eye, a solace devoid of romanticism or spiritual self-delusion.

The film’s most significant accomplishment is the mood it crafts with its cool black-and-white images, fast-paced editing, unorthodox camera angles, handheld camera, and overall jazzy atmosphere.

The Stroll is overtly broad, detached, and full of ready-made empowerment rhetoric.

Because so much of Hayakawa’s film is given over to depictions of the procedures, formalities, and impersonal administration that define Plan 75, even the tiniest spark of feeling comes as a relief.

The film’s most authentic moments are those that leave its main character breathless, cutting her plans for making up for lost time short.

Joyland is full of extraordinary situations that prevent it from being defined by its topicality or tantamount to a badge of honor.

The sort of gravitas that seems necessary for the most satisfying of French clichés to amount to playful reworkings, not tired repetitions, only makes a few appearances throughout the film.

Femme fascinatingly taps into the radical possibilities of the sartorial as narrative device, exploring the tabooed nuances of queer subjectivity and muddying the lines between gay and trans in the way that lived experience tends to do.

Lack of clarity, it turns out, is what makes Disco Boy so enjoyable, and imbues it with gravitas.

The film is best experienced by simply wallowing in the lushness of its fabrics, sartorial and symbolic alike, refusing the temptation to unspool its poetic parallels.

The film reminds us that any coming of age is a risky business where finitude and mourning are the only guarantees.

The focus on Ferragamo’s craft, and the very structure of manufacture, is exciting, but the narrative’s tendency to embody the opposite of his innovativeness feels lazy and contradictory.

Aly Muritiba’s film is always telling the viewer that death-ness and trans-ness bear the intimacy of Siamese sisters.