Jared Mobarak

Despite Ali & Ava proving a heartwarmingly funny and rich love story, its strength truly lies in the characters’ melancholic confrontation with their underlying pain.

The events onscreen are semi-autobiographical for Sama and thus a document of the turmoil those his age at the time faced when external expectations and internal hopes clashed. At its center: love. The power it has to bring us together opposite its potential to tear us apart.

Its style is audacious, its plot minimalist, and its future full of potential.

Demon becomes a siren to never forget the past or the many bodies left on battlefields of horrific wars. No matter how civilized or at peace we are now, history will always haunt us.

No one can be trusted. No one is assured of their survival. We don’t even know who we should be rooting for––beyond the filmmakers themselves, in hopes they stick the landing.

It’s a familiar tale pitting selfish desire against the greater good, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen thanks to the wondrous South Pacific landscapes.

It’s nothing short of heroic and heartbreaking and important—both because of how laws in her name are still being planned to go before the US legislature and because audiences need to remember that victims of domestic abuse deserve to be given as much benefit of the doubt as their abusers. Being an addict shouldn’t disqualify you from receiving life-saving protection.

López’s fairy tale is one seeking to remind us of an innocence not yet stripped clean.

We learn everything there is to know about an entire country through the Heise family’s words. Some passages prove better than others, but none are inconsequential to the whole.

Sarnet orchestrates authentic horror through a supernatural filter wherein beautiful black and white cinematography can immortalize abject despair.

It’s a self-propelled therapy session laid bare to the world. And it’s 100 percent raw and real, whether natural or not.

Their newfound friendship strips them down to their raw humanity in a way that allows them to see each other like no one has ever seen them. They grow together, acknowledging self-destructive natures without passing judgment until inevitably unearthing the undeniable truths even they refused to see within themselves.

Neulinger dives in headfirst to break down every single aspect of his journey towards the truth.

The Oak Room is playing games with us as well.

Coldwater lives or dies by the dynamic between Boudousqué and Burns ebbing and flowing from nemeses to partners and back again as the latter begins to lose control.

The humor is infectious, the pop-culture nerd affinity relatable, and the familial struggles resonant. And it’s messy because so is life. Its happy ending is about learning to listen. That’s how everyone wins.

Writer/director Alexandra-Therese Keining‘s adaptation of Jessica Schiefuer‘s 2011 August Prize-winning (Sweden) young adult novel Pojkarna (translated as The Boys but changed to Girls Lost for international release) is deliciously dark and profoundly vital.

The Dry reveals itself as an engaging thriller in the vein of fellow Australian production Top of the Lake with duplicitous figures sharing a contentious enough history to confuse facts with emotions thanks to having a familiar face heading up the investigation.

We’re witnessing a nuanced reorganization of priorities within both Dong-Hyun and So-Young at different speeds.

Hamoud’s message concerns having the courage to be who you are no matter what society or heritage demands. Compromise is important in any relationship, but it shouldn’t be one-sided and especially not favor the man simply because the culture is steeped in patriarchal infrastructure.

There’s no better way to show these power dynamics than via long takes. By letting the events play out, Hania refuses to let her lead off the hook emotionally. Al Ferjani is therefore thrown into the fire, her Mariam an exposed nerve reacting on impulse to everything that occurs.

Surreal comedy turns into surreal horror as hope buckles under futility’s weight.

Adapted by Anita Doron from the award-winning novel by Deborah Ellis, The Breadwinner delivers a heart-wrenching coming-of-age tale within a nation that’s lost its way.

Stefan Forbes has thus found himself at a Holy Grail nexus point with Hold Your Fire—his subject matter exists at a literal crossroads wherein the “us” and “them” are equally to blame, its complexity demanding the realization that “them” is a construct for violence.

Watching Matthew Heineman’s documentary The First Wave isn’t therefore a casualty of diminishing returns due to a false sense of redundancy. If anything, it proves more powerful from accumulation.

Schaefer and Lawler pack their rounded vignette of full-frame 16mm film with contradictions, thematic mirrors, and unexplainable phenomena that confounds in its beauty just as easily as it enlightens through its complexity.

While a lot of Detention is steeped in anguish and anxiety, the terror induced by those emotions becomes the pathway back into the light.

Despite its darkly supernatural package, however, Louis-Seize’s film adheres to its idiosyncratic tone of purposeful excitement for a future that’s hardly assured––death can be a beginning too. Rather than adhere to the status quo by taking people’s lives, maybe Sasha can somehow take their deaths instead.