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3 Weeks After — Miroslav Terzić [KVIFF ’26 Review]
Plenty can go wrong on a school bus trip. In Serbia-born director Miroslav Terzić’s third feature, 3 Weeks After, what begins as a teenage hangout movie stretches into a stylized excursion through adolescent cruelty and the institutional impotence of the educational system, if not of state policy itself. Opening at the precise moment of boarding, [...] The p
My Wife Cries — Angela Schanelec [KVIFF ’26 Review]
For a viewer who is familiar with Angela Schanelec’s cinema, in particular the three films she has made over the last 10 years, My Wife Cries should come as a bit of a surprise. Initially, it appears to be as stark and austere as those previous films — The Dreamed Path (2016), I Was at [...] The post My Wife Cries — Angela Schanelec [KVIFF ’26 Review] appear
Man of War — William Kaufman [Review]
William Kaufman makes movies like someone who saw the centerpiece bank shootout in Michael Mann’s Heat and internalized every beat of it, determined to bring new heights of tactical realism to the action genre. He’s spent his career filming some of the best gun fights in recent memory, never mind that he often has a fraction of [...] The post Man of War — Wi
Hijamat — Nader Saeivar [KVIFF ’26 Review]
If who you are is a sin, what are the consequences of simply living your life? Traditional spiritualism clashes with modern individualism in Nader Saeivar’s Hijamat, a tense and intelligently observed drama about the repercussions for a Turkish family living in Berlin when one of the patriarch’s sons is rumored to be gay. At its [...] The post Hijamat — Nade
Night Nurse — Georgia Bernstein [Review]
Writer-director Georgia Bernstein’s feature debut, Night Nurse, appears to fit within a poetic label once afforded to Claire Denis: this erotic thriller bears a sense of “voluptuous austerity” in its exploration of power dynamics and kink. But whereas Stephen Holden employed this description admiringly with regard to 1999’s Beau Travail, this writer conjures
Beyond the Border, Beyond the Genre: A Conversation with Valeska Grisebach on The Dreamed Adventure
Among the standout films that played at this year’s Cannes Film Festival was The Dreamed Adventure, which earned Valeska Grisebach the Jury Prize and marked the long-awaited return of one of contemporary European cinema’s most distinctive voices. Set in Svilengrad, a Bulgarian town on the borders with Turkey and Greece, Grisebach’s fourth feature follows Ves
Barrio Triste — Stillz [Review]
Sympathetic portrayals of kids who’ve fallen into a life of crime have been commonplace in the arthouse circuit since at least the days of Italian neorealism, and, if we broaden our purview away from cinema to art itself, likely time immemorial. Chaplinesque tramps, Dickensian orphans, and Huck Finns of every country have encouraged us to [...] The post Barr
The Desire to Care: A Conversation with Georgia Bernstein & Cemre Paksoy on Night Nurse
It’s been five years since RS Benedict’s essay “Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny” was published by Blood Knife. While Benedict focused on action films in particular and their lack of sensuality and sex, the essay has stuck with me as a diagnosis of American cinema at large. In the years since, independent [...] The post The Desire to Care: A Convers