Little White Lies

Directed by YORGOS LANTHIMOS Starring JESSE PLEMONS, EMMA STONE, WILLEM DAFOE Released 28 JUNE Some guy once said some words that resonated with some other guys, and those words were this: “God is dead”. I allude to that quotation because the Greek f

Back in 2009, two Greek writers caused quite a stir with their disturbing feature debut, Dogtooth, which focused on three teenagers isolated by their controlling father, pushing against the limits of his control. Since then, Yorgos Lanthimos and Efth

One is a veteran of the screen who’s been acting for over 40 years, the other’s career began to blossom after a starring role in Alexander Payne’s 2017 dramedy, Downsizing – Willem Dafoe and Hong Chau meet on-screen in Kinds of Kindness. For Dafoe it

I have a recurring nightmare. It comes to me fairly sporadically, but when it does, I’m certain to be torn away from the nurture of deep sleep. From what I understand, I’ve never screamed, been caught hyperventilating or found my body dappled in flop

For a long time, The Bikeriders was just a project Jeff Nichols talked about. His close friend Michael Shannon would rib him about it, pointing out that he’d been mentioning it for years and was still no closer to realising it. But finally, after som

Directed by JEFF NICHOLS Starring JODIE COMER, AUSTIN BUTLER, TOM HARDY Released 21 JUNE Eight years since his last feature, Jeff Nichols returns with a wistful and contemplative depiction of a ’60s Chicago motorcycle club, The Vandals, inspired by t

Two of the finest actors of their generation pair up for the first time – one a Yorgos Lanthimos veteran, the other a newcomer to this world. When Emma Stone first partnered with Lanthimos on The Favourite in 2018, it was the beginning of a beautiful

Directed by RICHARD LINKLATER Starring GLEN POWELL, ADRIA ARJONA, AUSTIN AMELIO Released 7 JUNE Every few years or so, an article pops up lamenting the death of the movie star. I go back and forth on whether or not I agree – certainly an uptick in so

Directed by VIGGO MORTENSEN Starring VICKY KRIEPS, VIGGO MORTENSEN, GARRET DILLAHUNT Released 7 JUNE Unlike some of his actor-turned-director peers, Viggo Mortensen doesn’t see filmmaking as a zeitgeist-connected popularity contest. With his wistful

When Voltaire wrote that, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,” in 1768’s ‘Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs,’ he was pushing back against an atheistic refutation of the divine from the “insipid writer” Arthur Mac

Directed by NURI BILGE CEYLAN Starring DENIZ CELILOĞLU, MERVE DIZDAR, MUSAB EKICI Released 26 JULY Like a patient naturalist with his digital camera preprimed, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan is adept at spotting dyed-in-the-wool male misanthrope

Slowly but surely, the Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has consolidated his reputation as one of the best and most fearless filmmakers on the planet. His early work (2002’s Distant, 2006’s Climates) placed a soft-spoken visual sensibility t

Directed by SELMA VILHUNEN Starring ALMA PÖYSTI, EERO MILONOFF, OONA AIROLA Released 7 JUNE Can infidelity turn into polyamory? When Equality Party MP Juulia (Alma Pöysti) discovers that her vicar husband Matias (Eero Milonoff) has been having an aff

Directed by KAMAL LAZRAQ Starring AYOUB ELAID, ABDELLATIF MASSTOURI, MOHAMED HMIMSA Released 14 JUNE There’s only a limited amount of love you can extend to a film that spins out a yarn on the back of a tricky situation whose “solution” should be obv

Directed by JULIO TORRES Starring JULIO TORRES, TILDA SWINTON, RZA Released 8 JULY It’s a joy to enter the surreal world of Julio Torres’ Problemista – a uniquely funny, delightfully whimsical, and endlessly smart odyssey through art, connection and

Directed by LEVAN AKIN Starring MZIA ARABULI, LUCAS KANKAVA, DENIZ DUMANLI Released 19 JULY The last promise that Lia (Mzia Arabuli) made to her sister before her death was that she would reunite with her niece, Tekla, after many years of estrangemen

Directed by LINA SOUALEM Released 24 JULY “I don’t know how to grieve a mother”, Hiam Abbass tells her daughter, director Lina Soualem, in this documentary/mediation on personal and geographical history. Hiam (the beloved Marcia in TV’s Succession),

Directed by MARIE AMACHOUKELI Starring LOUISE MAUROY-PANZANI, ILÇA MORENO ZEGO, ARNAUD REBOTINI Released 14 JUNE It’s with remarkable simplicity and tact that Marie Amachoukeli crafts her debut feature into a layered meditation on maternal love and a

For her solo debut feature, filmmaker Marie Amachoukeli depicts the complicated relationship between a French six-year-old and her nanny from Cape Verde who must return home to take care of her own family. This vibrant film comes from a personal plac

Directed by NATHAN ZELLNER, DAVID ZELLNER Starring RILEY KEOUGH, JESSE EISENBERG, NATHAN ZELLNER Released 14 JUNE To save you a few unnecessary clicks, don’t bother heading to your search engine of choice to find out what the collective noun is for “

Directed by BAS DEVOS Starring STEFAN GOTA, LIYO GONG, TEODOR CORBAN Released 7 JUNE There’s a sense of harmony between natural and urban landscapes in Here, Flemish director Bas Devos’ fourth feature which won the Encounters Award and the FIPRESCI p

Directed by AGNIESZKA HOLLAND Starring JALAL ALTAWIL, MAJA OSTASZEWSKA, TOMASZ WŁOSOK Released 21 JUNE In Agnieszka Holland’s bruising, ultimately galvanising Green Border, those fleeing war in Syria find themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle of s

Directed by TURNER ROSS, BILL ROSS IV Starring TONY ABURTO, MICAH BUNCH, NICHOLE DUKES Released 31 MAY The precariousness of youth, the excitement of discovery and the overwhelming truth that you have to be the master of your own destiny sits at the

Directed by BERTRAND BONELLO Starring LÉA SEYDOUX, GEORGE MACKAY, GUSLAGIE MALANDA Released 31 MAY Of the many pop culture assets that Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast calls to mind, perhaps the most obvious is Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spo

Directed by STÉPHANIE DI GIUSTO Starring NADIA TERESZKIEWICZ, BENOÎT MAGIMEL, BENJAMIN BIOLAY Released 7 JUNE Beauty standards are continuously evolving. What remains is that, in some way, we will always find ourselves feeling self-conscious about so

Astalwart of French independent cinema, Bertrand Bonello unleashed his most ambitious project to date at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, where The Beast – his spin on Henry James’ novella ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ starring Léa Seydoux and George MacKa

Directed by CHRISTOPHER MURRAY Starring VALENTINA VÉLIZ CAILEO, DANIEL ANTIVILO, SEBASTIAN HÜLK Released 14 JUNE “I don’t know who you are anymore,” says Agnes (Annick Durán) to Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) a little way into Christopher Murray’s Sor

Directed by KEVIN COSTNER Starring KEVIN COSTNER, ABBEY LEE, LUKE WILSON Released 28 JUNE “We have to keep going,” intones Kevin Costner’s Hayes Ellison toward the end of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, as he rides on horseback across a vast,

Directed by PAUL B. PRECIADO Released 24 JULY As trans people, we have always had to search to find ourselves. And not just in the obvious way. To see the traces of ourselves in a history that seldom gave us a name and often wiped us from its pages.

Directed by MONIA CHOKRI Starring FRANCIS-WILLIAM RHÉAUME, MAGALIE LÉPINE BLONDEAU, PIERRE-YVES CARDINAL Released 5 JULY While not all of Hollywood’s recent theatrically-released romantic comedies have performed well, the breakout commercial success

I first met Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ as a young (and yes, admittedly pretentious) literature student looking for chance encounters with the most mummified of modern classic paperbacks. There’s so much to revel in and appreciate about the novel: as

Iit was fitting that Greta Gerwig was the jury president at the Cannes Film Festival this year since the question, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” was a preoccupation throughout many of the festival’s most anticipated titles. Late-stage works f

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