Author Gary M. Kramer

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. Bertelli is probing the physical and menta...

Pierre le Gall makes an auspicious directorial debut with Flesh and Fuel, the winner of this year’s Queer Palm Revelation prize at Cannes. A character study of gay truck driver, Étienne (Alexis Manenti, of Les ...

The cogent documentary, Who Killed Alex Odeh?, codirected by Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans, investigates the unsolved 1985 assassination of a Palestinian living in Santa Ana, California. Alex Odeh was wo...

The stylish, atmospheric, and engrossing police procedural, Special Unit: The First Murder, cowritten and directed by Christoffer Boe (working under the moniker Hr. Boe), recounts a 100-year-old murder case in ...

Happy Holidays (2024) is Palestinian Scandar Copti’s first solo feature as writer/director, following his Oscar-nominated Ajami (2009), cowritten and codirected with Yaron Shani. (Between films Copti helmed a s...

South Korean writer/director Syeyoung Park’s sophomore feature film, The Fin (2025), establishes him as a director to watch. His beguiling dystopian thriller is incredibly atmospheric, with distinctive visuals ...

Claire Denis returns to Africa, the setting for several of her films (Chocolat, White Material, and Beau Travail among them), for her latest feature, The Fence. The film, adapted from the play Black Battles wit...

Portuguese writer/director Pedro Pinho’s extraordinary drama, I Only Rest in the Storm (2025), set in Guinea-Bissau, is hypnotising throughout its 217-minutes running time. The film introduces Sérgio (Sérgio...

The slippery, slow-burn drama, The Things You Kill, is an intense psychological thriller set in Turkey and written and directed by American Iranian filmmaker, Alireza Khatami (Terrestrial Verses ). The story...

Writer/Director Florian Pochlatko makes an auspicious feature film debut with How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World. This topical drama, which premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, has vi...

Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev The timely and topical documentary, Porcelain War, chronicles the lives of a trio of artists in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Codirected by Brendan Bellomo and one of the subjects, Sl...

South African writer/director Pia Marais travels deep into the Brazilian jungle for Transamazonia, her hypnotic fourth feature.  Rebecca (Helena Zengel) is a teenager who has been practicing faith healing wi...

Director and cowriter Francesco Costabile’s Familia, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is an intense drama inspired by true events.   Licia (Barbara Ronchi) lives with her two young sons, ...

Argentine writer/director Celina Murga has made a series of intriguing character studies over the course of her career starting with her debut feature, Ana and the Others in 2003. Five years later, her film A W...

For his feature film debut, Block Pass, which premiered at Cannes this year, director Antoine Chevrollier reteams with actor Sayyid El Alami who starred in his 2022 TV miniseries, Oussekine.  In this powerfu...

Jonás Trueba won the Label Europa Cinemas prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his feature The Other Way Around, about a couple’s separation party. The film costars – and is cowritten with – Itsaso Ara...

Simón de la montaña (Simon of the Mountain, 2024) grabs viewers from its opening moments as the title character (Lorenzo Ferro), a 21-year-old, tries to help a group of disabled youths caught in a windstorm. Th...

Expanded from his 2020 short of the same name, The Moogai is writer/director Jon Bell’s allegorical horror film about the Stolen Generation – the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families betwee...

Fernanda Valadez made a stunning feature directorial debut with Identifying Features (2020). For her sophomore effort, Sujo (2024), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where it won the Worl...

Meryam Joobeur earned an Oscar nomination for her 2018 short film, Brotherhood, about a Tunisian family grappling with the unexpected return of their son, Malek (Malek Mechergui). Malek, who has been gone for o...

Although he has written and directed only two features, Martín Shanly has developed a distinctive voice in Argentine cinema. His style is low-key, and his character studies showcase troubled heroes. His two fil...

A good short film uses time to support the story. Given the brief running time, a filmmaker must establish a setup, keep viewers in suspense, and deliver a satisfying payoff in, 15 minutes. Short films evoke an...

Shame on Dry Land, by Swedish writer/director Axel Petersén, is a flinty noir set in sunny Malta. The film, which had its World Premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, is as slippery as its protagonist, ...

Unapologetically queer writer/director Everett Lewis burst on the film scene in 1990 — one year before the “New Queer Cinema” movement — with his gritty, black and white gay-themed bromantic drama, The Natural ...