No Other Land (2024)Introduction the editors January 2025 Editorial Issue 112 Welcome, dear readers, to a new year and a new issue of the eclectic and serious discussion of cinema. As with every rotation around the sun, this one too brings the results of our hefty World Poll. Composed of 128 contributions from all corners of the globe, the project captures and highlights some of the inexhaustible diversity of our readership, with tastes as heterogeneous as the countries from which they stem. At the same time – in an era of both individualism and global consolidation, as aesthetic opinions and consumption patterns feel more and more atomised and particular (even as they might in truth be ever closer to merging onto a planetary superhighway) – we thought it important and appropriate to take a step back and reflect on the format of the end-of-the-year poll itself, as a discursive genre. In ‘Why Do We Poll?’, a collaborative piece serving as something of an editorial introduction to this year’s poll, we ruminate on the stakes and consequences of annual listmaking, canon formation, and their more and less insipid limitations. For their work on editing this year’s World Poll, we extend our kindest thanks to three expert volunteers: Joanna Batsakis, Avery LaFlamme, and Amelia Leonard. For all the generous contributions, we, as every year, thank our readers and writers. In our Features section, Yiju Huang writes compellingly about Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Kaibutsu (Monster, 2023) and how the film structurally echoes Buddhist mandalas, allowing reality and truth to melt away in lieu of perception, introspection and emotion. London-based film scholar Richard MacDonald provides a thorough account of the circumstances that led to the making of the pioneering Thai independent film Tongpan (1976), concluding that the film is a result of authentic collective effort rather than a singular vision. Shifting geographic contexts, Jeremi Szaniawski in his article “Trick or Treat? Genre Trouble” contributes an ambitious and philosophical yet playful critique of a selection of recent US horror films. Rounding off our Features is an obituary to creative genius David Lynch, whose recent passing rocked the global film world, sparking a plethora of personal tributes on social media. It is fair to say that each and every one testifies to the profound and formative influence of Lynch on cinephiles around the globe. For one example of his immense importance, one need not look any further than our own journal; to assemble an impromptu mega-dossier on Lynch, simply look him up in our extensive archives. Once again, this issue’s Interviews section is overflowing with rich offerings. Former guest editor and passionate cinephile Hamed Sarrafi conducts astute and in-depth interviews with Canadian Matthew Rankin, Portuguese/Scottish Laura Carreira and Singaporean Yeo Siew Hua. Visionary Australian filmmaker Alena Lodkina interviews Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari about her new film Harvest (2024). Past Senses guest editor Cristóbal Escobar interviews Mexican filmmaker Tatiana Huezo, while Botagoz Koilybayeva interviews Sareen Hairabedian, whose film My Sweet Land (2024) was recently banned in Jordan. And regular Gary Kramer provides an insightful interview with co-directors Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev about Porcelain War (2024), a compelling portrait of war-torn Ukraine. It’s been a difficult year, with genocide and war as a constant, painful backdrop against which we, as critics and cinephiles, must consider the role of film criticism. We’re proud to see that, throughout the year, our festival reports have not only questioned and held to account the global politics and economy that props up wars and oppression, but also that our contributors have examined how festivals and films play their part. It is a great privilege to work with writers who have so much to say about our art form, humanity, and the world. In this issue, Josh Bogatin finds light in the dark in Tallinn, while Carmen Gray takes a look at Georgian cinema from both Tallinn and Kutaisi. Petro Alexiou searches for audiences in Thessaloniki; Olivia Popp, meanwhile, finds that at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival audiences come first. Nolan Kelly reflects on the positionality of the New York Film Festival amid America’s re-election of Donald Trump. Writing from imperial HQ (United Kingdom), Nasheed Qamar Faruqi looks for liberation at the London Film Festival. On this occasion, our book reviews make a stop at the past cinema of Myanmar, in a profoundly political and historically conscious reading by Duncan Caillard of Jane M. Ferguson’s profoundly political and historically conscious Silver Screens and Golden Dreams: A Social History of Burmese Cinema. For her part, Tiia Kelly assesses the interesting Provocation in Women’s Filmmaking by Janice Loreck, a book that relevantly wonders how women directors provoke in specific fashions, different from the masculine tradition of provocation. And we close with Wheeler Winston Dixon narrating the labor and times of Agnès Varda as he goes through Carrie Rickey’s A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda. Wherever 2025 takes you next, we hope you enjoy reading the 112th edition of Senses of Cinema.