In Search of Indie’s Soul: Chinese Independent Cinema Today and Beyond Xiang Fan November 2023 Festival Reports Chinese independent cinema has long been associated with the term ‘underground cinema’ since its emergence in the 1990s. Due to its non-compliance to ...
Amiko haunts the 23rd Nippon Connection Roger Macy November 2023 Festival Reports The stand-out film of the 2023 Nippon Connection – although the ‘Visions’ jury in Frankfurt didn’t agree with me – was Amiko, (Kochira Amiko, 2022), w...
Notes From The 26th San Francisco Silent Film Festival Jonathan Mackris November 2023 Festival Reports Some background The only way to begin responsibly is with some facts about the status of the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the long-time home of t...
Magnetizing and still Putting on Weight – the 37th Il Cinema Ritrovato Roger Macy November 2023 Festival Reports This midsummer, in the centre of Italy, I encountered an enviably rich film festival with more than 30 great historic films, all unseen by me. There w...
Dealing with the past, and present, at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival Randy Malamud November 2023 Festival Reports Crowds erupted in the narrow streets outside Sarajevo’s stately National Theatre as security guards cleared a space for someone unexpected – though we...
76th Locarno Film Festival: Culture on the Edge, Tumbling Into Futures Unknown Jaimey Fisher November 2023 Festival Reports Locarno is, and can feel, half a world away from Hollywood, but much of the press talk leading up to this year’s 76th Locarno Film Festival concerned ...
Rock and roll and garden parties at the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Cerise Howard November 2023 Festival Reports “Well, to be completely honest, the award’s very nice and all, but I’m only here for the gig. I was ignorant to this whole thing until just a while ag...
Towards A Domestic Cinephilia: The 24th Jeonju International Film Festival Marc Raymond August 2023 Festival Reports The Jeonju International Film Festival has gone through a transformation in its now 24-year history, one that has some overlap with the broader moveme...
Direct Cinephilia: Play-Doc 2023 Fedor Tot August 2023 Festival Reports A wise man - and a festival director to boot - once said to me, “Film festivals are not about the films. Neither are they about the Q&As with the ...
Stardust chronicle, a report from the 69th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen Arindam Sen August 2023 Festival Reports To begin with, a brief note on the possibilities or impossibilities of film criticism within the ambit of festival reports. I have not written one in ...
Rising from the ashes: The 47th Hong Kong International Film Festival Maja Korbecka August 2023 Festival Reports After three years of pandemic-related hiatus, Hong Kong International Film Festival returns to its regular late March/early April dates. The festival ...
The 22nd Transilvania International Film Festival: Open-world Stimulations Peter Virginas August 2023 Festival Reports The Transilvania International Film Festival has taken place since the early 2000s in Cluj-Napoca, one of the most significant towns in Romania. Slowl...
Searching for Eros: the 76th Cannes Film Festival Savina Petkova August 2023 Festival Reports For some, their first experience of attending the Cannes film festival is love at first sight: the slow-burning infatuation with the idea of sharing t...
Prismatic Ground 2023: Labour Seen Will DiGravio August 2023 Festival Reports The first full day of Prismatic Ground began on an overcast morning in Harlem, Manhattan, at the Maysles Documentary Center, following a sold out, ope...
Generational Feminisms: the 45th Festival International de Films de Femmes Sian Mitchell May 2023 Festival Reports As a director of a women’s film festival here in Melbourne, the opportunity to attend the world’s oldest, still running women’s film festival – the Fe...
GoEast: the 23rd Festival of Central and Eastern European Film Carmen Gray May 2023 Festival Reports Andrii Donchyk’s debut fiction feature Oxygen Starvation (1991), a devastating vision of military service in the Soviet army, was one of the first non...
CPH:DOX 2023: At World’s End Will DiGravio May 2023 Festival Reports Among the great cognitive dissonances of our time is the fact that those of us who fear the end of the world by way of natural forces like climate cha...
Punto de Vista 2023: Dust No Longer Clouds Our Eyes Jay Kuehner May 2023 Festival Reports I approached the 17th edition of Punto de Vista (International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra) with necessary ambivalence, owing on the one hand...
All the world’s a stage IFFR Critics’ Choice 9: PLAY Tara Judah May 2023 Festival Reports In Inge Coolsaet’s video essay (putting) On Aftersun, she divulges that her brother missed the early scene in the film where the tour guide mentions T...
Sundance 2023 – Hybridity and Transgressive Heroes Bérénice Reynaud May 2023 Festival Reports Sundance 2023 (hybrid again this year) expanded its multicultural reach, spreading over several sections. It offered films by and about Black protagon...
Sweet Madness: the 2023 Berlinale Daniel Fairfax May 2023 Festival Reports Reader, sometimes it feels like I have been penning film festival reports for an eternity – and not just because of the distension of durée that we ha...
All that is Solid Melts into Air: IFFR 2023 Madeleine Collier May 2023 Festival Reports In early December, I received an unexpected email. After participating virtually in the IFFR Young Critics Program in 2019, I was invited to take part...
Fire Within: The 60th Viennale Leonardo Goi January 2023 Festival Reports The single strangest effect the pandemic’s had on me is that I seem to have changed the way I walk. I don’t mean how I walk indoors, or at home, but h...
The Kids Aren’t Alright: The 27th Busan International Film Festival Marc Raymond January 2023 Festival Reports The latest edition of the Busan International Film festival was, for the first time since 2019, more fully “international” in terms of the festival au...
A Report on the Exhibition Threshold (works by Dirk de Bruyn, Guy Grabowsky & Mat Hughes) Glenn D'Cruz January 2023 Festival Reports Dirk de Bruyn’s extensive body of work is marked by an experimental ethos that consistently challenges formal cinematic conventions. Steven McIntyre h...
Politics, Isolation, Pandemic: The 35th Tokyo International Film Festival Kohei Usuda January 2023 Festival Reports If an argument can be made that film festivals reflect some of the unique traits of their host cities, the sprawling format of the Tokyo International...
All the Pain and Exploitation: 66th London Film Festival Tara Judah January 2023 Festival Reports After two years of hybrid versions, London Film Festival was back in full force. But I still felt uncertain about attending in person; fighting my way...
BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL … on the Claude Sautet retrospective at the 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival Neil Young January 2023 Festival Reports Only a tiny handful of film festivals have ever made it to their 70th edition, but celebrations when Spain's leading such event — at San Sebastian, th...
Small but Mighty, the Power of the Donkey: Adelaide International Film Festival Saige Walton January 2023 Festival Reports Dubbed a “celebration of the imagination”, AFF expanded its scope in 2022 to include new venues across the city (Her Majesty’s Theatre, the Capri Thea...
Restarting Indian Documentary Film Festival Bhubaneswar (IDFFB) 2022 With a Bang! Dr. Sneha Krishnan January 2023 Festival Reports Worldwide, film festivals are slowly emerging in their physical avatars after the pandemic-induced break since 2020. Screening of independent document...
The 59th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival: Cold War Revisited Maja Korbecka January 2023 Festival Reports Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival survived the pandemic unscathed. None of its editions took an online or hybrid form. However, another issue thorough...
DOC NYC 2022: Fringe No More Will DiGravio January 2023 Festival Reports Since 2010, DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in the United States, has put forth programs that showcase a wide range of works that rally unde...
Skies Over and Caves Under Kutaisi: Kutaisi International Short Film Festival Levan Tskhovrebadze October 2022 Festival Reports Kutaisi International Short Film Festival (KISFF) is a pure manifestation of how film festivals can enrich and enhance a city’s cultural landscape. Ku...
NYFF 60: Hide and Seek Nolan Kelly October 2022 Festival Reports Something interesting happened in the opening minutes of Jafar Panahi’s No Bears when it was shown at the press preview for the New York Film Festival...
Budapest Classics Film Marathon Andrew Northrop October 2022 Festival Reports The Budapest Classics Film Marathon is a growing festival run by Hungary’s National Film Institute (NFI), drawing upon the film archive’s restoration ...
Setting the World Ablaze: Notes from the 30th Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival Susana Bessa October 2022 Festival Reports Skimming through my many scribbles in a desired attempt to describe what Curtas Vila do Conde means 30 years into its instalment in Portugal’s now eve...
