Fiction

Not sure where to look and cut, Jasna Safić’s portrait of an old man suffering from a mental illness makes up for its shortcomings by embracing a selfless humanity.

A fun, campy homage to contemporary folk and cosmic horror.

The 1983 French television interview with actor Maria Schneider has lost little of its relevance in the intervening 40 years. In these reenactments of the interview, everything appears to be the same—but is it?

Rita Barbossa presents a woman in need for real connection and underlines the right to embrace the pleasures of life without shame.

Through symbolism and suggestive framing, Zoljargal Purevdash tells a story of contemporary Mongolia’s troubles.

In a clever and playful moral, the extensive process of constructing a tree house charts the significance of time.

Lithuanian filmmaker Vytautas Katkus stars alongside his actual father, exploring the increasingly tenuous connection between ageing father and son.

Loneliness plays a crucial role in Evi Kalogiropoulou’s coming-of-touch story.

In her debut film, Maria Estela Paiso presents a walk down memory lane as a horror show. The end of the world is nigh and frogs are raining down from the sky.

Jean-Sébastien Chauvin’s city symphony generates affect before analytics, allowing it to continuously play with expectations and observations as it progresses.

There is something in these characters that writer-director Risto-Pekka Blom feels compelled to denounce and it soon becomes evident who his real targets are.

Théo Jollets Meet Doug is a mesmeric overload that is quietly stunning.

Nicolai G.H Johansen’s horror-thriller investigates the roots of fear and anxiety—the one associated with a first love, a first touch, a first time of carelessly crossing a boundary towards the Other.

Gerard Ortín Castellví mixes his anthropological interests with his creative curiosities and turns his camera towards automated greenhouses in Agrilogistics.

Nikita is a young teenager and a real techno music aficionado. Berlin is calling in this Eastern European love child of Gaspar Noé’s Climax and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy.

The past is inescapable for the protagonists in Marie Larrivé’s Noir-Soleil, in which the filmmaker wants us to pay close attention to “unmoments”—seemingly unimportant short occurrences where the characters stare into space or an animal moves between the bushes.

A character study of a middle aged woman, in many ways reminiscent of Yasujirō Ozu’s cinematic work.

Leonardo Martinelli’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner Neon Phantom is surprisingly as entertaining and watchable as it is urgent and harrowing.

Hotel Royal is a complete work of fiction that draws heavily from the conditions of its creation, namely the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pom Bunsermvicha’s embrace of metafiction in Lemongrass Girl comes as no surprise as it follows a recent trend in Thai cinema.

Competing in the prestigious Cannes short film competition this year, Orthodontics is as an anachronistic tale of youth and friendship.

In Doytcheva’s account of Bulgarian queer life, we are constantly reminded that identification does not have to be tied in to subjective manner of narrating.

Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival’s Grand Prix eloquently highlights the filmmaker’s grudge against patriarchal, male-dominated societies. Rightfully so.

Portuguese filmmaker Diogo Costa Amarante’s follow-up to his Golden Bear-winning 2016 short Small Town with a more straightforward celebration of the power of friendship.

Jacqueline Lentzou seems to offer some solutions to our existential angst, as the title of her latest short film humorously suggests.

Two young Black men are on a hike together. There are sparks of intense eroticism. But Tebogo Malebogo is not one to kiss and tell, nor are his characters.

Two Falangists have come to disturb the domestic evening rituals of Paz and her family. Pedro Peralta’s talent celebrates the dignity of his fearless protagonist.

A dark satire look at the (possible) end of the world through the prism of middle-class and middle-aged malaise.

Meryam Joobeur’s major festival hit, exploring the tensions within a Tunisian family, is cinematically and ethically flawless.