Film Festival reviews, interviews, and podcast episodes.
SIFF 2026: The Friend’s House is Here
Written by Eric Zhu
“Centered on the friendship between two female artists Hanna and Pari, the film opens on one of Pari’s shows, a piece of Brechtian performance art where actors enact their daily routines within a white soundstage. This prefaces a fizzy hangout film about cosmopolitan urban…”
Cannes 2026: 9 Temples to Heaven
Written by Eric Zhu
“…tensions surface in the merit ceremonies, where some temples have been refashioned to appeal to a modern audience and nearly all leverage spirituality as a means to earn donations. At the second temple, a monk stresses the importance of mindfulness, warning against the temptations of…”
SIFF 2026: Barbara Forever
Written by Eric Zhu
“Many cinema-goers, even serious cinephiles, have little context for avant-garde cinema. It’s easy to understand the impetus behind a documentary like “Barbara Forever,” which provides a rare introduction to a towering figure in the field.”
Cannes 2026: La Perra (2026)
Written by Eric Zhu
“Dominga Sotomayor’s “La Perra” is both perfectly judged and ravishingly beautiful. Set on a remote island in the South of Chile, the film is situated within a community of seaweed harvesters, one of whom, Silvia, has her regimented lifestyle disrupted when…”
SIFF 2026: Assets & Liabilities
Written by Eric Zhu
“In a better world, we’d have many more independent films like Zach Weintraub’s “Assets & Liabilities.” This is a film that’s formalist but not over-directed, funny and anxious, but not solipsistic. It’s set in a specific time and place (a present-day gentrified Tacoma), with people and places that feel real rather…
SIFF 2026: EIGHT BRIDGES
Written by Eric Zhu
“The evocation of 16mm, which once seemed inextricable from Benning’s blue-collar class background, has an obvious connection to these hollowed-out landscapes. These resonances are enhanced by…”
NYFF 2025: Dry Leaf
Written by Eric Zhu
“Like many of the best films, “Dry Leaf” is endlessly thought-provoking, but gracious and easygoing on a moment-to-moment basis. Unencumbered by narrative, it’s motivated by the simple pleasures of pastoral vistas, rich humanity, and…”
VIFF 2025: With Hasan in Gaza
Written by Eric Zhu
“For us, unbound from the burden of direct representation, these images invite speculation of who these people are, of who they might be now, of lives before these images, and of Palestine’s future.”
VIFF 2025: Christy
Written by Taylor Baker
“With some decent fight choreography and dedicated turns by Merritt Weaver and Ethan Embry as Christy’s mother and father, this would-be redemption story amounts to little by the time we see Sweeney walk out and bump fists with…”
VIFF 2025: Two Prosecutors (Zwei Staatsanwälte)
Written by Taylor Baker
“Losznitsa, a director who primarily films documentaries, lets his cameras roll for extended sequences, allowing the spaces to come to life and the characters time to inhabit them. It is when Kornyev acts with kindness or humanity that the entire social and physical structure seems to react like an immune system…”
NYFF 2025: The Currents (Las Corrientes)
Written by Eric Zhu
“Although various metaphorical dimensions of water are explored, chief among them the feeling of being trapped in a vortex between Lina’s escapist desire and maternal love, “The Currents” is a film about keeping up appearances in a disembodied society, a struggle that renders…”
NYFF 2025: Levers
Written by Eric Zhu
“The disruption of daily routine that the darkness inspires, and the corresponding subversion of cinematic legibility, are what enable the film’s expansive sprawl. Perhaps the intimate nocturnal atmosphere is also…”
NYAFF 2025: Transcending Dimensions
Written by Eric Zhu
“Operating simultaneously as urban revenge thriller, space opera, and a Japanese version of a wuxia flick, Toyoda treats each genre vernacular as part of the same overarching prison. Attempting to liberate the film from narrative, he subverts traditional…”
NYAFF 2025: Queerpanorama
Written by Eric Zhu
“Despite the references to real-world tensions, “QueerPanorama” exists in a punishingly claustrophobic headspace. This is most obvious in the barren abstraction of Cheung’s apartment, where Cheung’s arrested development is on…”
SIFF 2025: Invention
Written by Taylor Baker
“What emerges is neither purely documentary nor entirely fictional but, as its title suggests, an invention unto itself. It’s a film about the descendants of snake oil salesmen and big dreamers, about the complicated inheritances we receive…”
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