Ioncinema

Ghosts of Past & Present: Sultan Khoosat Hones His Visual Flair But Latest Devolves Into Silliness A universal thematic thread of the past haunting its central characters in conflicting ways is tackled in the Pakistani production Lali. Director Sarmad Sultan...

I Confess: Mohammadi’s Myriad of Memory Celebrates Women of Iran Who Don’t Stand Idly By While we understand imprisonment as punishment par excellence, what Iranian filmmaker and activist Mahnaz Mohammadi explores in her searing sophomore feature Roya is how confinement...

Here are the winners! As we predicted, Yellow Letters was a formidable film in the competition of twenty-two films. Golden Bear: Yellow Letters Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: Salvation Silver Bear Jury Prize: Queen at Sea Silver Bear for Best...

Strategy of Tragedy: Chen Overdoses on Drama in Sprawling Family Portrait The most succinct aspect of Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s latest feature, We Are All Strangers, which focuses on a modern day working class family in a country usually only...

It Doesn’t Follow: Linares Villegas’ Queer Horror Forgets the Fright Factor Horror has long been a safe space to explore queer stories; from cult classics Jennifer’s Body and Ginger Snaps to horror villains found in The Babadook and the androgynous...

Perfect Blue: Covi & Frimmel Marinate in Memories “Everything changing all the time. Even the air you breathing change,” notes a character in August Wilson’s classic play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), which encapsulates the essence of The Loneliest Man...

This Makes Two of Us: Mitić Explores Binding Connection of Trauma & Silence Adolescence is once again cinematically explored as a breaking point between innocence and forced adulthood, and North Macedonia filmmaker Kosara Mitić‘s debut feature tackles this with blunt-force...

The Unbearable Likeness of Being: Trobisch Mines Banality in Family Drama Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…and sometimes those unhappy ways are boring. Such is the case with Home Stories (Etwas ganz Besonderes), the third directorial effort from...

Capitalism & The Cosmos: Jinwei Ambitiously Explores China’s Future with a Stark Warning For Its Present Long have Chinese filmmakers used the medium of film to address China’s growing industrialisation and embrace of capitalism. Modern master Jia Zhangke comes to...

All the Small Things: Eimbcke Explores the Pleasures of Disruption The titular insects of Fernando Eimbcke’s latest feature, Flies (Moscas), metaphorically represent an unwanted, aggravating presence. But sometimes, these are elements which force us to snap out of stagnation and...