Ioncinema

Evidence of Love: Douard’s Debut Reads Between the Lines of Maternal Affections While it plays like something of a specific time capsule, Alice Douard’s Love Letters is really about a compounded state of transition, conflating fluctuating cultural realities with one woman’s...

White Impact: Pinho Explores the Ponderous Progress Through Post-Colonial Perceptions “We never seem to be where we are,” remarks one of the characters in Pedro Pinho’s simmering sophomore feature I Only Rest in the Storm (O riso e a faca),...

Ghost in the Machine: Boonbunchachoke Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost Spirits, in all their various forms, are an abiding fixture in Thai culture and folklore, represented in a complex spectrum of malignant and benevolent varieties. Two decades ago, Shutter (2004)...

Fox on the Run: Carnoy Explores Bruised Masculinity Following the incestuous liaison of Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer (2023), Samuel Kircher (son of Irene Jacob) braces for impact in more familiar territory with Wild Foxes, the directorial debut of Valéry Carnoy....

Unless we count some items he produced, Ari Aster is one of the filmmakers coming to Cannes without any previous Croisette history. A standout in the horror field and psychological warfare, it was only a question of time to see...

Actress-filmmaker (she forever stole our cinephile heart for her role in Abdellatif Kechiche’s The Secret of the Grain back in 2007) Hafsia Herzi has made a striking impression adored on the Croisette with Tu mérites un amour (2019) locking up...

No Country for Smart Men: Aster Satirizes the Obvious It would seem all is actually for naught in Eddington, Ari Aster’s sprawling, meandering fourth and least inspired feature to date. While previously a forerunner of the elevated horror era, Aster...

The Lost Daughter: Herzi Passes Up Potency in Standard Adaptation “My name is Fatima,” is one of the constant refrains utilized in Fatima Daas’ celebrated first novel The Last One (2020), a fragmented piece of auto-fiction which parallels the author’s...

Burn Witch, Burn: Kowalski Nurses a Curse in Sinister Backwoods For her sophomore feature Her Will Be Done (Que ma volonté soit faite), Julia Kowalski channels Stephen King’s Carrie, bringing to mind the infamous crescendo, “And then the world exploded.”...

Belle de Jour: Mourning Becomes Sex Work in Poukine’s Debut There’s arguably a slippery slope at work in Alexe Poukine’s narrative debut Kika, a far cry from the zany dark comedy constituting the similarly named titular figure of Almodovar’s 1993...