Ioncinema

YouBETcha! is back, this time for our Berlinale edition, where we guess the odds of the films most likely to pick up the converted top prize: The Golden Bear. We accurately predicted the film that had the best chances of...

Up Close & Personal: Sadat Subverts the Spotlight in Stellar Melodrama In her third directorial feature, No Good Men, which is part of a five film cycle with co-scribe Anwar Hashimi, Shahrbanoo Sadat creates something of an anomaly with a...

After competing for the Golden Bear back in 2018 with The Heiress (read review), Paraguayan filmmaker Marcelo Martinessi returns to the Berlinale with the birth of authoritarianism and how one artist was snuffed out during the brutal dictatorship circa 1959....

Invisible Missiles: Blaževičius Offers Chilly Portrayal of a Couple & Country in Crisis Given its title, Andrius Blaževičius’ third outing, How to Divorce During the War, invites expectations of a very different kind of film than the one the filmmaker...

Spanish filmmaker Ian de la Rosa makes his big entry onto the film festival circuit with Iván & Hadoum – a TorinoFilmLab workshopped project that was selected for the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama section. The feature debut a...

Set against the awkwardness of early adolescence, 8 minuter 1981 plunges the viewer into a moment when curiosity, fear, and desire collide without warning. What begins as a seemingly innocuous suburban rite of passage quietly mutates into something far more...

Seriousness Sensationalized: Marczak Uses a Father in Turmoil to Showcase His Style The winding, seemingly endless Vistula River, the longest in Poland (and ninth longest in Europe) is at the centre of Michał Marczak’s brooding doc Closure. Following a father...

Creature Discomfort: Docu Explores the Long Rift Between Neighbors Adding to the docu sub-genre of our ecological collapse, more of an observational docu than indictment, Nuisance Bear carries an unsettling air of accommodation toward a new reality shaped by dumb...

Following a thunderous world premiere, Beth de Araújo’s sophomore feature quickly emerged as Park City favorite, confirming the narrative we had anticipated. Josephine was crowned with both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award from the U.S. Dramatic competition...

Strictly Soft Gloom: Wladyka’s Bereft Bliss Puts Spotlight on Rinko Kikuchi Healing comes in baby steps — and dance steps in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s warm and rebellious third feature film outing. Conjoining the absurd with reality-check seriousness, like a trendy...