Ioncinema

Feed My Fetish, Please: Cattet & Forzani Pay Homage to the Eurospy in Dazzling Pastiche Whether giallo gore or Western shaped, their films don’t lose their shape, as evidenced by Reflection in a Dead Diamond, the fourth feature from Belgian...

Ripe Fruits: Kanawade Taps the Bittersweet Rind of Going Home Again While there’s been an uptick in contemporary LGBTQ+ films from India over the past two decades, many have maintained a low international profile with the exception of a few...

Love Me If You Dare: Broe Explores Love in a Hopeless Place Harlan Ellison’s publication Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled might be a more fitting title for Sauna, the directorial debut of Danish filmmaker Mathias Broe, in essence a...

A filmmaker whose work is definitely idiosyncratic and agnostic choosing whatever approach works best for a specific tale, Bertrand Mandico has been setting the film world ablaze with 2017’s Les Garçons sauvages, 2021’s After Blue (read ★★★★ review) and 2023’s...

For his second feature film, Toronto-based Alireza Khatami tackles masculinity, shame, and the violence passed down through generations. A haunting, psychologically layered drama that explores guilt, memory, and the quiet violence people inflict on eachother (and themselves), The Things You...

A Bridge Too Far: Laxe Enters the Zone “The Zone wants to be respected. Otherwise it will punish.” Aleksandr Kayadonvsky’s line from Tarkovsky’s existential sci-fi classic Stalker (1979) comes to mind when viewing Sirat, the fourth and arguably most accessible...

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Schilinksi Paints a Microcosm of Misogyny The original title of Mascha Schilinski’s sophomore feature was The Doctor Says I’m Alright, But I’m Feelin’ Blue, which actually better captures the sinister poetics of...

A Poison Tree: Khatami Deconstructs the Psychoses of Patriarchy For his third feature, Iranian American director Alireza Khatami formulates a powerful psychodrama unspooling through the microcosm of normalized patriarchal dysfunction in Turkey with The Things You Kill. Employing a surreal...

In her stunning feature debut (that premiered at Sundance), Swedish filmmaker Isabella Eklöf offered an unflinching and pitiless examination of a drug dealer’s inner circle, presenting a world of psychological and sexual violence with chilling, dispassionate precision. Moving from the...

While the focus for awards season these days is Stateside, but the French will soon begin campaign mode for César Awards and other prestigious items such as the Prix Louis Delluc awards. What might be considered a weak year for...