Ioncinema

It wasn’t meant to actively promote anything, but I had a very brief conversation with Ava DuVernay at the Marrakech International Film Festival in 2024. I saved this moment to mark the start of a new year in moviemaking—because the...

After acknowledging the work of Debora Lobe Naney, Jury president Bong Joon-ho awarded Marrakech’s top award to Erige Sehiri‘s Promised Sky. The Under the Fig Trees filmmaker had returned to Cannes earlier this year and competed in the Un Certain...

As we reflect on the year’s best films, it’s also worth remembering those that made a strong impact on the festival circuit but never secured a theatrical release—among them a remarkable debut that was ultimately chosen as Turkey’s official Oscar...

Moroccan filmmakers Asmae El Moudir and Laila Marrakchi shared the €20,000 top prize ex aequo at the eighth edition of Marrakech’s Atlas Workshop, the industry platform dedicated to Moroccan, Arab, and African cinema. El Moudir’s Don’t Let the Sun Go...

For her sophomore feature, Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel continues her rigorous exploration of childhood as a site of ethical conflict, institutional pressure, and emotional vulnerability. Receiving a second invite to Cannes (nestled in the Critics’ Week section, while Playground before...

Cutting his teeth writing features in Deepak Rauniyar’s Highway (2012 – a Berlinale selection) and Min Bahadur Bham’s Kalo Pothi: The Black Hen (2015’s Venice selection), Nepalese filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah gradually padded on the shorts with his 2022 short...

After winning the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the Best Actor award for first-time performer Abou Sangare at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the film went on to receive numerous further awards and accolades over the course of the...

Shake It Up: Fastvold Envisions the Life’s Work of a Religious Leader There’s a fervor roiling beneath the surface of Mona Fastvold’s third feature, The Testament of Ann Lee (which has an alternative title, The Woman Clothed by the Sun,...

In Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee, Amanda Seyfried delivers the kind of performance that is steeped in considerable restraint and conviction, embodying the Shaker leader not as a distant historical figure but as a woman shaped by faith,...

Slay the Competition: Chan-wook Explores the Horrors of Capitalism In many ways, Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax feels more relevant than ever, which is why Park Chan-wook’s adaptation No Other Choice feels so strangely felicitous taking place, as it...