The North is a beautiful decree for digital detoxification
Bart Schrijver’s film The North begins with an earnest proclamation: ‘The trail is best enjoyed without your phone. Please turn it off.’…
Drama
652 posts
The Mountain Bride (Vermiglio) is a Rich Tapestry of Human Sensibility
Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio uses Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ as one of its musical motifs. Cesare (Tommaso Ragno) the patriarch of the large Catholic Grazaidei family spends his money on phonograph rec…
David Cronenberg Embraces AI in His New Film, The Shrouds
This article was original published in 2024. Few filmmakers have explored the human condition through technology and biology as David Cronenberg. Long a fan of blending experimental technology with t…
Maciej J. Drygas' Trains (Pociagi) is a haunting human experience
Although the legend of mass panic in screenings of The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the 50-second film by the Lumière brothers which first screened in 1895 is untrue, it is true that cinem…
Ronan Day-Lewis' cinematic composition isn't enough to save the tonally clumsy Anemone
There’s no doubting Ronan Day-Lewis has an eye for cinematic composition. His debut film Anemone starring his father Daniel Day-Lewis, with Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, and Sean Bottomley looks strikin…
SXSW Sydney Interview: Adrian Ortega, Sarah Nicolazzo & Max Nappo on their familial drama Westgate
Writer-Director Adrian Ortega's Westgate follows Netta (Sarah Nicolazzo) and her son Julian (Max Nappo) as she embarks on a torturous day of navigating hospitals, family, cultural prejudices, and…
From All Sides writer-director Bina Bhattacharya on giving space for multiracial and bisexual stories on screen
Bina Bhattacharya is a creative storyteller whose work I've been following for a while now. Her 2017 short film Wild Dances embraced music and cultural identity against the backdrop of Eurovision,…
Samuel Van Grinsven on honouring the weight of grief with his latest film Went Up the Hill
With two feature films under his belt, Samuel Van Grinsven has quickly become a vital voice in Australian cinema. His feature debut, the lurid and sumptuous 2019 queer drama Sequin in a Blue Room, uti…
Ron Howard's Eden shows that paradise was never real
There’s something irresistible about the idea of running away from it all, isn’t there? The fantasy of leaving behind the noise, the politics, the mess of modern life, and finding some untouched corne…
Adrian Ortega’s Westgate is an immersively authentic gift of a film
In 1970 the under-construction Westgate Bridge in Melbourne collapsed, the biggest industrial accident to ever occur in Australia. 35 people died. It changed the way the industry approached safety aro…
Queer Screen Review: Lucky, Apartment and the fear of being unseen
South Korean documentarian Kangyu Garam makes her feature-length debut with Lucky, Apartment, a film that feels both intimate and unsettling in the way it threads the ordinary with the unbearable. At…
We Bury the Dead is a Haunting Elegy for the Living and the Lost
There are zombie films that thrill you, and then there are those that haunt you — not with snarling teeth or sudden jump scares, but with quiet questions about love, grief, and the echoes we leave beh…