The film centers on 28-year-old Greta (Jella Haase), a recently widowed woman in a small community in Eastern Germany. They are comfortably shielded from the realities of the war, but nevertheless remain duty bound to their country in their thoughts and deeds. But when bodies start washing up on the banks of the nearby river, the village is unsettled. As it becomes clear that the Russian army is advancing, fealty to the fatherland is followed to the extreme in this cinematic depiction what led to the mass suicides that spread across Germany in 1945 as defeat loomed.

“The Nazis trained the people to behave like that: just a body function, without will, without meaning [and without] the right to [question] something,” Vahl explains.

Citing books including Florian Huber’s “Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself” and Ian Kershaw’s “The End,” the director’s deeply researched film started a lot closer to home. “Normally, the old people that didn’t talk so much about the wartime, but my grandmother, she was different,” Vahl said. “When I was a little child, when we walked to the river and she said, ‘They went into the water.’ That [image] never let me go.”

The subject, taboo in Germany for many years, felt like “a horror story of fairy tale” for Vahl who saw in the material something that resonated across far and wide, saying, “I recognized that the story of my grandmother wasn’t a single story, it was all over Germany.”

Intriguingly, Vahl is “not such a fan of war movies,” but she uses the genre and setting to pursue a deeper thematic exploration. “It’s more about our present time. It’s about fear. And fear has a strong power when fear becomes panic, and panic turns to [blaming people],” she explains. “It’s always the same, pattern, you know? When leaders say follow this single story and don’t follow your own moral compass.”

Shooting her first film, Vahl’s ambition created challenges. Not only is Krux a period piece, but the production saw her working with child actors and animals as well, all with limited time and money. At one time, she thought the subject could lend itself well to a TV series. But when it finally came time to make the movie, the filmmaker was able to distill everything down to her most potent vision.

“I calculated was forty-one days [for the shoot], but we had thirty-one days, yes. But through this limitation, we [discovered] new ideas to make [the film] stronger,” she says.

In creating the picture, Vahl nods to director Steve McQueen who speaks of making “cinema that you feel in your guts.” Filled with arresting images and a screenplay that teases out its horrors instead of presenting them head on, Krux makes good in creating an unsettling atmosphere. Vahl’s film presents a vision of fascism’s grip at a distance from power, but the filmmaker is careful not to lead the audience to any easy conclusions.

“I don’t want to give [viewers] so many answers, [I want to] raise more questions,” she says.

The result is a movie that marks an impressive first feature that will certainly have audiences unpacking what they’ve seen long after the credits roll, a mission central to Vahl’s picture. “I like it that when movies stay longer with you, because we are in a time we have so many movies and they go away so fast,” she shares.

“Krux” plays in the Discovery section at TIFF with international sales handled by Global Constellation. 

Unlike many biographical documentaries, Amanda Sans Pantling’s film about Diane Jobson, the lawyer who is best known for her friendship with Bob Marley, isn’t concerned with getting across a story or being, in any way, definitive. Instead, it adopts a patient approach, creating a quiet and wholly appropriate portrait of the woman at its centre – someone who has spent their life helping and supporting others, largely avoiding any acclaim, and walking to the beat of her own drum. A Rastafarian defence lawyer most often seen with a spliff hanging from her lip, Miss Jobson proves a warm and engaging sketch that trades more on the vibes of a good hang as it does descriptive detail.

Although there are some sequences in which questions are evidently put to Diane in order to elucidate certain aspects of her life, largely the filmmaking feels unobtrusive. The modus operandi here seems to be to perhaps manufacture a situation – such as Diane going to visit an old friend – but then to allow life to take its natural course. This means that Diane comes across as utterly authentic; ill at ease discussing her own life, a matronly figure to many of the younger people who recognise her in the street or those who require her help to avoid legal trouble; and lighting up around those she loves. In one scene, her good friend Sally Henzell (the widow of Perry Henzell, director of The Harder They Come amongst other things) tries to get Diane to speak about her love life. She gets short shrift from a private woman who doesn’t see any compunction to discuss su h things.

Early in the film, Diane appears on a morning television show in Jamaica, allowing the film to surreptitiously introduce its main character to anyone unfamiliar – lawyer and friend of Bob Marley, involved in the early days of Tuff Gong Records, known to many as the “poor people’s lawyer.” Diane is uncomfortable with the adulation but the presenter makes no bones about the impact Diane and her work has had on people’s lives. Rather than recounting former victories, or amassing talking head testimonies, Pantling allows this to come out naturally in the film as Diane does her rounds, visiting clients in prison, conducting meetings in her office, celebrating someone’s acquittal with joyful family members. Multiple people imply, or state outright, that Diane has saved lives – she shushes them, lights up a spliff and carries on with her day.

At one stage, when she’s visiting Sally at her picturesque beachfront house, Diane speaks explicitly about Marley and – given he was her introduction to it – about what Rastafarianism means to her. Here she characterises it as an obligation to defend those who can’t help themselves and this is reflected in the legal work we see her undertaking. She is shown visiting a ghetto in Kingston where the police have been roughing up locals and encouraging her client to make a complaint in the hope of dissuading further violence – at one point she confronts a gun-wielding officer about his gloves, suggesting they’ve been reinforced to protect his knuckles when he punches someone. In one conversation, Sally asks her how she handles her conscience when defending killers and criminals. She unequivocally says she harbours no guilt at all, asking Sally if she’s ever been to the ghetto before adding that she would likely use a gun if she had to live there.

This side of Diane’s life is shown in small snippets, like a patchwork impression of her career and she admits on several occasions that she’s getting too long in the tooth to continue working for much longer. She describes herself as a frustrated artist and suggests she’ll perhaps retire and pick up a pencil again. What this life may look like is apparent in the sequences she spends with Sally, clearly an old and dear friend. They bicker and tease one another but the mutual affection shines through – not least when they take a road trip to swim in a cave the frequented as youths, cackling together as they fly down the motorway in a convertible.

The other moment in which Diane’s guard is most down is when she takes a trip to Miami to visit three of Marley’s sons – Rohan, Richard, and Robert. Described as mother, sister, auntie, teacher and many things in between, it is clear the important role that Diane played in their lives both before and after their father’s death and her love for them is evident as they recount funny stories from their childhood. Diane’s impact runs deep, within and beyond the Marley clan. At one point she mentioned Bob: “he had an answer – not a belief but a knowledge.” Watching Miss Jobson move to Diane’s unique rhythm, the same could easily be said of her.

Director, screenplay: Amanda Sans Pantling
Executive producers: Tammy Hart, Amanda Sans Pantling
Cinematography: Jurgen Lisse, Chris Browne
Editing: Juliana Montanes, Carlos Prieto Cabrera
Music: Sergio Bertran
Sound: Cora Delgado
Production company(ies): Hart Investments Ltd (Spain)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (International)
In English
80 minutes

Read more of our coverage of Oldenburg Film Festival.

Delivered to the workshop of a sculptor, Peter (Mattis Savard-Verhoeven), it is the blank canvas from which he must divine his next artwork. In this  evocation of creative pressure – flirting both with feverish anxiety and rapturous vision – the act of determining the path forwards becomes a process of sublimation, of sight beyond sight and, ultimately, of an almost spiritual connection. Comte’s 2018 short Fauve was Oscar-nominated and his debut feature, Paradise, premiered in Berlin earlier this year. Brute screens this week in Oldenburg, having first premiered at Festival REGARD earlier in the year.

An experienced hand in crafting compelling shorts, Comte’s skill shows in Brute, a simple setup mined for striking imagery, enveloping sound design and a core idea that resonates well beyond its running time. Here that last element sees a significant portion of the film trading the artist’s workshop for the rainforest, as Peter is transported there as he works to find the masterpiece hidden within the grain of his material. Comte conceptualises the essence of creation as akin to deep understanding, in which the block of wood is no longer the inanimate object of the sculpture but the living beating heart of an ecosystem.

This all sounds very poetic, and the film certainly contains that element, but it is perhaps more memorable for the almost psychological horror that it inflicts before any moment of clarity. Here the walls shake and move, as Peter is trapped inside the workshop, with only whispering voices and strange presences for company. Michael Anctil’s sound design here is a high point, the equivalent of writer’s block reverberating through the building, creating a sticky discomfort that Peter must force his way through.

In Brute, Peter’s journey is a terrifying and painful one that takes him beyond the limits of space and time, allowing him to see beyond the confines of his physical reality to understand the ecological implications of his craft – or does it? Perhaps the film occurs entirely within Peter’s mind, the crippling anxiety giving way to peace of having found his way. Comte leaves such decisions to the viewer’s discretion, and audiences will likely enjoy mulling over its implications.

Director, screenplay, editing: Jeremy Comte
Cast: Mattis Savard-Verhoeven
Producers: Laurent Allaire, Jeremy Comte
Cinematography: Kristof Brandl
Music: Daniela Andrade
Sound: Michael Anctil
Artistic director: Kenny Dorvil
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Shorts)
No dialogue
16 minutes

Read our coverage of more short films in our Verdict Shorts section.

Having never played the game nor seen any of the earlier movies, I cannot speak to how this Resident Evil fits in the overall scheme of the property. (There will, no doubt, be many reviews that will dig deep into this history.) What I can say is that this brisk 90-minute thriller plays like a great series pilot: it builds the world, establishes the crisis, and carves out time to create meaningful personal stakes for its protagonist.

Those stakes land a lot harder than they otherwise might have thanks to an empathetic and beautifully crafted lead performance from Austin Abrams. The young actor has demonstrated himself to be an intuitive comedic and dramatic actor in a number of film and television projects, but if you saw him in Wolfs — where he spends most of the movie underdressed for winter weather, falling off buildings and attempting to elude the pursuit of George Clooney and Brad Pitt — you know that Abrams can hold attention even when he’s by himself. That skill gets a workout here, as Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten (Ballerina) frequently isolate Abrams’ character Bryan over the course of one very challenging, terrifying night.

Bryan works as a medical courier, delivering to hospitals those insulated zip-up cases that contain a vital organ or other essential healthcare cargo. He’s about to clock out one night when he’s offered double rate to take a package up to Raccoon City; he lies and says his car is outfitted for wintry mountain roads, although we soon see him skidding around. He accidentally hits a pedestrian who suddenly appears from out of a dark forest, and when he stops to find her, he realizes she’s staggered a bloody trail back into the woods. She’s still alive (if staring blankly and holding her hands out in an odd fashion), so he attempts to get her to the hospital. And then mounting levels of all hell break loose.

Anyone even passingly familiar with the Resident Evil saga knows that Bryan has stumbled into the beginning of a zombie outbreak, and as the night continues, and he encounters many a fearsomely mutated person (and animal). This courier will become personally involved with the horrors around him, while occasional phone calls with his girlfriend give him additional motivation to make it out of the nightmare alive.

In true video-game narrative fashion, Bryan keeps finding locks that need keys, weapons that need bullets, and impossible passageways that need him to think past their dead ends, but part of what makes him so relatable is the fact that he’s no action hero — more than once, he laments over the fact that he’s “bad at guns.” Abrams knows his way around a droll wisecrack, and he can also convey terror in his expressive eyes, which makes him the perfect vehicle for what Cregger does so well, mixing notes of humor into moments of terror (and vice versa). The director’s go-to editor Joe Murphy keeps the action and the jokes moving along at just the right clip, and allows memorable moments for a bevy of talented character actors (including Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, and Zach Cherry) while always keeping the focus on Abrams.

There’s room in the world for dread-soaked horror that contemplates the worst of human nature, and based on the sporadic phone calls he makes throughout, there’s room here for assigning metaphorical meaning to Bryan’s horrifying series of tasks. But every so often, it’s fun just to scream and laugh at those horrifying tasks, accompanied as they are by hideous mutations that barf acid. Fun is the main agenda of this new Resident Evil, delivered by a genre specialist.

Director: Zach Cregger
Screenwriters: Zach Cregger & Shay Hatten
Cast: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser
Executive producers: Oliver Berben, Richard Wright, Robert Bernacchi
Producers: Robert Kulzer, Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Victor Hadida, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan
Director of photography: Dariusz Wolski
Production design: Tom Hammock
Editing: Joe Murphy
Music: Ryan and Hays Holladay
Sound design: Kami Asgar, Erin Oakley, supervising sound editor
Production companies: Columbia Pictures, Constantin Film, Davis Films
In English
90 minutes

Just how easy that is to glean from Edgar Pera’s sprawling, chaotic and endlessly reflexive film is a question that remains. Taking as its basic premise that this is a depiction of the rise and fall of the Forças Populares 25 de Abril (Popular Forces 25 April or FP-25) through the 1980s, the Pera then makes hand-break turn after hand-break in a breathless feat of metatextual hybrid filmmaking. None of that is to imply that the resulting work is not hugely enjoyable and utterly transfixing, which should like suit a receptive audience when the film screens in Oldenburg this week having premiered last month at Locarno.

The film takes its title, and its central conceit, from a book by Manuel Ricardo Sousa which charted the inception and ineptitude of FP-25 from the inside. In the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution in 1974, in which Portugal threw off the dictatorial yoke of the Estado Novo regime, which had been established by Salazar (who had died in 1968), The FP-25 saw a new rise of the fascist right threatening to reassert itself and saw direct action as not only advisable, but necessary. Their exploits involved several terrorist attacks and bank robberies, including the bombing of a Chilean embassy and an ugly and tragic incident in which two members were beaten to death during a heist.

Pera is not interested in a straightforward adaptation of events, though. The film refracts this story through a prism of different lenses, at once embracing the tragicomedy of a unprofessional militant outfit while also using the setup to explore the nature of rebellion and political idealism, the concept of artistic resistance and the structures that act against such impulses, seeking to stamp down not just radical thought, but independent thought of any kind. He does this by presenting a series of films within the film – most significantly in the form of an attempt in the 1990s to adapt Asphalt Guerilla directly, through a series of other political statements made earlier in his career as part of his avant-garde “neuro-punk” style.

Where the film is perhaps at its most successful is in using this fractured aesthetic and form to evoke the febrile energy of the politics it is engaging with and in being able to present to the audience the multitudes contained in a movement like FP-25. The constant jittery flickering between dated-looking film footage and archival imagery and almost Godard-esque on-screen text imbues the film with a zine-like quality that speaks to Pera and FP-25’s radical roots. Pera is constantly throwing new images at the screen in such a way that the meaning is sometimes gleaned, or felt, rather than directly processed. At the same time, the playful reimagining of the bank robberies and other operations of the group begin to feel apocryphal – like we are the citizens of Lisbon watches the robberies happen through the stained glass windows of the bank, unsure of what is real. This allows us to laugh at their aborted attempt to steal a stalling car from a cranky elderly man while holding our breath when the idealistic Raul is brutally killed. As Pera’s film is not one thing, FP-25 don’t need to be either. It’s easier to explore the messiness of reality in a film that constantly challenges its own veracity and conventions.

The one place where this contradiction feels a little less successful is in the film’s use of AI imagery. There are various points in the film where it is used – most of these clearly signposted and implied as being a way (at least in the narrative of the voiceover) of reproducing lost images. However, as the film reaches its climax, we are confronted with an onslaught of AI slop accompanied by the warnings of Pera’s former artistic collaborator Terence McKenna where the images come to represent a modern form of fascism: “For us, experience has been betrayed because we serve masters we do not see and whose goals we do not understand.” While Pera is evidently using AI visuals with an agenda to interrogate them – and the point he makes is a resounding one – it feels a little bit like the director is having his cake and eating it having used AI to dramatic effect (and far less overtly) earlier in the film.

In the end, Asphalt Guerilla becomes a treatise on the nature of political creativity and radical art as a way of resisting the rise of something terrifying. It is a manic 77-minute ride, but a thrilling one, filled with important questions and ideas and perfectly embodying the energy of a movement it seeks to represent.

Director: Edgar Pera
Screenplay: Edgar Pera, Rodrigo Areias
Cast: Victoria Gueraa, Ana Bustorff, Nuno Nolasco, Nuno Preto, Ivo Bastos, Albano Jeronimo, Miguel Borges, Ivo Arroja
Producer: Rodrigo Areias
Cinematography: Jorge Quintela
Editing: Joao Mora, Inspector Tornykete
Sound: Pedro Marinho, Antonio Abreu, Sergio Silva
Art direction: Ricardo Preto
Production design: Carlos Andre, Nino Vassouras
Production company(ies): Bando a Parte (Portugal)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Midnite Xpress)
In Portuguese
77 minutes

Read more of our coverage of Oldenburg Film Festival.

The camera lingers in the backseat of the van he rides in with his partner Michel (Michel Mpambara) catching a glimpse of his black eye. It follows him when they arrive at the scene of an accident, where they are mortuary staff tasked with removing the body and – snow storm fast approaching – he’s misplaced his overcoat. It stares directly at him as he observes the decapitated body of a young woman, and attempts to read him as his mind races about the potential implications of the apparent suicide they’re attending to. Anctil gives a worthy performance of all the attention – a fantastic psychological journey across his face in Emile Lavoie’s excellent, brooding, apocalyptic and stomach-churning short drama.

The film takes place at dawn, Evangelos Deborough’s cinematography making the most of the dark car interior, lit starkly by flashlight on occasion or the ominous red of a brake light. The darkness envelops Luc as he tries to sober up and bats away his partner’s questions about what happened to his face. The light, the sound design, the terse dialogue exchanges all add to a sense of foreboding which is elevated when they depart the vehicle and Michel observes the oddity of lightning preceding the incoming snow storm. Lavoie ratchets the tension perfectly as the duo begin going about their work only for Luc to be confronted by a dark possibility as he looks at the unidentified body before him.

Everything around him is perfectly calibrated, but it is in that performance from Anctil that the power of Living Grounds truly lies. Luc is filled with regret and frustration about whatever has happened to him earlier in the night, but it transforms into anxiety and guilt as he wrestles with the potential course of events that have led to this railway siding at dawn. Anctil must navigate a constantly shifting emotional landscape and does so brilliantly to take the audience on his journey with him. The final moments are masterfully played out in this tense, understated by devastating drama.

Director: Emile Lavoie
Screenplay: Emile Lavoie, Camille Mongeau
Cast: Jean-Michel Anctil, Michel Mpambara, Mikhail Ahooja
Producers: Camille Mongeau, Denise Payette, Raymond Lavoie, Gustave Dufresne, Emile Lavoie
Cinematography: Evangelos Desborough
Editing: Louis Chevalier-Dagenais
Music: Theo Porcet
Sound: Gino Visconti, Francois Belanger, Charles Saint-Andre
Artistic direction: Mathilde Donnard, Philippe Gauvin
Production company(ies): Martine Films (Canada)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Shorts)
In French
20 minutes

Read our coverage of more short films in our Verdict Shorts section.

Famed for its commitment to independent cinema and its vital support of those making interesting, dynamic and energising work on the industry’s fringes, the festival in Lower Saxony kicks off once again this Wednesday, 16 September. Over the coming five days, audiences will be treated to a wide variety of work with almost fifty films of different lengths being screened around the city. As always, these will range from crowd-pleasing genre spectacle, to intimate dramas. Viewers can attend gala screenings of world premieres and a vibrant repertory programme curated with real enthusiasm. It looks set to be another invigorating few days, overseen by the familiar face of the festival’s founder and director, Torsten Neumann.

Always keen to spark conversation and create a though-provoking atmosphere, the festival will open on Wednesday evening in a somewhat different style to normal. The world premiere of Mi Steinbach’s Strange Neighbors, makes it the first documentary to open Oldenburg and as a wordless non-narrative portrait of an island and nature reserve on the Elbe river, it is the meditative end of the documentary canon. Described by the film maker as contrasting the majesty of untouched nature with the behemoth of global industry, it is bound to generate discussion.

Other films making their bow in Oldenburg include Matthew Osubor’s Providence-set shaggy dog crime caper about a flower delivery service that possibly does more than deliver flowers, Big Daddy’s Flowers; Kill Me Now, a thriller in which a screenwriter’s life begins to resemble her story, from Michael Polish; Srdjan Janicijevic’s You Won’t Believe What Happened Before, a Macedonian political thriller pulling few punches regarding the state of the world today; and Jared Hogan’s stark and powerful homage to Ford and Malick set in 1930s Utah, Jackrabbit. Elsewhere, Murderous is a new dark and acerbic psychological thriller from Neil LaBute, about a filmmaker accused of stealing an idea from a former classmate.

LaBute is himself the subject of one of the festival’s two repertory strands. Accompanying the debut of his latest film, audiences will be able to delight in revisiting or discovering various of his older work including his first film, 1997’s In the Company of Men, the popular comedy-thriller Nurse Betty, starring Renee Zellweger and Morgan Freeman, and his recent foray into horror, House of Darkness, in which Kate Bosworth invites Justin Long in for a post-date nightcap he’s almost certain to regret. Alongside the work of LaBute, Oldenburg will also be paying tribute to the renowned Zoe Bell, who Quentin Tarantino has termed “the greatest stuntwoman in the world” with screening of Double Dare (2004), Death Proof (2007) and Angel of Death (2009) amongst others.

And there is much more besides. Attendees will be able to catch buzzy festival titles like Alex Cox’s Dead Souls, Zamo Mkhwanazi’s Laundry, Marjorie Conrad’s The Joyless Economy, and Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica. The festival will close on Sunday 20 September with a screening of William Scoular’s Northbound, in which Bruce Dern as an unruly grandpa on a road trip to Canada. It promises to be a bountiful week in Lower Saxony, with bold visions and unique voices aplenty, just the way Oldenburg Film Festival loves it to be.

Read more of our coverage of the 2026 Oldenburg Film Festival and watch this year’s festival trailer below or on YouTube.

“One time I went to my grandmother’s house and I found some family albums there. I started looking through the photographs and I noticed in one a man who was standing next to my father, but his face had been scratched out,” Ahangarani said. “I asked my grandmother and my mother, ‘Who is this person?’ They told me, ‘He was your father’s best friend. He was executed after the revolution. He was a leftist.’ I asked them, ‘Why did you erase him?’ They said, ‘Because, we were afraid. We didn’t want to, leave any trace of him.’ I asked them, ‘Why didn’t you destroy the photo?’ They told me, ‘We don’t know.’ In that shocking moment I realized that maybe my grandmother left that photo there for me, maybe somewhere inside her, she was hoping that one day someone would look at the photo and ask her, ‘Who is this person?’ In that moment, I realized that maybe my responsibility as a filmmaker is to find some of these scratched-out faces and bring them back to life, back into the frame, give them a voice, [and] give them a face in our collective memory, in our collective history.”

With her latest film, she does just that. Utilizing a wealth of archival material, ranging from news broadcasts to on-the-ground smartphone footage, the documentary presents decades of political tumult in Iran through the lens of Ahangarani’s family. The result is a movie that challenges the governing version of the truth and delivers a powerful and distinct view of revolt across generations from inside Iran.

“In Iran we have…private archives, personal archives, and official ones,” she explained. “For example, for the 2009 Green Movement, I found a lot of footage from different sources, and some of them were filmed by ordinary people who participated in the protest. And the other ones [were from] the official archives. When you put these two different archives next to each other, you immediately feel the contradiction because there was some kind of distance in the official archives. They wanted to dehumanize the people. You feel that whoever is filming is a stranger. But as soon as you see a personal archive, [shot] by ordinary people who participated in the protest, in every camera shake, in every sudden movement, even in every out of focus image, you see humanity.”

Now living in exile in London, the filmmaker nevertheless feels a deep connection to the cycles of “hope and despair” Iranians have been living through. The transition hasn’t been easy and Ahangarani who still dreams of one day returning.

“I left my country with just one carry-on and as soon as I imagine [myself] as an immigrant who can’t go back to my country…I can’t accept [this],” she said. “You can’t imagine how difficult it is when you’re outside of your country and when you see your friends in the street, and you can’t get any news from them because there’s no internet [or] phone.”

“I can’t accept that I’m gonna [raise] my child outside of Iran. Maybe next year, me, my baby, and my husband will go back to Iran, and my daughter can see her grandmothers and my aunts and all of my family, and I hope she feels Iran is her homeland,” the director adds.

Rehearsals for a Revolution is an example of how the voice and view of the ordinary citizen can confront codified narratives. And for Ahangarani, these are necessary supplies in her work as a director, saying, “These are my materials, these are my tools, because I think these materials by themselves can challenge the authoritarian’s power, and stand against the official version of the history.”

“Rehearsals for a Revolution” plays in the Centrepiece section at TIFF. It will be released theatrically in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics. 

“I’m not from anywhere,” Beau (Eanna Hardwicke) says. The year is 1988 and he’s in exile from Ireland, where homosexuality is still illegal, and living in London. Maurice (Rupert Everett) — self-described as “South London’s premiere Auntie” — gives Beau the run of his cafe that’s more a refuge for lost queer men than a functioning restaurant. One afternoon, one of Maurice’s “strays,” Tiny (Jack Wolfe), comes through the door with the promise of a job. Sensitive and inexperienced where Beau is hardened and weary, Tiny eventually wears him down enough to become his flatmate. Tiny receives a queer education, given a stack of books by Jean Genet from Beau, and a lecture in queer icons by Maurice, and begins to see the possibility of a fuller life.

“I feel dirty inside,” Tiny confesses to Maurice one night. The year is 1988 and the Center of Disease Control in the United States will report 46,000 fatalities from AIDS that year alone. The young man has been diagnosed and suddenly Beau goes from reluctant friend to resistant caretaker. He comes up with a system so the increasingly forgetful Tiny remembers to take his pills. But the proximity to Tiny stokes Beau’s own unspoken fears about the disease ravaging a community that is desperately trying to persevere. This manifests in Beau alternately pulling Tiny close to him and then pushing him even further away until one day he disappears completely. Concerned, Beau goes in search of Tiny in the familiar cruising spots, bars, and hangouts, bringing him closer to truths he’s not ready to face.

The ambitious picture unfolds in a carefully weaved tapestry that stitches together the past and present, dreams and memories, music, and even Gloria (Christina Hendricks), a former Hollywood goddess, now a queenly Charon ferrying souls to the afterlife. With uncommon confidence, Turpin brings it all together without losing a thread. The resulting sensation, guided with fluid editing by Stephanie McCutcheon, is a film whose ethereality is its grounding touch.

It’s in this environment that allows rising star Hardwicke (IFTA award winner for last year’s TIFF entry Saipan) to give yet another impressive turn. As a man not at home anywhere, Beau is an island unto himself; flinty, guarded, and not easily likeable, but the actor never makes him totally distant. Hardwicke’s measured performance empathetically portrays Beau’s mix of anger, helplessness, and sorrow that grows as Tiny — a symbol of promise and loss — tumbles further into his illness and needs him more than ever. With such a strong center, the rest of the ensemble follows with Everett (charming and solemn), Wolfe (doe-eyed and vulnerable) and Jessica Reynolds (devoted, as Beau’s best friend Shell) working to build the thumping, bruised heart of the movie.

“I like love stories and ghost stories,” Tiny says, and that perfectly describes Ancestors. Turpin has fashioned a story of love, one that finds Beau raging against his affections for Tiny, a man who with each passing day is disappearing forever. As he searches for Tiny, when he’s asked, “Is he someone special?” it’s as if Beau only realizes it in that moment. The contemplative and delicate film is filled with such unanswerable and unexpected questions: Where do we go when we die? Will our sins be forgiven? But the most potent question Turpin poses is: how do we remember someone when they’re gone? The answer might be: we remember them as if we they are right here with us.

The year is 1988, and in December, World AIDS Day will be observed for the very first time.

Director: David Turpin
Screenplay: David Turpin
Cast: Eanna Hardwicke, Jack Wolfe, Jessica Reynolds, Rupert Everett, Christina Hendricks
Producers: David Collins, Eamon Hughes, Miranda Ballesteros
Cinematography: Patrick Jordan
Production design: Louise Mathews
Costume design: Saileóg O’Halloran
Editing: Stephanie McCutcheon
Music: Stephen Shannon
Production companies: Samson Films (Ireland), Lunatica (United Kingdom)
World sales: Mister Smith Entertainment
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In English
106 minutes

Isak (Herbert Nordrum) is man literally carving out his place in the world. In a remote, mountainous region of northern mid-19th century Norway, he finds a patch of land wild with timber and decides to make it his home. A crevice in a rock face is the first place he finds shelter, as it protects him from the wind and snow. Soon he is joined by Inger (Asta Kamma August), a woman with a harelip, traversing the land with a cow in tow. They make an unspoken agreement to be together and consummate their relationship. They build a home out of timber and rock. And then a barn for livestock. Soon she is pregnant with child. They are in love, living in an enjoyable solitude. They aren’t lonely and their days are filled with farming and raising their child Eleseus. This idyll won’t last.

The modern world encroaches on their life. First comes the arrival of the Sheriff, who informs the illiterate Isak that he must formally register a deed for his property with the state and pay taxes. Another child is born, Sivert. Isak and Inger are happy, and their joy grows. However, when Inger is sent to prison following a violent incident, Isak must raise his sons on his own. And when she returns, their life simply cannot return to what it once was.

Thoughtfully constructed, Moland approaches material as if it were a biblical text. The early portions of the two-and-a-half-hour movie are nearly wordless. Chaptered, the first section is called Before Time and indeed, it feels primordial. Isak and Inger — perhaps like Adam and Eve — are both in wonder and awe at the untamed world. The wind howls around them and the cold gnaws at their bones. A fire is barely enough to keep them warm. Moland makes us feel every tree chopped down, and every boulder leveraged, as the pair wrestle the land around them into something habitable. When Isak is pinned under a tree, with Inger nowhere in sight, the filmmaker unfurls an agonizingly felt sequence as the man figures out how to get a nearby axe into his hands so he can free himself.

If the first half of the film is more primeval, the second stirs melodrama into the mix. Isak’s masculine stoicism starts to fray as Inger, with the changing times, stakes her independence and begins to see the possibilities for herself and children in the wider, quickly modernizing world. Nordrum, perhaps best known for his supporting turn in The Worst Person In The World, operates in a different register here. Under an unkempt beard, his Isak is a man who understands only what’s in front of him, driven by the simple notion that the home and farm he has built will establish his legacy. But nothing is so simple, and the actor finds the tenderness inside Isak’s otherwise largely animalistic nature. As he did for Renate Reisve, Nordrum sets the stage for a breakout turn by August (who also stars this year in the TIFF selection What Lies Between Us). Inger is given the film’s biggest arc, from an almost timid woman who feels undeserving of care given her affliction, to someone who finds the confidence and self-determination in a world she begins to see will no offer no gifts to those who don’t claim opportunities when they arise. And the actress owns it, giving Inger an unforgettably formidable presence, anchored by a head that refuses to be bowed, and an intelligence whose depths are yet to be reach.

Beautifully photographed and painstakingly modulated, The Growth of the Soil falls just shy of achieving the cumulative power of its grand scope. Too often, the film unfolds as a series of events whose emotions are muted. Isak eventually matures and seemingly finds everything he could’ve wanted with a home and wife and children, assuming in his simple way, it would pass on to the next generation. The devastation is that nothing is so easy. Philosophically, Moland communicates that message, but just misses the heart.

Director: Hans Petter Moland
Screenplay: Hans Petter Moland, Gard B. Eidsvold
Cast: Herbert Nordrum, Asta Kamma August, Gard B Eidsvold, Anders Baasmo
Producers: Hakon Overas
Cinematography: Oskar Dahlsbakken
Production design: Thomas Oyjordsbakken Odland
Costume design: Anne Pedersen
Editing: Linda Man
Music: Kaspar Kaae
Sound: Gisle Tveito
Production companies: 4 1/2 FICTION AS 4 ½ Fiction (Norway), Scanbox Entertainment (Norway)
World sales: Beta Cinema
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
In Norwegian
155 minutes

It’s 1916, and a trainload of fresh faced young Belgian men head to the front, psyching themselves up as they sing “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile” in unison. Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) is among them, and when he arrives at camp, he does his best to live up to the model of the ideal soldier. Little does he know that there are other ways to serve until he sees “the band of rejects.” Led by the flamboyant Francis (Valentin Campagne), the group of soldiers — unable or forbidden from taking part in combat — are tasked with raising morale among the men. Through song, dance, and plays, Francis (adept at costumes thanks to his trade as a tailor before the war) leads his charges in staging elaborate entertainments for the troops. Soon, Pierre starts helping with their productions and something deeper unfolds with between himself and Francis.

While some of their comrades mutter about about the “rejects” playing arts and crafts while everyone else is “killing the Huns,” its undeniable that the soldiers welcome the distraction from the horrors of the battlefield. If Francis doesn’t fully understand the reality of what goes on in no man’s land, Pierre does. More than once he’s dragged maimed, disfigured, and horrifically injured bodies back to their side until one day he’s had enough, and intentionally drives a knife through his hand. Unable to fight while the wound heals, he joins Pierre and the “rejects” full time. Their love blooms, as intense as it is temporary.

Coward draws it’s strongest power from the bitter irony that Pierre and Francis can enjoy some measure of an unfettered sexual and emotional relationship that, either before or after war, would be untenable. Indeed, Francis half-seriously wishes the war wouldn’t end; he realizes what they have is special and singular. But Pierre has bigger dreams, pushing for promises from Francis of a future together that wavers between unrealistic and delusional. It’s a shame then that so much of this tenderness is rendered with syrupy sentimentality, as Dhont punches in Valentin Hadjadj’s barn door-sized score to ensure not one feeling goes unnoticed. The effect is a movie that unfavorably echoes the worst excesses of 1940s Hollywood dramas, unable to trust viewers to let their own hearts move them. This follows to the two leads — who shared an acting prize on the Croisette — who either by design or from the script settle their performances on a single register. Pierre is mostly interior turmoil, Francis all extravagance, with neither being by led by Dhont toward the sensitivities the story calls for.

Away from Francis’ rehearsals and shows, the wartime sequences are routine. From the muddy trenches to the muddy fields of barbed wire, Dhont feels somewhat uninspired here. The volume is loud, the camera close and shaky; it’s almost as if the scenes were completed with only the most perfunctory interest in order to return to the material the filmmaker felt more compelled by. Similarly, a sequence through a hospital recovery room full of men attempting to heal from life-altering injuries feels muted in the casual and almost cavalier nature in which its displayed.

Coward does earn commendation for interrogating modes of masculinity, and how war blurs the lines of manliness that are more rigidly formalized in peacetime. Otherwise, Dhont’s picture draws a chintzy conclusion that war and love are similar kinds of hell. But as the picture comes to a close, the filmmaker attempts to wrap the film in a happy bow. But its a disservice to the men ruined both physically and psychologically, and an injustice to Pierre and Francis — they are so idealized as to not be changed at all.

Director: Lukas Dhont
Screenplay: Lukas Dhont
Cast: Emmanuel Macchia, Valentin Campagne
Producers: Michiel Dhont
Cinematography: Frank van den Eeden
Production design: Eve Martin
Costume design: Isabel Van Renterghem
Editing: Alain Dessauvage
Music: Valentin Hadjadj
Sound: Valerie Deloof, Flavia Cordey
Production companies: The Reunion (Belgium), Lumen (France), Topkapi Films (Netherlands), Versus Productions (Opus) (Belgium), France 2 Cinema (France), RTBF (Belgium), Proximus (Belgium), BeTV (Belgium)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
In French, Dutch
125 minutes

After her father unexpectedly passes away, Ejva (Elli Sara Valkeapää) has little time to mourn. The vast reindeer herd he shepherded needs tending and Ejva, raised by her father to follow in his footsteps, must now prove her worth to her family. But she quickly learns that, as a woman, it won’t be easy to be admitted to the male-dominated council that governs the community. After making some mistakes while out with fellow herders in the unforgiving tundra, during the deep freeze of winter, Ejva wonders if she’ll ever be taken seriously. She also has the added pressure of being a role model for her younger sister Elle (Risten Alida Siri Skum). But when Ejva accepts the romantic advances of Heaika (Andte Gaup-Juuso), an influential leader in the community, she’s brought into the circle of shepherds and herders.

Ejva settles into her relationship with Heaika with all the excitement of a compromise, but as winter turns to spring, her passions are inflamed by his cousin Nejla (Vincent Niia). Their flirtations bloom into a genuine connection that’s apparent to anyone looking — including Heaika. When Ejva attempts to end things, Heaika asserts his dominance with rape, and reminds her the only reason she’s been integrated with the others is because of him. The assault causes her hands to shake uncontrollably, threatening her ability to take care of the herd. And if she can’t manage the reindeer, Ejva wonders what her identity is as a Sami.

The screenplay evokes the richness of Victorian era novels, transposed to the Swedish north, fusing together environmental and emotional landscapes, and reflecting them back on each other. Indeed, this story about a woman whose loyalties are torn and reputation is threatened is the stuff of classics. Kernell, born to a Sami father and Swedish mother, updates these elements in her screenplay that both honors her Indigenous background and challenges the archaic and sexist structures that may still be ailing some segments of the community.

It’s thanks to the sensitive and considered writing that the cast — largely made up of actual reindeer herders — are able to shine. None more so than Elli Sara Valkeapaa. She’s a magnetic and natural presence, subtly evoking and admirably handling the vast spectrum of feelings Ejva grapples with over the course of a year. Niia is similarly impressive, finding the right balance to play a more sensitive variant of the otherwise masculine and macho herders Nejla works with. The actors warm the center of the picture’s wintry landscape, one of frozen lakes and hard crunching snow and reddened cheeks, that Sophia Olsson’s camera handsomely captures.

The film’s title is a phrase that’s commonly said to young, Sami reindeer herders. And as the picture moves into its third act, Ejva is faced with having to put that advice into action in order to survive. But asking someone to make themselves brittle leaves them closed off to the things that make us human such as desire, wonder, longing; it asks one to refuse to be vulnerable. Kernell’s solution to the paradox is an ending that’s elegant and rings with hard truths. She allows Ejva the dignity to move on while shifting her burden to the community around her to consider. Just as in life, justice is imperfect, but Ejva, with Elle by her side, is ready to show the next generation how to face challenges from within and without with a full heart and head held high.

Director: Amanda Kernell
Screenplay: Amanda Kernell
Cast: Elli Sara Valkeapaa, Andte Gaup-Juuso, Vincent Niia, Risten Alida Siri Skum, Siri Marakatt, Arild Skaltje, Nils Peder A Gaup
Producers: Eva Åkergren
Cinematography: Sophia Olsson
Production design: Sabine Hviid
Costume design: Sandra Woltersdorf, Sara Svonni
Editing: Linda Man, Theis Schmidt
Music: Rebekka Karijord, Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Sound: Brian Dyrby, Kristoffer Salting
Production companies: Nordisk Film Production (Denmark), Forest People (Norway), Compass Films (Iceland), Invictus (Bulgaria), Filmpool Nord (Sweden), SVT (Sweden), Film i Väst (Sweden)
World sales: TrustNordisk
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In Northern Sami, Swedish
97 minutes

Yet its two big wins – very rare in the festival annals—left many with a feeling of disappointment that the festival’s intense, slap-in-the-face, game-changing favorites, NAZA and DAU, were farther down on the awards list. The former documentary shocked audiences with its uncompromising revelations from anonymous Israeli intelligence officers about how cynically the Israeli military targets the people of Gaza for destruction and death. After receiving a 24-minute standing ovation at its official screening, possibly the longest in Venice’s history, it seemed particularly undervalued when it got only the Special Jury Prize to take home. DAU, a wildly imaginative, expressionistic vision of Soviet scientists working on the atomic bomb during the Cold War, twenty controversial years in the making, was recognized with the Best Director award to Ilya Khrzhanovsky.

It was a momentous year on the stage of world politics by any measure, marked by old and new wars, economic instability, and major political re-alliances. Almost every festival that took place in 2026 had to come to terms with demands they take a public stand in favor of Palestine and Ukraine, against Israel and Russia. Venice director Alberto Barbera has said he sees the festival’s role as safeguarding freedom of expression, and that it makes no sense for it to take an explicit political position. In the last few years, the Venice Film Festival has become known for its liberal attitude to programing films from any country in the world, in contrast to the controversies Berlin and Cannes always seem to get embroiled in, not to mention the many smaller festivals who have to follow national political guidelines that exclude entire countries from selection.

The most memorable films in Venice competition – and there were many intense experiences in the lot – wove their stories around social injustice, war, military dictatorship and other contemporary issues.

The understated delicacy of Lee Chang-Dong’s Possible Love, in which a poor Korean family of three who have lost their money and self-respect when a strike at their factory fails to reinstate redundant employees, is a long film that starts quietly and builds to a bewitching, transcendental conclusion. It was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize. Entirely overlooked at the awards’ distribution was Marco Bechis’s riveting Back to Buenos Aires, a relentless revisitation of Garage Olimpo, the director’s classic outcry against the military dictatorship that saw so many young Argentinians tortured and killed. The new film offers a painful catharsis to the survivors, and the audience, with Italian actor Adriano Giannini exceptionally moving.

While Naza rightly earned the biggest headlines, the wider Venice program delivered a bumper haul of superior documentaries with strong political themes. Musk, Alex Gibney’s epic-length investigation into Elon Musk, mostly covered familiar ground, but landed enough sharp blows to draw legal threats from the Nazi-saluting tech tycoon himself. Spanning even more screen time, Julia Loktev’s six-hours-plus My Undesirable Friends Part II: Exile offered a riveting ensemble portrait of brave young rebel reporters forced to flee Russia after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, paying a high price emotionally and mentally for speaking truth to power.

There was also a timely political dimension to Theo Rollason’s Queer Edward II, a flashback to legendary director Derek Jarman’s angriest film, which was made against a backdrop of stormy gay rights protests. Rollason’s fascinating found-footage documentary shared the main Queer Lion prize in Venice. Meanwhile, Oscar-winner Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) shared a chillingly powerful snapshot of Trump’s America with They’re Here, a 25-minute non-fiction horror film co-directed by Rachel Lauren Mueller, about ICE agents terrorising the streets of Minneapolis,

Veteran campaigning documentary-maker Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, USA) was back on the Lido too with another hard-knuckled examination of workplace power politics, Union Town, which chronicles a series of recent strikes in New York City. Kudos is due to Kopple, a mere 80 years young and still fighting the good fight.

Indeed, older filmmakers were in great form in Venice this year. Making a rare return to drama, the 84-year-old Werner Herzog delivered one of his most boldly unhinged passion-project films in years, the surreal Irish fairy tale Bucking Fastard. Herzog also made brief cameo as himself in the latest feature by his German New Wave contemporary, 81-year-old Wim Wenders, the elegantly crafted 3D documentary From Inside Out: The Architecture of Peter Zumthor.

Still a formidable screen queen at 93, Ellen Burstyn was in Venice to pick up her honorary Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion. She also had acting credits in the program, playing a 100-year-old Marilyn Monroe in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s quirky short Flesh Impact, and a mischievous matriarch taking a wild road trip in Kornél Mundruczó’s patchy but warm-hearted odd-couple comedy Place to Be.

By comparison, John Malkovich is a mere baby at just 72, but he brought tremendous comic energy to Venice, winning the Best Actor prize for his full-spectrum performance as a rogue CIA agent in Martin McDonagh’s darkly hilarious Wild Horse Nine. This late-career return to peak form by Malkovich is already being widely tipped as a surefire Oscar contender.

Outside of the competitive sections, the audience cast its vote in the Spotlight sidebar, the only part of the Official Selection where the public gets to pick a winner. Their choice fell upon the Romanian film I Matter, the feature directorial debut of actress Alina Serban (a regular of Radu Jude). Viewers were drawn to the story of Rebeca, a Roma teenager whose life is about to change as she gets ready for her 18th birthday and leaving the orphanage where she grew up. A reworking of Serban’s short of the same name from 2021, it’s a solid character study and further evidence of the strength of contemporary Romanian cinema, with the award as a precursor to wider global exposure in theaters.

Among the questions that loomed large over the selection was one about the Italian films in the program: too many, perhaps? Alberto Barbera was quick to point out it was one fewer than 2025, but that doesn’t change the fact the general reaction on the Lido suggested a few of the festival regulars (Gianni Amelio among them) could have sat this one out. Particularly curious was the response to Andrea Pallaoro’s The Echo Chamber, widely regarded in the critics’ polls as a nadir of the competition. Not too long ago, critics and cinephiles had blasted Italy’s Ministry of Culture for refusing to support a project based on Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay; now, they were cheerfully tearing down that very film, implicitly confirming the ministry committee may have had a point.

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s jury was certainly not impressed by the Italian crop, as this was one of the rare editions where the national contenders were completely left out of the official awards. Better results took place in the Orizzonti competition, where Tommaso Landucci’s Children of the Monkey (the affecting story of a father who, having to deal with a disabled child, starts spending more time with his nephew) won Best Screenplay and Best Actor, the latter being a fitting achievement for a career-best performance by Riccardo Scamarcio, who boldly casts aside his usual brooding persona in favor of something more vulnerable and raw.

The setting is Italy in the 17th century. Leopoldo da Casamacchia (Favino) has buried his Prior (Paolo Rossi) and is sort of stranded in the middle of nowhere, having left his usual grounds due to the plague. He soon gains a certain renown: while the Church carries out most of its business in Latin, Leopoldo regales people with Biblical episodes in the local vernacular, complete with animal sounds and the occasional joke. The Pope (Carlo Cecchi, in his final performance) gets wind of this and, believing the friar’s actions to be blasphemous and heretical, sends the most preeminent Inquisitor of the time, Cardinal Maculani (Silvio Orlando), to investigate. The question is, can we laugh when godly matters are involved?

Nowadays, the answer would be positive (Pope Francis is quoted in the end credits), but the intolerant attitude displayed by the Church is not as ancient as one might think, lest we forget Monty Python’s Life of Brian was banned in several countries (in fact, Italian cinemas didn’t receive it until 1990, eleven years after its domestic debut). Of course, that was a pure comedy, which God Laughs really isn’t. Of course, Leopoldo’s stories are sprinkled with humor (and the English subtitles do not do justice to Favino’s use of language, as he speaks in an Umbrian dialect and employs slang terms), but even those moments have an underlying sadness to them, to the extent that when he resorts to profanity in a key scene, it’s cathartic and tragic rather than funny.

Favino is predictably great, every nuance of the friar’s multifaceted existence emanating from his eyes, and Veronesi gives him the right sparring partner in the shape of Orlando as a man weighed down by his own reputation and disillusioned with what the clergy is turning into. Through their repartee and Maurizio Calvesi’s earthy cinematography, the director takes us on a trip to the Italy of yore, a place looking for hope even in the apparently silliest of places, while those in power use faith as an instrument of oppression.

And while some might check out on account of the film’s departure from Veronesi’s usual style, it is precisely when he most explicitly steps outside of his comfort zone that the picture strengthens its position and showcases a cinematic maturity that may take some aback (put simply, scenes involving the Inquisition’s nastier practices are not played for laughs). And yet, at its core, the picture also harkens back to some of the recurring themes in his filmography, and one in particular: the importance of love. Even when the person describing it comes across as a bit of a jester.

Director: Giovanni Veronesi
Screenwriters: Giovanni Veronesi, Nicola Baldoni, Gianluca Bernardini, Nicola De Orsola, Paolo Portone, Jean Jacques Ilunga
Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Silvio Orlando, Alma Noce, Francesco Gheghi, Maurizio Lombardi, Paolo Rossi, Carlo Cecchi
Producers: Fabrizio Donvito, Benedetto Habib, Marco Cohen, Daniel Campos Pavoncelli, Massimiliano Orfei, Luisa Borella, Davide Novelli
Cinematography: Maurizio Calvesi
Production design: Carmine Guarino
Costume design: Carlo Poggioli
Music: Paolo Buonvino
Sound: Giulio Capanna
Production company: Indiana Production, Ogi Film, Piperfilm
World sales: Piper Play
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Venice Open – Out of Competition/Closing Film)
In Italian
114 minutes

A few years ago, Lafitte was on villain duty in The Count of Monte Cristo, where he played Gérard de Villefort, a previously irreproachable prosecutor who then decided to take part in a cover-up and false accusation for personal gain. Here, he’s Léonard Landry, a defense attorney with a sketchy track record: while he is good at his job, he also has a habit of defending criminals in ways that most would consider ethically dubious at best, and he’s a massive coke fiend: in the highly energized opening sequence, he exits a club after pulling a drug-fueled all-nighter, gets to his usual hangout and asks the bartender for his poison of choice – vodka with pepper, which he himself twists out of a pepper mill (three turns, no more, no less). As he later explains, that mixture can keep him going for 48 hours straight.

Except, that’s not quite what happens this time, as the stress of running between two court hearings (one of which he was forced into) takes its toll on the man, causing him to collapse from an overdose in full view of the judges. One rehab stint later, he has one week to prepare for the case which will determine his professional future, since his cocaine supply was on display in open court when he had his episode. His best hope is being defended by his colleague and former lover Iris Saint-Didier (Mélanie Laurent), but she’s skeptical. As chance would have it, though, their paths cross as he’s provided with material that could substantially alter the outcome of a trial she’s working on. An uneasy alliance is forged, and Landry also has to show the ropes to his young intern (Anthony Bajon), whose idealism is about to be shaken.

The main attraction is Lafitte, and he is positively on fire from an acting standpoint, regardless of which mode his character is in: the almost manic energy of the opening stretch (basically Trainspotting if Mark Renton had become a lawyer) is just as compelling as the more subdued – but still brilliantly arrogant – version we get once he’s out of rehab and genuinely trying to do better. The title is not ironic at all: Landry is a ridiculously good jurist, and he wants to match his legal acumen with moral rectitude, as that is the only way he’ll – possibly – be allowed to keep practicing the one profession he’s even remotely qualified for.

It’s almost a one-man show, although the actor spars admirably with Bajon and their banter keeps the emotional stakes relevant, even as the writing begins to descend into sub-Grisham territory (the twists and turns in the third act come close to stretching plausibility, although that is unlikely to be considered a bug by the average Netflix user). It’s perhaps not the right material for a continuing storyline, unlike Lafitte’s previous experience as a cop alongside Omar Sy, but it’s thrilling enough to ensure we want to see those two together on screen again at some point.

Director: Tristan Séguéla
Screenwriters: Marcia Romano, Simon Jacquet, Tristan Séguéla, Stéphane Sebag
Cast: Laurent Lafitte, Anthony Bajon, Mélanie Laurent, Carole Bouquet
Producer: Simon Jacquet
Cinematography: Augustin Barbaroux
Production design: Jan Houllevigue
Costume design: Elfie Carlier
Music: Amine Bouhafa
Sound: Nicolas Provost, Anne Gibourg, Nicolas Bouvet, Niels Barletta
Production company: ICONOCLAST
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Venice Open – Out of Competition)
In French
110 minutes

Xiao Lei (Cuishan Liang) and Li Bei (Jialing Sun) are a young lesbian couple sharing a Beijing apartment. Their sexuality is not exactly a secret, but this is socially conservative China, so they mostly play it safe by shielding their relationship from casual friends and co-workers. In a source of mounting irritation for Li Bei, Xiao Lei has also not yet come out to her parents, fearing the explosive reaction of her overbearing mother Ling Hu (Wi Chunli), whose dearest wish is for her only daughter to find a nice man, get married and start a family.

With New Year looming, Xiao Lei makes plans to visit her parents in Harbin, a city in north-east China close to the Russian border, which is famous for its icy winters. Adding insult to injury, she She does not invite Li Bei but instead recruits a casual male acquaintance, Yao (Bin Yu), to come home and role-play as her boyfriend. While this awkward gathering is unfolding, Li Bei becomes increasingly angry over her erasure from the story, eventually setting off to Harbin to force a truth-telling showdown with Xiao Lei’s family.

Little Big Things is a closely autobiographical story for Zhou. The plot was inspired by a similar real-life case of deception, shock revelation and family rupture which happened to her and her partner, Chun Yu, who is also the film’s main producer. Adding an extra meta dimension, Yu’s actual father, Bin Yu, plays the father of her screen alter ego. In her Venice notes, Zhou pitches the film as a cathartic healing process, a “dialogue through cinema” to help resolve lingering generational friction.

Zhou could have played this familiar clashing-values coming-out plot for maximum socially awkward comedy, as seen in thematically similar films like Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993), Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) and Clea DuVall’s Happiest Season (2020). But instead she lays out these events with sombre restraint, a non-judgmental tone and a generous degree of compassion for all her characters. Even Ling Hu, ostensibly the villain of the piece, is a study in quiet desperation and profound loneliness.

In an extra culturally specific twist, Xiao Lei and her father have roots in southern China, switching between Mandarin and Cantonese at times, which isolates the monolingual Ling Hu further. The film’s subtly invoked setting is the early 2020s, shortly after pandemic lockdowns lifted, when long-separated families could finally meet up again, which reinforces this underlying theme of lost human connection.

Big Little Things is a minor-key chamber drama, but it still fills a big screen with emotional pyrotechnics and eye-catching visuals. Zhou and her cinematographer Hark Xu consistently turn tiny details into lyrical moments, doing imaginative work with silhouettes, reflections, neon colour busts and fuzzy focus fields. Rarely seen on western cinema screens, Harbin is another strong selling point. Framed as a painterly collage of icy streets and deserted snowscapes, the city comes to feel like a giant metaphor for the deep-frozen tensions that crackle between the story’s conflicted protagonists. There may be a subtle cautionary message here about social conformity and conservative values being a surefire recipe for misery, but Zhou is not pushing any militant queer manifesto in this tender, bittersweet story about the harm caused by the secrets and lies we tell others, and ourselves.

Director, screenwriter: Michelle Zhou
Cast: Cuishan Liang, Jialing Sun, Bin Yu, Ling Hu, Hai Yu
Cinematographer: Hark Xu
Editor: Xinzhu Liu
Music: Gang Yu
Producers: Chun Yu, Michelle Zhou, Junjie Zhai, Clarissa Zhang
Production: Three Dots Films (US), Snow Island Pictures (Hong Kong)
World sales: Moebius Entertainment, Hong Kong
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
In Mandarin, Cantonese
109 minutes

The film tells the story Ejva (Elli Sara Valkeapaa), a young woman who is suddenly thrust into caring for the family’s reindeer herd in remote, northern Sweden after her father suddenly passes away. The practice is close to the heart of the Sami, and Ejva is determined to live up to the expectations of those around her. But following a violent assault, she must reassess her place in the community and what it will take, physically and emotionally, to endure.

“It’s something you say to young ranger herders,” the writer and director elaborates about the title. “Older people tell it to young people during herding [season] because that’s how you survive because life is gonna be tough. People will die, and the world is gonna be tough on you too.”

Indeed, Kernell’s beautifully shot film makes palpable the hardships herders face. From treacherously icy lakes to unrelenting snowstorms, reindeer herding isn’t for the faint of heart. And by utilizing actual non-actor herders in the lead roles and across the ensemble in making the film, it helped with a production that battled the elements. This was no routine studio film.

“Everything went wrong,” Kessel laughs. “I would not recommend [shooting] like this. But if you do, do it with reindeer herders. They’re all used to being on your own and solving things in a place where there’s no phone coverage and a lot of avalanches.”

The filmmaker’s determination fuelled her desire to bring to the screen the truth of the perils and challenges of herding. The years spent earning the trust of the community (Kessel’s father is Sami) is reflected in the detailed portrayal of raising reindeer and the dangers it involves. A sequence involving a snowmobile plunging through a lake was filmed on location, and animals were actually branded. This verisimilitude serves a larger purpose for Kessel. Brace Your Heart has larger ideas and questions on its mind as the filmmaker explores how trauma and identity reflect and refract amongst a tightly bonded group of people.

“If you’ve been through something traumatic or violent, what’s the alternative to leaving everything behind? Should you stay with the person who did this to you?” Kessel asks. “I guess a lot of people would say no. But I don’t think it’s that easy because what if you love this life?”

“So what can then liberate you?,” she continues. “Is it love? Is it the truth? Some people say it’s the truth because it actually liberates you inside yourself, because it changes the memory center in your brain if you put words [to it].”

Another central theme to the picture is — what’s the cost of letting something go and moving on? “A lot of people that have been through difficult times, storms in their lives, and found a way out on the other side, have been in this difficult choice of when should you confront and what should you forgive,” she says. “So it comes from wondering what should be forgiven and what if you live in a place where everything must be forgiven.”

Brace Your Heart doesn’t go for easy answers. The film traverses an emotionally terrain as rugged as the beautiful and lonely landscape it presents. But Kernell also wants viewers to take away some measure of hope from the film too. Elli Sara Valkeapaa watched the picture before its Toronto premiere, and she not only saw herself in Ejva, but learned something from the character too.

“ ‘This reminds me a lot of my life,’ ” Kernell says Elli told her. “ ‘And I think I’ve learned from Ejva to stand up more to my for myself.’ ”

Brace Your Heart plays in the Platform section at TIFF with international sales handled by TrustNordisk.

Cincuenta años después de los sucesos narrados en Garage Olimpo —la estremecedora denuncia de Marco Bechis sobre la tortura y el asesinato en Argentina a manos de una brutal dictadura militar—, el cineasta chileno-italiano toma los pedazos destrozados de un pequeño grupo de sobrevivientes en una obra de ficción igualmente oscura e intensa: Regreso a Buenos Aires.

Ante el actual debate artístico y político que tiene eco en los festivales de cine, el guionista y director Marco Bechis siempre se ha mostrado certero sobre su enfoque cinematográfico. «Toda actividad artística es también un acto político. Un artista es alguien que quiere sacudir nuestras conciencias», escribe en el boletín de prensa. Garage Olimpo (1999) fue uno de esos hitos convulsos del cine político argentino, al retratar los horrores y la violencia de la dictadura militar del país en la década de 1970, con la tortura y el asesinato sistemáticos de jóvenes activistas opositores al régimen.

Su nueva película Regreso a Buenos Aires —que es casi una secuela— logra narrar una historia igualmente apasionante centrada en las víctimas que sobrevivieron y que han cargado con las cicatrices físicas y emocionales de esa experiencia durante toda su vida. Estrenada en la sección oficial de Venecia, es un drama absorbente, fotografiado con sobriedad visual controlada, acompañado de una banda sonora palpitante —similar al latido del corazón— que mantiene la atención del espectador evitando que su mente divague.

Parte de la fuerza y convicción de estas dos películas surge sin duda de la experiencia personal del director: en 1977, Bechis, entonces un joven de veinte años, fue secuestrado y encarcelado en un campo secreto conocido como Club Atlético antes de ser deportado de Argentina. Regreso cambia los detalles alrededor de su destrozado protagonista, Mariano Guerra, ya que Bechis recurre a elementos de ficción específicos, “acercándose a una verdad que la memoria por sí sola no puede contar.”

Sobre todo, Mariano es una víctima psicológicamente hecho pedazos, llena de culpa del superviviente. Mariano – Interpretado con una humanidad que rompe el corazón por Adriano Giannini en una de sus mejores actuaciones – a primera vista parece un hombre que ha construido una nueva vida en Italia, rescatando gente con un equipo de ambulancia de primera respuesta. Pero si se mira más de cerca, se ve la existencia sombría de un solitario nervioso que lleva una vida circunscrita con su perro. Y se avecina una crisis. Le llega la carta de un magistrado en Argentina que lo llena de pavor: es una solicitud oficial para presentarse en el juicio colectivo contra los militares que participaron en hacer prisioneros y detener desaparecer a los opositores políticos del régimen. Su testimonio debe ser dado en persona, y podría ponerlo en problemas legales. Como advierte un juez, si no tiene cuidado, podría entrar a la audiencia como testigo y salir como acusado.

Cuando la acción finalmente se traslada a Buenos Aires, las aprensiones de Mariano crecen al verse obligado a enfrentar a un grupo de compañeros de cautiverio que no ha visto en 33 años. Están todos alojados en habitaciones espartanas para testigos protegidos dentro del Ministerio de Justicia. Estos hombres y mujeres envejecidos lo observan con recelo antes de reconocer a Tano (Mariano). El simple hecho de haber sobrevivido dos años de prisión en el centro de detención Garage Olimpo lo hace sospechoso; y el rostro ruborizado de culpa de Mariano y su lenguaje corporal aumentan la tensión. ¿Le dirá al tribunal lo que sabe? y ¿cuánto de la verdad está dispuesto a sacar de su mente quebrantada para condenar a los viejos rígidos en los asientos de los acusados por sus crímenes contra la humanidad?

Varios encuentros cruciales lo influyen. Uno es su admiración por una mujer de 60 años (Ana Celentano) que ha testificado cuatro veces y que solo ahora, en su quinta aparición en el tribunal, tiene el valor de contar cómo fue violada en grupo. Ella comprende los sentimientos encontrados de Mariano sobre testificar, esto lleva a una escena emotiva entre los dos. Uno de los pocos momentos que le dan a él esperanza de que esta pesadilla pueda superarse. Otro momento es su confrontación con la joven, Evelyn (Veronica Gerez), que exige información sobre su madre Muñeca (Olivia Nuss). Al principio Mariano niega haberla conocido, luego arrastra impulsivamente a Evelyn al Garage Olimpo, que ahora es un espacio conmemorativo abierto al público, y revive dolorosamente sus desgarradores recuerdos del arresto y tortura de Muñeca, que presenció. En la escena más explícita de la película, el cuerpo desnudo de ella es resucitado con un desfibrilador empuñado por un joven estudiante de medicina italiano.

Un fantasma del pasado aparece como una figura calva con bigote; Mariano lo reconoce como “Doctor K” (Adrian Fondari), su mentor y violador, quien le obligó a inyectar anestésico a los prisioneros antes de que los subieran a un avión y los arrojaran a morir en el océano. Es difícil imaginar cómo identifica al viejo médico muy cambiado que una vez le mantuvo con vida para ser víctima de abusos sexuales. Dos veces se encuentran en los baños sobre los mingitorios, donde el escenario establece sutilmente una conexión. Giannini aporta a la escena del enfrentamiento el dolor reprimido de una vida, mientras viejas humillaciones vuelven de golpe en una demostración impactante de que el Doctor K aún ejerce control sobre su víctima.

Aparte de unos bien espaciados picos dramáticos, el guion de Bechis y Vijaya Bechis Boll mantiene cuidadosamente la actitud de no juzgar a Mariano, dejando que el público sea el juez y el jurado de su historia. Aunque la banda sonora late con una urgencia casi de thriller, el director da a sus actores tiempo y silencio para que sus reacciones maduren. La cinematografía de Fabrizio La Palombara mantiene a su vez una distancia respetuosa, contrastando lugares cargados de emoción como los espacios vacíos del memorial Garage Olimpo, los pasillos monásticos del ministerio y la sala de tribunal desierta con la iluminación ambigua de los escenarios teatrales.

Director: Marco Bechis
Guion: Marco Bechis, Vijaya Bechis Boll
Elenco: Adriano Giannini, Ana Celentano, Verónica Gerez, Olivia Nuss, Adrián Fondari, Paula Cohen, Marcelo Chaparro
Productores: Domenico Procacci, Laura Paolucci, Alfredo Federico, Simona Banchi, Marco Bechis, Daniele Incalcaterra, Paolo Del Brocco, Patrick de Jongh, Cibele Amaral, André Ristum
Fotografía: Fabrizio La Palombara
Edición: Jacopo Quadri, Nicolò Tettamanti
Diseño de producción: Caterina Giargia, Mario Scarzella, Eduardo Antunes
Diseño de vestuario: Caterina Giargia, Sara Giovene, Coca Serpa
Música: Guglielmo Diana
Sonido: Marco Fiumara, Ray Fisch
Compañías productoras: Fandango, 39Films, Karta Film, Rai Cinema, 34 Filmes
Ventas internacionales: Fandango Sales
Reseñada en:  Venice Film Festival (Competencia)
En italiano y español
105 minutos

It’s spring 1945 in a remote village in eastern Germany. The only sign of the conflict gripping the world is the large absence of men from the community and the linens the women launder as part of the war effort. Little by little, however, signals that the war will soon be on their doorstep are becoming harder to ignore. Greta (Jella Haase) receives news her husband has died. The enemy’s propaganda leaflets flutter from the sky. Thomas Mann, in a radio broadcast from abroad, pleads with his countrymen to find reason. But when a German soldier, bloodied and near death, stumbles into town late one night, the villagers can’t look away from what’s right in front of them. “We behaved like barbarians,” he cries, sparking immediate worries about the measure of vengeance the advancing Russian army will take on the German people. Those concerns intensify as more bodies began to wash up on the banks of the nearby river.

Walter (Lukas Milo), the town’s mayor, immediately sets into motion his emergency plan to ensure the Russians can’t take pleasure in their victory: he orders the slaughter of all livestock, the destruction of material goods, and finally, the suicide of every member of the community. Walter marvels that a cyanide capsule could smell as inviting as a piece of cake, but his mania isn’t embraced by everyone. Fritz (Clemens Schick), the local headmaster, shudders at teaching the children how to make their own noose. While Albert (Martin Wuttke), the priest, grieves the loss of humanity around him. “Fear breeds monsters,” he warns Walter.

The film’s portrayal of an unseen, horrific war raging beyond the walls of a community recalls The Zone of Interest (one of the film’s producers, Ewa Puczscy?ska, worked on Jonathan Glazer’s film as well). So too does the throbbing score by Lorenz Dangel. The picture also occasionally flirts with Michael Haneke-esque austerity, but never quite fully commits. While the result is neither as singular or masterful as either filmmaker — in fairness, few could be — Vahl nonetheless delivers a memorable and assured first feature.

Working in concert with cinematographer Piotr Soboci?ski Jr., the pair deliver a string of stirring images: a human heart in a mason jar; a gun hidden in a beehive; a dead woman floating in a pond, reminiscent of Millais’ Ophelia. Meanwhile, the film’s tension is drawn from the careful yet subtly realized struggle for power and ideology that emerges between Walter, Fritz, and Albert. This unease — underscored by wavering considerations about how far commitment to the fatherland must be followed — is bolstered by the story that never leaves the confines of the village. Dahl’s confidence as a screenwriter is illustrated by its sensible economy.

In the film’s opening moments, a strange ceremony unfolds. Greta participates in a funeral for her husband that turns into a wedding; it was his final wish to be wed with her, even in death. She goes into mourning with a ring on her hand. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the surreal nature of warfare. Loyalty must be given to the dead, yet life must continue marching forward. “For the fatherland,” is a rallying cry heard with a continually withering passion in Krux. But as each day marches by and the war winds to a close, what that means becomes harder to discern.

Director: Tony Vahl
Screenplay: Tony Vahl
Cast: Jella Haase, Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Clemens Schick, Lukas Miko, Martin Wuttke
Producers: Martina Haubrich, Ewa Puczscy?ska, Claudia Schröter, Peter Hartwig
Cinematography: Piotr Sobocinski Jr
Production design: Katarzyna Sikora
Costume design: Aleksandra Staszko
Editing: Nikodem Chabior
Music: Lorenz Dangel
Sound: Johannes Hampel
Production companies: CALA Filmproduktion GmbH (Germany), Extreme Emotions (Poland), CALA Film Central GmbH & Co KG (Germany), Kineo Film (Germany)
World sales: Global Constellation
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In German
92 minutes