That refusal to explain itself to newbies is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the cartoon moves at a brisker pace than its predecessor, never pausing to footnote its world-building. On the other hand, outsiders will have to take it on faith that, say, Princess Peach (voiced by Anja Taylor-Joy) eating a magic mushroom will make her grow in size, Alice in Wonderland–style. (Adult viewers not tasked the responsibility of chaperoning small children may wish to sneak their own edibles into the theater to improve the experience.)

The villain this time around is Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie, which should thrill all the toddlers who loved Good Time), seeking to rescue his father Bowser (Jack Black), who was imprisoned and miniaturized after trying to kidnap Peach in the previous adventure. Bowser Jr. steals another Princess, Rosalina (Brie Larson), to use her powers in nefarious ways. Rosalina is “mother to the stars,” and she sends one of her children to find Peach. After Peach departs in pursuit, Bowser Jr. steals her entire castle, including plumber brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), and the galaxy-spanning chase is on.

Along the way, they’ll encounter an amphibian mobster (Luis Guzmán), omnivore Yoshi (Donald Glover), and a very Han Solo–ish space pilot (Glen Powell) — the arrival of the latter two garnered applause from game fans at my press screening — while a seemingly reformed Bowser finds himself torn between his son’s desire to conquer the universe and the lessons of friendship he’s learned from his former captors, particularly Luigi.

Returning screenwriter Matthew Fogel makes no bones about the fact that he’s adapting a video game here, with the plotting reduced to pure “go to the place and get the thing.” The two laughs I got along the way, even as a non-player, were couched in familiarity: Powell’s ne’er-do-well is clearly playing off its Star Wars references, and a slow-talking information robot utterly rips off the sloth from Zootopia.

The animators and designers, for their part, have crafted a multitude of dazzling worlds and backgrounds for the characters, from the realism of a Monument Valley–style desert (across which Mario and Luigi ride motorcycles) to a gravity-defying casino where there’s gaming not just on the floor but also up the walls and across the ceiling. There’s also some lovely character design on Bowser Jr., whose wide eyes and quivering jaw communicate his desire to make his dad proud (when he’s not ferociously trying to destroy our heroes with his magic paintbrush.)

Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (who gave the world the brilliant Teen Titans Go to the Movies! before getting mired in Mario world) know where their bread is buttered, re-enacting the left-to-right action of the original video game whenever possible so that fans, in turn, can re-enact the “Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen” meme.

And why shouldn’t they? The last few decades of pop culture have demonstrated that, to paraphrase the emperor in Amadeus, people like songs they already know. It’s just a little disappointing that the brain trust behind The Super Mario Galaxy Movie couldn’t throw the occasional bone (or mushroom, or box with a question mark on it) to viewers who don’t already have a high score but might like to join the game.

Directors: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic
Co-directors: Pierre Leduc, Fabien Polack
Screenwriter: Matthew Fogel, based on characters from Nintendo video games
Cast: Chris Pratt, Anja Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan Michael-Key, Benny Safdie, Donald Glover, Issa Rae, Luis Guzmán, Kevin Michael Richardson, Glen Powell, Brie Larson
Executive producers: Brett Hoffman, Bill Ryan, Yusuke Beppu
Producers: Chris Meledandri, Shigeru Miyamoto
Music: Brian Tyler
Sound design: Jeremy Bowker, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Illumination, Nintendo
In English
98 minutes

As he prepares his wedding-night toast, groom-to-be Charlie (Robert Pattinson) recalls that his meet-cute with Emma (Zendaya) involved an undercurrent of duplicity: he awkwardly attempted to pick her up in a coffee shop by claiming to have enjoyed the novel she was then reading, even though he’d never read it. He cops to the lie on their first date, however, and she’s more amused than angered by the revelation.

Cut to the week of Charlie and Emma’s wedding, when they’re sampling food and wine options from the caterer with Charlie’s best friends, married couple Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), who are also serving as Best Man and Matron of Honor. After a few too many bottles, the conversation turns to “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” And then Emma tells them.

Her revelation won’t be spoiled here; suffice it to say that writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario) has given Emma a secret both shocking and disturbing enough to make Charlie rethink their entire relationship, and whether or not the two should even get married. That choice is probably The Drama’s boldest move, but the film never feels exploitative; the characters and the audience have to sit with the discomfort and horror of it, but that horror is never brushed aside or minimized.

After Emma’s confession, all four leads spin out, from Rachel’s fury (if The Drama is like an extended episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Haim is the Susie Essman) to an upset Charlie clumsily attempting to seduce his assistant (Hailey Benton Gates). It all leads to an extremely awkward and brutally hilarious wedding reception where disaster looms around every clink of silverware on crystal, with the subtly insistent score by Daniel Pemberton and the tension-building editing (from Borgli and Joshua Raymond Lee) ratcheting up the discomfort.

More’s the pity, then, that Borgli whiffs the ending, because up until the film’s final sequence, he’s made the most of an uncomfortable situation. The director (and his cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan, Bones and All) know how to present a love-story Boston, complete with spacious apartments and cozy hang-out joints, and the cast finesses the rom-com beats (starting from that coffee-shop meet-cute), lulling viewers into expecting a charming urban love story and thus making the pivot to Emma’s reveal as disconcerting to the audience as it is to the characters.

Pattinson allows us to see both the cleverness and caddishness of Charlie; Emma turns out to be far more complicated and unsettling than the gamine we first meet, with Zendaya playing all those notes perfectly, but Charlie is no put-upon innocent himself.

The Drama falls into the category of “date night movie for people who are really confident about their relationship” — it’s either a conversation-opener or a door slammed shut for young lovers — but it might have achieved real greatness if Borgli hadn’t let Emma and Charlie off so easily. It’s a comedy of manners that seems to aspire to something darker and more relevant. In an era where terrible people in power either paper over their past mistakes or reframe them as triumphs, there need to be consequences or, conversely, the lack of consequences should be the point. Instead, The Drama shrugs off its terrible weight, amounting to a failure of nerve. This movie digs two complicated characters into a frighteningly complex hole and then, unforgiveably, offers unearned forgiveness.

Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Screenwriter: Kristoffer Borgli
Cast: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Benton Gates, Zöe Winters, Sydney Lemmon, Jordyn Curet, Michael Abbott Jr., Anna Baryshnikov
Executive producers: Kristoffer Borgli, Chris Stinson, Amy Greene
Producers: Lars Knudsen, Ari Aster, Tyler Campellone
Director of photography: Arseni Khachaturan
Production design: Zosia Mackenzie
Editing: Joshua Raymond Lee, Kristoffer Borgli
Music: Daniel Pemberton
Sound design: Jack Sobo, supervising sound editor
Production companies: A24, Live Free or Die Films, Square Peg
In English
106 minutes

Director Kirill Sokolov (Why Don’t You Just Die!) is clearly a student of international genre cinema, with references to gonzo Japanese and Italian action and horror movies evident in the exhilaratingly jarring cuts from editor Luke Doolan (The Underground Railroad) and in every rack-focus and split-diopter from cinematographer Isaac Bauman (the upcoming Faces of Death). But beyond all that flash, there needs to be a story, characters, stakes, something to engage the audience. Instead, we get tons of fight choreography and tongue-in-cheek gore — much of it impressive, granted — but it’s not enough to keep the narrative afloat.

Zazie Beetz stars as Asia, who arrives at legendary New York apartment building The Virgil to take a housekeeping gig, although she’s really there to rescue her younger sister Maria (Myha’la, Industry) from the human-sacrificing devil-worshippers who live there. After years in jail, serving time for shooting their abusive dad, where she learned the art of facing multiple combatants at once — like something out of The Raid — Asia is ready to take on any and all rich creeps who would get in the way of her mission.

Not a bad premise for a film and, like The Raid, the screenplay by Sokolov and Alex Litvak (Predators) offers a built-in video-game structure, whereby our hero must survive level after level before facing off with the Big Boss. But classics like The Raid understand the subtle art of making each fight distinct, whether through combat style or weaponry or physical layout of the space. Much of They Will Kill You involves Asia taking on a handful of faceless opponents (they’re often wearing masks) inside various hotel common areas, and the sameness of those brawls drains the life out of them as redundancy takes over. Chief among her maskless opponents are Tom Felton and Heather Graham, but they get little to play beyond a requisite blond smugness.

The writers occasionally insert a bold concept — a Sam Raimi-esque bit of body-horror slapstick that gives new meaning to the phrase “wandering eye,” for example — but not often enough; nor do they give the energetic and luminous Beetz enough material for her to build an actual character, in spite of how she physically and emotionally throws herself into every scene. Patricia Arquette’s presence reflects a somewhat diminished sense of commitment, as she serves up one of the least convincing Irish accents in recent film history.

The film’s best moments are an outlandish pleasure, far outshining the highlights of the similarly-plotted and mostly by-the-numbers sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. But the latter at least maintains a consistent level of energy from start to finish. The initial dynamism on display in They Will Kill You contracts and collapses. Death be not dull.

Director: Kirill Sokolov
Screenwriters: Kirill Sokolov & Alex Litvak
Cast: Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette
Executive producers: Russell Ackerman, John Schoenfelder, Carl Hampe, Alex Litvak, Kirill Sokolov
Producers: Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, Dan Kagan
Director of photography: Isaac Bauman
Production design: Jeremy Reed
Editing: Luke Doolan
Music: Carlos Rafael Rivera
Sound design: Jeffrey A. Pitts, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: New Line Cinema, Nocturna, Domain Entertainment, Warner Bros.
In English
94 minutes

Set in Laramie, Wyoming (and shot in Calgary), the vastness of the sky and the beautiful mountain ranges — and the insistence of cinematographer Tim Ives (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret) upon including those vistas in every shot possible — go a long way toward keeping the storytelling from becoming too grim, even when Monroe’s Kenna comes back into town and snags an apartment at a shabby complex called Paradise. (Complete with a giant neon sign, whose letters might as well read M-E-T-A-P-H-O-R.)

Kenna’s been gone for seven years, serving prison time for a DUI accident that resulted in the death of her boyfriend Scotty (Rudy Pankow). Consumed with guilt, Kenna showed no remorse at the trial, although she found a reason to live when she later discovered she was carrying Scotty’s child. Alas, his parents Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford) swooped in and took custody of young Diem (Zoe Kosovic); Kenna has returned to Laramie in the hopes of meeting her child for the first time.

Further complicating Kenna’s return is the fact that Scotty’s best friend Ledger (Tyriq Withers, Him), a former NFL player who left the Broncos after an injury, has been renting the house across the street from Grace and Patrick and serving as a stand-in dad to the young girl, who’s just old enough to start asking question about her mother’s whereabouts. Kenna and Ledger have a meet-cute at the bar he owns — since he was away playing football when Scotty and Kenna were a couple, they’d never met before — but once he realizes who she is and why she’s in town, he finds himself torn between his feelings for her and his instinct to protect Diem from a woman whom Grace and Patrick think of as a monster.

Big emotions are on display here, with major decisions to be made and reckonings to be reached, but the screenwriters and director Vanessa Caswill (the BBC’s Little Women) don’t trust their audience’s ability to sit with a character’s pain. At almost every turn, a potentially gut-wrenching moment — Ledger stops Grace and Diem from unknowingly walking into the grocery store where Kenna works, for instance — is buffered with egregious sentimentality, usually from Diem or from Kenna’s developmentally disabled co-worker Lady Diana (Monika Myers), both of whom the film reduces to cuteness props, not unlike the kitten Kenna adopts upon moving into her apartment.

Both Withers and Pankow deliver the kind of soft-eyed sweetness that’s the stock in trade for male leads of female-driven romantic dramas, and Graham squeezes what she can out of a character who’s mainly a plot device. (We spend the film waiting for Grace to show grace.) But it’s Monroe’s show all the way, imbuing genuine grief and regret into this three-hankie spectacle.

Tear-jerkers are valuable to cinema; they can provide emotional catharsis as satisfying as any other kind of popcorn entertainment. It’s hard to get misty-eyed, however, over a film that never stops reassuring you that everyone’s going to get a happy ending. Let the audience feel bad for a while, so they can feel good after; failing that leaves everyone feeling nothing.

Director: Vanessa Caswill
Screenwriters: Lauren Levine & Colleen Hoover, based on the novel by Colleen Hoover
Cast: Maika Monroe, Tyriq Withers, Rudy Pankow, Lainey Wilson, Lauren Graham, Bradley Whitford
Executive producer: Robin Mulcahy Fisichella
Producers: Colleen Hoover, Lauren Levine, Gina Matthews
Director of photography: Tim Ives
Production design: Francesca Massariol
Editing: Michelle Harrison
Music: Tom Howe
Sound design: Warren Hendriks, sound designer/re-recording mixer; Anna MacKenzie, supervising sound editor
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Heartbones, Little Engine Productions
In English
114 minutes

It’s the not-too-distant future, and astronomers have observed a flowing chain of some mysterious substance that seems to be feeding off our sun. Scientists from around the globe are called in to deal with the problem; one of them is seventh-grade science teacher Ryland Grace (Gosling), whose doctoral thesis so brashly challenged existing theories that it caught the attention of shadowy government figure Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller). Even though Grace’s troublemaking theories turn out to be wrong, he winds up being the only scientist on Earth who can figure out how to attract and regenerate the mystery substance. He’s sent into deep space to the one place in the universe where the alien matter isn’t devouring a star, so he can learn why and subsequently save all life on Earth. No pressure.

This backstory comes at us in bits and pieces, however: Goddard and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (22 Jump Street) open the movie with Grace waking up from a medical coma on a space station, unsure of who he is or how he got there. And while he’s putting all that together, he’s also got to deal with a visit from a faceless, stone-like alien (Grace eventually dubs him “Rocky”) who’s on a similar mission from another galaxy.

Like The Martian, it’s a story about process in which someone intelligent and capable can, in the words of Matt Damon’s character in the earlier film, “science the shit out of” a problem. But while the problem facing Damon and his NASA cohorts was clear-cut even for the lay mind — stay alive on Mars, figure out a way for a rescue team to bring him back to Earth — Project Hail Mary’s alien substance, what it is, what it does, and how to contain it or reverse it, isn’t as easy to follow, at least not in the way that Goddard presents it. By the time Grace and Rocky start making vital discoveries, I found myself apportioning their dialogue to a folder in my brain marked “Science Stuff.” (And yes, Rocky does eventually speak, through a computer translator, voiced by James Ortiz.)

Project Hail Mary is absolutely working toward something unique, combining awe-inspiring galactic vistas from cinematographer Greig Fraser (Dune: Part Two) – Amazon MGM really, really wants you to see this movie in IMAX, and they’re not wrong – with the free-wheeling wit that Lord and Miller have brought to their earlier projects (which also include The LEGO Movie and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) as directors and producers. The gags are practically the architecture, whether Gosling is on his own, or trading banter with Rocky or, in flashbacks, with Hüller’s stone-faced bureaucrat.

What the film doesn’t deliver, even with Gosling giving it his all, is a character for Grace. We know why he left academia to become a schoolteacher, but does this guy have friends or family? Is there anyone on Earth for whom he wishes to make this ultimate sacrifice, and will anyone miss him while he does it? Even if the answer to those questions is “No,” Goddard’s screenplay never tells us, so even as Grace reconstructs his memories and the events that brought him to galaxy’s edge, he remains a puzzling enigma. Some of his strongest character notes come courtesy of costumers David Crossman and Glyn Dillon, who give Grace the best collection of hip-nerd T-shirts since Val Kilmer in Real Genius whenever the reluctant astronaut isn’t modeling the latest in form-fitting, space-station sportswear.

Ultimately, the film’s breezy attitude and calculated audience-pleasing wins out. Project Hail Mary offers plenty of laughs alongside of a dollop of sentiment, and it centers science in a tale where the apocalypse isn’t necessarily inevitable; it celebrates both humanity’s ability to save itself, and the idea that humanity might be worth saving.

Directors: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Screenwriter: Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, Priya Kansara
Executive producers: Patricia Whitcher, Lucy Winn Kitada, Nikki Baida, Ken Kao, Drew Goddard, Sarah Esberg
Producers: Amy Pascal, Ryan Gosling, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Aditya Sood, Rachel O’Connor, Andy Weir
Director of photography: Greig Fraser
Production design: Charles Wood
Editing: Joel Negron
Music: Daniel Pemberton
Sound design: Erik Aadahl, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Amazon MGM Studios, Pascal Pictures, Open Invite Films, Waypoint Entertainment, Lord Miller
In English
156 minutes

Cine Verdict entrevistó a Daniela Alatorre, directora de IMCINE, para entender mejor las estrategias detrás de la nueva ley.

TFV: Felicitaciones por la propuesta de una nueva ley del cine. ¿En qué se diferencia de la ley de 1992?

Daniela: agradezco el interés de Cine Verdict. La ley necesitaba actualizarse y ampliarse. El panorama mediático ha cambiado mucho en estos años, aportando contenidos audiovisuales a los espectadores también fuera de las salas de cine, en plataformas de streaming, dispositivos electrónicos y utilizando efectos generados por IA. Queremos democratizar el acceso a los derechos culturales, y hemos incrementado el apoyo a la producción para las comunidades vulnerables, como los pueblos indígenas y afrodescendientes. México es un país multiétnico y pluricultural, y queremos defender los derechos culturales y creativos de las personas. Una estrategia complementaria es asegurar el mandato de preservación, para que se preserven y se almacenen adecuadamente no solo las películas, sino también las clases magistrales, el pensamiento crítico en el campo y los contenidos que preservan nuestra historia y nuestra memoria patrimonial.

TFV: ¿Cómo aborda la estrategia los desafíos actuales de la producción cinematográfica?

Daniela:  La estrategia actualiza el marco legal y diseña políticas públicas que apoyan la producción local a través de incentivos fiscales y financieros. Los incentivos ofrecen una reducción del 30% en los impuestos para las producciones. En el caso de las internacionales, buscamos garantizar que contraten al menos un 70% de talentos y proveedores mexicanos. Se ha aumentado la financiación de IMCINE para producciones de ficción, documentales, posproducción, series y animación. También apoyamos las producciones en los estados fuera de la capital mexicana, y la exhibición en la Cineteca Nacional. La realidad es que México -y América Latina- está en desventaja respecto de los mayores recursos que tienen las industrias cinematográficas de otros países, por lo que esperamos que estas medidas puedan defender nuestra soberanía creativa. Consideramos que el cine es un patrimonio cultural que no debe responder sólo a las fuerzas del mercado, sino que también refleja una diversidad de géneros, formatos y espectadores, incluidos los niños. También queremos crear nuestra propia plataforma de exhibición.

TFV: En un campo cada vez más competitivo, ¿cómo puede ganar mayor visibilidad el cine mexicano?

Daniela: La nueva ley extenderá el requisito de que los exhibidores asignen el 10% del tiempo de pantalla a películas mexicanas durante dos semanas (desde una semana en la ley de 1992). Necesitamos revisar y monitorear el cumplimiento. También buscará que las plataformas de streaming otorguen mayor acceso y visibilidad a nuestras producciones en las opciones y prioridades que ofrecen a los espectadores.

TFV: Los cineastas mexicanos han recibido reconocimiento internacional (24 Oscars hasta el momento, así como Goyas, Globos de Oro y muchos premios de festivales importantes). ¿Existe el peligro de que los cineastas exitosos sean reclutados por estudios y servicios de streaming en el extranjero, y las producciones no regresen a México?

Daniela: Estamos seguros de que nuestros talentosos cineastas seguirán buscando historias y equipos mexicanos y seguirán filmando aquí, dada la diversidad de nuestras locaciones y la habilidad y prestigio de nuestros técnicos. Estamos aumentando la financiación para nuestras escuelas de cine, como el CCC (Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica), que produce graduados altamente calificados. IMCINE ha aumentado su presupuesto de producción y desarrollo, y estamos ya ofreciendo apoyo, residencias y capacitación en áreas fuera de las grandes ciudades. También nos centramos en las mentorías y el desarrollo de guiones para capturar las historias que aún quedan por contar.

TFV: Hay un creciente temor de que los actores estén siendo reemplazados por la Inteligencia Artificial.

Daniela: Eso es una preocupación, y en una modificación a la ley de derechos de autor estamos proteger los derechos de los artistas. Por ejemplo, dado que hay mucho doblaje de películas en nuestra industria, queremos asegurarnos de que, incluso si se utiliza la Inteligencia Artificial, se haga con el pleno acuerdo y la remuneración de los actores.

TFV: ¿Cómo ve la iniciativa de Netflix de invertir mil millones de dólares (en varios años) en producciones cinematográficas mexicanas?

Daniela: IMCINE da la bienvenida a las empresas internacionales que demuestren confianza en nuestro país al invertir en sus propias producciones en nuestro país. Nuestros incentivos y apoyos a la infraestructura de la producción de cine y a las capacidades técnicas de México, a las instalaciones de capacitación, nuestros estudios y locaciones variadas hacen que el rodaje en México sea una opción atractiva para empresas internacionales. Estamos viviendo un gran momento en el cine mexicano.

Ultimately, it is also a heart-wrenching study of how a serious crime scars the soul of the perpetrator as well as the victim, and how healing, such as it is, can take place through selfless service to another person. Though the setting may seem overly familiar at first, that impression is quickly swept aside as personalities take over in the riveting lead performances by Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan. Both actors are superbly measured and self-aware, fiercely casting out any hint of sentimentality in the story.

A night scene introduces Frank Baker (Ben-Adir) as he is marched shackled into a new prison with a dozen other men in orange jumpsuits. The dominant colors will soon shift to the blue of standard-issue prison wear and yellow in the distinctive jackets of the “Gold Coats”. These are veteran inmates who (based on a real program in a California prison in San Luis Obispo) have been trained as caregivers for fellow prisoners with cognitive issues like Alzheimer’s and dementia. This hierarchical color symbolism draws the first, seemingly definitive line between Frank, young and athletic but with grizzled hair attesting to 17 years already served behind bars, and the fragile and failing 60-year-old Louis Nelson (Morgan) who is put in his care.

Louis has been a tough, violent customer all his life, feared by the other inmates. Now he is fragile and failing, with bouts of lucidity alternating with total puzzlement over where he is and what brought him there. There is something of the mortally wounded animal in his hostility and rage towards Frank that gives Louis a human side despite the fact he (like Frank) is serving time for murder.

As his memory fades, the paradox becomes increasingly clear: he no longer has the capacity to understand why he is being punished. The viewer shares Frank’s perplexity: first, and most banally, how to dress and feed a man who refuses his help. The group of inmate-caregivers, coached by an enlightened psychiatrist, rally around Frank when he is so discouraged he is ready to quit. They have all learned to roll with the fearful rages, outbursts and insults from the men they care for, and have grown protective and attached to them as their minds deteriorate and they move ever closer to hospice care. All this is touchingly suggested in Volpe and Esther Bernstorff’s screenplay without becoming maudlin. As a kind-hearted Hispanic Gold Coat (René Pérez Joglar in a warm supporting role) reminds Frank, one day their minds will be empty of everything, “even hate”.

Frank’s own struggle is multifaceted. He is approaching an important hearing with the parole board which fills him with hope and trepidation and, after many years, he has reestablished contact with his sister. But we sense that he is not being completely honest when he claims to have conquered his anger issues and gotten his violent impulses in check. In contrast, Louis seems to mellow as his dementia progresses, but he receives no help from his daughter who refuses all contact with him.

The slow pacing, especially in the first half of the film, requires some patience on the part of the viewer, but there are rich rewards later as scenes flow organically to their inevitable conclusion. Compared to the frenzied rhythm of Late Shift, Frank & Louis is a model of stylistic moderation, where all the narrative and technical elements work together in a persuasive whole. Oliver Coates’ sophisticated score quietly but insistently penetrates almost every scene, depicted by cinematographer Judith Kaufmann with simultaneous lights and shadows that are the visual equivalent of the moral dilemma under the surface of the story. How can we reconcile punishment – even just punishment – with a criminal who doesn’t remember his crime? It is Kafka seen from another angle.

Director: Petra Volpe
Screenwriters: Petra Volpe, Esther Bernstorff
Producers: Reto Schaerli, Lukas Hobi
Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Rob Morgan, René Pérez Joglar, Rosalind Eleazar, Indira Varma
Cinematography: Judith Kaufman
Production design: Su Erdt, Iain Andrews
Costume design: Pascale Suter
Editing: Hansjorg Weissbrich
Music: Oliver Coates
Sound design: Gina Keller
Production companies: Zodiac Pictures
World sales: TrustNordisk
Venue: Sundance Film Festival
In English
94 minutes

The Film Verdict interviewed Daniela Alatorre, director of IMCINE, to better understand the strategies behind the new law.

The Film Verdict: Congratulations on the proposed new film law. How does it differ from the 1992 law?

Daniela Alatorre: I appreciate the interest of The Film Verdict. The old law needed to be updated and expanded. The media landscape has changed a lot in these years, bringing audiovisual content to viewers on streaming platforms, electronic devices and using AI-generated effects. We want to democratize access to cultural rights, and we have increased support for production for vulnerable communities such as indigenous peoples and people of African descent. Mexico is a multi-ethnic and multicultural country, and we want to defend people’s cultural and creative rights. A complementary strategy is to mandate preservation, so that not only films, but also master classes, critical thinking in the field and relevant content are preserved and stored properly.

TFV: How does the strategy address current challenges in film production?

Alatorre: The strategy updates the legal framework and designs public policies that support local production through fiscal and financial incentives. The incentives offer a 30% reduction in taxes for productions. For international producers, we aim to ensure that they hire at least 70% Mexican talent and suppliers. Funding for IMCINE has been increased for fiction, documentary, post-production, series and animation productions. We also support productions in the states outside of the Mexican capital, and the exhibitions at the Cineteca Nacional. The reality is that Mexico – and Latin America – are at a disadvantage relative to the larger resources of other countries’ film industries, so we hope these measures can defend our creative sovereignty. We believe that cinema is a cultural heritage that should not respond only to market forces, but also reflect a diversity of genres, formats and targeted viewers, including children. We also want to create our own exhibition platform.

TFV: In an increasingly competitive field, how can Mexican cinema gain greater visibility?

Alatorre: The new law will extend the requirement that exhibitors allocate 10% of screen time to Mexican films for two weeks (from one week in the 1992 law). We need to review and monitor compliance. It will also ask streaming platforms to grant greater access and visibility to our productions in the choices and priorities they offer viewers.

TFV: Mexican filmmakers have received international recognition (24 Oscars so far, as well as Goyas, Golden Globes and many awards from major festivals). Is there a danger that successful filmmakers will be recruited by studios and streaming services abroad, and productions will not return to Mexico?

Alatorre: We are certain that our talented filmmakers will continue to search for Mexican stories and will continue filming here, given the diversity of our locations and the skill and prestige of our crews and technicians. We are increasing funding for film schools, such as the CCC (Capacitacion Cinematográfica), which produces highly qualified graduates. IMCINE has increased its development budget, and we already offer support, residency and training in areas outside of major cities. We also focus on mentorship and scriptwriting to capture the stories that remain to be told.

TFV: There is a growing fear that actors are being replaced by Artificial Intelligence.

Alatorre: That is a concern, and in an amendment to the copyright law we are protecting artists’ rights. For example, since there is a lot of movie dubbing in our industry, we want to make sure that even if artificial intelligence is used, it is done with the artists’ consent and remuneration.

TFV: How do you view Netflix’s initiative to invest a billion dollars (over several years) in Mexican productions?

Alatorre: IMCINE welcomes international companies that show confidence in filming here. Our support for Mexican filmmakers, production infrastructure and our diverse locations make Mexico an attractive choice. We are living an exciting moment in Mexican cinema.

“It is the most progressive and ambitious audiovisual policy proposal in decades,” Juan Carlos Vargas, a film professor from Guadalajara university, told The Film Verdict. “It contemplates the reactivation of the film industry as an ecosystem and considers support from training, production and distribution to exhibition and preservation. Moreover, it includes dubbing, A.I., and streaming platforms. We will have to see whether it is applied and followed.”

The proposal began its legislative process on March 3, 2026, and is expected to be approved before April 30. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, President of the Republic, has already approved a decree for Fiscal Incentives for Film as a complement to the law.

The atmosphere was festive when the legal reform was presented in February at Palacio Nacional, seat of the Mexican government, in the presence of a large swath of the filmmaking community. Mexico’s cultural authorities and President Sheinbaum spoke about the benefits of the law and the decree, the complexity of the task, as well as the consultations held with associations and companies. Producers Inna Payán and Salma Hayek-Pinault spoke — with great emotion —  about the major improvements in procedures and funding, as well as the economic significance for the country.

This presentation — unusual for a legislative proposal — was considered a good sign. “The fact that the federal government is turning its attention to the film and audiovisual industry and finding ways to update, modernize, and promote it is, in itself, a particularly important indication,” commented film director, academic, and programmer Juan Manuel González to TFV. “The reform sounds remarkably interesting. We will have to see how it progresses and what obstacles it faces on its way before it is signed into law.”

Filming by decree

At the presentation of the reform, Salma Hayek-Pinault noted that the production incentives will allow her to finish her first film as a director, currently in progress in the states of Veracruz — her home state — and Quintana Roo. “I could shoot this film in Australia, the Canary Islands, or the Dominican Republic because they do have incentives there, but I want to shoot a love letter to Mexico and it has to be filmed here, with Mexicans.”

But what does the decree mean for smaller productions? Speaking to TFV, Ozcar Ramírez González, Mexican producer and director (9 meses, 9 días, La 4ª. Compañía, Días de gracia), voiced a different opinion. “This decree is to attract investment, which is not to say that it’s bad in itself, but we shouldn’t pretend it will help.  It is for foreign films. For someone like me who makes independent films, it does not benefit me; it truly changes nothing.” Estrella Araiza, director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival, with a background in film distribution and markets, said, “The production issue is and has been solved for a while. There are many issues that affect Mexican cinema, but producing is not one of them.”

The decree requires that the talent and actors be predominantly Mexican. “We must understand that the spirit of the decree is that there is a distribution of these tax credits to all Mexican service providers for the audiovisual industry; that is, even if a large company receives this credit, it is distributed among all those who provide services to the production,” commented Juan Manuel González. The decree does not include, as in other countries, a cash rebate or tax rebate, which means that companies will be compensated with a tax credit without affecting tax collection. This may make it less attractive.

What about funds for the promotion of national production?

The new law will provide a legal framework for FOCINE (Fund for the Promotion of Cinema) which has been operating since April 2020 as a stimulus program through calls for proposals, without being included in any law, which made it very vulnerable. The Ministry of Finance will annually assign the amount of this fund.

FOCINE replaced the very successful FIDECINE (Investment and Stimulus Fund for Cinema) which between 2002 and 2019 supported 230 feature films ranging from memorable first works (Duck Season directed by Fernando Eimcke) to films by established directors (The Reasons of the Heart by Arturo Ripstein) and some commercial films like Instructions Not Included and Una película de huevos. FIDECINE was closed, without warning, in 2020 during the pandemic.

The irony of exhibiting in Mexico

Mexico, as a country, is the fourth largest market in the world for audiovisual content both in theaters and on platforms. However, Mexican films, successful at festivals around the world, with very few exceptions are not even released in the country’s commercial circuit. Distribution and exhibition is a complex problem: on one hand, audience development is necessary, and on the other, exhibition chains often pose an obstacle, citing losses.

The new law proposes extending screening times and improving exhibition schedules. However, according to musician, producer, and “film doctor” Pablo Mondragón, “Nobody cares about the screen percentage, and no Mexican is going to watch movies just because Mexican cinema is in theaters for three more weeks. The United States are geniuses in this field; they have been revolutionizing creativity, talent, and technology for years to create products unobtainable elsewhere. As a friend used to say, ‘your creativity with limited resources is competing against a U.S. content industry that, except in Japan, China, and India, is overwhelming the whole world’. That is why funding must embrace new ways of production developed by creators who have a lot to teach us. As we have always said: if we join forces with those who have new needs and solutions, then we CAN compete with any film industry.”

At  the presentation, the new law and decree were celebrated as a great achievement. And so they are: the Mexican film industry could not continue working under a law that is 34 years old and makes no mention of ethnic diversity or the representation of minorities. When it begins to take effect, we will see, in theaters and on streaming platforms, whether this reform was enough.

Según dijo a TFV el académico y catedrático de cine de la UdG  Juan Carlos Vargas “ …es la propuesta más progresista y ambiciosa de política cultural audiovisual de las últimas décadas. Contempla la reactivación de la industria del cine como un ecosistema que considera apoyos desde la formación, producción, distribución, exhibición y archivo.  Además, incluye al doblaje, la inteligencia artificial y las plataformas de streaming. Habrá que ver si se cumple y aplica…”

La propuesta empezó su proceso legislativo el 3 de marzo y se espera se apruebe antes del 30 de abril.  Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, presidenta de la República aprobó y está vigente el Decreto de estímulo fiscal que es un complemento de la ley.

La reforma para la Ley se presentó en Palacio Nacional,  el pasado febrero, estuvo invitada una buena parte de la comunidad cinematográfica. Las autoridades de la cultura en México y la presidenta Sheinbaum hablaron de los beneficios de la Ley y del decreto, el trabajo que significó y la consulta que se hizo con asociaciones y empresas. Las productoras Inna Payán y Salma Hayek-Pinault hablaron -con mucha emoción- de las facilidades para filmar y el significado económico para el país.  La atmósfera era festiva y terminó en un portrait de famille.

Esta presentación – inusual para una propuesta legislativa- se considera un buen indicio: “El que el gobierno federal esté poniendo la vista sobre la industria del cine y el audiovisual y encontrando maneras de actualizar, modernizar e impulsarla, es en sí mismo, un hecho muy importante (…) la reforma suena muy interesante. Habrá que ver cómo avanza y cuáles son los obstáculos que enfrenta en su camino antes de llegar a ser publicada” comentó para TFV el director de cine, académico y programador Juan Manuel González.

Filmar por decreto

En la presentación de la reforma Selma Hayek-Pinault dijo que el incentivo a la producción le permitirá terminar su primera película como directora, en este momento en proceso en los estados de Veracruz – su estado natal- y Quintana Roo,  “podía filmar en Australia, las Canarias o República Dominicana porque ahí si tienen incentivos. Pero, quiero hacer una carta de amor a México y se tiene que filmar aquí, con mexicanos”.

¿Pero qué significa el decreto para producciones más pequeñas? Ozcar Ramírez González, productor y director mexicano (9 meses, 9 días, La 4ª. Compañía, Días de gracia) dijo a TFV: “Este decreto es  para atraer inversión, lo cual no es que sea malo en sí, pero tampoco nos vamos a hacernos tontos de que eso va a ayudar. Es para películas extranjeras, yo que he hecho películas independientes, no me conviene, verdaderamente cambia cero”. Estrella Araiza, directora del Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara, con una trayectoria en distribución y mercados de cine nos dijo “el tema de producción está y estaba resuelto desde hace un rato. Hay muchos temas que aquejan al cine mexicano pero producir no es uno de ellos”.

El decreto exige que el talento y los actores  sean mayoritariamente mexicanos , “debemos entender que el espíritu del decreto es que haya una derrama de estos créditos fiscales hacia todos los proveedores mexicanos de servicios para la industria audiovisual, es decir, aunque una gran empresa reciba este crédito, el mismo se distribuye entre todos los que colaboran prestando servicios a la producción audiovisual” comentó Juan Manuel González. El decreto no contempla, cómo en otros países, un cash rebate o tax rebate, lo que significa que se compensará a las compañías con un crédito fiscal sin afectar la recaudación de impuestos. Esto puede hacerlo menos atractivo.

¿Y los fondos para el fomento a la producción nacional?

La nueva Ley dará marco legal a FOCINE (Fondo de Fomento al Cine) que está funcionando desde abril 2020 como un programa de estímulos por medio de convocatorias sin estar incluido en ninguna ley, lo que lo hacía muy vulnerable.  El monto de este Fondo será asignado por la Secretaría de Hacienda anualmente.

FOCINE sustituyó al muy exitoso FIDECINE (Fondo de Inversión y Estímulos al Cine)  que apoyó, entre 2002 y 2019, 230 largometrajes que van desde óperas primas memorables (Temporada de Patos, Fernando Eimcke); películas de directores consagrados (Las razones del corazón de Arturo Ripstein) y algunas películas comerciales como  No se aceptan devoluciones y Una película de huevos. FIDECINE se cerró en 2020, sin previo aviso, durante la pandemia.

La ironía de la exhibición en México

México, como país, es el cuarto mercado mundial para el cine y las series tanto en salas como en plataformas. Sin embargo, las películas mexicanas, un éxito en festivales alrededor del mundo, con muy pocas excepciones ni siquiera se estrenan en el circuito comercial del país. La distribución y exhibición es un problema complejo, por una parte es necesaria la formación de públicos y por otro las cadenas de exhibición suelen ser un obstáculo.  La nueva ley propone ampliar los tiempos y mejorar los horarios de exhibición. Según el músico, productor y film doctor Pablo Mondragón “lo del porcentaje de exhibición a nadie le importa y ningún mexicano va a ir a ver películas porque estén tres semanas más el cine mexicano.  Los Estados Unidos son unos genios porque llevan años revolucionando la creatividad, el talento y la tecnología para crear productos inalcanzables, como decía un amigo ´hoy competimos contra lo fascinante´ (…); tu creatividad con pocos recursos está compitiendo contra una industria estadounidense de contenidos que excepto Japón, China y la India está avasallando todo el mundo. Por lo tanto los apoyos deben tener voluntad de reunir nuevas formas de producción de creadores distintos que tienen mucho que enseñarnos. Como se ha dicho siempre, si unimos fuerzas los de la experiencia con los de las nuevas necesidades y soluciones, entonces SI podemos competir con cualquier cinematografía. ”

En la presentación la nueva Ley y el Decreto se festejaron como un gran logro. Lo son, el cine nacional no podía seguir con una ley de hace 34 años, que no mencionaba la diversidad étnica o la representación de minorías. Cuando empiece a funcionar veremos, en el cine y en plataformas, si esta reforma fue suficiente.

There is no metaphorical hat upon which Gyllenhaal won’t place another hat, and then another, and then a veil, and a wig: She opens the film with Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) in limbo, telling us that she’d always intended to write a sequel to Frankenstein that was even scarier. And if that weren’t enough, Shelley then possesses the body of 1930s Chicago gangster’s moll Ida (also Buckley), who floridly tells off a table of mafiosi before tumbling down a flight of stairs and dying.

Lucky for Ida, then, that Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) has arrived in town with the hopes that mad scientist Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) might make him a bride. They dig up Ida in a potter’s field, re-route some electricity from a streetlight, and The Bride is born. She has no memory of her past, but unlike Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein, the revived Ida finds herself warming up to her potential mate.

There’s a great deal of plot here: the two lovers becoming fugitives, with a pair of Chicago detectives (Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz) in hot pursuit; the monster’s obsession with big-screen song-and-dance man Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal); and Ida’s distinctive look (black lips and tongue, with a bloody inkblot on her cheek) inspiring imitators — think adult women behaving like the teen-girl pop cults of Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains or The Legend of Billie Jean — who rise up against their male oppressors. Maggie Gyllenhaal takes every advantage to emulate 1930s cinema (monster movies, gangster pictures, RKO musicals) and pilfer from a plethora of screen Frankensteins, from James Whale’s to Mel Brooks’. (The motto for this Bride is “something borrowed, something borrowed, something borrowed, something borrowed.”)

As a piece of filmmaking craft, The Bride! is often thrilling, with cinematographer Lawrence Sher (Joker: Folie à Deux) capturing multiple vintage film styles while legendary costumer Sandy Powell and production designer Karen Murphy (Elvis) play fast and loose with the looks of the decade. (Did a New York theater in 1936 screen White Zombie in anaglyph 3D? Probably not, but the sight of a packed audience wearing those red-and-blue glasses makes for an indelible visual.)

If only director Gyllenhaal had demanded more from screenwriter Gyllenhaal. The Mary Shelley framing device feels fairly absurd — imagine if One Battle After Another opened with Leonardo DiCaprio as Thomas Pynchon, telling you that what you were about to see is even better than anything else he’d ever written — and having Shelley burst in and out of Ida’s speech patterns never pays off in any real way. Ida spends much of the film unable to remember who she is, and when she suddenly starts naming her fallen comrades and calling out the mobsters who killed them, it happens in the middle of a musical number (no, really), and thus gets lost in the cacophony. (Credit to Gyllenhaal for paying tribute to a legendary female forebear in the director’s chair by naming the main Chicago gangster “Lupino.”)

Jessie Buckley gives a performance that can’t be called “good” by any traditional yardstick, but it’s in perfect keeping with the rest of the movie; her work here is big and boisterous and frantic and unrestrained, and clearly what Gyllenhaal wanted. Bale wisely underplays, resulting in a quietly witty and occasionally heartbreaking monster. Bening’s having a ball, with Jeannie Berlin as her hilariously deadpan sidekick; should they return to play the Abbott and Costello to Bale’s Frankenstein’s monster, that would be a sequel worth making. Cruz can barely keep a straight face for her super-detective character, but she does carry off the era’s Joan Crawford bangs and eyebrows with grace.

It’s difficult not to link The Bride! to another recent Warner Bros. release, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, since both feature prominent female auteurs extravagantly deconstructing the work of legendary women novelists. But while 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein is a puckishly perfect skewering of the Genesis myth — man is created to exist, while woman is created merely to keep the man from being lonely — The Bride! veers off in so many exhausting directions that it ultimately amounts to little more than sound and fury. She’s alive, alive, but she can’t maintain this pace.

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Screenwriter: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Penélope Cruz
Executive producers: Carla Raij, David Webb, Courtney Kivowitz
Producers: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Talia Kleinhendler, Osnat Handelsman Keren
Director of photography: Lawrence Sher
Production design: Karen Murphy
Editing: Dylan Tichenor
Music: Hildur Gudnadóttir
Sound design: Damian Volpe, supervising sound editor
Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, First Love Films, In the Current Company
In English
126 minutes

But even if there’s more than a little James Cameron DNA in the screenplay by Jesse Andrews (Elio, Luca) — who shares story credit with director Daniel Chong (We Bare Bears) — Hoppers finds its own footing thanks to some memorable characters and elaborate set pieces. Viewers who judge Pixar movies on whether or not they make you weep may find themselves tickled and perhaps moved, though dry-eyed.

We meet Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Lila Liu) as a young student who’s fervently determined to liberate every last turtle, guinea pig, and snake from her grammar school; her passion for animals often spills over into rage, but her beloved Grandma (Karen Huie) teaches the girl that patience and quiet have their rewards, particularly when communing with nature. It’s a lesson that sticks with teen Mabel (Piper Curda, May December), who nonetheless loses her temper during her frequent arguments with Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm), who wants to build a mostly pointless highway on top of the pond where Mabel and Grandma watch the beavers and other animals make their homes.

When Mabel discovers that her college professor Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has developed technology that allows for consciousness transfer to robotic animals, the student seizes the opportunity to convince the animals into keeping their homes in the pond. Discovering further chicanery by Jerry, beaver-Mabel becomes more of a firebrand, until she realizes her advocacy has inspired the animal kingdoms to work together to “squish” Jerry for good.

Kudos to Andrews for avoiding two clichéd tropes that Pixar seems to love: there’s no seemingly-benign authority figure who later turns out to be evil, and the two best-friend protagonists don’t have a falling-out for no other reason than to prompt the final act of the screenplay. Just about everyone in a power position here, from Jerry to animal monarchs voiced by the likes of Meryl Streep and Ego Nwodim, reveals their true personalities from the start.

The only benevolent authority is beaver George (Bobby Moynihan), who gets close with Mabel and also maintains perspective on the situation; as “king of the mammals,” he’s expected to hold dominion over human beings as well. While Mabel is furious with Jerry, it’s George who notes that “people places and animal places are all just places,” believing that “we’re all in this together.” (And no, they don’t sing the song from High School Musical, even if Disney does own it.)

It might also count as a sign of Pixar evolution that Grandma’s death is implied more than it’s dwelled upon; when early scenes show young Mabel bonding with and learning from her older relative, the expectation is for a the full Up treatment. Without bringing audiences to gut-wrenching sobs, however, Hoppers tells an effective story with wit and ingenuity, not to mention distinctive character design for every corner of the animal kingdom, from a kind-hearted shark (Vanessa Bayer) to a bratty caterpillar (Dave Franco).

Hoppers wants kids (and adults) to come away with renewed appreciation for nature and respect for our fellow travelers on the planet, but there’s a lovely pacifist moral hidden in there as well, one that suggests that cooperation is necessary to prevent mutual destruction. And in 2026, that’s a lesson that feels practical rather than theoretical.

Director: Daniel Chong
Screenwriter: Jesse Andrews; story by Daniel Chong, Jesse Andrews
Cast: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Eduardo Franco, Aparna Nancherla, Tom Law, Sam Richardson, Melissa Villaseñor, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Ego Nwodim, Nicole Sakura, Meryl Streep, Karen Huie, Lila Liu, Vanessa Bayer
Executive producers: Pete Doctor, Peter Sohn, Kiri Hart
Producer: Nicole Paradis Grindle
Directors of photography: Jeremy Lasky, Ian Megibbe
Production design: Bryn Imagire
Editing: Axel Geddes
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh
Sound design: Coya Elliott, supervising sound mixer; Stephen Urata, re-recording mixer
Production companies: Disney, Pixar
In English
105 minutes

Yes, 30 years after Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) survived a deadly high-school kegger, her life’s murderous traumas continue to follow her around and to restage themselves over and over again. Sidney feels secure living in a suffocatingly cozy little town called Pine Grove, where she’s married to the local police chief (played by Joel McHale) but facing conflict from her teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May, 1883). Tatum — named after mom’s murdered best friend, played by Rose McGowan back in 1996 — has reached the age Sidney was when she first achieved Final Girl status, but Sidney’s unwillingness to discuss the details of her past has driven a wedge between them.

And wouldn’t you know it, just when the tension between the two of them is at its most fraught, a new Ghostface (voiced by Roger Jackson) pops up, again threatening the lives of Sidney and everyone she holds dear. But it’s 2026, and this Ghostface has access to deepfake technology that brings one of Sidney’s tormentors back to life — or is he still truly alive after all these years? (The movie gets points for making AI one of the villains here, particularly since that element is one of the few contemporary ideas on display.) It’s up to Sidney and her husband and investigative reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) to crack the case before they all wind up skewered.

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson dreamed up these characters back in 1996, and he’s back on board, both as co-writer (with Guy Busick, Ready or Not) and, for the first time, as a Scream director. When it comes to delivering the slasher-movie goods, Williamson remains inventive; apart from an early kill that’s a little too protracted and torture-intensive for the established house style, the murders are clever, surprising, and not without some wit. (The crawlspace sequence immediately earns hall-of-fame status.) But they’re the only reason for this movie to exist; the Scream series has become a horror version of That’s Entertainment!, where 21^st century fans of a 1990s movie that paid homage to 1980s horror can get the kind of squishy, splattery, shocking homicides that A24 just isn’t going to deliver.

Unfortunately, the earlier, better Screams could handle both carnage and characterization, and the latter is sorely missing here. There are no new depths to Sidney or Gale for even these vets to plumb, and their presence just becomes a cozy and reassuring throwback to the audience’s youth, like a TV reunion special. The inside-baseball jokes about genre movies lack their usual zing, and there’s not even much fun trying to figure out whodunit — the mystery here feels less like Clue the movie and more like Clue the board game, with a random assemblage of pieces dumped on the board and the knowledge that one (or more) of them is the killer.

Apart from the always-welcome comedic banter between Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding as Gale’s self-described “hot interns,” the youngsters are mostly interchangeable. (For the adults making their first franchise appearance, Williamson has assembled a crack team of suspicious red herrings and potential maniacs, including Mark Consuelos, Ethan Embry, Anna Camp, and Tim Simons.)

It’s Savoy Brown’s Mindy who gets the script’s most dead-on piece of self-descriptive dialogue, whether Williamson and Busick intended it or not: discussing Gale’s faltering TV-news career, Mindy deadpans, “I’m learning all about faded careers and failed comebacks.”

Director: Kevin Williamson
Screenwriters: Kevin Williamson and Guy Busick; story by James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick; based on characters created by Kevin Williamson
Cast: Neve Campbell, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, David Arquette, Roger L. Jackson, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Mckenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Tim Simons, Matthew Lillard, Joel McHale, Courteney Cox
Executive producers: Kevin Williamson, Gary Barber, Chris Stone, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Ben Ormand, Ben Fast, Cathy Konrad, Marianne Maddalena, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Chad Villella
Producers: William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, Paul Neinstein
Director of photography: Ramsey Nickell
Production design: John Collins
Editing: Jim Page
Music: Marco Beltrami
Sound design: James Peterson, production sound mixer
Production companies: Paramount Pictures, Spyglass Media Group, Project X Entertainment
In English
114 minutes 

Controversy began at a press conference where Wim Wenders, the president of the main jury, was asked how the German government’s official support for Israel impacted the festival’s stance on Gaza. His blunt answer — that filmmakers needed to stay out of politics — became an instant soundbite that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on social media. Other side effects followed: Booker-winning author Arundhati Roy canceled her planned visit to the Berlinale to support a restored film, and more than 80 eminent artists and filmmakers including Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem signed an open letter to the festival organizers urging them to take a clear stance on the war in Gaza. The debate lasted throughout the festival and cast a chill over an otherwise well-oiled Berlinale, stealing the headlines from the generally well-liked and well-selected film program.

Though the message that got through was quickly reduced to “films are the opposite of politics”, here is what Wim Wenders actually said about Gaza:

“We have to stay out of politics, because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

And for some counterbalance, it must be said that there have been some very strong politically and socially engaged films in the wider Berlinale program. For the opening film, festival director Tricia Tuttle chose No Good Men by Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, a surprising depiction of Afghan life for women before and during the American pullout in 2021, underpinned by a riotous feminist romance. In Roya, Iranian director Mahnaz Mohammadi dramatizes her harrowing experience in prison.

Perhaps the biggest push-back to Wenders’ remarks – and, in a broader context, to how the German government has been handling political topics in the last couple of years – came from the festival attendees themselves, as the Audience Award went to the German courtroom thriller Prosecution, a very blunt indictment of the self-proclaimed objectivity of the national judicial system, particularly in the case of hate crimes and right-wing extremism. Traces offered the documentary testimony of Ukrainian women and men sexually assaulted by invading Russian soldiers. The fact that both Traces and Prosecution won Panorama Audience prizes might suggest that the festival public are more politically inclined than the festival organizers — or perhaps freer to express their views.

Ironically, or by design, Wenders’ jury chose to bestow its highest honors on two highly political movies. In Yellow Letters, the best film winner, director Ilker Catak directly addresses the fear-instilling injustice of the Turkish state in interfering with the lives of a theater director/playwright and his actress-wife, who summarily lose their jobs over a socially critical play and a slight to the authorities. Emin Alper’s Salvation symbolically traces the origins of political violence and war back to two neighboring Kurdish clans simmering with savage impulses and egged on by a self-styled Messiah figure. And in a slightly broader political context, there are the queer underpinnings of Sandra Huller’s award-winning performance in Markus Schleinzer’s much-admired film Rose, a startling historical tale about a soldier tired of war who settles in a village and marries, without anyone suspecting (except the audience) that he’s a woman. Interestingly, all three of these films are supposed to be inspired by real events.

In the trends-to-watch category, lots of black-and-white cinematography gave many films a special sheen, including Rose, Grant Gee’s Everybody Digs Bill Evans (winner of the best director award), and Fernando Eimbcke’s charming tale of love, loss and loneliness Flies, all visual standouts.

In general, children and the elderly were much on view, the former in films like Beth de Araujo’s Josephine featuring the fantastic child actress Mason Reeves as the eyewitness to a rape, and the Mexican Bastian Escobar as a boy alone in the city while his mom is in the hospital in Flies. Winner of best screenplay was writer-director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles for her fetching, offbeat tale Nina Roza, about an eight-year-old girl painter from rural Bulgaria who is hailed as a prodigy, and her ambivalence at the prospect of fame.

Taking home two prizes – the Jury Prize and the award for best supporting performance – was Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea, an upsetting but never cruel story about an elderly couple played by Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, as the wife descends into cognitive decline. And the documentary Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch and Banker White turns a woman in her eighties into a fascinating character who it is a delight to get to know. The film’s highly original set design, involving intricate miniatures of Yo’s house, won it the outstanding artistic contribution award.

Berlinale Shorts was, as ever, a rich collection of brief works up to 30 minutes, their makers ranging from emerging talents to seasoned directors like Radu Jude (who once again looked into the complicated recent past of Romania with Shot Reverse Shot) and Yolande Zauberman (who dedicated the screening of her film Les juifs riches to the memory of Frederick Wiseman, a master of the documentary form). As is often the case in this section, animation was particularly strong, the highlight being Unidentified Nonflying Objects (UNO), the latest by Russian director Sasha Svirsky. As he explained during the post-screening Q&A, that film also comes with a certain political baggage, as it was the first short he made after relocating to Germany four years ago due to his objection to the war in Ukraine. Also greatly appreciated was Cosmonauts, which was designated as the Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards.

The main prize in the section went to Someday a Child, whose director Marie-Rose Osta already caught festival goers’ attention in Rotterdam a few weeks ago as one of the authors of the omnibus film Home Bitter Home. This time, in addition to delivering a powerful film where a young boy uses superpowers to repel invading aircraft, she used her platform to openly address the precarious situation in her native Lebanon as well as Palestine, once again showing that whatever informal gag order had been in place during the official press conferences was powerless against the voices of filmmakers who come to festivals to be heard and share their vision, with the latter sometimes rooted in a painful reality that needs to be acknowledged.

Members of the Jury: Wim Wenders (Jury President), Min Bahadur Bham, Bae Doona, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Reinaldo Marcus Green, HIKARI, Ewa Puszczyska

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM
‘Gelbe Briefe’ (‘Yellow Letters’)
by Ilker Çatak
produced by Ingo Fliess

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE
‘Kurtulus’ (‘Salvation’)
by Emin Alper

SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE
‘Queen at Sea’
by Lance Hammer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR
Grant Gee
for ‘Everybody Digs Bill Evans’

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST LEADING PERFORMANCE
Sandra Hüller
in ‘Rose’ by Markus Schleinzer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Anna Calder-Marshall & Tom Courtenay
in ‘Queen at Sea’ by Lance Hammer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCREENPLAY
Geneviève Dulude-de Celles
for ‘Nina Roza’ by Geneviève Dulude-de Celles

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION
Anna Fitch, Banker White
for’ ‘Yo’ (Love is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch, Banker White

PRIZES OF THE PERSPECTIVES JURY
Members of the Jury: Sofia Alaoui, Frédéric Hambalek, Dorota Lech

BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD 
Chronicles from the Siege
by Abdallah Alkhatib produced by Taqiyeddine Issaad, Salah Issaad

BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
Members of the Jury: Lemohang Mosese, B Ruby Rich, Shaunak Sen

BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
If Pigeons Turned to Gold
by Pepa Lubojacki produced by Klára Mamojková, Wanda Kaprálová

PRIZES OF THE INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM JURY
Members of the Jury: Ameer Fakher Eldin, Stefan Grissemann, Gabriele Stötzer

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST SHORT FILM
Yawman ma walad (Someday a Child)
by Marie-Rose Osta

SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE (SHORT FILM)
A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere
by Fanny Texier

BERLINALE SHORTS CUPRA FILMMAKER AWARD
Di san xian (Kleptomania)
by Jingkai Qu

PRIZES OF GENERATION KPLUS
Children‘s Jury Generation Kplus
Members of the Jury: Walter Moritz Arndt, Gustav Arnz, Thabani Dabulamanzi, Rosa Sophie Krasznahorkai, Vera Marsh, Emir Efe Özeren, Alma Sofia Villanueva Bullemer

CRYSTAL BEAR FOR THE BEST FILM Feito Pipa (Gugu’s World)
by Allan Deberton

CRYSTAL BEAR FOR THE BEST SHORT FILM
Whale 52 – Suite for Man, Boy, and Whale (Wal 52 – Suite für Mann, Junge und Wal)
by Daniel Neiden

THE GRAND PRIX OF THE INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR THE BEST FILM
Feito Pipa (Gugu’s World) by Allan Deberton

THE SPECIAL PRIZE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR THE BEST SHORT FILM
Spî (White | Weiß)
by Navroz Shaban

Bowing at the Forum section at the Berlinale, Cesarean Weekend is neither a clichéd study of masculinity in crisis nor a reactionary clarion call aimed at the manosphere. By exploring the two men-children’s and their fathers’ troubled relationship with themselves and each other, the film offers a delirious and deliciously disorienting stab at characters confined by past and present social norms they have problems conforming to. Shunning realism at every turn, Shirvani flings comedy, tragedy, history and geography into the blender and delivers a mind-bending and heart-rending piece about existence in contemporary Iran.

“Fuck your existence!” reads graffiti sprayed on a wall, and this might well be Shirvani’s own motto towards mainstream Iranian society. He made his international breakthrough in 2013 with Fat Shaker, an absurdist drama about an oversized con-man getting his comeuppance and attaining redemption for using his handsome-yet-deaf son as bait to snare women. Today the Iranian indie producer-director is part of a coterie of filmmakers (including Vahid Vakilifar and Mani Haghighi, among others) trying to veer away from the aesthetics of their festival-acclaimed forefathers.

Refusing to play by the rules of establishments of any political stripe – whether that of the state or the dissident movement – Shirvani elected to follow up the success of Fat Shaker by retreating into underground cinema with his workshops and projects with his Alternative Film Lab. Having spent the past decade producing raw films from young cineastes, the maverick filmmaker has now returned with something that subverts expectations about narrative, characters and space.

Starting with the blast of a rooftop party, the film slowly descends into surreal debates about society and philosophy in a pool downstairs, before ending up in dream-like, death-infested finale in the sea.

Cesarean Weekend begins with a 15-minute sequence of hedonistic revelry, as a group of young people smoke, dance, get tattooed and row to the sound of booming dance music. Weaving his way through the many women literally letting their hair down is Milad (Milad Ahmadzadeh), a curly-haired wannabe-Lothario seen flirting with each and every woman around him – an extreme reaction, it seems, to his learning of the pregnancy of his frustrated girlfriend (Bita Jamshidi). His buddy Armin (Armin Shirvani, the director’s real-life son) is a bespectacled nerd who has to be literally dragged out of bed to join the party.

Just when one is tempted to see Milad and Armin as Iranian incels, Shirvani throws a curve ball by splicing snippets of the pair’s intimate interactions at another time and space. Roaming the ruins of an abandoned tenement block and the overgrown gardens around it at dawn – before or after the party, we are not sure – the two seemingly stoned men, dressed only in their swimming trunks, crack infantile jokes (including the one about the graffiti), hug trees, chase goats and reminisce dreamily about their good times together. Teasing both tenderness and rawness from his two leads, Shirvani leaves the nature of their relationship very much ambivalent, a guessing game best left for the engaged viewer.

Without warning, the film shifts shape as the young people relocate to a swimming pool on the ground level of the house. They are now joined by patriarchs: relaxing in the water surrounded by youth, Milad’s bearded bear of a father (Peyman Yeganeh) taunts his feral son for his lack of focus in life. “Using the language of misery is the only thing philosophy taught you” is one of the many insults he hurls at the manchild Milad  – while Armin’s more refined dad (played by the Vienna-educated musical conductor Nader Mashayeki), an expatriate composer who has lived abroad and away from his own family for years, laments the collapse of culture in his homeland.

Through the explosive exchanges among this quartet, filmed by Shirvani in close-ups and edited together with dynamism and danger, the tensions between generations are revealed. By venting fury at their overbearing or absent fathers, Milad and Armin are (probably) voicing the pent-up frustration of youth about the ignorance and ineptness of all these self-styled adults. While hardly addressing directly the turmoil gripping Iranian society, Shirvani’s barbed commentary about its social mores is more than evident.

These heated arguments eventually give way to a visually infernal denouement: as the focus shifts away from the young to the elders, Shirvani lets loose the two fathers in the sea. The pristine, high-resolution imagery of the rooftop party fades into the distance; heightened by Oveis Derakshan’s eerie sound design, the film morphs into a series of flame-tinted, fogged-up sequences of the two middle-aged men floating off the shores of the Caspian Sea, imploding with the guilt of not having done enough for themselves and the world and their inability to attain their life-long ambitions in their homeland. Discarding his demure demeanour of the earlier scenes, Armin’s father lets out screams beset by shame and regret for not being able to direct Gustav Mahler’s Ninth symphony in Iran.

This wish of his shouldn’t be taken as a straightforward critique of censorship of art in Iran: Mahler’s work has indeed been performed in the country, and Mashayeki himself brought even more experimental work there (John Cage’s music, for example) during his real-life tenure at the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. Rather, this final line should be taken as Shirvani’s opaque commentary about an individual’s inability to overcome his inner demons which are, indeed, shaped by the social constraints around them. That, however, might be too serious an interpretation for Shirvani’s liking. Like his previous work – not just the features, but also shorts and even mischievously surreal installations – Cesarean Weekend should be enjoyed like a strange dream as much as a piece of social commentary.

Director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor: Mohammad Shirvani
Cast: Nader Mashayekhi, Peyman Yeganeh, Milad Ahmadzadeh, Armin Shirvani, Bita Jamshidi
Music composer: Reza Rostamian
Sound designer: Oveis Derakhshan
Production company: Alternative Film Lab
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Forum)
In Persian
90 minutes

Trial of Hein borrows the clothes of naturalistic playwrights like Ibsen or Strindberg, but adds an allegorical fairy-tale undertow, plus some heavily mannered theatrical elements. If the plot feels familiar, that may be because the homecoming stranger with a mysteriously murky identity is a recurring archetype in both fiction and non-fiction films, from The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) to Sommersby (1993), The Astronaut’s Wife (1999), The Imposter (2012) and beyond. World premiered to positive reviews in Berlin this week, Stänicke’s solemn drama has solid art-house credentials that should ensure further festival interest.

A painterly opening sequence zooms in on a gaunt, intense, thirtysomething man (Paul Boche) crossing a foggy sea to the remote island village he once called home. But there is no warm welcome awaiting him in the bosom of this tight-knit fishing community. The stranger claims to be Hein, a native son of the island, but 14 years later nobody seems able to confirm his identity. His sister, a mere child when he left, is wary. His ailing mother has dementia, and struggles to recognise her own son. Even his closest confidantes from adolescence, Greta (Emilia Schüle,) and Freidemann (Philip Froissant), are torn, the intense bond they once shared now adrift on a foggy ocean of unreliable memory.

Wary of outsiders, the island’s Amish-like elders treat Hein as an invader from the outside world, seeking to corrupt their simple way of life with his shady motives and big city ways. Their solution is to stage a public “trial” that puts this interloper to the test, measuring his claims of belonging against the values of the wider community. Over several days, clashing memories and competing versions of history are aired, which only serve to amplify hidden tensions and buried secrets.

Spanning two ponderous hours, Trial of Hein takes a long time to deliver its Big Surprise Twist, which is not actually that big, nor really much of a surprise. No spoilers here, but Stänicke does have eloquent points to make about his protagonist’s real identity, about conformity and complicity, repression and denial, and how our public persona can be a performative facade. All valid  dramatic themes, but they add up to an oddly anti-climatic pay-off. The limitations of a first-time film-maker, single-minded and heavy-handed, are probably factors here.

In aesthetic terms, Trial of Hein is a polished and pleasing affair. The film’s maritime landscapes have a rugged, elemental beauty, well complemented by Florian Mag’s precisely choreographed overhead drone shots and Damian Scholl’s elegantly chilly chamber-orchestra score. Making resourceful use of a minimal budget, the production design balances broadly realistic, period-correct elements with stylised, quasi-Brechtian artifice. Most strikingly the village set is a huddle of deconstructed wooden houses without walls or roofs, reminiscent of the town in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville (2003). In his Berlinale press materials, Stänicke admits this design decision was initially dictated by financial limitations, but it also underscores the theme of small town life being a kind of theatrical performance. This world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Director, screenwtriter: Kai Stänicke
Cast: Paul Boche, Philip Froissant, Emilia Schüle, Stephanie Amarell, Jeanette Hain, Irene Kleinschmidt, Julika Jenkins
Cinematography: Florian Mag
Editing: Susanne Ocklitz
Music: Damian Scholl
Production design: Seth Turner
Producers: Andrea Schütte, Dirk Decker, Dario Suter
Production companies: Tamtam Film (Germany)
World sales: Heretic, Athens
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In German
122 minutes

The film comes on the heels of the 2022 Venice sleeper Vera, which starts as a documentary about the depressed daughter of Italian spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma, only to slide into a presumably fictional story of celebrity exploitation. In the new film, the directing duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel investigate the wonderfully authentic blues singer and guitarist Al Cook, who has single-mindedly devoted his entire life to American blues music. His comfy home is a sprawling shrine full of out-of-tune pianos, fancy guitars, scratchy LPs and loudspeakers, along with newspaper clippings and framed photos of Black musicians like Robert Johnson and Ma Rainey who pioneered the blues.

His collection of original Elvis Presley memorabilia is also vast and carefully preserved in suitcases. But the King’s influence extends to Al’s gray side-swept pompadour and leather jacket worn with the collar turned up. The extreme care with which he dresses is an endearing joke throughout the film.

He has taught himself English by repeating song lyrics over and over.

He has never set foot in America.

Now calamity is literally at his door. His beloved apartment (“my life”) has been bought by a crass real estate developer and is on the verge of being demolished. Al is the only tenant in the building who has refused to vacate. The first hint that the baddies mean business is when they cut off his power on Christmas Eve. Instead of reacting with anguished panic, Covi and Frimmel have him play the scene with understated control as he checks the fuses and calls the city power hotline, only to be told they will send a repairman after the holidays.

He treats the chubby, fully-tattooed owner of the building with the same irritated but laid-back politeness. One day he walks in to find the man stripped to the waist and snoring on his sofa, where he has polished off Al’s champagne. Without waking him, Al picks up a pen and signs the eviction notice, accepting the inevitable while changing his life forever.

At this point the film noticeably shifts register: far from being defeated, Al is looking forward into a brave new future, which he imagines will take him to Memphis and the Mississippi delta. There he plans to reinvent himself and get a foothold in the music industry – though his memories are forty years out of date. As he slowly sells off his souvenirs and the clutter of a lifetime, even the videos of his gigs as a young man, the mood is not sad or downbeat. At times Al confesses to an old girlfriend (now elderly and alone like himself) that he doesn’t know how to carry on. But then he remembers his youthful wish — to “get away from narrow-minded Austria”. And it spurs him on.

Watching the film, it is impossible to decide if and when the story wanders away from the “real” Al Cook. That he is a real blues musician is documented in his album covers and the fact that most of the songs in the film are written, arranged, played and sung by Al. But is the drama of the demolition of his once genteel building an incontrovertible fact? What about this relationship to his old flame? The filmmakers tease the viewer with doubts about where to draw the documentary line, as they did in Vera. For most general audiences it will make little difference, as the pleasure is in following the very consistent character face change and upheaval. And in listening to some very good blues.

Directors, producers: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
Screenplay: Tizza Covi
Cast: Alois Koch, Brigitte Meduna, Alfred Blechinger, Flurina Schneider
Cinematography: Rainer Frimmel
Production design: Lotte Lyon, Christian Gschier
Editing: Tizza Covi, Emily Artmann
Music: Al Cook
Sound design: Nora Czamler
Production company: Vento Film (Austria)
World sales: Be For Films (France)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In German, English
86 minutes

A sometime actor, activist and documentary director, Mohammadi is currently banned from making films. Which makes her second dramatic feature, shot without official permission, inside and outside Iran, not just a technically impressive work but also a courageous one. Particularly brave right now, with the Iranian people still reeling from a brutal government crackdown on mass street protests over the past two months. Islamic Republic officials have admitted to killing around 3,000 of their own citizens, but other credible sources put the death toll closer to 30,000. The pattern is depressingly familiar: every few years the regime crushes any serious public dissent using armed militias, torture, censorship, detention, forced confession, farcical show trials and mass executions.

World premiering at the Berlin film festival this week, Roya could hardly be more timely, especially with escalating threats of a US military attack on Iran. That said, it works just as well as a compelling art-house suspense thriller about the horrors of totalitarianism than as direct commentary on current geopolitical events. The non-linear plot becomes fuzzy and cryptic in places, but this is a deliberate design choice which repays patient viewing. Alongside Jafar Panahi’s thematically similar It Was Just an Accident (2025), Mohammadi’s quietly furious prison saga adds to the ongoing chorus of insider voices taking laudable personal risks by criticising one of the world’s most murderous, misogynistic, authoritarian regimes.

Roya opens with an attention-grabbing sequence set in the bowels of a grubby jail. Bordering on torture-porn, this suffocating, sense-jarring scene-setter is shot from the viewpoint of the unseen protagonist, a female prisoner known only by her grimly ironic label “guest 2648”, as she is roughly manhandled from her tiny cell, dragged to an interrogation room, then pressured to sign a confession to vaguely defined crimes. When she hesitates, she is assailed with insults and death threats, then beaten by members of Unit 400, a shadowy branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps infamous for thuggery and dirty tricks (both groups have been proscribed as terrorist organisations outside Iran). Meanwhile, one of her interrogators briefly drops his bullying tone to take a family phone call confirming plans for his child’s birthday party. The banality of evil in full effect.

Switching to more conventional third-person viewpoint around the 20-minute mark, Roya finally reveals the haunted, anguished face of its eponymous heroine (angular Turkish beauty Melisa Sözen) for the first time. In an unexpected twist, it appears she is leaving jail on temporary compassionate grounds, to attend her sister’s funeral, whose mysterious death is never fully explained. The ceremony is a quietly beautiful family affair filmed in frosty, sunny woodland. But even in these painfully private moments, Roya remains under near-constant surveillance from sinister regime informers, and must wear an electronic ankle tag to confirm her location at all times.

Meanwhile, Mohammadi feeds viewers fragmentary clues about the charges against Roya, a teacher arrested for encouraging female students to defy the regime’s oppressive dress codes. She also ran a photo studio taking evidence of women scarred, burned and blinded, presumably by state militia, which is raided by police in a slow-motion flashback sequence. Adding a bitter edge to Roya’s guilty burden, relatives of her students echo the demands of her jailers by demanding she makes a full confession, sacrificing herself to save others. “You provoked them to burn their headscarves,” one claims. “Your only choice is to confess.”

However, this temporary return to freedom is not quite what it seems. Mohammadi gradually unravels these naturalistic scenes into a more impressionistic non-linear collage of dreams, memories and hallucinations. Roya’s visits to her dying father (Hamidreza Djavdan) feel like hazy half-remembered flashbacks, with a vague euthanasia subplot that remains hazy, while her journeys through the semi-deserted city have a nightmarish otherness, with sinister stalkers on every street corner, and dead bodies slumped on subway station platforms.

As Roya repeatedly returns to an eerie basement apartment full of flickering lights and ominous noises, there are strong hints here that she never left her prison cell at all, and these events are taking place inside her head. While some viewers may be left confused here, the effect is fully intentional, as Mohammadi explains in her Berlin film festival press notes. “Trauma, memory don’t move in a straight line,” she says. “They surface, fade, overlap, and interrupt one another.”

Roya is made with poise, elegance and craft. Sözen gives a hypnotic, almost wordless performance, her emotions mostly conveyed in gaunt, piercing expressions. Ashkan Ashkani’s cinematography is loaded with moments of lyrical beauty: armies of ants carrying a dead scorpion, water droplets dancing on glass, shadows and silhouettes, solar halos and lens flare. The soft amber glow of winter sunlight is a recurring motif. Music and sound design are also crucial, a steady churn of clanking, droning, mechanical noises amplifying the paranoid mood. Mohammadi ends Roya’s story with a small act of defiance, a flicker of hope in the darkness. She also saves a killer pay-off for the end credits: “written in Cell Block 2A of Evin Prison”.

Director, screenwriter: Mahnaz Mohammadi
Cast: Melisa Sözen, Maryam Palizban, Hamidreza Djavdan, Mohammad Ali Hosseinalipour, Bacho Meburishvili, Gholamhassan Taseiri
Cinematography: Ashkan Ashkani
Editing: Esmaeel Monsef
Music: Andrius Arutiunian
Sound design: Ensieh Leyla Maleki
Production design: Alborz Malekpour
Producers: Farzad Pak, Kaveh Farnam, Bady Minck, Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu
Production companies: Pak Film (Germany), Media Nest (Czech)
World sales: Totem Films, Paris
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In Farsi
92 minutes

Binoche plays Amanda, who is on sabbatical from her work in academia in Newcastle and currently lives in London with her teenage daughter Sara (Florence Hunt), while her estranged husband is teaching in Canada. It soon becomes clear Amanda’s decision to move to the English capital comes with a certain emotional baggage: her mother Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall) suffers from advanced dementia, and there have been discussions about putting her in an assisted living facility.

The main obstacle to this, although Amanda can overrule him since she has power of attorney, is Leslie’s second husband Martin (Tom Courtenay), who refuses to accept his spouse requires specialized care. In fact, when we first meet them, as Amanda is checking in on their wellbeing, she catches them in flagrante delicto and calls the police. As it turns out, Martin has been told he’s no longer supposed to engage in sexual activity since Leslie’s condition makes it virtually impossible to establish consent, but he thinks he knows better, having read articles online.

From there on, the film follows two plot strands: one deals with Amanda and Martin coming to terms with what would be best for Leslie, while acknowledging the other’s point of view and their emotionally driven reasons for favoring one approach over another; the other storyline concerns Sara, who’s not quite sure what she wants to do with her life (in part due to her mixed feelings about the relocation and her parents’ separation), and has to think about whether she wants to act on the attraction she feels vis-à-vis a friend who’s similarly into her.

One body is still figuring out its autonomy, the other has all but lost it. Agonizingly tight close-ups show the anguish and frustration of each family member, including Leslie whose fragmented state of mind is tactfully conveyed by Calder-Marshall’s carefully judged performance: her eyes, at times fully expressive and at times a blank slate, provide valuable glimpses into the everyday tribulations the character must deal with, as well as the progression of the film’s main emotional arc. Though technically a bit more showy as he gets to shout on occasion, Courtenay – in his first film role in four years, and arguably his most important since 2015’s 45 Years – is also cleverly measured in his portrayal of a man who, be it out of habit or a certain “old school” about his role in the household, is not ready to let go of his wife.

Various notions of intimacy overlap and come into conflict as Hammer delicately explores the nuances of three generations dealing with the realization their family is broken in multiple ways. Much of it is upsetting, but never in a cruel way. Instead, the director finds the right shade of sincerity from the get-go, making even the harder-to-watch moments an organic part of the characters’ quest for clarity and not gratuitous depictions of misery designed solely to hit the viewer in the gut (in that regard, it’s not unlike Michael Haneke’s Amour). In a way, we’re on the same journey as Amanda and her family, discovering things alongside them and preparing for the same catharsis, which eventually strikes with honest precision.

Director, Screenwriter: Lance Hammer
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall, Florence Hunt
Producer: Tristan Goligher, Lance Hammer
Cinematography: Adolpho Veloso
Production design: Soraya Gilanni Viljoen
Costume design: Saffron Cullane
Sound: Kent Sparling
Production companies: The Bureau, Alluvial Film Company
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Berlinale (Competition)
In English, French
121 minutes