Starting out as a gruelling ethical quandary before progressing somewhere borderline fantastical, Child (2026) is without doubt a bleak film, but an innovative one, and it works effectively on its own terms, keeping a very humane, character-focused approach throughout its bizarre literal and metaphorical journey. We start with two doctors attending to what is clearly […]
Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec God of the Dead and page upon page of Aztec art depicting his historical ritual appeasement dominate the first minutes of Mexican director Mauricio Chernovetzky’s Sacrificios (2025), a study of Mexican religion, grief, fatherhood and guilt. After lingering across various drawings and sculpture, the camera pulls back to reveal a small boy, […]
We slowly pan back through a bedroom into a bathroom where a young woman sits, on the floor, bawling her eyes out: yes, Deepfake (2026) starts with a relationship breakdown, and the distressed dumpee Jane (Jessica DiGiovanni) is soon doing everything she can to rehabilitate her self-image and social standing, even if that largely seems […]
Part mystery, part broad strokes eco- or folk horror, Broken Beak (aka The Burning of Broken Beak, 2026) is flawed in execution, but not without engaging thematic and visual ideas of its own. Moreover, it my be flawed, but it isn’t flippant. We start by hearing the last mating call of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird, […]
We hear a link between music, chaos and quantum theory being suggested as Turn It Up! (2026) gets underway: someone is explaining to us, via a voiceover of sorts, that just the right kind of noise could, quite literally, open (interdimensional) doors. This is just before – in a fun, pace-setting title sequence – we […]
There’s a moment in Mark Jenkin’s new Cornish time-slip themed, 16mm folktale Rose of Nevada when the main character (Nick) finds a group of local fishermen in the newly invigorated fishing community he’s fallen through time into, all helping his crewmate to mend their vessel’s torn fishing net. As a traveller from a rather more […]
Did you order something? As she prepares a meal, a woman is disturbed by the arrival of a package. She collects it from the doorstep, and when she opens it, she immediately seems emotionally affected by what she finds inside. So much so, in fact, that she starts to asphyxiate herself with the bubble wrap […]
Whoa – don’t be fooled by that title. Peppermint Pixie Dream Girl (2026) may start out kitsch, with all the aesthetic trappings of vintage Americana – but it swiftly takes us somewhere far darker, and it’s all the more intriguing for it. We start in a kind of Happy Days diner, where a couple kills […]
Frida: The Making of an Icon, part of the Exhibition on Screen series, opens with a recording of Kahlo’s painting El Sueno (La cama) – or The Dream (The bed) – selling at the Exquisite Corpus auction of Surrealist art at Sotheby’s for a staggering $57.4 million. The painting depicts Frida sleeping on a wooden […]
Matador Bolero starts very calmly: there’s a young woman communing with nature against the backdrop of a rather beautiful, Super 8, retro-styled idyll. There’s no dialogue as of yet, and no music. She then finds a large, pastel-coloured egg, placing her hand on it – all the while being observed by a masked figure, hiding […]
Bear (Michael Johnston) is a music store employee who harbours romantic feelings for childhood friend and co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette), but is finding it difficult to articulate his affection. Mutual friend and workmate Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) thinks that Bear shouldn’t risk jeopardising the current, comfortable situation between members of their easy-going social group, which also […]