Much like its main character, Andrés Clariond's slippery satire comes frustratingly close to striking political gold. But rather than snatching the comedic crown - or in the case of the unlucky protagonist aiming for Mexico’s highest state office, the presidency - he lands an embarrassing misfire, before retreating into private excess which turns increasingly absurdist. The most blatant aspect of this curious cinematic combination of lavishness and ludicrousness is the evocation of the titular French estate.

After taking home the golden wolf statue for Best Feature Film at last year’s Black Nights Film Festival with Silent City Driver, Sengedorj Janchivdorj returns to Tallinn with another melancholic meditation on lost connections, loneliness, and laconic humor. Ulaanbaatar, with its glistening skyline set against the endless width of the Mongolian steppe, is once more a central character to the bittersweet story, filled with small connections to the director-writer's prior work.

The second new film from writer-director Osgood Perkins released this year, Keeper follows Liz (Tatiana Maslany) as she embarks on a romantic getaway with her boyfriend Dr. Malcolm Westbridge (Rossif Sutherland). Together now for one year, Liz is overwhelmed with how happy she feels. This is unusual for her, both having a relationship that lasts this long and to feel so satisfied in one.

Phillip Vandarploeug (Brendan Fraser) is struggling. An American living in Japan, Phillip is an outsider. He is lonely, spending his evenings looking out his apartment window to see a variety of locals living their ordinary lives in the apartment building across the street. Professionally, he is an actor who had a successful role in a cheesy toothpaste commercial, but none of his work is really paying the bills.

The “hunger shack,” as the original title of Karolis Kaupinis’ bleak history lesson translates, is not only the cramped Vilnius industrialized flat in which the handful of characters gather, it is also a somber symbol for a small nation starved for a freedom that, in the crucial days of the tight plot, feels both just within reach and far away.

Motherhood, militarism, and moral ambiguity collide in Netalie Braun's disquieting drama Oxygen. Prior to its run at Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival in the Best of Festivals section, the film took the top prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival, causing a stir for its supposedly anti-war message. This, however, is both complicated and compromised by the murky motivations of its protective protagonist who is egoistic at best and an outright sociopath at worst.

The original 1987 film adaptation of The Running Man has seen a critical re-appraisal over the years, though one fact remains: it is not really Stephen King’s The Running Man. It does distill many of the same themes while working within a similar framework, but it is a different story. With this re-adaptation, director Edgar Wright - who co-wrote the script with…

For a film among those which prominently provoked Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar to threaten that he would cut off all funding for the Ophir Awards, Shai Carmeli‑Pollak’s meandering dra…

In the inevitable follow-up to his 2022 survival saga Sisu, Jalmari Helander expands the folkloric brutality of the original into a more mythic action odyssey that occasionally overreaches but rarely ceases to entertain. Returning as the indestructible ex-commando Aatami Korpi, Jorma Tommila brings the same granite-faced charisma to the lead, whose bare-bones biography is slightly expanded. Gritty fight scenes and over-the-top action pieces that brought the first part financial success are still the main feature.

For those not very versed in Eastern European history, "Livonia" might sound like the name of a medieval country straight from a fantasy horror story, just like the anarchic animated tale which director-brothers Raitis and Lauris Ābele bring to Tallinn's Black Nights Film Festival. In fact, Livonia is a historical region which, by the end of the 13th century, comprised most of what today is Estonia and Latvia.

For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan’s legacy lived in the shadows of that of more prominent and popular explorers such as Christopher Columbus. The latter’s voyages were also financed by the Spanish crown that gave Magellan his big sailing shot at fame when the Portuguese King Manuel I refused to support his daring plan: to sail around an only crudely sketched-out South America into the Pacific Ocean (which by then wasn’t even called the “Pacific Ocean” since that name, too, came from Magellan).

Part of the artistic achievement of Chloé Zhao's absorbing account of genius and the personal grammar of grief is not only to build a strongly fictionalized protagonist who can hold up against a near-mythical historical figure but to undo centuries of biographical disparagement. Little is known about the real Agnes Hathaway - or Anne Hathaway, as some documents state - apart from what saved her from historic oblivion.

I love it when Wes Anderson makes a real Wes Anderson-ass movie.

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In a scene in Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, two characters compare their situation to the play Waiting for Godot. They find themselves waiting, in disagreement over their next actions, for clarity that isn’t going to come. This indetermination forms the basis for the bulk of It Was Just an Accident.

Die My Love is challenging. Director Lynne Ramsay fine tunes every element of this production to be as agitating as possible, dropping the viewer into the mindset of a woman such as Grace (Jennifer…

Larry (Barry Primus) and Joan (Betty Buckley) are on their way to a gender reveal party for one of their grandchildren, an event that has the couple who have spent 65 years together bickering. Larry does not see the point in such a party, while Joan laments that he just “enjoys being miserable.” By the time they get there, they are focused on celebrating the occasion and concealing Joan’s terminal cancer diagnosis, as she hopes for just one more family event where her health is not the focus.

Like Pinocchio before it, Frankenstein sees Guillermo del Toro adapting a classic 19th century story, this time tapping into del Toro’s fascination with monsters. A film spending almost two decades…

For a film among those which prominently provoked Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar to threaten that he would cut off all funding for the Ophir Awards, Shai Carmeli‑Pollak's meandering drama The Sea takes on a surprisingly tender, occasionally even lighthearted tone. It’s only in the final moments that the minimalist story about a young Palestinian boy determined to go to the sea reveals its devastating outlook and parabolic power.

Larry (Barry Primus) and Joan (Betty Buckley) are on their way to a gender reveal party for one of their grandchildren, an event that has the couple who have spent 65 years together bickering. Larr…