Locarno Film Festival 2023
★★★★☆
Locarno Film Festival 2023
Country
Smoking Causes Coughing (2022) (Fumer Fait Tousser)
★★★☆☆
Smoking Causes Coughing, the brainchild of über-absurdist Quentin Dupieux, is bizarre, very, very silly, strangely disquieting and rather flimsy.
Mother and Son (2022) (Un Petit Frère)
★★★★☆
Mother and Son is an ★★★★☆
involving, compassionate film by Léonor Serraille that poignantly shows the difficulties and the effects on a family – both positive and negative – of immigration into a strange country.
La Syndicaliste (2022)
★★★★☆
Isabelle Huppert stars in Jean-Paul Salomé’s thriller and nuclear-industry investigation La Syndicaliste, based on the recent true story of French union official Maureen Kearney.
Reality (2023)
★★★★☆
25-year-old former American intelligence specialist Reality Winner is confronted by FBI agents arriving at her home. Based on true events, Tina Satter’s film’s dialogue is directly from the transcript of their tense, transfixing conversation.
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Day 3: 18 May 2023
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Day 3: 18 May 2023
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Day 2: 17 May 2023
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Day 2: 17 May 2023
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Day 1: Opening Film: Jeanne du Barry (2023)
★★★☆☆
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Opening film: Jeanne du Barry (2023)
The Eight Mountains (2022) (Le Otto Montagne)
★★☆☆☆
Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, which they adapted from Paolo Cognetti’s novel Le Otto Montagne, tells the story of the friendship of Pietro and Bruno from boys to men in their 30s from the perspective of Pietro.
The Blue Caftan (2022)
★★★★☆
The Blue Caftan by Maryam Touzani is a beautiful film celebrating understated love and tenderness in everyday life.
Love According to Dalva (2022)
★★★☆☆
Love According to Dalva, directed by Emmanuelle Nicot, features some extraordinarily intense performances in a paedophilia drama where the victim refuses to accept she is a child who has been abused.
Cairo Conspiracy (2022) previously Boy from Heaven (Walad min al-Janna)
★★★☆☆
Adam arrives in Cairo to study at the renowned Al-Azhar University and unexpectedly finds himself drawn into the centre of a dangerous world of religious and political power in writer/director Tarik Saleh’s compelling thriller.
Pacifiction: Tourment sur les îles (2022)
★★★★☆
Pacifiction, a hypnotically paced, dark political thriller set in French Tahiti directed by Catalan Albert Serra, enjoys the Polynesian island’s beauty, but also its inherent vulnerability to threats.
Leonor Will Never Die (2022)
★★★★☆
Comedy-thriller and Sundance award-winner Leonor Must Never Die, written and directed by first-time filmmaker Martika Ramirez Escobar, is an intriguing, galloping meta-romp-mix of fantasy, action pastiche and reality about the power of filmmaking.