Director: Shih-Ching Tsou
Writers: Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou
Stars: Janel Tsai, Nina Ye, Shi-Yuan Ma

Synopsis: A single mother and her two daughters relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall, each navigating the challenges of adapting to their new environment while striving to maintain family unity.

Sean Baker has become a filmmaker who has everyone’s eyes on him, now more than ever, after Anora, his rendition of the Cinderella story, earned him multiple Oscar wins, including Best Picture. It was a surprise for many, me included, especially after seeing it at the Cannes Film Festival last year. But Baker didn’t become the director he is today–focusing on sex workers’ lives since Starlet–without the films he made in the 2000s, particularly his sophomore feature, Take Out, which he co-directed with Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou. Much like the Safdie Brothers, who gradually honed their hectic, stress-inducing style with more dramatic features like Daddy Longlegs, Baker and Tsou created a film that showed their talents and knack for the craft, relying on the nitty-gritty elements of the setting to capture it with honesty. While Tsou later transitioned into a producing role, Baker remained behind the camera.

Their paths still crossed, as Tsou is equally responsible for many of Baker’s works getting financing. Yet one would have liked her to have made more pictures. Her influence is still felt on Baker’s works, but Tsou took twenty-one years to place herself again behind the camera with Left-Handed Girl (screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Semaine de la critique). Much like Take Out, Left-Handed Girl is a human and grounded story, highlighting the working-class life. Instead of the streets of New York, we get the Taipei night market, both basked in the neon lights from the shop signs and restaurants that brighten up the cold streets. The film follows a mother, Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), who, after many years, returns to Taipei with her daughters, I-Ann (Ma Shih-yan) and I-Jing (Nina Yeh), to open up a noodle stand in the night market.

Shu-Fen struggles to keep the shop afloat, as ex-husbands and estranged fathers return to her life after the departure. All the while I-Ann, the eldest of the two daughters, has great difficulty adapting to this new life. I-Jing explores the city with an innocence that Tsou and Baker, who is a co-writer and editor in the film, explore through a playfulness in the movie’s look and style–oversaturating the bright colors to create a dream-like sensation and, simultaneously, hiding the coldness that lurks in the streets of Taipei at night, without shying away from uneasy narrative developments. But also, her ventures provide some disarray into their lives, sending the story to realistic and exaggerated territories, although it keeps moving. Tsou may elevate the drama with various plot scenarios that each member of this family goes through. Yet, Left-Handed Girl feels authentic and raw, with each secret kept and lie told paving the way for these characters’ respective progressions. 

Like Baker, Tsou has a way with actors; she directs them to genuine performances, as if they were playing themselves rather than characters in a film. Sure, the framing of the film does not make it documentary-esque. However, these are true-to-life works, which never fail to see the humanity in the characters and the actors portraying them. Through the film, you sense both the sensibilities of Tsou and Baker, one in the director’s chair and the other in the writing and editing room. But the two never overlap; you never feel that they are trying to one-up or that one’s style and technique is sensed more than the other because Baker and Tsou’s collaborative effort matches each other to perfection.

Grade: B

Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writers: Ariana Harwicz, Lynne Ramsay, Enda Walsh
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield

Synopsis: In a remote forgotten rural area, a mother struggles to maintain her sanity as she battles with psychosis.

Every time Lynne Ramsay has a new film ready for us, it is cause for celebration. Since she makes films so sporadically, her last one being You Were Never Really Here back in 2017, each release feels like an event for cinephiles worldwide, much like Terence Malick, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jane Campion, amongst others. This high anticipation comes from her reputation as a singular, prominent director with a unique vision and knack for grim, psychological storytelling. Like those filmmakers mentioned, Ramsay emphasizes images, poetry, and feeling rather than dialogue and exposition; she shows the importance of crafting daunting, textured imagery left imprinted in our minds for an extended period. 

Some examples of her striking imagery are the opening of Ratcatcher, the Christmas tree with flickering lights against the boyfriend’s dead body in Morvern Callar (my favorite film by Ramsay), and the red paint-covered house in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Many contemporary directors don’t give this much attention to the images they create. That’s why Ramsay stands out in the medium. Her imagery has meaning, creating a poetic visual language distinct to her. After eight long years, Ramsay has a new visceral experience, Die, My Love (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), adapted from Ariana Herwicz’s novel of the same name. 

Once again working with source material, Ramsay presents the fragmented story of Grace (a magnificent Jennifer Lawrence), a writer who becomes increasingly uneasy on her isolated estate in the countryside. After living in New York for a while, Grace moves to the home of her partner’s, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), now-deceased uncle, Harry, who killed himself a while ago. This huge house seems like the perfect place for them to start their family, as Grace and Jackson are expecting their first child. The two are in love, desperately and passionately; they cannot be without one another, with Lawrence and Pattinson’s chemistry oozing from the screen in these initial moments. However, this idyllic start soon starts to unravel. 

As the days pass, Grace withdraws from both her picture-perfect “white picket fence” life and her newborn. She exhibits some erratic, violent behavior. She spends most of her time alone in the house, unable to write as her thoughts are blurred, and cleaning a spotless house. It is all getting to her head. She reaches out to Jackson for salvation, but Grace is too far submerged in melancholy to recover from this easily. The self-harm is not only physical, but also psychological, the latter becoming an even more significant affliction. Her psyche distorts once Karl (LaKeith Stanfield), her motorbike-riding neighbor, appears on screen. 

You don’t know if Karl is actually real or a figment of Grace’s deteriorating mental state. Fantasy and reality blur in a way only Ramsay can render, where chaos and grace rarely meet, but when they do, the result is devastating emotional catharsis. The protagonist remains unnamed in the novel, with Herwicz immersing us in her stream-of-consciousness. Ramsay retains that intimacy by embodying the character as Grace, giving us a similarly unfiltered glimpse into her unraveling mind. And she, although in a more streamlined yet equally unconventional fashion, crafts a very similar experience for the viewer. You are inside Grace’s head, going through every nook and cranny, memory and feeling, to a point where it becomes an exasperating view, but deliberately so. 

Think back to her previous feature, where Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe, a traumatized veteran, is overtaken by his nightmares and isolation, leading him on a downward spiral, with reality being blurred with each step he takes. The same happens to Grace, as she dismantles her house–the only place where she can reign in her pain with utmost control–and Ramsay lets Lawrence fiercely play in that madhouse. And it isn’t the first time Lawrence has been placed on a deconstructed, mad canvas. In the 2017 feature from Aronofsky, mother!, she was tasked with showcasing frenzy and madness for two hours straight; with each passing minute, the setting became as frenetic as Lawrence’s performance. 

The difference between the visions of Aronofsky and Ramsay is that the latter adds more humanity and empathy to the character Lawrence plays, instead of being a conduit for distress and suffering as it is in mother!. It is symbolic in Aronofsky’s film, and her character’s pain adds to the parable. Yet, I think some of it is done for exasperation and provocation (and I liked the film for such off-the-wall behavior). In Die, My Love, Ramsay uses the distress to reflect on postpartum depression, a topic rarely discussed in cinema, as well as blindsided love and domestic life. This is why each movement, expression, and look Lawrence’s Grace does, whether violent or gentle, feels genuine and heartbreaking. 

The violent or brash moments aren’t even the ones that feel the most dangerous; the tender and gentle scenes have a trepidation to them, where you don’t know when Grace is going to strike and eat Jackson alive, like a lion watching its prey from afar, waiting for the perfect moment. It is the effect of Ramsay’s double-headed love story, where devotion fills the atmosphere in desolation, and chaos is the natural sensation. And after resting with the film for some days now, I have grown to like it more for that. Even when Jackson can’t do anything to save or help his despondent Grace, the commitment transmits–the unwillingness to let the love, as its title says, die and rot amidst it all.

Grade: B+

Director: Laura Wandel
Writer: Laura Wandel
Stars:Léa Drucker, Anamaria Vartolomei, Alex Dascas

Synopsis: Against hospital protocol and court restrictions, a compassionate nurse finds herself caught between helping a distraught mother and maintaining professional standards of care.

The Dardenne Brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc) are a director pairing that is as influential and inspiring as they are daring, becoming bolder as they have aged. Ever since The Promesse in 1996, they have remained a staple in French cinema (and constant Cannes Film Festival attendees–with their latest film again in competition this year) and shifted the cinematic landscape with their storytelling. They are known for their hyper-realist, socially conscious narratives, focusing on the struggling working-class, placing the characters on a journey that tests their morals, without melodramatic or sentimentalist beats attached for sympathy with the characters. Much like their storytelling, every aspect of their filmmaking is stripped down, from natural lighting to hand-held cameras, which employs a sense of intimacy and authenticity to the film.

It is as natural and grounded as it can be. You are immersed in the lives of these characters; you may have even encountered or known people who have gone through similar scenarios and communicated with someone who underwent such troubles. Their films feel less like constructed narratives and more like fragments of real lives—intimate, unvarnished, and eerily familiar. They have inspired many with this style and technique, one of the best modern examples being Laura Wandel, whose latest work, Adam’s Sake (L’Intérêt d’Adam, the opening film of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival’s Semaine de la critique), is not only influenced by them but also backed by the Dardennes.

Wandel, whose previous film, Playground, an honest and realistic drama about bullying and the toll it takes on both the children and their parents, put the spotlight on her as a storyteller akin to the Dardennes, although with a bit more dramatic sensibilities than that of Rosetta or The Son. Playground wasn’t the best film about the topic, but when watching it, you felt so connected with the story because it felt real–it made you think back about the days in high school and middle school. And even though her follow-up feature has more specific scenarios than her debut, Adam’s Sake has that same effective realist sting that she utilized before, cementing her as a potential heir to the Dardenne style of filmmaking. 

Laura Wandel unfolds the narrative almost in real time, with each passing minute becoming as crucial as the next, set around a hospital with tons of chaos. And it is about to get even more tense. The film follows Lucy (Léa Drucker, who never misses a beat in her performances), the head nurse in an unnamed pediatric ward, constantly crawling with patients and their desperate parents. She has been following the case of a child called Adam (Jules Delsart), a four-year-old kid overcoming some serious health issues because of the poor diet restrictions imposed by his mother, Rebecca (Anamaria Vartolomei). The kid already has a broken arm from malnourishment, and he’s beginning to show signs of decline. 

Lucy knows that Adam needs proper treatment to keep him healthy, but she has trouble making Rebecca cooperate with the care. The audience becomes frustrated, not because of the story beats, but because of the mother’s negligence, whose child is suffering and needs better care. However, Wandel begins to show the backend of the setting–how cruel and manipulative health institutions are to people–and that frustration switches to understanding. This change is gripping, effective to the point where you feel you are in Lucy and Rebecca’s position. Once more details about Rebecca and her child are shared, the story becomes even more powerful. Rebecca has been given court access to Adam twice a day because he can’t eat anything without his mother. 

It becomes apparent that Rebecca and Adam don’t want to, and can’t, be without one another. The two mirror each other; Vartolomei and Delsart deliver performances so convincing you’d think they were mother and child. Child performances are nearly always mesmerizing because most haven’t had the experience that the rest of the cast might have had. But Delsart is something else. He slightly matches Drucker and Vartolomei, two of the best European acts working today, in terms of performance. Each second that passes, you feel a lingering sensation of forced separation, as an institution moves to distance this unbreakable bond. Lucy does her best to keep them together, but something bigger than her wants to prevent it. She fights back against an institution that strips people of their humanity. 

Adam’s Sake explores more than the nurse and patient relationship; Wandel wants you to see them as humans and their protectors, who should (yet don’t) keep them safe. Wandel is very wise, so she does not judge her characters’ actions, whether it is Rebecca malnourishing her son or Lucy’s over-involvement in the case. This is an element that makes the film as effective as it is. There are many scenes in which Wandel could have swung towards melodrama, having her lead belt out their “Oscar scene.” However, she distances herself from that behavior and lets us linger in the moment, as if it were a real pediatric case. 

We stay with these characters, corridor to corridor, hospital bed to hospital bed, and Wandel invites us to sit with the situation, to reflect without easy resolution. She questions the psychology behind the mother-son, doctor-patient, and institution-civilian relationships in a tad heavy-handed way, dwelling on the characters’ distress in many moments. Considering the muted nature of Adam’s Sake, one expects that Wandel didn’t rely on the stress-inducing pot-boiler act. Adam’s Sake is not a revelation in the same way as Playground was, but it affirms Laura Wandel as a filmmaker of striking empathy and formal precision. She refuses to moralize or manipulate emotions and allows the story to speak with raw honesty, echoing the Dardenne brothers’ legacy while charting her path. If the Dardennes represent the gold standard of realist European cinema, Wandel is well on her way to joining that conversation.

Grade: B

Director: Momoko Seto
Writers: Mariette Désert, Alain Layrac, Momoko Seto

Synopsis: Rescued from Earth’s nuclear annihilation, four friends crash-land on an unknown planet and courageously set out to locate a new home capable of sustaining their species.

Momoko Seto has spent the great majority of her film career crafting animated shorts and pieces about nature. Her films are somewhat unconventional, but they are interesting because she experiments with animation and live-action footage to create parables about the world surrounding us and why we must protect it at all costs. It is related to her studies at Le Fresnoy, the National Studio for Contemporary Arts, and her work in the CNRS (National Scientific Research Center), where she combines her love for science and admiration for cinema in her documentaries. The films that most reflect this intertwining are the ones in her Planet scenes, which began in 2009 with Planet A and continues with her latest work, and feature-length debut, Dandelion’s Odyssey (Planètes, screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival sidebar, Semaine de la critique).

Dandelion’s Odyssey is a very intriguing picture conceptually, like most of Seto’s decades-long work. She plays with the concept of stop-motion animation and the silent film tropes, particularly slapstick comedy, to keep the story fresh and interesting for viewers of all ages as Seto extends her narrative from ten minutes to seventy-two. There are moments where you feel you are watching real animals wandering around the animated plains, and others where it feels like a stop-motion picture from a big studio. This intertwining between documentary and animation kept me hooked on the film for half of its runtime. But these intriguing, mold-breaking techniques in its production can’t take you far enough if you have a weak structure and narrative. This odyssey is quite a drag, feeling like a chore as it runs its course. 

A bombastic score, similar to the ones heard in the MCU’s most suspenseful moments, introduces the film, as the stars in the galaxy unite to form a dandelion. The vast void of space is now embalmed in the flowers’ pappus, which dissipate upon uneasy blow, turning the screen entirely black, once again into a void, hinting at a forthcoming cataclysm. Each freckle of the pappus falls onto the Earth’s soil. It plants itself into the ground and is reborn as a full-grown dandelion. The flower sits upon the plains, abiding by the rule of nature, alongside other insects and animals that wander the terrain. But sooner rather than later, paradise becomes hell for every living creature. A series of nuclear explosions bolstering the land in sheer flames, with only two dandelions managing to escape–the select survivors of the planet once called Earth. 

They float into space, reaching the moon, as the dandelions bask upon a planet becoming a great ball of fire. It is a striking image that calls back to disaster and end-of-the-world films, although it has a more visually stimulating and dread-inducing atmosphere than most pictures in the subgenre could concoct. With no sense of direction or a place to call home, the dandelions float in the void of space, entering a black hole which transports them into a new galaxy, with mystical creatures all over. The rest of the film follows these dandelions going from one planet to another in search of a place to call home and begin their species lineage anew. On these planets, some beautiful scenery and landscapes immediately grab your attention. 

There’s a beauty that feels palpable and ultra-realistic, as if these flowers and animals were right there with you. Seto uses varied animation styles to create distinct textures and moods for each planet, whether an ice-covered land or a dangerous tundra. The images don’t have much depth, as the film’s message about protecting the Earth gets across early in the expedition. The one that struck me the most was seeing a planet bursting into flames, but that is because of the existential crisis that sometimes talking about the nothingness of space causes. Outside of that one, the great majority didn’t move me. I did feel intrigued. My continued engagement stemmed mainly from fascination with the film’s technical ingenuity, especially in how Seto came up with the specificity of these planets. Nevertheless, concerning the story being told, my interest fades vastly.

The use and potency of the imagery aside, the main reason why Dandelion’s Odyssey drags on is that the concept is better suited for a short rather than a feature-length film. Seto has created many successful shorts in the past few decades, even winning a handful of awards for some of them. She wants to utilize the same formula that worked in the short film format in a lengthier, broader canvas, front and back. And as she extends this story and formula from ten minutes to seventy-plus, there’s a feeling that halfway through, it repeats the same beats over a different landscape. It becomes quite boring; the film is not dull per se, as the technical elements arouse genuine interest, but it is definitely repetitive and tedious. I wish Seto would venture into other territories and continue to play with the medium. She has a unique and innovative vision as a filmmaker; the only thing keeping her from achieving her top potential is the scope of her concepts. 

Grade: C-

Director: Sven Bresser
Writer: Sven Bresser
Stars: Gerrit Knobbe, Anna Loeffen, Loïs Reinders

Synopsis: When reed cutter Johan discovers the lifeless body of a girl on his land, he is overcome by an ambiguous sense of guilt. While taking care of his granddaughter, he sets out on a quest to track down evil.

Something gloomy occurs whenever the wind blows in director Sven Bresser’s Reedland (Rietland, screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Semaine de la critique). An unraveling of secrets, mysteries, or dark paths happens each time the wind hits those Dutch plains and wheat fields, which are soon bathed by blood and oil. In this tonally creaky and nearly compelling Dutch drama, there are troubles all around; the poison these characters consume is rooted in such, cursing those who have done misdeeds. We see these troubles, changes, and internal fights through the eyes of Johan (Gerrit Knobbe), an elderly man who lives a calm life until he sees something unusual in his land. 

Reedland begins with that same blow upon a beautiful field similar to the one seen in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, without the sunlight kissing every inch of it. The wind hitting the wheat soothes the viewer’s ears, immediately calming us before Bresser switches gears later in the narrative. We see Johan tending the grain and taking his time during the process. The first ten minutes follow this man’s routine; no dialogue is spoken, just mere silence and the sounds of nature back these introductory scenes. We don’t know much about this man, but you can paint the picture through a few shots of old photographs. His partner has passed, and he misses her plenty. 

Johan currently cares for his granddaughter, whom he protects more than anything. Everything he does is simply to keep her safe. But once the dead body of a young girl appears in his field, something changes in him that shakes him to the core. Even though Knobbe does not express much with his performances as Johan, this finding has profoundly affected him. It recalls something in his past, yet he is suppressing it. The police arrive and investigate the area, questioning Johan, who worked there the night before. It leads nowhere, and overcome with a strange feeling, Johan embarks on an investigation of his own, searching for the truth and justice for that poor woman. As that happens, the effects of industrialization are taking their toll. 

The possibility of every farmer and agriculturist, including Johan, losing their land becomes higher than ever, with companies wanting to buy them out and machines ready to replace them. After a while, the once beautiful wheat fields coat the skies with a sinister atmosphere. Johan’s mind becomes tainted; his routine becomes a burden. The toll of it all eats up his soul inside and out. But his granddaughter keeps him alive. The film often depends more on cold, foreboding atmosphere than dialogue, shifting the focus from the actors, who still deliver engaging performances, to Sam du Pon’s striking cinematography. However, some tonal shifts during the film took me out of the film and its story, making the project inert rather than inspiring. For example, the fart scene; it does not match with the rest of the movie at all. 

These tonal shifts may be attempts to inject levity into the film’s steadily darkening narrative, but they feel unnecessary, or at least clumsily executed by Bresser. And that goes to the rest of the scenes that caused me this reaction, like the one featuring a chat room pop-up ad. Reedland benefited from basking in the darkness to tell its tale. Instead, Bresser wanted to dismantle his built atmosphere by including these scenes. It pains me to say this because the last fifteen to twenty minutes of Reedland are excellent. It concludes with a fantastic sequence of a children’s play version of ‘The Flooded Village,’ where we see the director as playful and adventurous. The tension and atmosphere carefully built during the first act are thrown away. These incomprehensible changes in tone taint the film’s most effective element. Some noteworthy aspects in Reedland work very well, but the lasting impression is disappointment from its lack of commitment.

Grade: C

Director: Julia Kowalski
Writer: Julia Kowalski
Stars:Maria Wróbel, Roxane Mesquida, Wojciech Skibinski

Synopsis: In a remote village, Nawojka grapples with dark urges she believes stem from an ancestral curse. Her world shifts when Sandra moves in next door, offering a glimpse of freedom from her family’s rigid control.

Not every horror coming-of-age story about a distressed girl in a drowning town refers to Brian De Palma’s 1976 classic, Carrie. Still, the elements from said picture are smeared across the conceptually similar films after it. The lonely girl in a small, cold town who has secret abilities she can’t seem to control. A parent who neglects her and suppresses her mysticism. A set of bullies who wear down the young girl and end up as the catalyst for the impending tragedy. Lastly, an older mother-like figure who embraces the girl and helps her come face-to-face with her true self. These stories have been told time and time again. Yet these stories remain fascinating because skilled filmmakers reframe them through new perspectives and settings.

Julia Kowalski’s sophomore effort, Her Will Be Done (Que ma volonté soit faite, screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Quinzaine des cinéastes) is yet another example of a reinterpretation of this tale that remains truly fascinating because of its unique perspective, location, and horror influences. In the film, the girl with uncontrolled supernatural abilities is Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), a twenty-year-old who dreams of being free after spending her whole life working at the family farm. The lines “My mother knelt before Satan. The evil was in her. It is inside me too.” provide Her Will Be Done with a fiery introduction. Nawojka’s parents stare at a bonfire, bearing subtle, yet malevolent, grins on their faces, as though they seem ready to accept this evil in their souls, no matter the cost. 

The flames rise, rise, and continue to rise, to the point where it swallows the screen. And when it does, the young Nawojka wakes up. Was it a dream or a memory? Whether it is one or the other, it doesn’t seem like this was the first time Nawojka has had this vision. Upon waking, it becomes clear how lonely she is in the small house with her father and two brothers, who act like wild animals at any moment. They are harsh and mean for no reason on some occasions and nonjudgmental in others. But there’s a particular disdain towards her from the two brothers, as if she’s guilty of their mother’s passing. While working at the farm one day, she notices a woman outside the window, Sandra (Roxane Mesquida, an underused French talent who should get more recognition). 

Nawojka stares at her with much interest and curiosity, fascinated by the messy-haired, free-spirited wanderer. With the arrival of Sandra into her eyesight and later life, as the two connect, and who is deemed a witch by the locals, Nawojka begins to experience some trance-like episodes. During these trances, she can’t control herself and berates herself for things that aren’t her fault, like the insults thrown out at Sandra or her mother’s passing. These episodes are depicted in two forms, both of which call back to Luca Guadagnino’s reimagining of Suspiria. Either it is seeing Nawojka convulse as queasy, squeamish sounds and groans are heard, or hallucinogenic collages appear on screen, both of which are equally creepy and effective. 

Kowalski lets the camera linger for enough time on the disturbing scenes to make the viewer uneasy, and nearly always she succeeds in doing so. Although there are sequences that are provocative because of the inclusion of murder of animals by euthanasia (not the only film at Cannes this year that does that) and brutal, cold-blooded killings, Kowalski is wise enough to distance her lens and not dwell on it; instead, the film cuts away, leaving the gore up to the imagination of the viewer and letting the crimson red spill out of the frame instead of in. The movie descends into madness as Nawojka and Sandra slowly connect and understand each other’s grievances, the pain and toll the city and its people have done to them.

One of the few moments of happiness happens when the two are together. But sooner rather than later, Kowalski makes the atmosphere feel darker and colder than before. The film will shift from the mundane to something fresh and distinctive because of her bravery in her imagery placement. Her Will Be Done, like Carrie, is a tale not solely about female independence but also female empowerment and the challenges of traditional gender roles. Kowalski explores the societal expectations placed on women in these male-dominated small towns as women struggle for autonomy and potential, embracing their unique abilities, literally and metaphorically. The film falters in sparse moments when the dialogue becomes too repetitive. 

Similar scenes were being thrown one after the other, which tended to bother, specifically during its most horrific scenes. For example, the brothers’ bullying of Nawojka or Sandra tends to happen often. And most of those scenes are constructed in the same manner or contain similar dialogue. They are crucial to the other being told about women’s autonomy. However, I do feel there could have been a diverse way of exploring the sexist men’s dynamics instead of repeating the same routine. Nevertheless, I felt entranced by the other and its potent imagery because of Kowalski’s boldness and steady direction with the performances. Her Will Be Done can be considered one of the many in the vast landscape, although Kowalski and her team offer a different angle to a recurrently told story.

Grade: B-

Director: Oliver Laxe
Writers: Santiago Fillol, Oliver Laxe
Stars: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Stefania Gadda

Synopsis: A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his missing daughter in North Africa.

In the world of Mad Max, created in 1979 by George Miller, the Wastelands are a form of purgatory. This post-apocalyptic hellscape catches everyone and places them in a cycle of violence, suffering, and potential redemption. The Wastelands become a place where people like Max, Furiosa, or Immortan Joe confront their guilt, trauma, and the chance for change. Lost souls roam through the desert, ending in either damnation or salvation, wherever their respective journeys lead them. As the endless, barren desert is bolstered in fire, fury, and blood, it all feels like a loop, purgatory’s waiting, and the cyclical penance. For his latest work, Sirat (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), Oliver Laxe takes this symbolic representation of the wasteland and barren desert, without excessive violence or Ozploitation elements.

The Spanish-French filmmaker turns it into something so outlandish, adventurous, and remarkably moving that you are surprisingly fascinated by everything he offers. Mad Max meets Zabriskie Point, as many have described it, Laxe puts us, and the characters, through the ringer, on a proverbial odyssey where we walk the bridge between life, hope, and death. It swings constantly and could lead to damnation in one misstep. It is a daunting and expressive journey that confounds and inspires, with Laxe making some of the boldest and adventurous moves in his time as a filmmaker that ultimately grip you in a quiet but unrelenting emotional hold.

Sirat begins with some workmen setting up giant speakers and sound equipment on a rock cliff in the Moroccan desert for what appears to be a rave party. Kangding Ray’s magnificent score begins to pulse through the barren land. The basslines vibrate through the sand like a spell, waking both the living and the dead. A post-apocalyptic music festival in the vein of Coachella and Burning Man is constructed in minutes. Within the partygoers and drug-takers, there’s Luis (Sergi López) and his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez), joined by their terrier, Pippa. Luis is out there searching for his daughter, who has been missing for five months, and rumor has it that she’s at the rave party. 

He shares photos of her with the partygoers, hoping somebody knows about his daughter’s whereabouts. In a place covered with people dancing their hearts out, or what’s left of it, Luis and Esteban are outsiders, suffering the disappearance of a loved one and holding out for fate to reunite them again. Luckily, the two meet a ragtag group of ravers, who look like they have been through hell and back, and are happy to share that another party is scheduled soon on the other side of the desert. The party is terminated by a soldier announcing that a state of emergency has been declared. Everybody packs quickly, regrouping with eerie calm to head elsewhere. 

War has broken out and reached their location, but everyone seems to have been prepared for it; you get the feeling that they all have gone through similar perils, which leads them to be mentally organized for what comes next, even if they don’t know where to head out to. Luis makes a quick decision: follow the ravers to the other location. This leads them towards a perilous venture through the Sahara with dangers lurking around every corner, some of which feel inspired by Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece, Wages of Fear—the dangers lie not only in the road ahead but also in their fractured mental states and growing desperation.

Laxe is no Clouzot, nor reaching the level of William Friedkin, who made an equally excellent remake of Wages of Fear in Sorcerer. Hence, the mastery of holding an audience captive through tension, introspection, and existentialism is not here. However, he manages to completely control the various tones displayed in Sirat with tremendous confidence. Laxe implements the Mad Max element of a wasteland as a purgatory with dashes of mysticism, the title coming from the separation of paradise and hell. But there are also similarities with Fury Road, without the spectacle and popcorn entertainment, yet with the same amount of tension and shocking moments, some of which do leave you speechless and without room to breathe. 

The characters head towards salvation, even if everything in their way impedes them from doing so. They wander through sun-flared lands for what seems like eternity. “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” A character replies, “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.” Time does not move in the world of Sirat; things may change, incidents tend to occur, but everything remains still. The only thing moving is the people dancing in the face of death and near reach of deliverance. Even though it is set in a location where there isn’t much to it, Laxe focuses on the story’s setting, detailing every inch of the locations, from the grains of sand and dust covering the screen to the vehicles the characters travel in. 

Sirat is built from this specificity, constructing his parable about release in a world of decay from the outside in. Oliver Laxe crafts more than a dystopian odyssey–he constructs a spiritual trial by fire, where nothing is guaranteed and grace must be fought for through exhaustion, despair, and communion. The film’s power lies in its atmosphere and willingness to sit with stillness and ambiguity. Laxe doesn’t offer salvation, only the possibility of it. The bridge of Sirat is not one you cross once, but repeatedly in search of hope. It’s sun-scorched, soul-searching, and stress-inducing, but ultimately unforgettable and admirable–a true standout in the Cannes selection and modern Spanish cinema.

Grade: B+

Director: Christian Petzold
Writer: Christian Petzold
Stars: Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt

Synopsis: A young music student’s life takes an unexpected turn when her boyfriend tragically dies in a car crash, forcing her to reshape her path forward.

One of the most magnificent duos in modern cinema is the collaboration between German filmmaker Christian Petzold and his current muse, Paula Beer. After making many films with another, equally talented, German actress, Nina Hoss, Petzold landed with Beer as one of the leads in his 2018 feature, Transit. Ever since, both have evolved for the better in their respective crafts—Petzold as a director, Beer as an actress–becoming top-tier acts in the European scene, although some part of me still feels they are undervalued in their fields. The two are elegant, with significant poise and control in their work. 

Petzold grows into a filmmaker who does more with less, depending on the tactility in the emotional underpinnings of his narrative rather than style and innovation. Meanwhile, Beer has emphasized finding the truths in her characters, which leads to honest, authentic performances that connect easily with the audience. Their latest (and fourth) collaboration, Mirrors No. 3 (Miroirs No. 3, screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Quinzaine des cinéastes), is the smallest regarding production (and runtime, running under ninety minutes). Still, it may be their best, and most touching, one yet. If the only issue it has is that you wish you’d spent more time with the characters, that says the whole story. 

Petzold and Beer deliver an honest, intimate portrait of strangers and the pain they carry, centering around a young piano student from Berlin named Laura (Beer), played by the talented German actress. Named after Ravel’s piece of the same name, Mirrors No. 3 follows Laura, who is changing her heart during a road trip with her boyfriend Jakob. They are going to the pier to meet with a producer willing to work with Jakob for his upcoming record. He needs Laura to be there for the whole weekend, but she wants out–enraging Jakob vastly, enough to drive her back to the station, leaving her alone during the next couple of days. But they don’t make it there; a car accident occurs and kills the impatient boyfriend, with Laura surviving, yet being shaken to the core. 

The accident is not shown, only a moment before and after, so details are missing from this introduction. Petzold’s ambiguous nature remains high, and we are meant to slowly decipher the many secrets and metaphors he presents us during the film’s development. The only person who can be considered a witness to this tragedy is a middle-aged woman named Betty (Barbara Auer). She invites Laura to her humble farmhouse nearby after leaving the wreckage. After a while, Laura asks her to stay indefinitely, and Betty is happy to do so, yet surprised at the request. From here, a mother-daughter relationship arises, even though they are strangers. 

Their quick bonding becomes similar to that of a parent and their child, with the white picket fence Betty was painting the first time we see her being part of the family picture Petzold is constructing. While Laura remains a mysterious figure that is hard to read, like most of her characters during the beginning of the narrative, Betty is much clearer. By mere accident, she calls Laura by a different name, Yelena, revealing the root of the pain she holds from the loss she can’t move past. It is a moment of clarity in a still and unsettled canvas, framed by Petzold’s usual cinematographer, Hans Fromm. 

That moment, along with one where Betty requests Laura to play a Chopin piece, helps provide the audience with a path towards understanding the character of Betty while forging the next steps for Laura after these events. A sympathy built on anxiousness, secrecy, and grief is built, and the audience begins to see how these characters deal with their respective griefs. These are strange ways to deal with the loss of a loved one. But who are we to judge? We all have had different ways of expelling our sorrows, which are difficult to explain yet help us move forward. 

Other members later join this reflective journey, including Betty’s husband, Richard (Matthias Brandt), and son, Max (Enno Trebs), who live in the car-repair shop they manage nearby. Like in Afire, the appearance of Beer’s character begins to stir the household, with some members being warm towards her, while others feel like she is a burden, questioning her relationship with Betty. But sooner rather than later, she becomes the key to solving their sorrows. And later on, the roles are reversed for Laura’s pains and woes. The four form a unit that begins with distance and ends with a level of compassion. Not only is Betty suffering the loss of the named Yelena, but Richard and Max as well, in a different manner that is more internal rather than outwardly expressive. 

That is how Petzold works. He puts more emphasis on the effects that an incident has rather than the moment of impact itself. Everything that has caused the characters to be this way, apart from the image of Laura in the wreckage, is alluded to. And even by removing the aforementioned image, Mirrors No. 3 would retain its tact and eloquence, although with more ambiguity and mystery to the stranger–mirroring Petzold’s recurrent interest in how the presence of a bystander can subtly alter the emotional trajectories of those around them, implemented by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his 1968 masterpiece Theorem, albeit without the provocation or existentialist crisis. We don’t know Laura as a whole; it is only the version that Betty reconfigures to fit the image of her loved one. 

With an aptitude for emotional opacity and inner turmoil, Beer offers a haunting and touching performance, with her smiles and looks indecipherable, adding layers to the enigmatic narrative. We grieve and worry alongside her; she is a mirror into herself, but one that takes time to show its reflection to the audience. The film is ghostly, not in the manner of frights or scares, but in how memory can quietly distort our perception or save us from sinking into our woes. Mirrors No. 3 is elliptical as Petzold moves his minor-key symphony of human connection into profoundly moving territories. Its fleeing nature creates echoes that linger as you deconstruct each character’s mask to reveal what they are hiding–a work of quiet devastation and unexpected grace.

Grade: A-

Director: Richard Linklater
Writer: Holly Gent, Laetitia Masson, Vincent Palmo, Jr.
Stars: Guillame Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin

Synopsis: Follows the production of Jean-Luc Godards’s “Breathless”.

As every cinephile must know, the French New Wave is one of cinema’s most important film movements. Influenced by Italian Neorealism and the works of Alfred Hitchcock, French film critics from the Cahiers du Cinema magazine (François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and the godfather of the movement, Jean-Luc Godard) and the Left Bank directors (Agnes Varda, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais) assembled in proposition for a new vision for filmmaking and the cinema being shown in their country at the time, which they criticized as trite and unimaginative (the “tradition de qualité”, as they referred it to). Some aspects present in films that emerged from this movement are talk of modern situations, directors having complete control of their movies, and a focus on showcasing realistic portraits rather than pure fiction.

After the release of Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, and Godard’s Breathless (À bout de souffle), just to name a few, cinema changed forever. A breath of fresh air roamed through the medium and reached international markets–inspiring many for years to come. Even to this day, the works made from the French New Wave have influenced people to become filmmakers or view cinema differently–timeless pieces that conjure the magic of art and prove to be more than artistic, but revolutionary ones. To honor such a movement and those involved in it, which many have done multiple times with books, documentaries, and art installations, American filmmaker Richard Linklater gives them an homage with his latest feature, Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave, screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival).

Nouvelle Vague is an act of love from Linklater, who has been inspired by Truffaut, Rivette, and Godard not in style or technique but in the free-spiritedness of their work. Unfortunately, it is an act of love that they would have hated, and very much so, as it goes against what they were implementing back in the late 1950s. Yet Linklater does not care about such; he aims to showcase his love and admiration for a time and place, and the people in it, which is long gone, but its effect is still felt, like cinematic aftershocks after their shattering artistic earthquake. 

In the same style and spirit, although with some elements being stripped down for a more relaxed fit rather than being a straight rip-off, Nouvelle Vague is a film about the making of the iconic Breathless from 1960 following Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch, who is excellent in the film and very spot-on with her accent work and posture), François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) as they make a film that will change cinema forever and cement Godard as an icon of the art form. Every movement Linklater creates in the production is made to reenact or allude to past creations of those who inspired him, and he wants to celebrate with this piece. 

You see this in the shooting style—cinematographer David Chambrille was tasked with matching the essence of Raoul Coutard (the cinematographer of Breathless)—the sound mixing, and even in the casting choices, with each actor looking very similar to the people they are interpreting. From beginning to end, you sense how Linklater wanted to take the audience and his cast and crew back to 1950s France, creating an immersive experience. With such celebration, there is an abuse of nostalgia, an issue that occurs in some of his features, particularly his period pieces, Everybody Wants Some and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, where although he nails the specifics of the time and place, there’s a rumination that is all remembrance without discussion. 

That issue then travels to Linklater’s 1950s France set in Nouvelle Vague, where the memory of the ghost of the legends is there, but there are no assertions on why this time, place, people, and films were so important and influential. He treats the setting and topic with his hangout film panache. We get the behind-the-scenes look of the production–Godard’s on-the-spot direction, his relationship with Beauregard, meetings, the mechanics of their techniques, line readings–as well as reenacted scenes, which do feel quite tacky and the film could have been done without them. Nevertheless, Linklater does something that provides his film with plenty of magic, one that fractures time and memory in a playful way that I vastly appreciated. 

Some “fictionalized” scenes shift the film from its hang-out, history lesson persona to an encapsulation of the movement and all of its participants. In one of those scenes, we see Jean-Luc Godard having a fascinating conversation with Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe), a prominent figure in Italian neorealist cinema, with films like Germany, Year Zero and Paisan. Godard viewed Rossellini as a foundational figure in modern cinema. Hence, a conversation between a student and his hero helped build the figure of Godard within the confines of the movie’s purpose, showing the “passing of the baton” in revolutionary filmmaking. I do not know if this conversation ever happened, and I haven’t found a source of information confirming it. 

Linklater has people who knew Godard in his production team, so it may be true. But this brings a mysticism to Nouvelle Vague that is captivating and outright magical, a feeling missing for most of the picture. Another short sequence with the same effect is when we see Robert Bresson shooting his 1959 film Pickpocket in an abandoned Parisian tunnel. This is yet another filmmaker (and film) that inspired many filmmakers, from Paul Schrader and Abel Ferrara to Chantal Akerman and Andrei Tarkovsky. Linklater himself has not been inspired by Bresson per se, but that is beyond the point of including him. If you are encapsulating this period, he must be included as one of the best figures to emerge from it. 

Yet again, it is a minor scene that fades rapidly when put into the microcosm of Nouvelle Vague, like many of the cameos that appear here and there (Agnes Varda, Claude Chabrol, Jean Cocteau), yet it helps Linklater navigate this artistic world of filmmakers, poets, storytellers, and activists. The screenplay struggles with placing all these people on the canvas; most appear for seconds and disappear. And their backstories and influence are not referred to. That is up for the audience to pick up on if you know your cinema history, or be lost upon if you haven’t. At the time, neither Godard, Truffaut, nor producer Georges de Beauregard knew what they had their hands on, yet believed in it through and through. Now, it has reached the point where many see it as one of the best films in cinema history. 

For someone who does not know what the French New Wave and the founders entail, Nouvelle Vague will be just another movie about making movies. The film has conversations and dialogue that allude to the inspirational nature, yet it is too far between. This is the opposite of what happens with David Fincher’s Mank, where the impact of Mankiewicz’s screenplay is seen through a microscope–how every conversation, action, open bottle, cigarette burned, and discussion leads to the creation of Citizen Kane. In contrast, Linklaker’s piece lets these historical moments float in and out like half-remembered dreams, more concerned with evoking a time than interrogating it. Reverence is through and through in the director’s gaze, but it comes with a cost, and that is depth. 

A romanticization of this movement’s chaos, brilliance, and rebellion builds as the characters interact with one another, albeit without the contradictions or the radicality. It feels safe, way too neat and clean, without the grittiness of French New Wave. And while there are things to like and appreciate, Nouvelle Vague ultimately ends as trite. At least, it is a better and more honest homage than a previous Cannes Film Festival film, Godard Mon Amour (Le Redoutable) by Michel Hazanavicius, which was an embarrassing attempt at uncovering the next stage of Godard during the production of La Chinoise. That was pastiche. Linklater does not amount to doing such things because he respects Godard and company plenty. 

Grade: C-

Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone

Synopsis: In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.

When Beau is Afraid was released two years ago, I called Ari Aster a master manipulator—his eerily prescient grip on the audience felt like a cinematic Ludovico technique, eyes pried open à la A Clockwork Orange. Many directors wish they could have these kinds of powers of deceiving and capturing the audience; Aster and his jet-black comedic panderings are an inseparable pair and one of a kind. With each feature, the Midsommar director has been getting more provocative and darker, the fine line between stirring and bothersome, self-indulgence and introspective, being walked on a tightrope hanging a hundred feet above ground. It feels that during his latest walk, Aster managed to slip, unfortunately, for the first time, falling into the side of being groan-inducing and pompous. 

Eddington (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), a western-dark comedy hybrid about the pandemic and the hysteria that ensued during it, socially, psychologically, and politically, is both precise in its analysis of what occurred during those dark times in the early 2020s and a complete farce. It is something I didn’t know was possible to achieve, yet, Aster, the unique filmmaker he is, managed to do it. With Beau is Afraid, he teamed up with Joaquin Phoenix to create the definitive film about Freud’s Oedipus Complex, where dread, disappointment, and overbearing mothers were just the tip of the surrealistic iceberg. Aster sets out to do the same with Eddington, but with the effects of the pandemic in America. 

Phoenix switches from the anxious and ever-suffering Beau Wasserman to County Sheriff Joe Cross, who encapsulates everything that went wrong at the time. The two films are born from the director’s greatest fears. Aster stated in the post-premiere press conference in Cannes that he’d written Eddington in fear, worried about what America has become. Similar to Beau is Afraid, where he took his nightmares and anxieties to craft a film he has longed to make. However, some aspects deviate from his previous—the provocation and indulgence. Beau contains such in spaces (even I, a fan of said movie, admits it), yet it is part of the experience rather than the whole thing. His latest film is provocation and indulgence, becoming a rather frustrating watch, with Aster feeling the unnecessary need to one-up himself.

Set in the fictional town of Eddington, home to nearly 2,400 people, in May 2020, Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross is introduced to us by being pulled over by Officer Butterfly Jiminez (William Belleau) for entering his jurisdiction without a face mask. Joe says that, because of his asthma, he can’t breathe with his mask on. This leads to a bad example and places him at odds with the kind, compliant mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is up for re-election in the coming elections. Sheriff Joe Cross and Mayor Ted Garcia clash heads repeatedly during the film’s runtime, much like the cowboys and outlaws in classic Westerns do to build tension for a final shootout, which Eddington slowly builds towards in unconventional, absurdist ways. 

This is no High Noon or The Searchers; this is Ari Aster’s version of a Western, so don’t expect the classic tropes and expect twist, turns, and shrewd violence. Heroes and villains are difficult to find here, as you sympathize with none of the characters, nor does Aster want you to do so. A new AI data center is one of Ted’s moves to polish his re-election. He believes it will help Eddington, both the town and its people, but many residents are against it. The data center will consume many of their limited resources, especially since a lengthy drought has minimized the water supply in the desert town. This is one of the first moves that makes the people go against Ted and his policies. 

After other circumstances arise, Joe runs against Garcia for mayor, causing mayhem in this political debate. From the mention of AI and the pandemic setting, the film is rooted in America’s urgent contemporary anxieties. While the idea of Eddington might have occurred to Aster a while ago, the film’s aim has changed through the years and become a different project overall, commenting on everything that has happened (and is occurring) in the U.S. at this very moment. There’s a bit of everything here—an overstuffed encapsulation of America—and that’s part of the problem. Aster talks about gun-control debates, Black Lives Matter protests, Antifa, TikTok absurdities, and media hysteria. The result is less a coherent satire than thematic mush—thrown into a mincer and drained of its thematic nutritional value. 

The experience changes from an engaging portrait to a hindrance in a matter of minutes; it removes the satire and reaches a level of farcical behavior that includes some funny gags here and there, but, ultimately, lacks the inward-looking element that Beau is Afraid, even with its pretension and baggage, had in its core. A series of side characters–Emma Stone’s Louise, Joe’s desperate wife, and Austin Butler’s cult-leader Vernon, both of whom get limited screen time–provide the film with some of its best moments and appear on screen to heighten the aforementioned scenarios and dilemmas. Aster delves with precision into the pandemic hysteria and political madness, taking digs at the drowning sensation we all felt inside our rooms. At the same time, everything collapsed, staring out the window and seeing the world burst into flames. 

In such moments, you get the stress and fear that you had five years ago. However, the palpable feeling dissipates when placed alongside the multiple plot strands. And even so, to this point, there have been so many films, comedy specials, SNL sketches, podcasts, and more about that time and place that you don’t get anything from Eddington. Maybe Ari Aster’s point is that, after five years, we have remained the same, yet each time, America feels more like a farce than a properly running country. Politicians remain ignorant and keep on making things worse. The world is crumbling as the rich and powerful get their way. Aster’s nightmares are turning into a reality. But he does not provide a witty enough satirical conceptualization in the mise-en-scène, dedicating his time to building exaggeration rather than thoughtfulness or humanity. You can feel Aster’s anger and urgency in interviews, but on screen, that passion translates into excess, not insight.

Grade: D

Director: Andrew Dominik
Stars: Bono, Gemma Doherty, Kate Ellis

Synopsis: Bono shares life stories and U2 songs in an intimate show, exploring relationships with family, friends, and faith. Features unseen footage from his Beacon Theatre performances of “Stories of Surrender.”

For me, Andrew Dominik is one of the best and most fascinating directors working today. Ever since Chopper back in 2000, he has made a great impression, each of his pictures managing to show a different side of his directorial vision and stir the mind of the viewer, whether it is by painting a portrait of the famed, notorious outlaw Jesse James or a Fire Walk with Me-inspired tale of trauma, objectification, self-destruction, and loneliness through the eyes of Norma Jean, Marilyn Monroe, and their armor, the Blonde. But, in between those projects, Dominik has taken on some musical ventures, teaming up with Nick Cave and his fellow Bad Seed, Warren Ellis, for some beautiful, multi-layered concert-documentaries that speak on their artistic process and personal tragedies: One More Time with Feeling and This Much I Know to Be True, the former being one of the best musical biographies in recent memory.

The two projects make us feel like we are trespassing, as if Dominik and Cave accidentally left the door open and we just stumbled upon them having these very personal conversations about loss, suffering, existentialism, and the difficulty of finding hope in the face of tragedy, particularly after the passing of Cave’s son in 2015. These two projects go hand in hand, a before and after portrait of a man who underwent something so painful that nobody wishes upon another. When This Much I Know to Be True was released in the U.S. later in 2022, tragedy struck again; Cave lost his eldest son, making the project more melancholic and reflective than it already was. 

What makes these projects so compelling and unique, in the vast, mostly saccharine landscape of music portraits, is the relationship that Andrew Dominik and Nick Cave have. It helps convert the films from a classic concert-documentary to a study of Cave and his mental state–his grief, search for hope and empathy, recovery, and more–through a time lapse of six years between the two projects. Nobody other than Dominik could have captured the essence of Cave, as a person, a father, and a musician, in this level of susceptibility. Because of that 2016 documentary, Cave became one of my favorite artists. 

Seeing him dispel his grief and suffering made me see another version of Cave, considering that what I heard before was his work from the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Cave was honest, broken, and willing to share his pain with the world in his most painful days. And Dominik’s bond helped the film become clearer while trapped in this desolate void, portraying the inside and outside of Cave. One More Time with Feeling and This Much I Know to Be True are going to stand the test of time, but I don’t think Andrew Dominik’s most recent musical venture with the U2 frontman, Bono: Stories of Surrender, will, or, at the very least, leave a lasting impression.

Named after his critically acclaimed one-person show (and the new version of his book of the same name releasing alongside the film), Stories of Surrender has Andrew Dominik filming Bono through the stages of producing his show. It is a pulling back of the curtain-type project, where an artist is given the spotlight to talk about their past, present, and future–their goals, mistakes, legacy, and woes–through personal anecdotes and song performances that match with such. This sort of project happens mostly with artists who have planted their seeds in the genre they embarked on for many decades, significantly impacting the musical landscape. And Bono, whether you like him or not, has done so to an astronomical level, and he and the band have been relevant since their creation in 1976. 

The band’s style has evolved through the ages, for better or worse, yet their expressionism and sociopolitical commentary on their records has remained untouched. They are never afraid of speaking their mind, which established the band’s reputation and separated them from the many that were coming up during that period. In Stories of Surrender, Bono talks about many things deeper than music, more open and personal than he has been in other U2 documentaries, like From the Sky Down. Friends (close collaborators and bandmates like The Edge, Jacknife Lee, Gemma Doherty) and family; his faith and how it has challenged him in various ways; the cross-generational struggles and role changes in his life, from son to father and musician to activist. 

Though Bono still performs the songs that launched his career, he presents them as someone who has evolved, at least in part. Under Dominik’s lens, you get a backstage pass into his life, with intimate anecdotes about his childhood in Dublin, which paved the way for his activist life, and how he decided that his artistry should have meaning, a significance on today’s society, rather than just sing love songs and churn out pop records. These interviews are intertwined with some performances of classic U2 records, which were re-recorded during the pandemic. Even if I don’t particularly like the tracks themselves, Bono is a good showman; he knows how to get the crowd invested in the stories he tells in his records. 

Now, Stories of Surrender has some things that make it somewhat distant, even if Bono is open and wants the viewer to know him better, inside and outside the spotlight. Bono’s self-righteousness and pretentiousness appear constantly during the performances and interviews. As George Harrison said, “U2 is based on ego, with most tracks being self-centered.” Many people despise the Irish singer because of these antics during interviews with magazines and newspapers; in one of the most recent, he says that he finds much of the U2 catalog cringeworthy. Bono has to always pull the focus on himself and himself alone, without regard for the experiences of others, which is one of the reasons why his band gets plenty of flak. 

Even if he apologizes for the “unreasonableness of youth” during his 60s, Bono does not try to dissipate that behavior. Being a very bold and ambitious director, Dominik tries to make use of this self-righteousness, as he has done before with some of the characters in his films. However, it doesn’t amount to an exploration of an artist’s mask and his true persona. This wasn’t the project’s intention, and Dominik doing so would have caused many problems with the singer and his estate. However, a part of me would have liked to see Dominik accept Bono’s behavior more and reflect on it as an outsider. 

Secondly, it lacks the director-musician bond that helps elevate the Dominik and Cave projects, where in each frame, there is a sense of closeness and kinship even when the lead Bad Seed isn’t speaking. You never feel that Bono and Dominik have a connection with one another. A coldness covers the stage, even when Bono sings his fiery lyrics. Another excellent example of an artist-musician bond is Martin Scorsese with New York Dolls frontman David Johansson, who passed away recently, in Personality Crisis: One Night Only. Stories of Surrender and Personality Crisis are similar in concept and structure. Scorsese captured an exceptional performance in January 2020 at the legendary Cafe Carlyle in New York. 

Johansson sings his classic joints in a different tone than Buster Pointdexter, the hepcat lounge lizard alter-ego he created in the ‘80s. The records are reimagined from their punk origins into blues ballads with a self-reflective tone. Johansson reevaluates his legacy through performances and interviews, where he is questioned about death, grief, his discography’s expressionism, and much more. Scorsese’s love and admiration for the New York Dolls and Johansson are smeared across each running second, and the artist and filmmaker are connected to paint an incomplete yet introspective and honest portrait.

That sensation that transcends film and music is missing from Stories of Surrender; it fails to capture what makes Bono the man, myth, and legend he is, nor does it have a specific reason to make a reflective piece about his work. Nick Cave was grieving the loss of his son while making his most personal record to date. Johannson turned seventy and began to ponder death after many of his colleagues and bandmates passed–he being one of the last few icons from his time up and running. Meanwhile, Bono has the re-release of a book and a tour to promote. That alone shows you that the project is more promotional than reflective.

Grade: C-

Director: Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Writer: Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Stars: Karelle Tremblay, Barbara Ulrich, Zeneb Blanchet

Synopsis: Young activists attempt an armed attack that fails, leading one to abandon her comrades. A former member haunts her, exploring violence, beliefs, friendship, love against societal crises.

“Don’t abandon what makes you free and dangerous. And be careful where you step,” one character in Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s Death Does Not Exist (La Mort n’existe pas, screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival sidebar Quinzaine des cinéastes) states halfway through the film. It perfectly encapsulates what the French animation director wants to explore in his latest experimental work. It is a layered and cautionary message to the characters and the audience watching. We should hold onto what shapes us and gives us autonomy, individuality, and independence, not letting go of our edge, courage, and nonconformity. But, to the same degree, we should be aware of our surroundings and the consequences of our actions as we navigate this slowly crumbling world. We are free, but everyone is watching.

The world is full of traps that can cost all that we love. An animated film that is both mystical and grounded in various ways, Death Does Not Exist is about commitment, in all that the word entails, and connection, both in the physical (romances, friendships, encounters) and metaphysical (the brooding and nurturing intersection between life and death). Dufour-Laperrière conceives a story with its characters riddled with self-doubt, contradictions, impossibilities, and hard-hitting existential questions. The characters are brooding, slowly realizing that there’s forthcoming damnation–something they must accept and commit to before it is too late. Because of how the film is constructed, the audience places themselves in the mindset of the characters during their treacherous dilemmas and ponders the things we must come to terms with. 

Death Does Not Exist begins with an array of still frames and solid color canvases in which you can still see the brush’s etchings, as the sound of an exhausted woman breathing heavily is heard in the background. It is then quickly followed by a selection of images showing gold statues in the garden of a wealthy family. These statues allude to power or extreme wealth, the ridiculous things rich people spend their money on. You may not know it yet, but these statues foreshadow some of the story’s arcs. Wolves and sheep; weak hummingbirds; a slight caress between two people; a woman with a thousand questions. Those are the statues. This is a story of people haunted by regret, searching for meaning in the aftermath of a harsh decision, seen through the perspective of the survivors of a failed heist. 

A group of angsty activists meet up in the forest near the house of a wealthy family, preparing for their bullet parade to ensure everything goes as planned. It is all guns blazing and no survivors allowed; they want this violent act to set the trend for an uprising against the higher class and their debauchery. Everyone seems ready with their fingers on the trigger, except for Hélène (voiced by Zeneb Blanchet), whose perspective we will follow and whose mind we will dissect. The thought of killing a person tears her apart. Hélène is frequently asked if she is ready to pull the trigger, both literally, by gunning down whomever is in her way, and metaphorically, committing to this team and the consequences that might arise. Her silence hides a psychological breakdown that she can’t even begin to comprehend. 

Hélène is the ghost of doubt in a room full of certainty, succumbing to the desolation as the day of reckoning is near. She might say she is prepared, but her face and attitude say otherwise. When the day comes, everybody is locked and loaded. They slowly approach the mansion, waiting for the right moment to strike. The gates open and they approach with haste. And everything goes haywire in a matter of seconds. One after another, each member of the job is shot to death by the security guards. Hélène, in the heat of the moment, freezes and runs away from the blood bath, scared desolate because of just happened. Dufour-Laperrière depicts her escape as a harmless sheep hunted by wolves, rapidly catching up to her. 

Dufour-Laperrière uses animal metaphors to chart the evolution of Hélène’s psyche and moral compass. The wolves and sheep underscore her vulnerability and inevitability of her reckoning, the rupture of innocence and birth of a new life outside the one she briefly tried to belong to alongside the other activists. After several miles out, Hélène takes a big fall, which leaves her unconscious. When she wakes up, Hélène notices that one of her friends, Manon (voiced by Karelle Tremblay), is beside her. Manon is disappointed that Hélène ran away from them, leaving the crew behind to die a painful death. “You swore we’d be together forever”, Manon says to her. But through the disappointment, Manon offers a second chance to keep their relationship alive. This threat sends chills down her spine and flips the film into an unexpected territory filled with hope and melancholy. 

Through psychedelic and metaphorical imagery, including ones that reference the cosmic flower-covered animal cadavers in Alex Garland’s Annihilation, beautifully animated by Dufour-Laperrière and team, Hélène is forced to revisit her convictions and choices, as well as confront her fears, morals, and most hurting woes, disrupting her perception of right and wrong, life and death, and the true meaning of freedom. It unravels with thorough abstraction, utilizing elements from filmmakers like Philippe Grandrieux–the power of images presented to the audience with every possible form of love, violence, and life, even at its darkest–and Jan Švankmajer, although not to the extent of being grotesque or highly absurd with its creations. She traverses a dreamlike wasteland, where time warps and landscapes melt into memory. 

Dufour-Laperrière adopts a looser narrative structure here, where linear logic is tossed aside for a reflective, existentialist resonance that keeps the viewer gripped onto the story. It is a character’s reckoning that is both internal and cosmic, positioning Hélène not only as a survivor of a failed heist but as a crucible for her loyalty, morality, faith, and inner angst. The final movements of the film seem to signify that Hélène is nearing a state of inner peace. But there’s a side to these last few images that does seem to hint towards that hopeful fairytale ending; it suggests surrender. Hélène accepts and commits to this finale, wherever it may lead her, to joy or further suffering, which makes Manon’s purpose of guiding this lost soul into one of enlightenment. 

One of the last lines in Death Does Not Exist comes from Manon, and it has stayed with me a lot: “Life… It’s a movement, and a movement has a cost, inevitably.” This line reminded me of the quote in the poster for Gaspar Noé’s Vortex. “Life is a short party that will soon be forgotten.” Of course, Noé’s one is far darker and more depressing. But the two lines connect in confronting the transient, often painful, nature of existence. Dufour-Laperrière and Noé want to highlight the fading of memory and meaning as life continues, and people leave and enter your life, like people checking into a hotel and leaving when their vacation is over. Moving through life demands something in return, whether regarding joy or despair. And while Death Does Not Exist examines plenty of topics other than mortality and acceptance, this element, alongside this quote from the character of Manon, stuck with me the most.

Grade: B+