IFFR Pirjo Honkasalo’s Orenda, which premiered at the 2025 International Rotterdam Film Festival, invites viewers into a world both intimate and wide in thematical scope. It’s a meditation on grief, guilt, faith, and identity, wrapped in a narrative that unfolds with deliberate pacing and quiet intensity. While it may not appeal to those seeking immediateContinue reading “Rotterdam 2025 Review: “Orenda””
Author Archives: Julian Janssen
Rotterdam 2025 Review: “John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office”
IFFR In John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, directors Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens closely into the enigmatic life of neuroscientist John C. Lilly, whose unconventional experiments with dolphins, humans and psychedelics sought to expand the boundaries of human consciousness. Narrated by Chloë Sevigny, the film uses archival footage, cultural clips, and interviewsContinue reading “Rotterdam 2025 Review: “John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office””
Rotterdam 2025 Review: “I Shall See”
With I Shall See, Dutch director Mercedes Stalenhoef presents an immersive exploration of sudden loss and resilience in her first fiction feature. The film follows 17-year-old Lot, a passionate diver who dreams of becoming a maritime archaeologist, traveling, and living independently. Her life takes a devastating turn on New Year’s Eve when a firework failsContinue reading “Rotterdam 2025 Review: “I Shall See””
TIFF 2024 Review: “Horizonte”
César Augusto Acevedo, the acclaimed director behind “Land and Shade” (winner of the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 2015), returns with his long-awaited follow-up, “Horizonte,” a haunting and poetic exploration of loss, memory, and redemption. The film tells the story of two ghosts -a mother, Inés, and her son, Basilio- as they wander through a war-torn world in search of the man’s missing father. Their spiritual journey, traversing the desolate, misty landscapes of a city torn apart by conflict, uncovers the wounds left by war.
TIFF 2024 Review: “Mr. K”
Mr. K”, the English-language debut of Norwegian-Dutch director Tallulah H. Schwab, is a surreal and disorienting experience set in the confines of a seemingly inescapable hotel. Starring Crispin Glover as the titular Mr. K, a traveling magician who checks in for a single night, Schwab creates a Kafkaesque nightmare comedy where the ordinary is warped beyond recognition, and every attempt to find an exit leads deeper into the bizarre.
TIFF 2024 Review: “Measures for a Funeral”
Over the past eight years, director Sofia Bohdanowicz and actress Deragh Campbell have created a fascinating cinematic partnership centered around the character of Audrey Benac. In “Measures for a Funeral”, their latest collaboration, they explore the blurred lines between biographical and semi-autobiographical storytelling, merging the legacy of a forgotten Canadian violinist, Kathleen Parlow, with their own artistic reflections. The result is a film that is meta and captivating, oscillating between a portrait of Parlow and a meditation on the act of preserving and interpreting history, art, and personal identity through the former two.
TIFF 2024 Review: “Beloved Tropic”
Ana Endara’s debut fiction feature, “Beloved Tropic”, presents a relationship between two women whose lives intersect through a shared dependency in contemporary Panama City. The film centers on Ana María (Jenny Navarrete), a Colombian immigrant and experienced caregiver who harbors a secret, and Mercedes (Paulina García), a wealthy, sharp-tongued high-class woman struggling with the early stages of dementia. What begins as a rather straightforward arrangement quickly transforms into an exploration of autonomy, motherhood, and family.
Venice 2024 Review: “Cloud”
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud,” the director’s third film of 2024 and another hit, is a sharp, unsettling dive into the dark underbelly of modern capitalism and digital-age alienation. Celebrated for his works in which he blends psychological horror and social commentary, Kurosawa once again demonstrates why he remains one of the sharpest cinematic analyzers of contemporary society. At 69, he continues to deliver films that dissect the toxicities of the digital age, the pervasive influence of capitalism, and the unsettling impacts of hyper-individualism. In Cloud, Kurosawa presents a world where ethics are blurred, greed is rampant, and the online world becomes a literal battlefield of hate.
Venice 2024 Review: “Quiet Life”
“Quiet Life” by Alexandros Avranas, who won the Silver Lion award at the 2013 Venice Film Festival for his film “Miss Violence” is a gripping and oftentimes bitingly satirical exploration of a family’s struggle for asylum in 2018 in Sweden. The film follows Sergei (Grigoriy Dobrygin), his wife Natalia (Chulpan Khamatova), and their two daughters, who have fled Russia claiming persecution due to Sergei’s promotion of banned political texts at his school. The family’s hopes for a new beginning are crushed by the cold and harsh system of Swedish bureaucracy, which doubts the credibility of their story and dismisses their application for asylum, leading to a sudden medical emergency. Avranas presents a narrative where the family’s life is reduced to a series of inspections, interrogations, and regulations, all captured through a meticulously controlled and sterile lens.
Venice 2024 Review: “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies”
In Turkish Director Murat Fıratoğlu’s debut feature, “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies,” the audience is offered a glimpse into the world of a field worker who battles the oppressive realities of labor, poverty, and familial responsibilities in rural Turkey over the course of a single day. The film examines the balance between human dignity, the different kinds of people that make up our society, and the brutal socioeconomic forces that insert themselves into every aspect of the lives of the working class.
obviouslyreviews.com 