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Rotterdam 2025 Review: “And the Rest Will Follow”

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And the Rest Will Follow, Turkish director Pelin Esmer’s first fiction film in seven years, explores the relationship between personal aspiration, storytelling, and artistic creation. The film introduces us to Aliye, portrayed by Merve Asya Özgür, a 25-year-old housekeeper in the small Turkish town of Söke. Dissatisfied with her monotonous life and a stifling home environment, Aliye finds solace in the world of cinema, particularly in the works of renowned filmmaker Levent, played by Timuçin Esen, and seeks to forge a connection with him.

IFFR 2025 Review: “The Tree of Authenticity”

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Sammy Baloji’s The Tree of Authenticity is an experimental and multi-layered essay film that seeks to explore Belgian colonialism in the Congo, connecting historical records to personal memory and environmental discourse.

Rotterdam 2025 Review: “Blind Love”

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Julian Chou’s Blind Love presents an affecting intersectional critique of patriarchal family structures, queerphobia, and the suffocating effects of societal expectations. Adapted from a short story by celebrated Taiwanese writer Essay Liu, originally centered on a daughter’s forbidden love with her father’s ex-boyfriend, Chou’s adaptation reimagines the narrative through a gender swap. By shifting the focus to Shu-yi (Ariel Lin), the film shifts its focus to highlight the societal pressures imposed on women and queer individuals within a relatively progressive place like Taiwan.

Rotterdam 2025 Review: “Orenda”

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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 immediate clarity or conventional storytelling, Orenda offers a rewarding experience for those willing to engage with its complexities.

Rotterdam 2025 Review: “John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office”

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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 interviews to explore Lilly’s controversial methodologies, far-reaching ideas, cultural context and legacy.

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 fails to go off. As she attempts to relight it, it explodes in her face, leaving her with a perforated left eye and severe damage to the right. As Lot wakes up in the hospital, the audience experiences her new reality through disorienting, blurred vision, a visual motif that recurs throughout the film to reflect her struggle with impairment.

TIFF 2024 Review: “Horizonte”

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César Augusto Acevedo, the acclaimed Colombian 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 plans to check 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”

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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 metafictional and highly captivating throughout, oscillating between a portrait of Parlow and a meditation on preserving and interpreting history, art, and how these acts affect our personal identity.

TIFF 2024 Review: “Beloved Tropic”

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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 an arrangement between two very different figures quickly transforms into a sensitive yet scattered exploration of autonomy, motherhood, and family.