A decaying industrial landscape: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert

Do you suffer from an overarching inexplicable modern malaise? No, Michelangelo Antonioni does not offer a solution, but he definitely recognizes your problem!

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End may be anti-musical and anti-world but at least it’s pro-planet

«It’s when the music stops that the excuses, the rationalisations and obfuscations, rise like scum to the surface.»

Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero: Starving for Meaning

Club Zero mirrors the reality of consumer culture, where influencers, self-help coaches, and wellness gurus promote ideologies that conveniently align with products they sell.

Out of place, out of time, Emily Louisa Millan Eide’s The Renaissance Prince (2024) is so today

«William Heimdal is larger than life, a strange admixture of arrogance and nagging self-doubt, of maturity beyond his years and an almost childish naivety.»

«I’m no past and all future, see? And I like it that way»: On Gilda (1946), its Past as a Regressive Noir Oddity & Future as a Reclaimed Queer Classic

Gilda is the queerest heterosexual film ever committed to celluloid. Yes, this supreme case study of the male gaze is, in fact, very, very gay.

Psychological Landscapes: The Visual Environment in Joachim Trier’s Cinema and Its Parallels in Agnès Varda’s Films

Joachim Trier’s cinematic technique of connecting character psychology with visual environments has a meaningful lineage that can be traced back to one of the pioneers of the French New Wave: Agnès Varda.

A painkiller for both of us – Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love is a quietly sensational trilogy entry

Venice 2024: Like going back to a place you cherish, a second trip to Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo makes for a reinvigorating, heart-tugging cinema experience, while also bringing his ongoing trilogy into sharp focus for the first time.

On the Entitled Pleasures of Misbehaviour: Danny Boyle Digs Deep in Shallow Grave

It paid off to be ambitious: Shallow Grave has a surprising amount of plates spinning despite being a debut, or a mere crime thriller. It’s a pretty good lesson in what one can achieve with little money but a lot of will to punch above one’s weight.

Kill Everyone Now: the Abject Strikes Back in John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972)

Pink Flamingos is a curiosity from a truly specific time and place, and it’s not as gratuitous as you might expect.

Forget your stupid Dad: M. Night Shyamalan’s superhuman escapism in Trap

Great entertainment is provided in an audacious film where a virtuoso, multi-layered performance by Josh Hartnett shall seduce us into accepting Trap as an arena of pure playfulness.

Impressions of a lucky strike: Woody Allen’s Coup de chance

Woody Allen’s work is most often praised for witty dialogues and clever plots but this article might surprise you, as it explores an elegant visual stylist, confidently working with meaningful imagery, echoes and motifs.

Daniele Luchetti’s Confidenza let’s slip love’s fearful, darker side

KVIFF 2024: Confidenza has a remarkable capacity to challenge spectators to push their own boundaries and rethink their sense of self and social connection.