Zero Fucks Given (2021)

“Your uniform is your armour.” Something to this effect is told to the flight attendants taking a training course. Cassandre (Adèle Exarchopoulos) knows this, but has some difficulty participating in a smiling exercise. “Leave your emotions behind.” Zero Fucks Given (2021) is an observational workplace drama, which follows Cassandre on her rounds as an attendant […]

Afire (2023)

To me, unlikeable characters can be great protagonists. Sometimes they help identify and purge the unlikeable parts inside of us. Like with the pretentious writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) in director Christian Petzold’s Afire (2023). A classic stick in the mud, Leon accompanies his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) to a holiday house in Felix’s family, out […]

Coma (2022)

Bedroom pop? Or bedroom shoegaze? More like bedroom darkwave. Dedicated in an opening narration to his 18 year old daughter, French director Bertrand Bonello made Coma (2022) during Covid lockdown and frames the teenage bedroom as its setting. Even with the alarms outside reiterating lockdown curfew, the sight of a teenager stuck in their bedroom, […]

Trenque Lauquen (2022)

I only heard about the film Trenque Lauquen (2022) through Simon Miraudo reviewing it on Letterboxd. A four hour shaggy-dog mystery from Argentina might have passed me by, but it completely sounded like something that I’d like to seek out. Directed and co-written by Laura Citarella, this is a mystery that ventures off into different […]

Something In The Dirt (2022)

I really dug Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s The Endless. And while I liked Synchronic fine enough, their screen presence as actors – not just as the co-directors, writer and cinematographer of their projects – is an underrated element. Something In The Dirt (2022) was something Moorhead and Benson made during the pandemic, basically filming […]