Wild Diamond (2025)

Direction: Agathe Riedinger
Country: France 

Wild Diamond tells the story of Liane Pougy, a relentless 19-year-old influencer who dreams of joining a reality TV show at any cost. This character had already taken centre stage in director Agathe Riedinger’s 2017 short film J’Attends Jupiter. Now, Riedinger makes her directorial feature debut with a bold foray into the world of fame and social media—offering a sharp reflection of our times.

Liane (Malou Khebizi) lives in Fréjus, a French city that evokes both hedonistic leisure and the grit of English working-class towns. At home, she’s stuck with an emotionally distant mother—who regularly brings sugar daddies home—and a tender younger sister. She prays to Saint Joseph and considers buttock augmentation, clinging to an artificial glitter while impatiently chasing easy fame. Her growing despair drives her to take dangerous risks.

Khebizi is the true diamond of the film in a quite impressive first appearance on the big screen. Trapped between a glossy fantasy and a bleak reality, Liane is a portrait of someone whose biggest aspirations become the very obstacles to her happiness. Riedinger shoots in a confrontational, intimate style, using a 4:3 aspect ratio to heighten the rawness of the characters and setting. Yet, the film occasionally stumbles, with minor plot stagnation and a couple of distracting and ineffective on-screen texts.

By the end, it feels like we’ve only skimmed the surface—but Wild Diamond still hits a very specific bullseye. How it affects you will almost certainly depend on your current relationship with social media and reality television. Flaws aside, this is a film worth wrestling with—brimming with electricity, as if told through the fingertips.

The Shrouds (2025)

Direction: David Cronenberg
Country: USA 

David Cronenberg wrote The Shrouds in response to the death of his wife in 2017. Despite this deeply personal origin, the film’s uninspired delirium begins with a promisingly tense atmosphere only to unravel into something muddled and ultimately hollow. The Canadian filmmaker returns to his signature obsessions—mutilation fused with macabre romanticism, fixation on death and the body, espionage, and futuristic technology. eXistenZ (1999) and Crash (1996) naturally come to mind, yet this time the concoction feels undercooked, lacking soul, coherence, and genuine emotional weight.

The plot follows an inconsolable corpse voyeur (Vincent Cassel, in his third collaboration with Cronenberg) who harbors a disturbing fascination with his late wife’s body and cemeteries. However, the story quickly gets bogged down in contrived, exhausting dialogue and stilted staging. Delivered at a glacial pace, the bland narrative nearly lulled me to sleep. Adding to the confusion is the film’s tech subplot, clouded by mysterious hackers and vague conspiracy theories involving Chinese and Russian corporations.

Whatever suspense the film tries to build evaporates almost instantly. What a futile and misguided movie this is! - certainly one of Cronenberg’s biggest flops to date. At 82, one has to wonder if Cronenberg has lost his touch—both in direction and in his ability to truly engage the viewer, as mortuary enigma mutates into incoherent drivel.

Materialists (2025)

Direction: Celine Song
Country: USA

Materialists, the sophomore feature from Canadian helmer Celine Song, is a romantic excursion where love can be negotiated like a business deal. Not as irresistible as Song’s debut Past Lives (2023) and perhaps a bit too safe in its proceedings, Materialists is nonetheless rich in, character, dilemmas, and conflicts that spark debate about life’s priorities. Its message feels particularly timely.

The plot centers on Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a young, charming, and successful New York matchmaker who finds herself entangled in a love triangle. A serious incident involving one of her elite clients deeply affects her, forcing a drastic shift in her life. Her suitors, Harry (Pedro Pascal) and John (Chris Evans), represent two opposing paths—wealth and comfort versus love and sacrifice.

Shot in 35mm, Materialists may lose some momentum toward the ending, but remains a finely crafted piece well worth seeking out. We’ve seen films like this before, but rarely have they looked or felt quite like this. Song, a thoughtful filmmaker with meaningful insights on relationships—past and present—ticks off every box on the film’s agenda and wraps it up with a big smile. This is not a backward step for the director, who portrays a transactional dating ecosystem with both realism and cleverness.

A Traveler's Needs (2024)

Direction: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea

In A Traveler’s Needs, another peculiar drama by Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, a solitary French woman—aptly portrayed by Isabelle Huppert—teaches French in Seoul using unconventional methods, while her unknown past remains a mystery. Although she shows interest in her students’ feelings and emotions, she maintains an insouciant attitude, drinking makgeolli—a fermented rice alcoholic beverage—throughout the day. Frequently bored, her behavior is often perplexing as we try to decipher her motives.

This fleeting fable carries a certain poetic quality and an insinuating sense of adventure, but gradually loses momentum, becoming increasingly formulaic. It’s a fascinating cross-cultural experiment that eventually runs itself into the ground, recycling Sang-soo’s familiar patterns of conversational interaction. 

Huppert and Sang-soo’s third collaboration—following In Another Country (2012) and Claire’s Camera (2017)—is the weakest of the trio, an occasionally charming yet underdeveloped ode to friendship that meanders without clear direction. In truth, A Traveler’s Needs feels like an acting exercise stretched to feature length, with the multi-faceted Sang-soo handling direction, screenplay, cinematography, production, editing, and score.

Motel Destino (2024)

Direction: Karim Ainouz
Country: Brazil 

After experiencing Hollywood last year with the period drama Firebrand, filmmaker Karim Ainouz (Madame Satã, 2002; Invisible Life, 2019) returns to Brazil to helm Motel Destino, a mundane and sexually-charged neo-noir thriller that plays like a haunting phantasmagoria. While the script itself lacks depth, the film benefits from its sensory overload, visual experimentation, and a Coen Brothers-inspired score that evokes sinister western landscapes. 

Living in Ceará, Heraldo (Iago Xavier) plans to move to São Paulo but must first complete one last job for drug kingpin and local artist Bambina (Fabíola Líper). When things spiral out of control, he takes refuge in a seedy sex motel, aided by its owners: the restless Dayana (Nataly Rocha) and her volatile, voyeuristic husband, Elias (Fábio Assunção). 

There’s no pretentiousness or ego in the trio’s performances, and enough tension sustains interest until the film’s ultimately disappointing ending. Motel Destino is a vicious piece of work from a director unafraid to expose the primal, darker instincts of his characters. Unfortunately, this stylized erotic thriller is undermined by clumsy dialogue and a hastily executed conclusion. It offers a shallow cinematic experience that may not leave you breathless, but its darkness lingers like cement, and the tension between its sleazy content and neon-lit aesthetics is precisely where its power resides.

When Fall is Coming (2025)

Direction: François Ozon
Country: France 

With the eclectic French filmmaker François Ozon at the helm, you never know which kind of film you're going to get. When Fall is Coming is a drama of atypical heroines that never follows predictable paths. Set mostly in Burgundy, in the French countryside, the story slowly distills its charms and poisons, exploring the thin line between good and evil.

This seemingly good-natured drama, imbued with scenes of commiseration, guilt, and relief, thrives on doubt and ambiguity, heightened by Ozon’s refusal to over-explain. The audience is invited to embrace uncertainty and draw their own conclusions. The understated mystery recalls Chabrol, with the academic form and classic staging perfectly suiting the film’s slightly opaque narrative. 

81-year-old actress Hélène Vincent, who was phenomenal in Brizé’s A Few Hours of Spring (2012), delivers a remarkable performance as Michelle Giraud—a devoted grandmother and former prostitute—capturing brief seconds of mental absence and confusion with striking precision. Ozon reunites with her and Josiane Balasko, who plays her best friend, seven years after By The Grace of God. More notably, he works again with Ludivine Sagnier—portraying Michelle’s depressed daughter—22 years after launching her career with Swimming Pool. Another successful reunion is with cinematographer Jérôme Alméras, Ozon’s collaborator on the 2012 drama-mystery In the House. 

When Fall is Coming unfolds in a familiar slow-burn fashion, but it’s a deeply satisfying watch. A film of small moments and subtle gestures, where performances radiate warmth and pain, gradually defining the characters. Following the playful extravagance of The Crime is Mine (2023), Ozon closely observes human behavior and emotions with profound quietude.

Bonjour Tristesse (2025)

Direction: Durga Chew-Bose
Country: France

This particularly unmemorable adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse fails to capture the soul of the story and lacks genuine drama. First-time director Durga Chew-Bose aims for subtlety, relying heavily on facial expressions and unspoken feelings, but the result often feels like a repetitive exercise rather than meaningful storytelling. The film manages to spark some minimal intrigue in its first half, only to lose momentum and control before collapsing into complete banality.

This chamber drama, steeped in calculated machinations and guilt, follows the manipulative 17-year-old Cécile (Lily McInerny), who enjoys a carefree summer at a French Riviera villa with her emotionally detached father, Raymond (Claes Bang), and his laid-back girlfriend, Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune). The arrival of fashion designer Anne Larsson (Chloë Sevigny), an old family friend, disrupts Cécile’s fragile summer equilibrium.

Bonjour Tristesse ends up as an irredeemably bland, formulaic coming-of-age drama that seldom rises above the absurdity of its own plot twists. The characters lack dimension—becoming increasingly grating—the dialogue remains superficial, and the performances feel awkward rather than authentic. This couldn’t be a more generic and uninspired entry into the genre. An empty summer reverie.

Holy Cow (2025)

Direction: Louise Courvoisier
Country: France 

Louise Courvoisier's feature debut, Holy Cow, is a sensitive coming of age tale set in Jura, a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. Eighteen-year-old Totone (Clément Faveau) prefers hanging out and drinking with friends over helping his father on their cheese farm. But misfortune forces him to radically change his life. He finds solace in Marie-Lise (Maiwene Barthelemy), his first love, and in a newfound obsession: making the region’s best cheese.

The beauty of Holy Cow lies in its details as much as in the simplicity of its story, populated by genuine, believable characters. The nuanced performances from non-professional actors, the evocative use of location, and the sensitive script by Courvoisier and Théo Abadie elevates the film above many others in the genre.

The film’s humble nature and the setbacks faced by the protagonist never undercut its uplifting sense of satisfaction or its quiet celebration of romance and self-discovery. What’s perhaps most remarkable about Holy Cow is that it actually works in a quiet, unfussy way. There’s an honest emotional core in Courvoisier’s depiction of a teenager coming to terms with responsibility, morality, and friendship.

Viet and Nam (2025)

Direction: Minh Quy Truong
Country: Vietnam

Set in rural Vietnam in the year 2000, this malancholic and bucolic romantic drama is drenched in intermittent heavy rain, contemplating more than it discovers. Viet and Nam are two coal miners and lovers who dream of a different life abroad. Meanwhile, Nam’s mother obsessively searches for the remains of her husband, a casualty of the war, eventually crossing paths with a medium from the North.

Served by striking camerawork, Minh Quy Truong's second feature unfolds as a slow, profound excavation of a country’s lingering war wounds. Though ghostly and dreamlike, it weaves together queer romance, working-class struggle, historical trauma, grief, and spiritual longing. 

The film embraces a poetic, meditative style, with enigmatic flourishes and an eerie tranquility drawn from its rural landscapes. Its fluid sense of time and space recalls Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema, albeit with a more grounded, objective gaze. The cast—composed of non-professional actors—delivers authentic, unembellished performances.

The film’s languid pacing and long, static 16mm shots may stretch its runtime, but Truong clearly trusts in the power of cinema and the viewer’s patience. Viet and Nam is a respectable film that can be moving in its infinite delicacy and quivering sensitivity—even if it doesn't entirely avoid the familiar traits of contemplative art-house cinema.

The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024)

Direction: Michel Hazanavicius
Country: France

From Michel Hazanavicius—the director of The Artist (2011)—The Most Precious of Cargoes marks his first animated feature, adapted from a novel by French playwright and author Jean-Claude Grumberg. The story centers on a poor woodcutter and his wife who, unable to have children, are unexpectedly blessed with a Jewish baby thrown from a moving train bound for Auschwitz. Narrated by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant—who passed away in 2022—the film is steeped in rural isolation, irrational beliefs, and the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, a hauntingly fertile ground for such a tale. Though animated, this is not an easy watch—nor should it be. It serves as a quiet, poignant resistance to the gradual and inevitable fading of our collective memory.

Hazanavicius, whose roots lie in an Eastern European Jewish family, crafts a postmodern fairy tale with simplicity and effectiveness, evoking deep emotion through acts of kindness and humanity. Even with modest dialogues, he generates a great deal of drama with a fierce kind of courage. This is reinforced by Alexandre Desplat’s oversentimental score.

Ghost Trail (2025)

Direction: Jonathan Millet
Country: France

Inspired by true events, Ghost Trail marks the remarkable fictional feature debut of Jonathan Millet, who, drawing on his background as a documentarian, spent considerable time researching the subject of his film. The story follows a Syrian literature professor who, after being released from one of Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons, sets out to track down his torturer—someone whose face he has never seen, and who likewise never saw his. Now living in Strasbourg, France, this fractured man operates with the aid of an invisible network of six others, spread across the globe, all seeking justice from the shadows.

This intelligent spy thriller, steeped in obsession and executed with methodical subtlety, plunges directly into the recent, harrowing history of a wounded Syria. Tense and controlled, the film achieves a disturbingly realistic tone, grounded in believable character dynamics that immediately pull the viewer in and sustain engagement throughout. The pursuit is long, slow, and fraught with uncertainty, but the tension pays off. The protagonist, Hamid (Adam Bessa), though initially consumed by vengeance, is wise enough to make choices that allow him to cling to the possibility of a ‘normal’ life.

As merciless as it is hard-hitting, Ghost Trail offers a searing portrait of political trauma and the tangled drive for retribution. Its moral complexities, coupled with sharp storytelling and Bessa’s outstanding performance, make it compulsively watchable. Eschewing physical violence in favor of mounting psychological tension, this debut signals the arrival of a filmmaker discovering his power.

Grand Tour (2025)

Direction: Miguel Gomes
Country: Portugal / other

A loving tribute to silent dramas and classic historical adventures, Grand Tour—filmed in breathtaking black-and-whit—is a art-house triumph co-written and directed by Miguel Gomes, the visionary behind Tabu (2012), Arabian Nights (2015), and The Tsugua Diaries (2021). Evoking the spirit of Murnau and Pabst, while channeling Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and elements of Von Sternberg and Mizoguchi, the film thrives on the cultural richness of its settings, imbued with an underground charisma and an enigmatic touch.

Inspired by a passage from William Somerset Maugham’s 1930 travel memoir The Gentleman in the Parlour, the story unfolds in 1918, following Edward Abbot (Gonçalo Waddington), a restless bohemian and possible spy stationed in Rangoon. His determined fiancée, Molly Singleton (Crista Alfaiate), sets out on a journey across Asia in pursuit of him. While he wants freedom, she wants marriage.

As comprehensive and lucid as a tone poem, Grand Tour is a dreamlike, tragicomic odyssey—a lavish production in which every frame pulses with expressiveness and dramatic force. Pushing intuition to its limits, Gomes liberates himself from the conventions of historical reconstruction. The result is a hybrid of experimental cinema, documentary, and fiction, through which he explores the wavering contours of human behavior with poetic clarity. His mastery of script, camera, and performance direction is striking throughout.

With just a bit more emotional depth and heightened tension, the film could have soared even higher. Still, Grand Tour exercises a powerful grip and stands as a strong recommendation.

La Cocina (2025)

Direction: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Country: Mexico / USA

Adapted from Arnold Wesker's play, La Cocina  is an exercise in style, full of highs and lows. It portrays a large, chaotic, multicultural New York kitchen where steel clangs, voices clash, and bodies move with tense urgency. Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios (Gueros, 2014; Museo, 2018) crafts a hot-blooded, surreal, and poetic spectacle that often resembles a wild circus.

Amid the clamor, dreams and personal struggles simmer—money has mysteriously vanished from one of the registers, and suspicion falls on Pedro Ruiz (Raúl Briones), a volatile, immature Mexican cook who has gotten Julia (Rooney Mara), an American waitress, pregnant. The film’s atmosphere is zany and sometimes disorienting, yet it retains a certain magnetic pull.

Undocumented immigrants and the marginalized are at the heart of the story—they’re indispensable and yet exploited—and the film offers fleeting but poignant glimpses into their roles in the restaurant’s ecosystem, which mirrors the nation’s broader social dynamics. The characters feel vivid and authentic, each with distinct aspirations and personalities, contributing to a frenzied spectacle that veers between hilarious and excruciating. 

La Cocina thrives primarily on its kinetic energy, with bursts of anger pushed deliberately to extremes, while also grappling with the dehumanizing mechanisms of an overburdened capitalist system that traps its workers. The score insightfully conveys the characters’ inner turmoil, and visually, cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez excels with striking black-and-white imagery and expressive camera work.

The Marching Band (2025)

Direction: Emmanuel Courcol
Country: France

The Matching Band, a comedy-drama co-written and directed by Emmanuel Courcol, navigates admirable humanism and warm emotion while exploring the fragile bond between two brothers who have only just discovered each other’s existence. Set in northern France, the story follows Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe), a successful 37-year-old conductor in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant, who also learns that he was adopted as a child. His only hope lies in contacting his biological brother, Jimmy (Pierre Lottin), whom he had never known. Despite their vastly different upbringings and lifestyles, the brothers find a shared language in music.

The Marching Band is an optimistic yet ultimately heartbreaking drama, elevated by a spirited score but marred by uneven performances—Lavernhe is more convincing than Lottin, who previously worked with Courcol in The Big Hit (2020). The film sometimes feels like a retread of familiar stories, revealing a degree of superficiality in certain areas. Its take on social determinism carries some heart, but despite its transparent staging, it lacks the raw urgency and piercing precision of Ken Loach’s realism. Instead, Courcol leans into light comedy and a saccharine tone that occasionally borders on condescension.

The plight of the mining community and its marching band, along with the romance between Jimmy and fellow band member Sabrina (Sarah Suco), feels underdeveloped—more like narrative filler than fully fleshed-out subplots. While the script doesn’t always ring true, the film ultimately lands with a powerful dramatic finale.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2025)

Direction: Rungano Nyoni
Country: Zambia / UK / other

In Zambian Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, characters move through a world marred by sexual abuse, trauma, and an infuriating societal passivity. Nyoni, who gained international acclaim with I Am Not a Witch (2017), also penned the script, centering the story on Shula (Susan Chardy), a fragile and apparently cold middle-class woman who shows no grief when she discovers her uncle’s body lying in the street. 

This moving, quietly furious drama, laced with moments of dark humor, gathers powerful elements to present a stirring call for a more just and self-aware Africa. It offers a compelling lens through which to examine Zambian traditions, cultural attitudes, and widespread indifference to issues like statutory rape and systemic sexism. Haunting and unsettling, the narrative’s ending may initially feel unresolved, yet compassion weaves subtly through the film. The emotionally fractured Shula is likened to a guinea fowl—an alert, talkative African bird known for warning others of lurking danger.

Tonally assured throughout, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl delivers a piercing, unflinching portrait of a family in desperate need of healing. Its ethos hits hard, and Nyoni deserves high praise for tackling such a difficult subject with discernment and sensitivity.

Snow Leopard (2024)

Direction: Pema Tseden
Country: China

Snow Leopard, the final film by Pema Tseden, impresses with its stunning visuals but falters in story development and character depth. Tibetan culture takes center stage in this comedy-drama, which carries the intriguing simplicity of a fable. However, its execution often feels overly theatrical, preventing it from leaving a lasting impact.

The humor wears thin over time, and the film’s polished aesthetic renders some scenes overly staged. The narrative also suffers from the repetitive use of its central motif. Snow Leopard is carefully and calculatingly naive, with a story structure that remains distractingly uninspired. It aims for gravity but its sincerity falls flat. Tseden will likely be more enduringly remembered for Balloon (2019).

Girls Will Be Girls (2024)

Direction: Shuchi Talati
Country: India / France 

Sixteen-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) leads the life of a model student at an elite boarding school in northern India. Unexpectedly, her mother, Anila (Kani Kusruti), develops an unsettling fascination with Mira’s charismatic classmate and first boyfriend, Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), who is unusually mature for his age.

Girls Will Be Girls is a bold, emotionally layered coming-of-age drama that weaves together themes of family, education, and patriarchal influence in India. Shuchi Talati’s feature debut is firmly anchored in its cultural context, distinguished by a sharp script and an impeccably cast ensemble. The story unfolds with quiet force, grounded in authenticity, with Panigrahi delivering a standout performance. Talati emerges as a rare director unafraid to linger in a moment, allowing scenes to breathe. Her film is filled with contemplation, tension, and discovery, gliding between the social and the intimate with a graceful, unhurried style that avoids sentimentality.

Although not reinventing the coming-of-age genre, Talati handles the complexities of female sexuality with remarkable nuance, and Girls Will Be Girls explores far more than the usual tropes of teenage love. The tender thrill of first romance is present, but it’s painfully complicated by a forbidden familial intrusion, turning sweetness into something far more fraught and haunting.

I'm Still Here (2024)

Direction: Walter Salles
Country: Brazil

Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here straddles the line between political thriller and family drama, recounting a real-life story set during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the early 1970s. Engineer and former congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) is arrested at his home by regime enforcers and subsequently vanishes without a trace. His wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), is detained and interrogated for several days before being released—only to face the devastating reality that she will never see her husband again. This gripping narrative, brought to life through exceptional filmmaking and deeply committed performances, is all the more chilling because it is true. 

Salles chooses to tell the story from Eunice’s perspective, mirroring the book her son Marcelo wrote about her. The film is not only an exploration of the psychological torture inflicted by a ‘disappearance’ within a family but also an examination of the profound and irreversible changes it triggers in the lives of those left behind. It is difficult not to be moved by the shattering of a once-happy family. Yet, despite its emotional weight, the film could have been more effectively executed.

There is little suspense, even in moments that demand it, and while the story carries undeniable gravitas, it struggles with pacing. Some dragging sequences disrupt what should be a fluid narrative, and it becomes clear early on that I’m Still Here is unlikely to fully take off. The film leans into resilience and emotion but hesitates to push beyond that safe zone.

Torres, an actress of exquisite sensitivity who previously collaborated with Salles in Foreign Land (1995) and Midnight (1998), delivers a formidable performance as Eunice—a woman who transforms into a late-life lawyer and activist. She embodies Eunice’s moral integrity and quiet resistance, shielding her children while enduring immense pressure. Torres’ real-life mother, the legendary Fernanda Montenegro, portrays Eunice in her later years, reuniting with Salles after his acclaimed Central Station (1998).

The film reflects a dark page in Brazilian history, but because it’s too tidy and airtight, it fails to leave much of an impression by remaining in a passive state of subtlety.

Hard Truths (2025)

Direction: Mike Leigh
Country: UK

Written and directed by the great Mike Leigh (Naked, 1993; Vera Drake, 2004), Hard Truths is an acrid contemporary drama that explores depression and bitterness within an African-American family in England. Marked by the pragmatic, unflinching realism that defines much of Leigh’s work, the film centers on Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an unsympathetic, deeply unhappy woman whose life is weighed down by trauma, extreme control, antagonism, and emotional isolation. Lonely, exhausted, and fearful, she makes life unbearable for her hardworking husband, Curtley (David Webber), and their indolent 22-year-old son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). The only person who can tolerate Pansy’s abrasive nature is her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin).

Reuniting with Jean-Baptiste 28 years after Secrets & Lies—Leigh’s Palme d’Or-winning drama—the director presents a toxic home environment with no easy resolution. It’s an intense, at times overwhelming experience, more humiliating than humorous, and grappling with Leigh’s recurring theme: the sheer difficulty of living. Emotional suffocation, unrelenting tension, and pervasive sadness dominate the atmosphere, yet if ever a performance could redeem such bleakness, it is Jean-Baptiste’s.

At times, while carrying his love-it-or-hate-it penchant for directness, Leigh risks alienating the audience from his intent. However, he ensures that every emotional wound is laid bare with sharp clarity, granting his actors the freedom to improvise in a way that heightens the film’s authenticity. The good part is that he’s not afraid to show the ugliest moments of life, doing it without passing judgment.

Nickel Boys (2024)

Direction: RaMell Ross
Country: USA

Based on Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Nickel Boys, is a poignant historical drama directed and co-written by RaMell Ross in his narrative feature debut. The film follows two young Black men struggling to survive the brutal realities of a Florida reformatory school in the 1960s. Inspired by the real-life Nickel Academy—a segregationist institution notorious for its systemic abuse—the story unfolds with a raw, unflinching perspective. 

Presented from a first-person point of view, this tough-minded film thrives on exquisitely composed imagery that both stimulates the senses and piques curiosity. Ross employs a distinct filmmaking intensity, one that encourages viewers not just to watch, but to observe and feel deeply. Echoing the works of Terrence Malick, Charles Burnett, and Barry Jenkins, he approaches youth incarceration with a fiercely personal and devastating lens. 

Not being an easy watch, Nickel Boys offers an impressionistic view of a tragic experience, covering predictable ground with an admirable sense of artistry and a fair dose of sincerity.