Babes (2024)

Direction: Pamela Adlon
Country: USA

Actress turned director Pamela Adlon makes her directorial feature debut with Babes, a quintessential New York comedy centered on motherhood and female friendship. While not a revolutionary tale, the film draws its strengths from fine performances, side steps, juicy details, and broken of taboos.

The story follows Eden (Ilana Glazer), who unexpectedly becomes pregnant after a one-night-stand, and her long-time best friend, Dawn (Michelle Buteau), who is married and has just had her second child. Tensions between the nearly inseparable pair escalate to a frantic boil, exacerbated by the emotional fluctuations and frustrations of being a mom. 

Though the catalogue of family troubles and various conflicts is familiar, the film is humanely observed and profuse on witty banter. The dialogue is fast and pungent, and the pacing is suave, all delivered with a good heart. Even the most clichéd moments can feel emotionally true in this lighthearted film, which, despite its faults, tries to march to a different drum than the most of Hollywood comedies.

Babes might not be as funny as some have claimed, but focuses on how these two friends rely on each other and grow through life's blessings and adversities. It’s an entertaining film aimed at adults.

Sisi & I (2024)

Direction: Frauke Finsterwalder
Country: Germany / Austria / Switzerland 

The fourth feature by German director Frauke Finsterwalder, Sisi & I, is a work of fiction inspired by historical reality. Co-written by Finsterwalder and Swiss author Christian Kracht, the film centers on the relationship between Empress Elizabeth of Austria, a.k.a. Sisi, and her last lady-in-waiting, the Hungarian Countess Irma Sztáray. 

Late in the 19th century, Irma (Sandra Huller) travels to the Greek island of Corfu to serve the reclusive, sometimes jubilant, sometimes moody, but often manipulative Empress (Susanne Wolff), overwhelmed by the demands of her duties. Desperate to avoid returning to court, Sisi’s constant fight against boredom is eased with cocaine elixirs, the occasional visits of her free-spirited friend, the Archduke Ludwig Viktor (Georg Friedrich), and her special bond with Irma. Yet, intense depression soon interferes with her leisure life.

Not as dynamic and provocative as Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage (2022), which explores similar territory, Sisi & I strikes a balance between the classic and the modern, especially through the sets and the anachronistic soundtrack - the charm of Portishead’s trip-hop gem “Glory Box” inundating the opening scene is undeniable. 

In her unflashy version, Finsterwalder chooses a common route, staging the story in her own terms and bringing some curious details into the fold. She makes a gracious, if occasionally tedious, effort to portray two frustrated women, modern for their time, who find refuge in a singular friendship. Despite its unevenness and tonal fluctuations, the film unpacks a feminist manifesto on power, sexuality, independence, allegiance, and sometimes cruelty. The sharp cinematography by Thomas W. Kiennast and the costume design by Tanja Hausner are assets, but the well-groomed film itself is a minor vehicle to deliver Huller's sober but firm performance. 

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Direction: Rose Glass
Country: USA

Directed by Rose Glass, the director of the critically acclaimed Saint Maude (2019), Love Lies Bleeding is a muscular and psychologically probing feminist thriller with a 1980s look and neo-noir moods inspired by films like The Wrestler (2008), Bound (1996), and Crash (1996). Working from a script she co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, Glass manages to achieve a fulfilling narrative arc anchored by surprisingly complex performances and a surreal tinge that works both for and against the film.

This is the type of cynical crime entanglement where everyone is implicated in some sort of scheme. It is centered on the ardent lesbian romance between a lonely gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart), and a promising bodybuilder, Jackie (Katy O'Brian). Love conquers all, but the atmosphere in town is heavy, potentiated by vindictive characters with destructive emotions and actions that often lead to violence and death. 

The film’s primal instincts are nihilistic and brooding, but it’s not short of ideas. The finely honed script plays like a greasy bucket-load of uninhibited dirtiness through its rougher patches, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Stewart and O’Brien have a palpable chemistry, while Ed Harris is phenomenal as Lou’s creepy father, an arms dealer with influential connections to the local police.

Glass’ sophomore picture is not as masterfully visceral as Saint Maude, but the rising filmmaker reveals herself as a gifted portrayer of emotional intimacies and wrenching acts of violence.

Problemista (2024)

Direction: Julio Torres
Country: USA

Problemista is the directorial feature debut by Salvadoran-American Julio Torres, who embraces fantasy to tell the story of Alejandro, an aspiring toy maker from El Salvador who struggles to keep working and living in New York. Torres himself portrays the main character.

After losing his job as an archivist for FreezeCorp - a company specialized in freezing terminally ill humans to be awakened at some point in the future - Alejandro desperately finds a new sponsor for his work Visa and easy gigs on Craigslist to stay afloat. The solution is Elizabeth (a red-haired Tilda Swinton in top form), a neurotic, washed-up art critic whose painter husband (the rapper RZA) has been frozen.

The film flows stonily, with an offbeat vibe that often seduces, yet the wittiness is not a constant, working intermittently. The film is stronger on the dramatic side, with its best moments tapping into a sadness and disappointment with the world that most people will relate to. Swinton’s unbeatable delirium is a perfect foil for Torres’ apathetic confidence in a well-acted surrealist comedy whose main strength is the mood. 

Problemista is only partially satisfying and easy to overlook, but hope is its last word - even if it means achieving things forcibly - and some aspects addressed are so true that they stay with you. It surely could have been better, but this is still a positive debut for Torres, who hired Isabella Rossellini as the film’s narrator.

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (2024)

Direction: Radu Jude
Country: Romania 

After the polemic and somewhat superfluous Loony Porn (2021), the incredibly talented Romanian writer-director Radu Jude continues to claim a spot at the peak of contemporary cinema with Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, another love-it-or-hate-it endeavor that places an independent young woman under relentless observation in a radically changing Bucharest. 

Ilinca Manolache plays Angela Raducanu, an exhausted and underpaid production assistant working for an Austrian company that exploits workers and has a reputation for destroying Romanian forests for profit. Overworking to the point of risking falling asleep at the wheel, she navigates the chaotic Bucharest traffic - often filled with macho drivers - to interview handicapped people for a devious TV show. With no time for herself, she finds solace in posting provocative TikTok videos where she impersonates a man with moronic behavior and lousy ideas. Two key moments of the film include a frank conversation with her boss, Doris Goethe (Christian Petzold’s muse Nina Hoss), and an encounter with the wishy-washy German filmmaker Uwe Boll (himself).

Using footage, the film creates a link with Angela Merge Mai Departe, a 1981 feminist Romanian feature directed by Lucian Bratu, centered on a female taxi driver under the communist dictatorship. This raffish and pertinent divertissement brings a lot of truths to light, touching on themes such as neoliberal capitalism, sexism, corruption, exploitation, resignation, and impunity in a tortured urban society that simply has no time to enjoy life.

Jude evokes the social realism of Jim Jarmusch and Jean-Luc Godard - creative in form, tenacious in the storytelling - and infuses a caustic humor that, cutting sharper than a knife, is often quite delicious. More jarring than sweet, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World is an eye opener for our hectic times. A must-watch.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Direction: Jane Schoenbrun
Country: USA

Like in her previous feature, We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021), director Jane Schoenbrun blurs the line between reality and fantasy in I Saw the TV Glow, a depressing psychedelic trip filled with mind-inducing eeriness and ambiguity. 

The narrative follows Owen (Justice Smith), a 7th-grade teenager living in the suburbs, who becomes addicted to an obscure TV show called The Pink Opaque. His life gets less empty when he bumps into Maddy Wilson (Brigette Lundy-Paine), another obsessed fan who admits the show feels more real than real life. Suddenly, they realize they have become players in a dangerous game. Everything changes when Maddy leaves without a trace, only to return eight years later with a confused memory and a different notion of time. 

I Saw the TV Glow is aesthetically curious, but its disjointed ideas don’t coalesce into a satisfying whole. Schoenbrun can't avoid force-feeding us metaphors during this infinite fever dream, opting for vague contrivances rather than providing real substance. The underlying tension is constantly present but never packs a wallop. The vision is too narrow for that, transforming this experimental gimmick into a lumbering, misguided mess.

The film, co-produced by Emma Stone, aims for the bizarre but ends up more mind-numbing and emotionally deserted than clever. Paranoia and melancholy swallow aimless phosphorescent kids… is that all you’ve got to offer, Ms. Schoenbrun?

Am I OK? (2024)

Direction: Tig Notaro, Stephanie Allyne
Country: USA

Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allyne teamed up to direct Am I OK?, a comedy-drama centered on the anxieties and vulnerabilities of coming out later in life and the intricate paths of friendship. Written by Laura Pomerantz, the film stars Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno, who are not only convincing in their roles but often funny.

Lucy (Johnson) and Jane (Mizuno) are longtime best friends. Lucy works in a spa and just realized she might be gay after a a negligible, unsuccessful, and vapid number of relationships with men. Jane, promoted by her boss and ready to move to London, tries to help her friend navigate her complex affairs with an excessively self-assured temperament that is not always helpful. In the desperation of finding the path to love, things only get more confused and complicated.

Radiating warmth and humor, the film’s main strength lies in two beautifully observed complementary performances, hitting the mark in its attempt to generate sympathy for the characters’ struggles. If the ending had been better imagined and less predictable, viewers would have an even stronger incentive to watch it. 

The Beast (2024)

Direction: Bertrand Bonello
Country: France 

Bertrand Bonnello’s intelligent time-spanning love story, The Beast, is his best film to date and my favorite of 2024 so far. Blending sci-fi, romance, drama, and dystopian thriller elements with enigmatic tones, the film, based on Henry James’ short novel The Beast in the Jungle, results in an original and purely cinematic work. 

The non-linear narrative centers on the doomed love between Gabrielle Monnier (Léa Seydoux) and Louis Lewanski (George MacKay) across three different eras. In 1910, she’s a married pianist frequenting the refined Parisian artistic circles, and he’s an attentive, if cold, British admirer. in 2014, she’s a model living alone in L.A., while he’s an unstable 30-year-old American virgin tortured by rejection and frustration. The future, in 2044, is marked by absolute AI control and the availability of DNA cleanings to erase sorrows of past romances, though at the cost of possible loss of feelings. Each fragment is imbued with a tightly coiled sense of tension and repeated patterns: odd therapy sessions, consultations with clairvoyants, persistent anxieties, premonitions, and fears. An unbearable sense of loneliness also pervades. 

Structured with deliberate bewilderment, the film is a gallantly romantic and dangerously obsessive journey into past lives. It can fascinate us as much as get us lost. Cast and crew make the dramatic events believable, with Seydoux and MacKay delivering extraordinary performances, contributing heavily to 145 minutes of poignant, almost delirious complexity. 

With shades of David Cronenberg and David Lynch, the director of Nocturama (2016) and Coma (2022) gives us something special in a ferociously pleasurable film that deserves respect for its ambition. The Beast is what it wants to be: a slice of thought-provoking, nightmarish science fiction that rewards the viewer emotionally and visually.

Green Border (2024)

Direction: Agnieszka Holland
Country: Poland / other

With shades of her mentor Andrzej Wajda in her filmmaking style, Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa, 1990; In Darkness, 2011), an important figure of the Polish New Wave movement, turns her gaze to immigration in a mesmerizing odyssey comprised of four parts. The narrative involves a Syrian family and an Afghan woman trying to cross the forest that separates Belarus from Poland, a border guard consumed by guilt, and a group of activists who welcome a psychologist turned staunch supporter of their humanitarian cause. 

By filming in black and white with vision and nerve, Holland accentuates the realism of a painful crisis that exposes the worst side of human nature. Green Border is a tense affair, as dark and swampy as the forest landscapes and governments involved in its narrative, providing viewers with a disturbing scenario of racial prejudice and shocking indifference. Noble-minded in its revelatory disclosures, this tough-to-take look at the plight of migrants seeking asylum in the European Union overflows with passion, artistry, and rage in a segmented, formal structure that coheres.

The ensemble cast is solid, hitting the right emotional notes and building credibility with scenes that are Holland’s earnest attempts to bring to the world a harrowing chapter of her country’s history. The contemporary topic adds to the film’s urgent appeal in a social and political rant that, refusing to let hope go, confirms Holland as an incisive and influential filmmaker. Green Border was distinguished in seven categories in Venice, including the Special Jury Prize and Best Film in a Foreign Language.

The Vourdalak (2024)

Direction: Adrien Beau
Country: France

With The Vourdalak, newcomer filmmaker Adrien Beau draws inspiration from Alexei Tolstoy’s short story, creating an exhilarating celebration of the gothic style. Despite the low budget, the director lets his imagination soar, crafting a human-seized puppet to represent the vourdalak, a sort of proto-vampire that spares not even his own family. He also gives voice to it.

The story follows the inquisitive Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), a noble emissary of the King of France, who loses his way in the woods after being attacked and robbed by bandits. He finds refuge with a strange, cursed family. 

The director and cast waltz through this sinister tale with bizarre, ritualistic steps. The minimalist decor, complemented  by effective cinematography, creates an atmosphere reminiscent of another time, moving between eerie medieval mysticism, patriarchal dominance, and ridicule. However, the film's theatrical staging leaves uncertain whether it aims to be a campy homage to cult vampire black comedies or a nightmarish horror odyssey. 

Retractable fangs fail to deliver a significant bite, resulting in an outrageously fascinating failure that could have been a laugh riot. Enthusiasts of mysterious old tales and legends can go for it, but they’ll have to adapt to and accept this peculiar aesthetic, which can sometimes be coarser than expected.

The Idea of You (2024)

Direction: Michael Showalter
Country: USA 

The contemporary romantic comedy The Idea of You, starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, is a terrible adaptation of Robinne Lee’s novel. It’s a corny, somewhat pathetic crowd pleaser that, besides being painfully predictable, fails to rise above a pedestrian formula that is beneath Hathaway’s charm.

Directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, 2017; Spoiler Alert, 2022) and written by Jennifer Westfeldt and Showalter, the film follows Soléne (Hathaway), a 40-year-old art gallery director and single mother, who begins an unexpected romance with 24-year-old boy-band singer Hayes Campbell (Galitzine). While the story’s premise is plausible, it’s executed in a boring manner, laden with gooey pop music that is hard to endure. 

Content with the pink tonalities of its finale, the film is a bland addition to the already low-stakes tradition of rom-coms. It is hampered by flaccid attempts at humor and songs with no resonance whatsoever. Although there are some interesting ideas about age-related concerns, the writing is flat and filled with trite, flirtatious dialogue.

Determined to charm audiences, Showalter is ineptly uninspired. The film stumbles when it sacrifices specificity for generic sentiment, making it ultimately a waste of time.

Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga (2024)

Direction: George Miller
Country: Australia

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the fifth installment in the Mad Max franchise and a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), exploring the early life of Imperator Furiosa. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the title character with passionate commitment, bringing to life a new heroic figure in Gorge Miller’s post-apocalyptic universe. Kidnapped by wild motorcyclists, Furiosa falls into the hands of warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) before left at mercy of another tyrant, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). As she grows up, revenge becomes her sole focus. 

Miller does not reinvent the wheel here, and the film is not entirely satisfying. However, a few sequences may leave you holding your breath. Despite CGI imagery increasing artificiality - some scenes resemble Dantesque animated sequences - the action surpasses the basic plot. This cult-film venture oozes blood, motor oil, and biter tears in an incessant chaos set against desert backdrops. I'm just worried it's not good enough considering its potential.

Bouncing around to sometimes memorable effect, the film only soars intermittently, amassing tension ahead of a climax that might feel underwhelming. It’s consistently caustic and dynamic, although never outright challenging.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)

Direction: Ariane Louis-Seize
Country: Canada 

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, the feature debut by Montreal-based filmmaker Ariane Louis-Seize, is a fine blend of dark vampirism, comedy, and coming-of-age storytelling that stems from her need to tame her own anxieties about death. The director, who collaborated with Christine Doyon on the script, found great success in the excellent performances of Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard.

Rising star Montpetit, whose skills had come to fore in Maria Chapdelaine (2021) and Falcon Lake (2022), plays Sasha, a sensitive young vampire who refuses to kill humans for sustenance, opting instead for blood bags carefully prepared by her parents. Her rejection of her nature and subsequent diagnosis with PTSD raises concern within the family, leading her to live with her cousin Denise (Noémie O'Farrell). While forcing herself to hunt, she bumps into Paul (Bénard), a depressive, bullied, and suicidal boy with whom she falls in love, shares similar dark inner struggles. 

Sharply edited by filmmaker Stéphane Lafleur (You’re Sleeping Nicole, 2014), the film, as dark as it is touching, is filled with surprising depth, sharp humor, and melancholy strangeness. The offbeat undertones suit the dichotomy between life and death as well as the non-conformist romance. This is a fable of elegant despair, an instant entry in the vampire canon that feels refreshingly gothic. Louis-Seize opts for a stable camerawork, while the gorgeously nocturnal cinematography by Shawn Pavlin fits hand in glove. The soundtrack is the cherry on top, and Montpetit’s powerful work dazzles and moves us. The vampire tale survives!

Hit Man (2024)

Direction: Richard Linklater
Country: USA 

Flirting with film noir and sly romance, Hit Man is the latest film by Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Before trilogy), who directs it with down-to-earth awareness from an insightful script he co-wrote with the leading actor, Glen Powell. The story, based on the 2001 Texas Monthly magazine article of the same name by Skip Hollandsworth, gracefully balances tension and mordant wit. 

Powell portrays Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor and tech nerd who works undercover for the New Orleans police as a fake contract killer. His task, carried out thoroughly, consists in closing deals with the ones who try to hire him and then arrest them. Everything runs smoothly until one day he breaks the protocol to help Madison Figueroa (Adria Arjona), a desperate woman trying to escape an abusive husband. Their instant chemistry leads them into a dangerous game with unpredictable outcomes.

Flowing with a comfortable pace, the narrative reminds you how bonds between people may change you unexpectedly and drastically. Linklater, showcasing his versatility and effortless cinematic approach, has taken a familiar premise and imbued it with a unique identity, a notion explored here in a darkly comic way. Despite its unequivocally amoral nature, I found myself cheering on the protagonists’ lawlessness.

Hit Man is breezily acted, consistently funny, often charming, and noir enough to provide a great time in the theater.

The Fall Guy (2024)

Direction: David Leitch
Country: USA 

Filmed in Sydney, Australia, The Fall Guy tells the fictional story of Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), an action stunt performer madly in love with Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), a camera operator turned director. This unsung hero becomes the victim of a conspiracy headed by film star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), whom he doubles in all action scenes, and the cunning producer Gail Meyers (Hannah Waddingham). Suddenly, he realizes that it’s not just his career at risk, but his life. 

Loosely based on the 1980s television series of the same name, this self-indulgent action-packed rom-com works on steroids, overloaded by a variety of impossible acrobatics, falls, and explosions to the point of exhaustion. Drew Pearce’s script never comes together, and the unequal parts of comedy, romance, and action fail to coalesce. As a result, its excessive artifice quickly leads to tedium.

Director David Leitch, who boasts a 20-year career as a stuntman himself, previously exhibited a penchant for chaotic scenarios in Bullet Train (2022). Here, he fails to deliver a compelling satirical look at a major Hollywood production seen from behind the screen. With numerous redundant action scenes, flopped soundtrack choices, and sparse laughs, The Fall Guy feels as contrived and frivolous as the stunts it showcases, never deciding on whether to be a parody or an homage to the brave, always-invisible Hollywood stuntmen.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Direction: Wes Ball
Country: USA

This obscenely produced 10th installment in The Planet of the Apes franchise introduces a new hero having to endure trials to grow. Wes Ball, known for The Maze Runner trilogy, directed from a screenplay by Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds, 2005), and counted on Owen Teague, Kevin Durand, and Freya Allan in central roles.

While visually splendorous, showcasing grandiose empires built on ruins and impressive CGI scenes of attack and destruction, the film fails to deliver an inventive narrative and staging. This type of lavish fantasy is no more a cinematic provocation, generally falling short of excitement and occasionally resorting to sentimental bait. 

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes loses substance, relying on reheated formulas disguised as modernistic ideas throughout its quicksilver flow. With so many issues permeating the story, the kingdom of the apes sinks like the Titanic. Our response to the apes’ sad fate, once touched by authentic tragedy, is now marked by relief that this chapter is over.

The Last Stop in Yuma County (2024)

Direction: Francis Galluppi
Country: USA

An exciting feature debut by Francis Galluppi, The Last Stop in Yuma County is a revivalist neo-noir thriller reminiscent of the works of Alfred Hitchcock and The Coen Brothers. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Jim Cummings (Thunder Road, 2018; The Beta Test, 2021), who channels Norman Bates from Psycho as a knife salesman stranded at a remote Arizona diner next to a gas station, waiting for a fuel track to arrive. What should be a quick rest stop, becomes a nightmare when two dangerous bank robbers - portrayed by Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan - exactly in the same predicament, terrorize everyone around them.

Galluppi crafts the film in a classic style, creating a sense of isolated, alienated Americana. His confident direction weaves the elements into a crescendo, enhanced by a viciously torrid and claustrophobic atmosphere. However, the film ends on a somewhat contrived note. Utterly engaging until that point, this suspenseful tale of greed still guarantees a satisfying pay-off, offering a slick slice of solid entertainment in a constant state of tension. 

The Last Stop in Yuma County reminds us how gripping neo-noir thrillers can be when properly crafted, and Gallupi proves to be a bold young director to watch.

Monkey Man (2024)

Direction: Dev Patel
Country: USA / Canada / India

Dev Patel, the star of Slumdog Millionaire (2008), makes his directorial debut with Monkey Man, which he co-wrote with Paul Angunawela and John Collee. He also stars as the title character, a traumatized fighter seeking revenge for his mother's death. Jordan Peele, the director of Get Out (2017) and Nope (2022), is among the production credits, and the talented tabla player Zakir Hussein, known for his collaborations with jazz musicians, is part of the cast alongside Sharlto Copley, Vipin Sharma, and Sikandar Kher.

This neo-noir action thriller inevitably draws comparisons to John Wick and The Raid, but transports its violent rampages to India, encompassing themes such as poverty, caste injustices, discrimination of the Hijra community, cult of personality, and corruption. 

Behind the camera, Patel doesn't offer much originality beyond the specific cultural context. While the stunts are choreographed with wild athleticism, the relentless violence is exhausting, and the plot remains rudimentary. Watching this bloated and overlong film can feel as enjoyable as sitting on a cactus. 

There's unquestionably an audience here, and the film isn't completely terrible. It is just rather monotonous as the flimsy story fails to support the dramatic weight envisioned by its creators.

Lost Soulz (2024)

Direction: Katherine Propper
Country: USA

Lost Soulz, a low-key documentary-style road trip drama infused with hip-hop dreams, repressed guilt, and painful loss, marks the directorial debut of Austin-based filmmaker Katherine Propper. Featuring real-life Gen-Z dreamers, the film showcases ambition but struggles with narrative immaturity and editing issues.

Rapper and social media influencer Sauve Sidle portrays Sol, who leaves his unconscious, drug-addicted best friend behind to hit the road with a group of hip-hop musicians heading to West Texas. As expected, not everything goes smoothly, especially when emotional stability is fragile and drug use is involved.

Sol's guilt and inner conflict are not sufficiently emphasized, shifting the focus to the fun and minor tensions within the teenage group, resulting in repetitive scenes. Some characters are underdeveloped, while others stand out for their charisma. The movie’s final segment is the strongest, ending on a touching note.

You find yourself wanting to like what you see. Yet, Lost Soulz is more to be admired than enjoyed, with noticeable choppiness where fluidity was needed.

Shayda (2024)

Direction: Noora Niasari
Country: Australia

Noora Niasari's Shayda delves into a compelling drama that draws from the Iranian-Australian director's own childhood experiences. Executive produced by Cate Blanchett and featuring Zar Amir Ebrahimi - the protagonist of Holy Spider (2022) - as the title character, the film centers on a young Iranian mother fighting for custody of her six-year-old daughter (Selina Zahednia) in Australia after enduring years of domestic violence. Seeking refuge from the aggressor, Hossein (Osamah Sami), mother and daughter find shelter in a women’s refuge.

The topic is greater than the film, which, unfolding with honesty, exposes patriarchal issues in Iranian society with familiar tones while carrying a universal appeal. An unremitting sense of anxiety pervades the realistic scenes, constantly charmed by Ebrahimi’s strong presence. 

Shayda may feel a bit clunky in places but that can't stifle the sheer force of the emotion it evokes. Niasari's admirable feature debut serves as a tribute to her mother and all the courageous women of Iran.