Manas (2025)

Direction: Marianna Brennand
Country: Brazil 

Debut filmmaker Marianna Brennand co-wrote and directed Manas, a raw, devastating, and deeply somber drama film that lays bare impaired family ties and cruel, traumatic adolescence in the isolated city of Marajó in Brazil’s Amazon region. The story sheds light on an abominable reality, examining cycles of family dysfunction that give rise to a different kind of horror.

We follow 13-year-old Marcielle (Jamilli Correa), who abruptly loses her innocence and trust after confronting sexual abuse within her own family. What’s most harrowing is the collective silence that surrounds her: relatives, church members, and the broader community are all aware of the crimes yet choose to look away.

The subject matter alone is emotionally shattering, but Brennand amplifies its impact through stark, eloquent imagery that speaks louder than words. The setting’s haunting isolation makes everything feel even more suffocating and real.

Measured in pace but unrelenting in power, this quietly distressing film is revolting, heartbreaking, and profoundly compelling. It’s not an easy watch, but Manas is an essential one—an urgent act of courage by a fearless filmmaker, carried by performances of striking emotional truth.

A Little Prayer (2025)

Direction: Angus MacLachlan
Country: USA

From Junebug (2005) writer Angus MacLachlan comes A Little Prayer, a bittersweet meditation on family, faith, and fracture. The film portrays the delicate dynamics within an American family with more seriousness than humor, revealing a humanity so genuine that its imperfections feel wholly forgivable.

The rigorously streamlined scrip follows Bill Brass (David Strathairn), a veteran and successful metal-sheet company owner who is very fond of his kindhearted daughter-in-law, Tammy (Jane Levy). He gets consumed by distress when he finds out that his alcoholic son, David (Will Pullen), is having an affair with one of his employees. His sense of stability unravels when he discovers that his troubled, alcoholic son, David (Will Pullen), is having an affair with one of his employees. At the same time, his emotionally fragile daughter, Patti (Anna Camp), returns home after another quarrel with her drug-dealer husband. Strathairn’s quiet dignity makes Bill’s private anguish palpable, while Celia Weston brings warmth and gentle humor as his wife, Venida.

A Little Prayer is a sincere, heartfelt, and beautifully restrained drama. Its format might feel familiar, but this is an affecting story that brings an emotional specificity to each scene. Balancing heartache and grace, the film captures the tragic and the beautiful facets of family life with rare empathy and control.

Suze (2025)

Direction: Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart
Country: Canada

Married couple Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart’s sophomore feature, Suze, is a smartly observed excavation of dependent single parenthood, middle-aged crisis, conflicted choices, and the unfulfilled expectations of youth.

Super-protective single mother Susan (Michaela Watkins), navigating the challenges of perimenopause, finds herself adrift when her daughter Brooke (Sara Waisglass) leaves home to attend university in Montreal. To her dismay, she unexpectedly maintains contact with Brooke’s blunt, unfiltered boyfriend, Gage (Charlie Gillespie), whom she can barely tolerate.

Flawed yet sympathetic, Suze is intimately aligned with its topics, hitting the sweet spot between awkward and affecting. Clark and Stewart’s sharp understanding of their characters’ inner lives makes the film consistently engaging, even when dealing with uncomfortable truths. Watkins delivers one of her most rounded performances, finding humor and heart in Susan’s vulnerability, while the film’s charming attention to small details makes the film easy to watch and like. 

If there’s one minor irritation, it’s how often the title name is repeated throughout — but even that can’t dull the film’s gentle wit and emotional honesty.

Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

Direction: Spike Lee
Country: USA 

Based on Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963), Highest 2 Lowest marks another misguided adaptation from Spike Lee, following his failed take on Oldboy (2013). It reunites him with Denzel Washington after 19 years, their last collaboration being Inside Man (2006), preceded by Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992), and He Got Game (1998). 

The story centers on David King (Washington), a Bronx-born music mogul whose life spirals when his teenage son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), is kidnapped for a ransom of $17.5 million. Screenwriter Alan Fox transplants Kurosawa’s tale into the American music industry, touching on themes of friendship, family, moral dilemma, and career. Yet the staging is so deficient and uninspired that the film never rises above mediocrity.

Undercutting the drama is a faulty score by Howard Drossin and Fergus McCreadie, which consistently fails to heighten tension, alongside an unappealing soundtrack featuring tracks by ASAP Rocky (who also stars) and Jensen McRae. The lone exception is a live performance by the late Latin-jazz pianist Eddie Palmieri, whose rendition of “Puerto Rico” stands out as a poignant posthumous tribute.

Instead of three-dimensional characters, Highest 2 Lowest gives us wax ones with zero chemistry. Nobody is really stepping outside their comfort zones. Therefore, when you should be clenching your fists with emotion, you only end up shrugging as everything seems unnaturally staged. 

Dragged out over two-plus formulaic hours, the film underscores Lee’s vertiginous decline. He has never made films in a predictable way, but here he is once again a hostage of his own misconceptions.

Familiar Touch (2025)

Direction: Sarah Friedland
Country: USA 

Familiar Touch, the first feature by 33-year-old Sarah Friedland, draws inspiration from the filmmaker's dementia-stricken grandmother. Through carefully composed frames, Friedland depicts a challenging reality with the help of 80-year-old actress Kathleen Chalfant, whose performance stands as a career highlight. Their collaboration yields a delicate, sensitive, and luminous portrait of aging.

Avoiding melodrama, the story follows Brooklyn-based octogenarian Ruth Goldman (Chalfant), who enters a nursing home after a gradual psychological decline. Filmed with precision, the slow-paced, documentary-like staging captures gestures, smiles, and silences that feel authentic, challenging clichés and striking with sobriety and purity. Though it is difficult to witness the decline of an independent woman, Familiar Touch remains warm and affirming. 

Friedland’s script doesn’t take us to a sticky-sweat swamp of tears and wild emotions, but somewhere subtler than that, without sacrificing genuine emotion. This is a small film, but one that gets to the heart with profound affection.

Late Shift (2025)

Direction: Petra Volpe
Country: Switzerland / Germany

Drawing inspiration from a detective novel by Madeline Calvelage, a young German nurse, Swiss screenwriter and director Petra Volpe delivers one of the most frighteningly believable, powerful, and necessary medical dramas in recent memory. Late Shift—a love letter to all nurses with heart—offers an enthralling experience that breathes authenticity and leaves you emotionally drained by its end.

Every frame rings true, with Leonie Benesch (The Teachers’ Lounge, 2023) delivering a stirring performance as a surgical nurse working at a demanding, chronically understaffed hospital. During an unforgiving night shift, she patiently engages with patients and their families, managing the relentless stress with quiet resilience—though certain atypical situations push her perilously close to collapse.

Rich in both humanity and tension, Late Shift keeps viewers constantly on edge, propelled by a taut script, assured direction, and flawless acting. The patients’ stories, drawn from situations Volpe witnessed while preparing the film as well as some personal experiences, deepen the film’s emotional resonance while grounding its drama in reality. 

You won’t find a more stressful cinematic rollercoaster this year—and its haunting finale continues to linger long after the credits roll.

Shambhala (2024)

Direction: Min Bahadur Bham
Country: Nepal / China / other

The fourth feature by Nepalese filmmaker Min Bahadur Bham is a lovely, feminist, and evocative work set in a small Tibetan Himalayan village, where modesty becomes its greatest strength. This finely tuned drama, told with gentle intimacy, follows Pema (Thinley Lhamo), a joyful bride whose life unravels after rumors circulate that she betrayed her beloved farmer husband, Tashi (Tenzin Dalha). In their culture, polyandry is customary—by marrying Tashi, she also became the wife of his two brothers: Karma (Sonam Topden), a devoted monk, and Dawa (Karma Wangyal Gurung), still just a boy. Determined to clear her name and preserve her honor, Pema sets out across the frozen mountains to find Tashi.

Shambhala lingers at times, but its minimalist narrative is as hypnotically captivating as it is culturally significant. It unfolds as a melancholic yet entrancing Himalayan ballad about the intricacies of human relationships and the preciousness of ancient traditions. The sweeping mountain vistas and delicate musical passages imbue the film with a quiet magnetism, while Lhamo’s grounded, deeply felt performance roots it in authenticity. The result is a work that expresses gratitude for life, stirs emotion from within, and offers a final, liberating sense of release.

Sorry, Baby (2025)

Direction: Eva Victor
Country: USA

The power of American independent film is on full display in Eva Vitor’s largely autobiographical feature debut Sorry, Baby, a deft blend of black comedy and drama laced with corrosive humor and covert horror. Produced by Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, 2016), the film—low-key yet strikingly authentic—conveys not only the devastating trauma and far-reaching consequences of a sexual assault endured by a literature grad student at her university, but also the tenderness and sustenance of genuine friendship. 

Victor, who also wrote and stars, is utterly convincing as the wounded Agnes; her emotions, demeanor, and concerns carry such integrity that they feel lived-in. Yet, there’s often the haunting sense that she’s teetering on the edge of a precipice. 

Tough and achingly beautiful, Sorry, Baby plays like a letter of apology to all the women forced to navigate the long road of emotional repair while their attackers walked free. At once as intimate as a sigh and as urgent as a klaxon, this symphony of shame, confusion, and resilience is driven by stellar performances—Naomi Ackie shines alongside Victor—and a compelling non-linear structure that gradually unearths and absorbs the emotional core of the story.

Suspended Time (2025)

Direction: Olivier Assayas
Country: France

Olivier Assayas is no ordinary director. Irma Vep (1996), Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016) are unforgettable works that remain etched in my mind. Suspended Time, however—a personal pandemic-era product—never approaches those heights.

In this uneven docu-dramedy set during Covid, the French filmmaker revisits the confinement with his brother in their childhood home in the countryside of Essonne. Vincent Macaigne plays Paul Berger—Assayas’ on-screen “double”—an anxious, neurotic filmmaker who seeks occasional relief in therapy, while Micha Lescot—carrying a Howard Stern-like arrogance— plays his rock-critic brother Etienne. 

The brothers’ tensions are tempered by their partners, Morgane (Nine d’Urso) and Carol (Nora Hamzawi), and evenings bring a temporary peace—dinners and drinks outdoors soften the edges—only for irritations to resurface the next morning. These domestic rhythms are intercut with lyrical, autobiographical voiceovers from Assayas himself.

Covid did these things, with people suddenly needing to tell a lot about themselves. Caught in the web of the past, the film struggles to move beyond the trivial, offering little more than a handful of mildly awkward domestic moments. The “artsy” dialogues, drifting toward tedium, rob the film of momentum. Suspended Time quickly goes stale—a talkative, pretentious, and overly nostalgic trifle that leaves annoyance lingering longer than any genuine insight or emotional connection.

Great Absence (2025)

Direction: Kei Chikaura
Country: Japan 

Inspired by Japanese director Kai Chikaura’s real-life experiences, Great Absence is an affecting and thoroughly worthwhile film that tackles a deeply sensitive subject: dementia. Told through a bravely impressionistic lens, the film avoids melodrama and sentimentality, instead centering on compassion and forgiveness. The long-standing estrangement between a father and son—who haven’t seen each other in 25 years—is reframed when the father is struck by a debilitating mental illness. 

Chikaura, who shot the film entirely on 35mm, invests each move with sincerity and emotional clarity, aided by riveting performances from Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses, 1976; Empire of Passion, 1978) and Mirai Moriyama (The Drudgery Train, 2012). Blending documentary-like realism with meticulous craftsmanship, the director occasionally leaves some narrative details ambiguous but never lapses into heavy-handed emotion.

With its sensitive and compassionate storytelling, Great Absence gradually breaks your heart. Methodically paced and quietly powerful, it offers a moving, understated experience for viewers open to subtlety. There’s a warmth to this film—a rhythm all its own—that lingers long after the credits roll. 

The Sparrow in the Chimney (2025)

Direction: Ramon Zürcher
Country: Switzerland

In this relentlessly bleak drama written and directed by Ramon Zürcher and produced by his brother Silvan Zürcher, tensions within a dysfunctional Swiss family reach unbearable levels. Without much filter, The Sparrow in the Chimney—the final installment in their “animal” trilogy—goes everywhere except somewhere truly interesting, offering instead a strange sense of liberation that feels excruciatingly numbing. The film is so deliberate and self-absorbed, so enamored with its own bitterness, that it loses sight of emotional resonance. 

Controlling and self-destructive, Karen (Maren Eggert) harbors deep resentment toward her outgoing, if traumatized, sister Jule (Britta Hammelstein), and secretly spies on her husband. Her youngest son, Leon (Ilya Bultmann)—a domestic caretaker of sorts—is relentlessly bullied. Her eldest daughter, Johanna (Lea Zoë Voss), is openly defiant and full of disdain. To complete the dismal picture, her husband Markus (Andreas Döhler) is having an affair with their arsonist neighbor Liv (Luise Heyer), who develops a strange, unsettling bond with Karen. The narrative unfolds over two intense days.

Influenced by David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and echoing the bleak universes of Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl, Zürcher fails to justify the film’s pervasive unpleasantness with any fresh insight. Instead, in his eagerness to provoke through both micro and macro aggressions, he more often misses than hits. There’s a lingering sense of perversion that ultimately feels exploitative rather than illuminating, as the film seems to bully its audience with its simmering anger, paranoia, and contempt. 

As sordid as it is absurdly overblown, The Sparrow in the Chimney descends into a cruel tangle of hidden desires and family secrets that collapse in a wretched avalanche of excess.

Queens (2024)

Direction: Klaudia Reynicke
Country: Peru / Switzerland / Spain

Set in political restless Lima, Peru, in 1992, Queens follows two teenage sisters, Aurora (Luana Vega) and Lucia (Abril Gjurinovic), who unexpectedly reconnect with their absent father, Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), just as their mother, Elena (Jimena Lindo), plans to leave the country for good. The elusive father—well-intentioned yet pathological liar—is the most compelling aspect of a drama that never fully excels in any department. 

Given the layered motivations and despite director/co-writer Claudia Reynike's efforts to achieve a sense of balance and restraint, it's unfortunate that the script doesn't go in for more tension and emotional weight. It all feels very prosaic and routine, while the painstaking lengths prevent a genuine connection with the characters. In many occasions, the lack of dramatic spark can't be overlooked, and I wish the director had taken more advantage of potentially tense dynamics. Queens didn’t do much for me.

Unicorns (2025)

Direction: James Krishna Floyd, Sally El Hosaini
Country: UK

Ben Hardy and Jason Patel star in Unicorns, a British queer drama directed by James Krishna Floyd— who also penned the script—and Sally El Hosaini (The Swimmers, 2022). The story revolves around the serendipitous relationship between Luke (Hardy), a single father from Essex who works as a mechanic, and Aysha (Patel), a drag queen striving for artistic recognition.

The film presents a respectful and sincere narrative, told with honesty and restraint, though it takes a quieter approach than one might expect—even when going to unsettling places. It’s a cross-cultural love story marked by rivalry, cruelty, and prejudice, elevated by empathetic and grounded performances from its leads.

Straddling the line between kitschy flair and indie sensibility, the filmmakers inject the familiar premise with insight and intimacy. Most notably, the film avoids becoming overly sentimental or obnoxiously cautionary. Not particularly groundbreaking, Unicorns takes an eventful route to a predictable destination. It’s a plot you can see coming once the main characters are in place.

The Life of Chuck (2025)

Direction: Mike Flanagan
Country: USA 

Adapted from a Stephen King’s short story, Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck shows a genuine interest in its profound themes, emerging as a funny, uncynical, and humanist apocalyptic comedy-drama with a beautiful message. The film is divided into three parts, each exploring a different period in Chuck's life, with distinct aesthetics, tone, and aspect ratio. Told in reverse order, the story is structurally triumphant, channeling Jordan Peele, Damien Chazelle, and Frank Capra, as the initial apocalyptic section gives way to a jubilant five-minute dance scene followed by a moving coming-of-age drama.

Tom Hiddleston (Archipelago, 2010; Thor: Ragnarok, 2017) stands out from the cast, delivering a magnetic performance full of charisma, while Flanagan handles it all in a disarmingly compelling way. With tact, tenderness, and a contagious sense of rhythm, The Life of Chuck has that rare ability to root itself in the viewer’s mind, gracefully alternating between levity and emotional weight, and embracing the importance—and power—of living life to its fullest.

Despite some classicism in the staging, the film never weakens because the story is truly special. It’s a lusciously gentle journey through a life of a common man, evoking familiar tones while offering its own distinctive touch.

April (2025)

Direction: Dea Kulumbegashvili
Country: Georgia 

Produced by Luca Guadagnino (Call me By Your Name, 2017) and directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili (Beginning, 2020), who strives to go beyond the simple exposition of a controversial topic, April denounces patriarchal abuses in the Georgian countryside through long shots and anguished tones. 

The plot follows Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an experienced obstetrician accused of performing illegal abortions in the village. Solitary, she does what she must, sometimes becoming a stranger to herself. Responsibility clashes with the law in a quiet and lugubrious character study, where sinister realities can morph into quirky surrealism. This is a tough cookie of a film—visually jarring and emotionally despondent, as if Christian Mungiu had joined forces with Carlos Reygadas in ambiguous gestures filled with raw authenticity and layered metaphor. 

Substance prevails over form in a film where unspoken fear, rage, and alienation permeate the oppressive cinematic space. At times, it’s almost too uncomfortable to endure, with brutality and fragility in constant confrontation, making for a slow-paced experience that, while laudable in intention, often feels overwhelmingly static. 

One of the oddest films I’ve seen lately, April wasn’t a pleasant experience for me, but I do understand its point. I tolerated its radical, open-to-question aesthetics to learn more about the rebelliousness and inner decay of its main character. A shame that its art-house tactics tarnish much of the story’s emotional impact.

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.