The Film Verdict
17 stories
The Film VerdictEuropeThe Odds A near miraculous thing happens in the opening minutes of Kewa Oni’s The Odds , which premiered at FIC Luanda. A young man helps another man who is stuck in a toilet without tissue paper.
The Film VerdictEuropeSapeur: The Great Scam The Sapeur could be a myth if he wasn’t as genuine as the crocodile-skin shoes on his feet. In the opening moments of the film Sapeur: A Grande Burla , ( Sapeur: The Great Scam in English), a brood…
The Film VerdictEuropeLeipzig 2026: The Verdict At the award ceremony of the 69th edition of DOK Leipzig in Germany, the top Golden Dove awards in the feature-length International Documentary and the International Short Film sections went to films…
The Film VerdictEuropeFIC Luanda Festival Director Jorge Cohen on Restarting the Angolan Film Festival For over a decade, FIC Luanda, the film festival based in the Angolan capital, was on a hiatus. This year it returned from October 28 to November 2 under the leadership of Jorge Cohen, its newly…
The Film VerdictEuropeHotel Utopia An ambitious scheme to establish an idyllic community of “digital nomads” in a crumbling former ski resort hotel in Bulgaria is the subject of Hotel Utopia , an engaging first full-length feature by…
The Film VerdictEuropeFree Zone Abtin Parsa, a Iranian young anarchist activist, is angry that people are dancing in an Athens square while his friends are in prison in Iran. An older activist disagrees.
The Film VerdictEuropeBára: Diary of a Rock Star A successful rock singer can perform before thousands of fans and still struggle to pay the bills, keep her marriages together and raise kids.
The Film VerdictEuropeHeat When Jacqueline Zünd premiered her fiction debut Don’t Let the Sun in Locarno in 2025, it was mentioned that it came about while she was doing research for a separate, documentary project.
The Film VerdictEuropeFor Life A sperm sample has only a limited time to remain viable outside the human body. For Hind, a Palestinian woman whose husband has spent more than two decades in the Israeli prison system, her chance to…
The Film VerdictEuropeConcrete Land In Asmahan Bkerat’s narratively rich and timely feature debut documentary Concrete Land , displacement does not begin and end at the border of a nation state.
The Film VerdictEuropeDOK Leipzig’s New Director Ola Staszel on Why Documentaries Are More Important Than Ever In her first edition at the helm of DOK Leipzig, Ola Staszel discusses challenging stereotypes about eastern Germany, the political sensitivities surrounding films about Palestine, and the growing…
The Film VerdictEuropeMagic Atlas Acclaimed Chinese multimedia artist Sun Xun’s feature animation debut about a magician captured by tyrants is an exquisitely crafted vision of art and its possibilities for radical freedom from…
The Film VerdictEurope1.5°C: Pyropolitics and the New World The crackle of fire, with its primal familiarity, takes on an urgent edge of apocalyptic warning in 1.5°C: Pyropolitics and the New World , which immerses us in documentary footage of the wildfires…
The Film VerdictEuropeBlossoming Polish filmmaker Kamila Serwicka tackles a vulnerably personal subject in her feature documentary debut Blossoming with candour and remarkable sensitivity, charting the emotional landscape of her…
The Film VerdictEuropeSumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing In Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing , Japanese-American director Erik Shirai offers fascinating, rare and surprisingly sensitive insight into the closed, masculine world of sumo wrestling, and the daily…
The Film VerdictEuropeClosure Polish director Michal Marczak established himself as a documentarian with a sensitive, intuitive ability to tap into the rhythms and flow of group dynamics and the youthful idealism of radical…
The Film VerdictEuropeClayface Stripping a comic-book villain from his heroic nemesis can be tricky business: Sony/Marvel’s attempts to dip into Spider-Man’s storied rogue’s gallery for stand-alone adventures gave the world such…
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