15-year-old Nafisa (Mihad Murtada) grows up under the towering presence of her grandmother, Al-Sit (Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud), the titular matriarch who occupies the centre of the family courtyard as a fixed point around which everyone orbits. Al-Sit watches over the village’s cotton fields like a priestess guarding sacred ground, her legendary tale of killing a British general retold and reshaped by both herself and others to ensure she remains at the heart of the village’s imagination. Her authority extends beyond agriculture into the spiritual: survival depends on the careful preservation of tradition, both in the purity of the cotton seeds and the girls who pick them. Yet she is far from austere: with her granddaughter, she laughs and conspires, sneaks spoonfuls of sugar despite her diabetes, and teases her daughter-in-law’s cooking. These flashes of mischief cement her control not through respect alone, but through the intimacy and kinship of a tight-knit community.

When her reign is challenged by Bilal (Mohamed Musa), a businessman and diasporic heir arriving from London with genetically modified cotton seeds and a familiar blueprint of modernisation, the village’s delicate equilibrium begins to tilt. His decision to take up residence in the master bedroom of the crumbling colonial mansion – the very site of Al-Sit’s supposed triumph over the General – is a symbolic coup that positions himself within the architecture of past power while dangling a vision of the future that bypasses the old queen entirely. Avoiding the easy binary of tradition versus modernity, Cotton Queen unveils a world where myth, authority and the everyday are tightly interwoven. Its real tension lies not in taking sides, but in navigating the tangled threads of past, present and future – threads Nafisa must stitch into a fabric she can finally call her own.

Christina Yang

Cotton Queen does not have a release date yet.

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The world Jackman conjures is deliberately strange. Richard E Grant presides as Birdman, a grotesque religious figure whose followers skulk about in beaked masks and flowing red capes, like papal henchmen transplanted from a steampunk dystopia. In this society, women reading is branded witchcraft – a running gag that grows darker with repetition. The framework, inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, is familiar enough. Yet Jackman’s inversion is curious: Scheherazade told stories to save herself; here, her counterpart Cherry is passive, waiting while Hero does the clever work on her behalf. To strip a female character of such agency and recast her as a damsel in distress – even if rescued by another woman – feels oddly regressive for a film so intent on proclaiming its feminism.

Where the feature lacks subtlety, it leans heavily on spectacle. Style frequently overwhelms substance, with every visual flourish demanding attention and each scene staged to impress. The costuming is as extravagant as it is anachronistic: Cherry drifts through scenes in white gowns that belong on a Maison Margiela runway, while Manfred’s flamboyant looks teeter on the edge of camp. In performance, Galitzine is the standout, revelling in his anti-Prince Charming role with a deeply unsettling swagger, while Corrin is constrained by exposition-heavy lines that tell rather than show.

Ultimately, 100 Nights of Hero wears its intentions in capital letters: the power of stories, women’s resistance and the absurdities of patriarchy. But by hammering every point home, it leaves little room for wit, nuance or discovery. What should feel like a bold feminist reimagining ends up closer to a coming-of-age parable.

Christina Yang

100 Nights of Hero does not have a release date yet.

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Silent Friend gives us a triptych in the form of one film, as it simultaneously follows three characters. Such a patchwork composition requires tremendous focus – it takes a while to put all those puzzles together, but it’s intellectual fun, ready to be unpacked by the audience. There is no linear order, so the lack of structure is reminiscent of Mario Vargas Llosa’s writing style. It is up to the viewers how much they will unscramble during the first watch. 

Firstly, we are acquainted with a neuroscientist (played by the irreplaceable Tony Leung), who arrives at a German university right before the COVID outbreak to work on his project exploring the minds of babies. It will only be a matter of time before he exchanges babies for trees. Secondly, Silent Friend starts following a young man (in an amusing performance from Enzo Brumm), who, after becoming enamoured by a girl while beginning his studies in 1972, starts watching over her geranium. Thirdly, in 1908, we meet the university’s first female student (charismatic Luna Wedler), who embarks on her studies by intertwining photography with botany.

Those three study/work in the same university building, which has developed over the years, and experiment in the same botanical garden. This place is left rather unchanged during the course of the film’s events. Our three protagonists are connected by the aspirational nature of their personalities. All of them – rather unexpectedly – become invested in searching the invisible interconnections between humans and nature. By experimenting, all of them start finding solace in the enduring power of trees and plants, which become their eponymous silent friends. To some extent, such storytelling echoes David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (also adapted as a film), where protagonists from various eras and places were reincarnations of the previous narrators. 

The greatest sin of Silent Friend is how it abruptly cuts two out of three storylines (only Leung’s timeline is somewhat concluded). One can defend such a decision by arguing that all three stories are actual projections of the Gingko tree’s memories. It has been able to observe each character’s misadventures. Once they left, the tree lost “sight” of them. It’s an immersive project, but despite its immense length (two hours and 30 minutes), one feels it is unfinished, hurried and unpolished. It’s an uncut gem, but still a gem. 

Jan Tracz

Silent Friend does not have a release date yet.

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Micro-influencer Meiyun (Xin Zhilei) leads a solitary life of restraint, running from a troubled past that comes back to haunt her. During a pregnancy checkup, she crosses paths with her former lover Baoshu (Zhang Songwen), who is sick with stage IV stomach cancer. What unfolds is a series of unfortunate events that call into question the morals and motivations of Shangjun’s two estranged antiheroes.

Initial impressions of the film evoke those of Past Lives, which shares a similar setup surrounding the reunion and bondage of a pair with significant chemistry for one another. Though in The Sun Rises on Us All, this semblance quickly derails into a heavy display of resentment, fuelled by feelings of unresolved guilt and sacrifice, and an ache for atonement. A complete juxtaposition of Celine Song’s unrequited love story, it is revealed that Baoshu spent time in jail after taking the blame for a crime Meiyun committed.

Zhilei masterfully jumps between cold, detached observer hiding cowardice in the discomfort of awkward, prolonged silence and sweaty, shaky panic in some of the film’s most heightened moments. Songwen’s performance is equally as impressive, comfortably juxtaposing his character’s frustrations in sickness and in health through aggressive physicality and sorrowful monologues with his co-lead.

There are many astonishing, anxiety-inducing scenarios of Shakespearean melodrama that at times obstruct the generally grounded, documentary-style look and feel of Shangjun’s contemporary setting. Still, cinematographer Kim Hyunseok manages to elevate this setting by enhancing both the intimate and invasive nature of the reunion. Subjects are for the most part centre frame on camera, individual introspection on view. They are otherwise positioned opposite one another, the spotlight turned on the rift between the two lost souls.

The Sun Rises on Us All is not for the weak; it risks alienating with its relentless despair. However, Cai Shangjun reaffirms himself as a fearless storyteller with a sharp eye for fractured humanity.

Douglas Jardim

The Sun Rises on Us All does not have a release date yet.

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Azorín is clearly preoccupied with parallels – between the tentative exchanges of the friends and their Roman soldier counterparts, Pompeii (Pavle Cemerikic) and Aurelius (Oussama Asfaraah), who appear as figures half-rooted in fantasy and half in history. They, too, are young and uncertain, burdened with worries about family and the ongoing war. At times, these echoes strike with force: fleeting conversations about death, delivered with the overconfident seriousness of youth while leaping across stones, or glimpses of soldiers deemed unfit to serve. The seamless continuity of the night is another subtle touch – the sky darkens almost imperceptibly, and morning arrives just as gently, underscoring the sense of time folding back on itself.

Yet the central relationship never fully resonates. A lengthy monologue in which António chastises Jota for failing to live up to his own aspirations is emblematic of the problem. Delivered in one stretch, the speech feels self-conscious and lands with little emotional weight. Jota’s half-hearted listening only highlights the hollowness of the moment, and the muted resolution that follows is anticlimactic.

Visually, too, the setting promises more than it delivers. Midnight baths, drifting steam, torchlit ruins – all suggest sensual mystery. But Azorín’s camera feels constrained. Compositions quickly grow repetitive, evoking the stasis of a filmed play or a student exercise rather than cinema alive with possibility. However technically demanding the shoot may have been, the imagery soon stagnates, its stillness sliding into monotony.

Even so, Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes is not without flashes of something richer. Azorín shows a sensitivity to history’s lingering presence and to the way young men try on philosophies as easily as they try on bravado. The film shines in these fleeting moments of promise, but in the end, Thebes feels only half-conquered.

Christina Yang

Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes does not have a release date yet.

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The entire situation is reminiscent of a bus accident described by Nathan Thrall in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. After all, both tragedies happened in real life. But Rajab’s inevitable demise is not a misfortune, not an unexpected domino effect, not a coincidence, but a repercussion of the current Israeli invasion. In the film, the on-screen team does everything to help Hind, yet it’s not that simple: so many procedures await them and getting the green light to send an ambulance seems like a Kafkaquese chore. Omar will shout, Sana (a wondrous Saja Kilani) will faint, while Mahdi (tense as a cat on a hot, tin roof, Amer Hlehel), a supervisor responsible for his rescuers, will play a shooting game on his smartphone to ease the stress.

Their inaudible sound of helplessness consequently evolves to a collective bellow of sorrow. All of it is caused by the vulnerable, terrified, stray, rambling and powerless voice of Hind Rajab, which we also hear on screen – instead of hiring a child actor, Ben Hania was determined enough to use the original recordings and implement them in her drama. It’s almost impossible to tell if the actors’ reactions are their own emotional responses or if we can still call it a performance. Just like them, we will also hear Rajab’s final words. And then there’s only grim silence left.

For some cynics in Venice, Ben Hania’s recent feature seemed like a way to monetise someone’s pain and, ultimately, the deaths of several people. Such a claim couldn’t have been further from the truth – what the director does instead is allow every viewer, no matter their personal beliefs and opinions, to participate in this unfair struggle to save an innocent human being. What will last after watching The Voice is Hind Rajab’s smile, seen in a few photos of possibly the most guiltless victim out of them all. And, a memory about her will live for many years to come. When we look at her cheerful countenance, a head full of dreams, a human being for whom infinite possibilities await, we understand that we failed as a species.

Ben Hania keeps reminding us that people will only react when confronted with an individual tragedy. Reading that every day, numerous people presumably die in Gaza makes us used to the number, makes the evil seem totally banal, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt. But watching a moment when the vital energy slowly leaves Hind’s body is something else. All of it jogs our memory about the reality of war – God knows how many Hind Rajabs are still there and await an ambulance to come. The feature’s most astonishing triumph is that it changes the audience’s optics. Now we want to save them all, even if we’re somewhere else, only watching Ben Hania’s tour de force in a Venice cinema. 

Jan Tracz

The Voice of Hind Rajab does not have a release date yet.

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Elisa (Barbara Ronchi) spends her time in a convalescent centre. She works at a local coffee place, attends some lectures and meets with her father every two weeks (he’s the one visiting her). Elisa seems perfectly normal; however, in these situations, there is always a “but”. As we learn right at the beginning, there’s a reason why our protagonist leads this almost rural, excluded life. That’s right – she brutally killed her sister ten years ago.

Elisa insists she doesn’t remember anything, so she immediately becomes a research object for a visiting professor (Roschdy Zem), also a criminologist. During their meetings, the past gradually emerges, like a diver who has lost himself at the bottom of the sea. Both actors skillfully increase the tension with each on-screen session. It begins like a meeting with a newly met friend and ends like an unnerving break-up.

Away from the flashbacks, which offer some provocative insights into the protagonist’s toxic past, Elisa is awkwardly hollow. As dark as it might sound, killing her sister was apparently the best thing that had happened in her entire life. Everything else – especially the modern timeline – isn’t as compelling. Following Elisa in her mind games doesn’t promise much and gives the audience even less. At some point, thanks to the clever cinematography that allows us to focus on Ronchi’s ambiguous countenance, we understand more about Elisa than the on-screen character. This incongruity tears down the veil of immersion. We’re already aware of what lies deeply hidden in her head; it’s just a simple deduction.

The same cannot be said about her psychologist or beloved father – they act like children lost in a crowd, unable to decipher Elisa’s reasoning behind her actions. There are a few suggestions implying she was more or less aware during committing the crime, but for unknown reasons, the others cannot find the necessary clues.

With more of the mystery being revealed, the less we trust that this is going in any reasonable direction. And, there is nothing worse for fans of crime mysteries than a film that fails not only to surprise the audience, but also to examine its character’s modus operandi with adequate care. No one expected another Fincher-like Gone Girl. Yet, what we still have is a drama about settling accounts with the past, although Elisa’s psychological layer should have been honed more carefully.

Jan Tracz

Elisa does not have a release date yet.

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Threaded through this professional drudgery is the omnipresent drone of the 24-hour news cycle. The television or radio is almost always on in the background, churning out reports of crime, corruption, natural disaster and ecological collapse. Human Resource favours restrained performances and cool, muted tones – one poignant scene shows Fren’s husband (Paopetch Jarernsuk) biting into an apple while a broadcast solemnly informs viewers that apples contain the highest concentration of microplastics of any fruit. Thamrongrattanarit leaves it ambiguous: is the world truly in freefall, or is it the endless saturation of bad news that makes life feel unbearable? Either way, it weighs heavily on Fren, particularly when she considers whether to bring a child into such a world.

Her husband, meanwhile, offers a subtler complication. They are not wealthy, but belong to a comfortable managerial stratum that survives by cultivating insider connections – the kind that tip you off that tap water is contaminated before the news becomes public. He is genial, even tender: a devoted partner, a kindly son-in-law, and the type of man who would make a decent father. Yet his eagerness to remain within the “in group” only sharpens Fren’s unease about the compromises required to preserve stability in such precarious times.

Thamrongrattanarit distills the small routines of work and home into a portrait of a generation suspended between private hopes and collective dread. Ultimately, Human Resource is less about individual characters than about the condition of living when the future feels increasingly untenable – a sombre meditation on life in the face of decline.

Christina Yang

Human Resource does not have a release date yet.

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The convent setting is captured with a painter’s eye: green-shuttered windows provide a subdued backdrop until, in one striking sequence, they flare into luminous panels of colour as Teresa rages at Sister Agnieska (Sylvia Hoeks) when she uncovers her situation. The confession booth, with its dark reds and heavy wooden browns, adds an ominous weight to these spaces, contrasting sharply with the softer greens and pastels elsewhere, emphasising the gravity of the private confessions and moral reckonings that take place within. The effect – somewhere between stained glass and stage lighting – transforms her fury into something both sacred and frightening. The ceiling fans rarely stop turning, their soft whirring filling scenes with a sense of quiet, everyday life. 

The film’s treatment of unplanned pregnancies is probing and nuanced, tracing the burdens of conscience and the elusiveness of easy answers as Teresa’s steadfast moral rigour clashes with her institutional obligations and her sense of responsibility towards her junior sister. What makes Mitevska’s vision compelling is its focus on hesitation rather than certainty. We know the monumental role Teresa will eventually occupy, but here she is portrayed as a woman caught between institutional duty and the perilous leap into something unknown. Rapace embodies her with brisk directness: her answers to difficult questions are clipped, uncompromising and almost brusque. It is a performance that strips away the saintly aura and replaces it with something colder, more unsettling. Her steely exchanges with an elderly nun – who calls her “Mother” while openly questioning her judgement – underline the strangeness of her position: a young woman already burdened with the weight and title of seniority. Meanwhile, her morning ritual of sending schoolgirls in pink uniforms to prayer – with hugs, geography lessons, and firm yet gentle instruction – reveals a more human side of the younger Teresa’s authority, rounding out a self-contained and multidimensional portrait of one of the most prolific women of the 20^th century.

Christina Yang

Mother does not have a release date yet.

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The road trip format carries a long cinematic history of self-discovery, of unlikely mentors finding in a younger companion some half-recognised version of themselves. Cavalli leans into this tradition only to invert it, as Holly as the ghost of her past, is no metaphorical mirror but an actual child strapped into the passenger seat. What might, in a conventional film, become a bittersweet exchange of wisdom across generations instead curdles into a folie à deux. Porcaroli leans into a childlike naïveté with flashes of petulance and a distinct detachment from her surroundings to deliver a performance that is both compelling and uncomfortably precise in its portrait of a generation.

Visually, there is a certain universality in the anonymous strips of highway, washed-out motels, and the doubling effect of Holly and Arabella in similar white outfits creates an uncanny blur between them despite their age difference. Yet the atmosphere alone can’t carry the film. As The Kidnapping of Arabella moves into its second half, the narrative begins to drift, and the impromptu road trip soon runs out of steam, despite being peppered with oddballs and chance encounters. As the parade of eccentrics loses its novelty, the story’s ambitions wane before grinding to a halt when the central relationship unravels. Despite Porcaroli’s sharp, unsparing performance and the screenplay’s cleverly subversive ideas, the execution ultimately lets it down.

Christina Yang

The Kidnapping of Arabella does not have a release date yet.

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