arthouse

Perceptions are personal. I couldn’t possibly know what you’d think Chinese drama Send Me to the Clouds would look like from reading a plot synopsis. What I do know, having seen the movie, is that it’s not going to be what you expect.…

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a romantic gothic drama that will make viewers hearts sing and break in almost equal measure. It’s the tale of two lovers from different walks of life. They are brought together through a lie yet ultimately…

French writer-director Francois Ozon (Double Lover, In the House) dials down his extreme, transgressive kinks but not his ability to grip with By the Grace of God, a traditional yet still stirring drama. Told in three acts, with each one…

There are ‘unique’ directors, and then there’s Peter Strickland. The Berkshire-born auteur is nothing if not a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. His brilliant breakout Berberian Sound Studio turned the production of a giallo horror into its own…

Birds of Passage is a gangster film. Yet, by being set in a culture unfamiliar to many Western viewers, directors Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent) expand the scope of what movies of the genre can do. Set in the…

Climate change is not a subject many would associate with whimsy, but with the Icelandic Woman at War, writer-director Benedikt Erlingsson has tried to apply a lightness of touch to a story about coming mass extinction. Halla (Halldóra…

In his latest film 1945, Hungarian director Ferenc Török poses the question: What happened when Jewish citizens returned to communities they were transported from during World War II? On a hot summer’s day in a rural Hungarian town,…

In 1993, the Sicilian mafia kidnapped eleven-year-old Giuseppe de Matteo, the son of a former mafia member-turned-informer and held him captive for over two years before murdering him. While the real-life details are not prerequisites to…