Life is filled with countless challenges, and we all approach them differently – for Lucia, her dream has always been to become a harpist, following in the footsteps of her father, who has played the harp for years as part of their small Yoreme community in Northern Mexico, where it is a cultural tradition that…

One of the wisest pieces of advice that I have ever encountered was when I was told that the only person stronger than the one who fights is the one who manages to resist since it takes more strength to remain stoic than it does to react in anger. Obviously, this is a nebulous concept…

There have been few filmmakers more dedicated to the subtle art of exploring everyday life than Mia Hansen-Løve, who has constructed an entire career out of a very specific kind of delicate, earnest social realist drama that strives for authenticity and in the process provides meaningful insights into the lives of ordinary people as they…

An important question that we often need to ask is whether we can excuse a deeply flawed film based on the value of its message. Objectively, the answer should be resoundingly negative, since art should not be judged more leniently based on the ideas that went into its creation. Unfortunately, we don’t like living in…

It is generally agreed almost universally that Preston Sturges was one of the greatest writers and directors to work during Hollywood’s Golden Age – and when discussing someone whose peers and collaborators include the likes of Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, it is clear that we are looking at someone quite special. He made several…

The social and political history of Portugal is fascinating, but also not widely known outside of those who come from the country or make up part of its extensive global diaspora. However, it is extremely difficult to find a work produced in the 20th century (or even to the present day) that doesn’t address the…

One of the more unconventional tragic figures in the history of literature is Heinrich von Kleist, a marginally well-known poet and writer whose most notable contribution to the culture was actually his suicide – not necessarily the act itself, but the journey he took towards ultimately ending his life, which was well-documented as being a…

By this point in this career, Hirokazu Kore-eda has done more than enough to prove himself as one of our greatest living filmmakers. In recent years, he has expanded on his own repertoire by stepping outside of his native Japan and looking at other countries, with his first film made in another language being the…

He may not be making films as often as he was before (in the last five years, he’s made one film and a television miniseries, a far cry from his more prolific period where we were getting a new project around once a year), but Xavier Dolan remains one of the most talented directors of…

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard”, an adage that many of us are familiar with, and which tends to be used to describe any work of art that tackles life’s greatest inevitability with even the most vaguely comedic approach. We often find that humour tends to be a very effective way of exploring death and…