Few Hollywood-based stories have been as tragic as the life and death of Judy Garland – from the wide-eyed young girl with an angelic voice, to an adult who could command even the biggest stages, despite her slight frame and almost milquetoast demeanour, she was always in the public eye, right until her untimely demise,…

Life is a journey that doesn’t end, but rather changes form. The reality is that none of us are nearly as important as we think we are, and instead each one of us is just another component of a constantly changing world, part of the proverbial machinery that has yet to come to a halt,…

There seems to be a contingent of people who are working laboriously to position Lukas Dhont as the next great filmmaker. Some have categorized him as the heir apparent to Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who have been the sovereigns of small, intimate Belgian dramas for decades, a position for which Dhont has supposedly been cited…

“There must be satisfaction gained in accurately naming the thing that torments you.” These simple but evocative words are taken from Women Talking, the beautiful novel by Miriam Toews, who tells the story of a group of women in an isolated Mennonite community who, after the arrest of a group of men that had been…

We all live with regrets – some are just small mistakes that bother us at arbitrary moments, while others are enormous errors in judgement that possibly changed the entire trajectory of one’s life, leading to further challenges that can take a major psychological toll on those who aren’t ready to confront the reality of the…

If we are looking at the history of romance on screen, we can divide it into two distinct eras – those films that were made before Brief Encounter, and those that were made after it. This isn’t a hyperbolic way of calling this one of the greatest screen romances ever committed to film – it’s…

Francophone cinema has certainly held a monopoly when it comes to foreign language filmmaking, as evident by the prominence of French and Belgian films that are widely consumed every year. However, an area that we tend to overlook are the movies produced in Canada by the French-speaking population. It’s certainly not a case of there…

How do you begin a conversation about Eo without simply collapsing into a state of complete psychological despair? This is one of the many questions that anyone endeavouring to discuss the ambitious drama written and directed by the legendary and highly influential Jerzy Skolimowski has to face when confronted with the abundance of emotions contained…

Watching a film made by a pioneer of a specific kind of movement or national cinema is always a compelling experience, since it allows us to see a different side of the filmmaking process, as well as gives insights into the challenges these directors tend to face. Márta Mészáros is one of Hungary’s most celebrated…

Every few years, there is a film that comes along that is so striking and ambitious, the process of leaving the cinema is nearly impossible, whether it be the result of awe-inspired wonder, or the abundance of emotions that wash over the viewer. The Whale was a very difficult film to walk away from –…