Mona (Tanya Zabarylo) hasn’t had the easiest life so far. When she was only a child (Olivia Landuyt), her life was shaken after her mother dies in a tragic accident, which she experiences through her bereaved father, Vincent (Tom Vermeir) struggling to come to terms with such an immense loss. However, it’s not too long…

It was the iconoclastic playwright and filmmaker David Mamet that called Hollywood “a sinkhole of depraved venality”, which isn’t a sentiment exclusive to his line of thinking – throughout its storied history, the proverbial Tinseltown has been the subject of a fair amount of brutal indictments, whether from those who were soured by their fifteen…

When it comes to taking deep-dives into the careers of artists you admire, one tends to come across some of their weaker moments, but also on occasion discover new sides of their work that we didn’t realize were there. I’ve so often expressed such immense admiration for Yasujirō Ozu, and working through his filmography has…

Sergey (Boris Barkhatov) has just turned five – and despite his young age, he has grown to have a keen understanding of the world around him. However, this sentiment isn’t shared by those in his immediate surroundings, who find him to be just like any other precocious child, curious about life, long before he learns…

In an introduction accompanying the restored version of his seminal masterpiece, The Rules of the Game (French: La Règle du Jeu), Jean Renoir describes the moment he knew he made a challenging film, when he witnessed a member of the audience at the film’s premiere light a newspaper in an attempt to burn the venue…

One of the biggest problems with contemporary world cinema is that so much attention is focused on Europe and certain Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, we don’t often give enough exposure to those nations that often fall by the wayside in many discussions. India has a rich and storied cinematic history, but…

The pure poetry lingering beneath Wild River is not to be underestimated, and should be addressed almost immediately when discussing a film that seems to be far more overpowering than we’d expect from looking at it on a purely superficial level. By the time he made it, Elia Kazan didn’t really have to prove anything…

When it comes to Aaron Sorkin, you normally get exactly what you pay for – by-the-numbers stories that are heavily focused on political or other highly-resonant cultural situation, with predictable plot points and an array of interesting characters that are very often portrayed by actors who are giving performances that belong in much better productions….

Seemingly without realizing it, Patricia Highsmith created one of literature’s most enigmatic figures in the form of Tom Ripley. What is even more bewildering is how he has rarely been cited as such, normally being a figure that many people adore, but not on the same level as many of the great literary antiheroes of…

“I wonder, will we really be able to, in dozens of years, to laugh and shed senile tears over these days? Then the earth will swallow us up, and our names will be obscured with fog” There are many ways to describe An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (Russian: Неоконченная пьеса для механического пианино) –…