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New Directors/New Films · 2023

New Directors/New Films 2023

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Programme

27 films · 11 reviews

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1976 (Chile, '76)

Review preview for 1976

Martelli carefully crafts an air of almost casual dread.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A woman finds herself dicing with danger after she is asked for help.

(Country: Chile; Year: 2022; Director: Manuela Martelli; Writer: Manuela Martelli, Alejandra Moffat; Stars: Aline Küppenheim, Alejandro Goic)

Full review See: Manuela Martelli on revisiting the past in 1976

Absence (Xue yun)

After ten years in prison, Han Jiangyu returns to Hainan Island. Housing construction is booming, his childhood friend is now rich. Searching for traces of the familiar, Jiangyu meets his old love who now has a daughter.

(Country: China; Year: 2023; Director: Wu Lang; Stars: Lee Kang-Sheng, Li Meng, Ren Ke, Liang Wanling)

Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster (Sanki Her Sey Biraz Felaket)

In contemporary Istanbul, a small group of interconnected millennials aimlessly grasp for love, work, friendship, and financial stability. They devote themselves to mindless games and romantic dead-ends while ignoring the larger world.

(Country: Turkey; Year: 2023; Director: Umut Subasi)

Arnold Is A Model Student

senior student Arnold excels at his studies and is a frontrunner for education scholarships and accolades. Yet after returning from studying abroad in the United States, he begins to question the meaning and authoritarian practices of school itself, and his growing awareness then makes him ripe for temptation into an underground cheating ring.

(Country: Thailand, Singapore, France, Netherlands, Philippines; Year: 2022; Director: Sorayos Prapapan; Writer: Sorayos Prapapan; Stars: Darunbhorn Likitkererat, Niramon Busapavanich, Siraphop Punmanee)

Ashkal

In the Gardens of Carthage, a district of Tunis initiated by the former Regime which construction stopped at the beginning of the Revolution, two cops, Fatma and Batal, find a burnt body in one of the lots. As construction slowly resumes, they start looking into this mysterious case.

(Year: 2022; Director: Youssef Chebbi; Writer: Youssef Chebbi)

Astrakan

A traumatised orphan on the cusp of teenagehood tries to adjust to life with his new, rural foster family.

(Country: France; Year: 2022; Director: David Depesseville; Writer: David Depesseville)

Autobiography

A young man working as a housekeeper sparks a chain of violence after defending his boss's mayoral election campaign.

(Country: Indonesia, Poland, Germany, Singapore, France, Philippines; Year: 2022; Director: Makbul Mubarak; Writer: Makbul Mubarak; Stars: Kevin Ardilova, Yusuf Mahardika, Arswendy Bening Swara, Lukman Sardi, Rukman Rosadi, Haru Sandra, Gunawan Maryanto, Yudi Ahmad Tajudin)

Coconut Head Generation

Documentary capturing the words and emotions of students at the University of Ibadan in southwestern Nigeria. The country’s first university, it was founded in 1948 and is still reckoning with its colonial British legacy.

(Country: France, Nigeria; Year: 2023; Director: Alain Kassanda; Writer: Alain Kassanda)

Disco Boy

Review preview for Disco Boy

If there’s vacillation in general at work, the slippery nature of the film, greased with the sweat of physical and metaphorical dance, remains beguiling.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
The destinies of a man who has joined the Foreign Legion and another in the Niger Delta intersect.

(Country: France, Italy, Belgium, Poland; Year: 2023; Director: Giacomo Abbruzzese; Writer: Giacomo Abbruzzese; Stars: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev)

Full review

Earth Mama

Set in the Bay Area, the film follows Gia as she contends with pregnancy and poverty while longing for her children in foster care.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Savanah Leaf; Writer: Savanah Leaf; Stars: Tia Nomore, Erika Alexander, Keta Price, Doechii)

Opening film

The Face of the Jellyfish (El rostro de la medusa)

A woman tries to cope after her faces changes.

(Country: Argentina; Year: 2022; Director: Melisa Liebenthal; Writer: Agustín Godoy, Melisa Liebenthal; Stars: Rocío Stellato, Vladimir Durán, Federico Sack)

Family Time (Mummola)

Comedy drama set during an annual family Christmas get-together.

(Country: Finland, Sweden; Year: 2023; Director: Tia Kouvo; Stars: Ria Kataja, Elina Knihtilä, Leena Uotila, Tom Wentzel, Jarkko Pajunen)

Gush

An embodied rumination of both male and female power, healing and haunting, all within an apocalyptic world. A transformation that courses through unknown terror to untamed collective joy.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Foxy Maxy; Writer: Foxy Maxy; Stars: Michel Sayegh, Ruth Fish, Sergio Mejia, Littlebear Sanchez, No'aash Iswut Peltier, Suavitel Paper.)

Have You Seen This Woman? (Da Li Ste Videli Ovu Zenu)

Review preview for Have You Seen This Woman?

The mixing of fiction and reality, as well as a lot of aesthetic choices, make for an interesting echo of the Yugoslav Black Wave aesthetic.

Nikola Jovic · 4 out of 5
Through three different life possibilities a middle-aged woman tries to get out of her skin.

(Country: Serbia, Croatia; Year: 2022; Director: Matija Gluscevic, Dusan Zoric; Writer: Matija Gluscevic, Dusan Zoric; Stars: Ksenija Marinkovic, Isidora Simijonovic, Boris Isakovic, Alex Elektra, Ivana Vukovic, Vlasta Velisavljevic, Goran Bogdan, Jasna Djuricic, Nenad Ciric, Radoje Cupic, Fedor Djorovic, Isidora Minic, Olga Odanovic, Milos Samolov, Danilo Savic)

Full review

Joyland

Review preview for Joyland

It is not so much individual people who cause the problems but rather the constricting cultural circumstances that dictate everyone must play their allocated role.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
As the Ranas, a happily patriarchal joint family, yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theater and falls for an ambitious trans starlet. Their impossible love story illuminates the entire family's desire for a sexual rebellion.

(Country: Pakistan; Year: 2022; Director: Saim Sadiq; Writer: Saim Sadiq; Stars: Sana Jafri, Ali Junejo)

Full review See: Sounding it out - Nathan Ruyle on the new revolution in sound design , Oliver Ridge on Joyland and the Corner Office

Leila's Brothers

No details yet available.

(Country: Iran; Year: 2022; Director: Saeed Roustayi; Writer: Saeed Roustayi; Stars: Taraneh Alidoosti, Saeed Poursamimi, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Payman Maadi, Mohammad Ali Mohammadi, Farhad Aslani)

The Maiden

Review preview for The Maiden

For every shot when you wish Foy would learn melancholy doesn’t have to be meandering, there’s another of striking poignance.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
The lives of three suburban teenagers intersect.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2022; Director: Graham Foy; Writer: Graham Foy; Stars: Jackson Sluiter, Marcel T Jiménez, Hayley Ness)

Full review

Maputo Nakuzandza

Kaleidoscopic view of Mozambique's capital, with a mysterious woman in its midst.

(Country: Brazil, Mozambique; Year: 2022; Director: Ariadine Zampaulo; Writer: Maria Clotilde Guirrugo, Ariadine Zampaulo; Stars: Domingos Bié, Maria Clotilde Guirrugo, Salvado Mabjaia)

Metronom

Review preview for Metronom

Belcu doesn’t need to show us much violence in order to indicate how the mere threat of it can become an effective tool of oppression.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
A teenager finds herself grappling with love and the authorities during the rule of Ceaucescu.

(Country: Romania; Year: 2022; Director: Alexandru Belc; Writer: Alexandru Belc, Patrick Templin; Stars: Mara Bugarin, Serban Lazarovici, Vlad Ivanov, Mihai Calin, Andreea Bibiri)

Full review

Milisuthando

Set in past, present, and future South Africa — an invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging by the filmmaker, who grew up during apartheid but didn't know it was happening until it was over.

(Country: South Africa; Year: 2023; Director: Milisuthando Bongela)

Mutt

Review preview for Mutt

Confident enough in its characters to tell its story without sensationalism or stylistic overcompensation.

Jeremy Mathews · 4 out of 5
Over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, three people from Feña's past are thrust back into his life. Having lost touch since transitioning from female to male, he navigates the new dynamics of old relationships while tackling the day-to-day challenges of living life in between.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Vuk Lungulov-Klotz; Writer: Vuk Lungulov-Klotz; Stars: Lío Mehiel, Cole Doman, MiMi Ryder, Alejandro Goic)

Full review

Pamfir

Review preview for Pamfir

There’s an increasing sense of the unnatural impinging on the natural.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
Pamfir wants to be a decent family man but challenged by the circumstances he is forced to give up honest breadwinning to help his family.

(Country: Ukraine; Year: 2022; Director: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk; Writer: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk; Stars: Oleksandr Yatsentyuk, Stanislav Potyak, Solomiya Kyrylova , Olena Khokhlatkina, Myroslav Makoviychuk, Ivan Sharan)

Full review

Petrol

While working on a deeply personal school project connected to her Russian heritage, Eva meets the mercurial Mia, a performance artist who runs hot and cold, and with whom she develops a close bond bordering on obsession.

(Country: Australia; Year: 2022; Director: Alena Lodkina; Writer: Alena Lodkina; Stars: Nathalie Morris, Hannah Lynch, Emmett Aldred, Daniel Aloisio, Mezi Atwood)

Remembering Every Night (Subete no yoru wo omoidasu)

Review preview for Remembering Every Night

Memories connect and even if they are not ours, they can make us understand something urgently human.

Anne-Katrin Titze · 4 out of 5
Drama involving the quiet pursuits of several women over a single afternoon.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2022; Director: Yui Kiyohara; Writer: Yui Kiyohara; Stars: Kumi Hyôdô, Manami Ohba, Ai Mikami, Tadashi Okuno, Guama Uchida, Shintaro Yuya, Mizuho Nojima)

Full review See: Yui Kiyohara in conversation on Remembering Every Night, Yukiko Iioka, Tadashi Okuno, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone In Love

Safe Place

Review preview for Safe Place

The transcendental nature of the film feels like an existential and therapeutic need.

Nikola Jovic · 4 out of 5
24 hours in the life of a man who is trying to kill himself while his family members try to save him.

(Country: Croatia; Year: 2022; Director: Juraj Lerotic; Writer: Juraj Lerotic; Stars: Juraj Lerotic, Snjezana Sinovcic, Goran Markovic)

Full review

Tommy Guns (Nação Valente)

Set in 1974 Angola, during the waning days of Portugal’s militaristic rule over the African nation, the film jumps between different perspectives, including those of local rebels and villagers contending with the persistence of authoritarian forces and the occupying soldiers.

(Country: Portugal, France, Angola; Year: 2022; Director: Carlos Conceição; Writer: Carlos Conceição; Stars: João Arrais, Anabela Moreira, Gustavo Sumpta)

Tótem

Review preview for Tótem

The idea of different things being in and out of focus for the various generations runs through a film that has sweetly comic moments and poignancy in equal measure.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
In a large house, friends and family meet for a dual ritual: it is the birthday of young father and painter Tona, but also a farewell ceremony.

(Country: Mexico, Denmark, France; Year: 2023; Director: Lila Avilés; Writer: Lila Avilés; Stars: Naíma Sentíes, Monserrat Marañon, Marisol Gasé, Saori Gurza, Teresita Sánchez)

Full review See: Lila Avilés on the many worlds of Tótem