Palm Springs International Film Festival

Latest reviews

• 
  From Hilde, With Love

  Review preview for From Hilde, With Love

  This non-sensationalist approach allows much more room to address the psychological effects of prison life itself, whilst emphasising the mundanity of much of what happened under the Nazis.

  In Berlin 1942, Hilde finds her place within an anti-Nazi resistance group as gradually as she falls in love with one of its members. The two spend an unforgettable summer until they get caught by the Gestapo and Hilde is imprisoned, eight months pregnant.
• 
  I'm Your Venus

  Review preview for I'm Your Venus

  From the start, there is something different about this film.

  Documentary considering the unsolved murder of Paris Is Burning star Venus Xtravaganza.
• 
  The Penguin Lessons

  Review preview for The Penguin Lessons

  Coogan is well cast in this tricky role, moving easily from humour to heartbreak..

  An Englishman in Uruguay adopts a penguin, smuggles it back to his home in Argentina, and gradually wakes up to the political violence going on around him.
• 
  The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

  Review preview for The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

  Grittily compelling

  Investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun vanishes, he suspects his wife and daughters, imposing draconian measures that strain family ties as societal rules crumble.
• 
  William Tell

  Review preview for William Tell

  An ostensibly rousing speech is aiming for Braveheart but has all the grip one would expect from an address to an adhesive sales conference.

  William Tell has returned home weary after fighting with the Knights Templar in the Holy Land. Now he is called upon to help a farmer who is seeking revenge against the villains of the Hapsburg court.
• 
  Maria

  Review preview for Maria

  It is gorgeous, both to look at and to listen to. It's perhaps Larrain's most accessible film, though that's as much to do with its star as its subject.

  Dramatisation of the life of the opera singer Maria Callas.
• 
  From Ground Zero

  Review preview for From Ground Zero

  The stories are highly personal and individual. It is the background observations, as much as anything, that makes the experience of viewing them sequentially crushing, and leaves one in awe of the fortitude of people still surviving there.

  A collection of 22 short films made in Gaza, giving Gazan filmmakers the chance to tell the untold stories about the current war.
• 
  Vermiglio

  Review preview for Vermiglio

  Maura Delpero’s multi-layered drama sees its heroine growing up and coming to understand the world in new ways at the same time as the village itself shifts, not altogether willingly, into the modern era.

  1944, Vermiglio, a remote mountain village. The arrival of Pietro, a deserter, into the family of the local teacher, and his love for the teacher's eldest daughter, will change the course of everyone's life.
• 
  How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

  Review preview for How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

  This kind of layered story construction is a difficult thing to pull off and it makes the film shine.

  A man quits work to care for his dying grandmother, motivated by her fortune. He schemes to win her favour before she passes.
• 
  Nickel Boys

  Review preview for Nickel Boys

  Nickel Boys is a tremendously daring film.

  The tale of two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory.

A–Z of Palm Springs International Film Festival 2025 reviews →

Features

• Unconquerable film
  Rashid Masharawi on the resilience of Palestinian culture and From Ground Zero
• Until the dance
  Andreas Dresen on resistance, ensemble storytelling and From Hilde, With Love
• The man who picked up a penguin
  Peter Cattaneo on adapting a true story in The Penguin Lessons
• Bingo
  David Siegel and Scott McGehee on Naomi Watts, Bing, Sigrid Nunez and The Friend
• Taking the plunge as 'angel and devil'
  French actor Félix Kysyl on his first lead role in Misericordia
• 'There is a bit of me in lots of the characters I create'
  Misericordia director Guiraudie on his tale of the unexpected
• Family ties and trauma
  Laurynas Bareisa on relationship dynamics in award-winning drama Drowning Dry
• Looking back
  RaMell Ross on basketball, filmmaking, overcoming objectification and Nickel Boys
• Beautiful and difficult
  Sandhya Suri on semi-urban outposts, moral ambiguity and Santosh
• 'I think there is a wisdom to children that adults lose sight of'
  Matthew Rankin on liminal spaces and child's play in Universal Language
• Hooked on fairy tales
  Sigrid Nunez on Bing, fairy tales and the adaptation of her novel The Friend
• Reflections of a cat
  Gints Zilbalodis on Hayao Miyazaki, fairy tales and Latvia’s Oscar submission, Flow
• 'I’m still enjoying the process of talking about Julie and advocating for her silence'
  Leonardo van Dijl on Belgian Oscar nominee Julie Keeps Quiet
• Finding joy and creating character
  Pamela Anderson and Gia Coppola on working together to craft The Last Showgirl
• Art, friendship and nature
  Tilda Swinton on dressing for Pedro Almodóvar, and The Room Next Door
• 'It is impossible to escape memory'
  Director Fabrice du Welz on the lingering trauma of the real case behind Maldoror and the questions he hopes to provoke
• A stylised world
  Alessandro Nivola on Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door
• Measuring happiness
  Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó on their latest documentary collaboration
• Cousins discovers a kindred spirit
  Filmmaker on his Barns-Graham art doc in Karlovy Vary
• Child's-eye view of a warzone
  Sareen Hairabedian on shooting her coming-of-age documentary My Sweet Land in the shadow of conflict
• Audiard on a crazy musical spree in Mexico
  Director on changing identity, democracy and drug cartels
• Cathedral in the sand
  Brian J Smith on his love for the Pines and A House Is Not A Disco