Thessaloniki International Film Festival — A–Z of films

Petzold’s most literary film to date.

Vlagopoulou’s performance has a raw intensity that you don’t dare question, less still look away from.

Pregnancy is often depicted as a state of enhanced vulnerability, and one which points the way to increased dependency. Here, Alaoui turns that around.

The aerial shots of the forest and the believable transformations with feathers, wings, beaks and claws as well as fish scales, make for riveting viewing.

The difficult reality of life in Senegal dances with something much more otherworldly in Mati Diop's debut film.

The unadorned observation of the physical aspects of the relationship in which middle-aged bodies are shown without artifice is one of the most hypnotic aspect of Naveriani’s vision.

Beneath the intense lead performance and the minimalist but effective camera work, there is a rigid moral waiting to be unearthed.

At key moments, director Damian Kocur slows his camera right down. We drift through the estate, through the sort of spaces which an architect might have thought would look pretty, with no idea how disaffected young people would use them.

The central portion of the film is delciously discomfiting.

The vibrancy of childhood skips from the screen.

Rohrwacher’s visually eclectic style is well suited to exploring the contrasts between present and past, natural and artificial, poverty and wealth.

A meditation on both memory and movies as well as ageing and a hankering for the past that is informed by the melancholic knowledge that nostalgia is inevitably rose-tinted.

There's a deep irony in Amir being constantly told what to do by the quasi-authority figure of the sat nav while offering up a means of escape to the city's youth that doesn't rely on roads to take them there.

Additional plot developments reveal a complex web of psychology between the two men.

A western for sleepwalkers and dreamers.

Moreno isn’t shy about his use of symbolism...What this effects to disguise, however, is the degree to which [the men's] own thinking has been shaped by symbols and by the belief system which surrounds them.

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.

For all its faults, the film is pretty, and that will probably be enough for some viewers.

Jude masterfully keeps the audience attached to the screen for almost three hours without relying on heightened tensions or conventional plot twists.

Anthony Chen's slow-burn character study is essentially a showcase for its star Cynthia Erivo

Some may find Decasia's approach nihilistic.

Whilst Eeva’s reaction is extreme and very far from something you should try at home, it’s important in its acknowledgement of the rage that some people feel.

There are so many shots through things, boundaries, borders, thresholds, that we are primed for other barriers crossed. Those transgressions are not light ones, but in them is an abject honesty.

Characters come and go between these different worlds, emerging and re-emerging in different forms, as we explore different aspects of colonialism, responses to it, and survival strategies at personal and cultural levels.

A visually masterful film that very much retains its power today, The Fall Of The House Of Usher introduced many of the tropes of the horror genre.

An amuse-bouche of a film, Aki Kaurismäki’s latest comedy romance may leave you wanting more but it’s also a fully rounded, good looking experience packed with all the flavours we’ve come to expect from the master of deadpan down the years.

There’s something inherently endearing about the way that Nikou always managed to conjure timelessness in his worlds. They’re more analogue than futuristic but ultimately hang in a sort of limbo of ‘here but not quite now’.

The exposure of the film’s underlying structures...invites audiences to think about the processes of storytelling and interpretation, which is important, because it’s a story which took the missing women away.

Martel expertly compounds ambiguities without ever abandoning the apparent naturalism of her presentation.

An old school slice of comfort and joy for the cold season.

In the Seventies, films like this had the status of arthouse. Now that CGI is sexier than life and you are only a multiplex away from Action City, they look like leftovers from an intellectual’s doodle.

For all the apparent chaos, this is a tightly controlled piece of work which fully delivers on the promise of Stolevski’s earlier films.

While Louis-Seize’s treatment of the night is atmospheric, the emphasis here is firmly on comedy rather on gore.

An impressively self-sufficient horror film with a dash of socio-political commentary.

Imagery and sound are so closely wedded throughout that at times it seems meaningless to distinguish between the two.

A sort of soft-faced tyrany abounds.

There’s a freshness to this world, as if one had just stepped out of one’s own door and arrived in an unexpected place.

Sometimes the rumblings are of the Shaw Brothers, at others the Marx Brothers.

By the end you might not only ask yourself if someone is losing their marbles but whose marbles, in fact, are the ones that are being lost.

First-timer Sarr - who is a musician - is a remarkable lead and matched by the support from fellow novice Fall.

Koeyers lets ideas flow over one another, like raindrops joining each other as they roll down glass.

Adapting Yordan Radichkov’s spiky 1974 play, co-writer/director Andrey Paounov creates a tremendous atmosphere.

This cinematic exploration, a manifestation of Christian bigotry, speculates with cinematic icons and religious imagery, laying bare the power-hungry clergy.

There are so many ‘solutions’ to the enigma of the plot that analysing it or watching it repeatedly is more fun than the first viewing.

Malena is no more real than a poster.

One of the most moving portraits of childhood seen recently on the screen.

Jacob Oostra's work in sound design is part of an overwhelming naturalism, an intimacy of sensation and a sense of intimacy.

Deren's most famous, complex and mature piece of cinema.

Vesely’s camera directs our attention very effectively and makes use of every aspect of the small set.

A beautifully constructed piece of work in which every detail serves the whole, putting the tools of the epic at the disposal of a story which is intimate and delicately realised.

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

Handsomely mounted in terms of both the wide open landscapes and the confines of the church, Thornton allows the mystery surrounding the boy’s powers to remain that way, unknowable perhaps even to the youngster.

There’s a still photographic quality to the cinematography from Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci, with the studious, fixed framing matching the meter of the film and allowing time for us to appreciate the texture, not just of the lives of these characters but the spaces they inhabit.

Will anyone see this who wouldn't anyway?

One of the most subtle films of the ongoing year.

Just as Reymont’s book immersed itself in the metaphorical colour of Polish peasant life, so the Welchmans’ film delivers a flood of literal colour.

While much of the visual humour works perfectly thanks to good timing and framing, some of the running gags seem more suited to a sprint than the marathon Rejtman takes them on.

The combination of subtlety and indeterminacy makes for an uncanny treat.

It is an assured and relentless exposé.

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

Urbaite shows stylistic ambition.

While attempting to describe the crux of Samsara is, essentially, as impossible as catching lightning in a jar, join me on a journey of imagination and we’ll give it a go.

The emotional arc Lena experiences is moving without being cloying.

The film wonderfully captures the dynamics of workplace small talk.

Part fantasy, part western, the film is exquisitely shot, the humid atmosphere of the island creating a degree of visual uncertainty to confound viewers further.

Although an undoubted classic of the period - and featuring one of cinema's best child performances in Torrent - the allusive and elusive style of the film is difficult to engage with.

Whilst there is an element of science fiction here, co-writer/director Karoline Lyngbye focuses on the psychological possibilities that it opens up.

More poem than conventional narrative, Sweet Dreams explores the tropes of the colonial fable with a romantic eye and a sharp wit.

While the end result is important, Hùng’s film is all about savouring the moment, something that becomes more urgent as it progresses - although talk of speed has little place in a film that unfolds with the pace and beauty of a flower.

It’s not the first time a film has scrutinised what it means to be “a good victim” but Girard’s general restraint, coupled with a controlled central performance from Alaoui bring it home.

Profoundly unsettling, richly atmospheric, a milestone in the development of cinematic ‘grammar’ as well as an edge-of-the-seat horror movie to rival the best.

An immensely dark, macabre and unsettling work.

This is, in places, a deeply disturbing film... yet the touching scenes, when they come, have a surprisingly emotional depth.