Get the latest gossip
International Feature Oscar Race: Read Variety Reviews of Shortlisted Titles and Submissions From More Than 50 Other Countries
Read Variety reviews of international feature Oscar submissions for the 15 shortlisted films and entries from more than 50 other countries.
Image Credit: Courtesy Films Boutique With livid, thinking-person’s thriller “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” director Mohammad Rasoulof responds to his own imprisonment in 2022 (during which a wave of protests erupted after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested and beaten for wearing an improper hijab) by examining Iranian tensions within the context of a well-placed Tehran family. And it could only be animated as hynotically as this by Gints Zilbalodis, the one-man world-builder responsible for the 2017 indie marvel “Away.” At his new film’s Cannes premiere, the young Latvian auteur explained how, after a solitary three and a half years dedicated to the making of “Away,” “Flow” represents the supportive coming-together of a team — a notion that becomes increasingly clear as the cat’s survival depends on the other species it encounters along its captivating journey. Inserting an inquisitive, imaginative intelligence into this key moment in the troubled timeline of post-imperial cultural politics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop fashions her superb, short but potent hybrid doc “Dahomey” as a slim lever that cracks open the sealed crate of colonial history.
Or read this on Variety