Tallinn Rebels with a Cause: transgression in its DNA
Anton Bitel delivers his verdict on the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black NIghts Film Festival, including the award winners and his personal favourites [Read More...]

The Baronesses (Les Baronnes)
Mokhtaria Badaoui and Nabil Ben Yadir’s Brussels-set meta-theatrical tragicomedy has four Muslim grandmothers restaging Shakespeare - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival/ REC Tarragona [Read More...]

Blindsight (Piatră Foarfecă Hârti)
Romanian o(d)dyssey offers a nostalgic family portrait and a kaleidoscope of distorted memories, in a movie that will have you wanting to watch it again - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

MieMie ~She Can See~
Katsutoshi Furuya’s weightless multi-genre mash-up makes a spirit war and a monster movie of a young modern romance - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Turn Up the Sun
Improvised feature from Britain starring James McAvoy sees different artists coming together in a manor house haunted by a tragic history - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Lo-Fi
Experimental feature debut shows an apartment echoing with memories, and its occupant caught in lovesickness and loneliness - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Leleka
Harald Hutter’s abstract road movie takes two female friends on a trans-European odyssey towards war-torn Ukraine - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

La Carn
Young gay dancer risks losing himself as he cruises the virtual meat market, in this thoughtful drama from Spain - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

The Megalomaniacs
Spiros Stathoulopoulos’ strange, quirky and at times irritant sort-of sex comedy finds in its present (and future) endless echoes of the past - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Vache Folle
Damaged war-veteran-turned-cowherd reluctantly fights for his dreams, in this dirty gem of a Franco-Swiss production - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Emergency Exit
Top-drawer ensemble takes a bizarre coach trip to the other side, in this metacinematic arthouse fare from Spain - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights [Read More...]

A Goodnight Kiss (Irena)
Giedrė Žickytė’s documentary portrait of late Lithuanian intellectual Irena Veisaitė is both a celebration and a lament - from the Doc@PÖFF Baltic Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Ou verdict of MOTELX 2025
Horror specialist Anton Bitel attended the 19th edition of MOTELX, in Lisbon, one of the most diverse and exciting niche festivals in Europe (now with a focus on Portuguese and women filmmakers) [Read More...]

Her Will Be Done (Que ma Volonté Soit Faite)
Witch fable from France traces an alienated adolescent woman’s embrace of her mother’s legacy amid parochial patriarchy - from MOTELX, in Lisbon [Read More...]

Buzzheart
Denis Iliadis’s game-playing domestic tragicomedy starts with a happy ending, before testing a young couple’s love with questions of what comes after - from MOTELX, in Lisbon [Read More...]

Karmadonna
In Aleksandar Radivojević’s rambunctious Serbian theological satire, a reluctant heroine must violently rebalance the world order for her baby’s advent - From MOTELX, in Portugal [Read More...]

The Old Woman with the Knife
Min Kyu-dong’s vigilante action thriller sees an ageing assassin struggling to determine how she wants to go out - from MOTELX, in Portugal [Read More...]

Missing Child Videotape
Ryota Konda’s unsettling J-horror feature debut sends three characters in search of a lost boy and a building on no map - from MOTELX, in Portugal [Read More...]

The Pianist (A Pianista)
In Nuno Bernardo’s medley of domestic melodrama, cloning sci-fi and psychothriller, a departed patriarch returns to the scene of the crime - from the 19th edition of MotelX, in Portugal [Read More...]

The Piano Accident (L’accident de Piano)
Quentin Dupieux’s absurdist portrait of an artist interrogates the unhinged drives and motives of an online celebrity - from MotelX, in Portugal [Read More...]

White Guilt
Marcus Flemmings stages the divisions and injustices of America race relations as incendiary rôle play, in this British-made and filthy genius drama - from Raindance [Read More...]

Thinestra
In this satirical body horror, a Los Angeles woman’s eating disorder births a monstrous, all-consuming doppelgänger - from Raindance [Read More...]

Snatchers
In Craig Alexander and Shelly Higgs’ ambitious yet messy feature debut, the morality of two down-on-their-luck hospital workers is put on the slab - Australian horror world premieres at Raindance [Read More...]

Row
Matthew Losasso’s slippery survivalist sea yarn buffets the viewer with high tension, simmering mystery and overwhelming mortal danger - in cinemas on Friday, September 5th [Read More...]

Saturnalia
First-time American director imports and builds from the horrific trappings of Suspiria in order to portray a timeless intergenerational clash - world premiere takes place at Raindance [Read More...]

The Invisible Half
Half-Japanese schoolgirl is inexorably pursued by her own sense of alienation, in this dirty gem of a horror debut - world premiere takes place at the 33rd edition of Raindance [Read More...]

Loner
Flirting with folk horror and found footage, this British debut uses diegetic camerawork both to expose and to hide one man lost in the woods, and inside (his own) nature - world premiere takes place at Raindance [Read More...]

Caliber 9 (Milano Calibro 9)
Fernando Di Leo’s hard-boiled poliziottesco shows an Italian underworld ruled by money and greed - from ArteKino Classics [Read More...]

Boys Go to Jupiter
Julian Glander’s musical Day-Glo 3D animation shows a Floridian adolescent boy’s weird rites of passage in an America less materialist than it seems - from the 24th REC Tarragona International Film Festival [Read More...]

The Memory Boom
Xenia Glen’s experimental film essay traces the cluttered memories of an old man whose mind is in collapse - from the 24th REC Tarragona International Film Festival [Read More...]

Yellow
Oliver Hirschbiegel and Albert Oehlen’s experimental broad-strokes biopic paints Vincent van Gogh as an artist caught between his own and our times - from the Rebels With a Cause Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

The End (Beigas)
Māris Maskalāns’s documentary shows, through five people working close to death, the meaning of mortality - reflective Latvian film is in the Baltic Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

A Sip of Hell (Un Trago de Infierno)
Pilar Boyle and Mariano Asseff’s psychodrama sees an actress finding her part and losing herself - from the Rebels with a Cause section of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

100 Litres of Gold
Sisters are ruining it for themselves, in Teemu Nikki’s tragicomic allegory of a nation unable to recognise or shake its own alcoholic tendencies - from the Official Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Rebel with a Bow Tie (Kikilipsuga Mässaja)
Jaan Tootsen’s insider documentary offers an intimate, often very funny look at a very unconventional world leader - from the Baltic Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

I Was Born In A Garage (Ma Sündisin Garaažis)
Arko Okk’s experimental 3D documentary offers a tour of Tallinn with one of its leading architects as guide - from the Baltic Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Filn Festival [Read More...]

Paradise Not Lost (Gabrielius is Neprarastojo Rojaus)
Linas Mikuta’s documentary tracks a devout, divorcing couple’s attempts to maintain a happy environment for a son with special needs - from the Baltic Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

A Very Flattened Christmas
Shane Wallace’s comedy series reunion is a dopey but unfunny Christmas slasher - available on VoD [Read More...]

The Brazen (Bezkaunīgie)
Aik Karapetian’s latest psychodrama lets a family role-play their problems in an insect-infested old house in the woods, in a movie with flavours of Lars von Trier - from the Baltic Competition of the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival [Read More...]

Embers
In Christian Cooke’s therapeutic drama, a sexual surrogate helps an incarcerated, deeply disturbed man break out of himself in order to make parole - dirty gem of a British drama premieres at the 31st edition of Raindance [Read More...]

Warhol
Adam Ethan Crow’s real-time feature takes an ageing shock jock on a long dark night of the soul - British indie premieres at the 31st edition of the Raindance Film Festival [Read More...]

Low Life
A YouTube star poses as underaged girls online and and then exposes predators, while juggling his very own relationship with a 16-year-old schoolgirl - American indie premieres at Raindance [Read More...]

Father of Flies
British horror wilfully disorients viewers with a tightly structured script, and a little dash of Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist - from Raindance [Read More...]

The Invisible Man
Australian-American sci-fi horror adapted from the eponymous novel follows a woman who believes to be haunted by her late, abusive husband - now available on VoD [Read More...]

The Grudge
The American director of The Eyes of my Mother and Piercing delivers a personal and inventive take on the highly conventionalised Japanese franchise - in cinemas Friday, January 24th [Read More...]