World Cinema – Rating Frames

The President’s Cake is a Vital Watch

April 3, 2026Darcy Read

In 1990, Iraq faced strict UN-backed sanctions, which led to extreme poverty and shortages of food and medicine. Despite this, Saddam Hussein required all Iraqis to celebrate his birthday. Set two days before the president’s birthday, either during or on the verge of the Gulf War, The President’s Cake (2025) follows nine-year-old schoolgirl Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who is anxious about being selected for the terrible honour of baking a cake for the day.

Filmmaker Hasan Hadi contracts a world from Lamia’s perspective outward through childlike framing and camera movements, grounding us in the surreal circumstance she finds herself in on the morning of the draw to decide who will have to bake the cake. The scene is an entire film in a bottle. We see Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), Lamia’s close friend, has to write his name five times to be placed in the draw as punishment for his lateness to class. A boy reminds the teacher that his father fixed his bicycle, and his name is not written down for the draw. When Lamia is called to draw the cake, an ultimate punishment, we collapse on her face, slammed with despair, but not broken. She learnt this from her grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat).

Without parents and raised on the outskirts of the city by her frail but spirited grandmother Bibi, Lamia must scrape and scrounge to acquire the funds to obtain the basic ingredients needed for the cake, which, if she doesn’t present it on the day, will be punished by being dragged through the street and possibly killed.

Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Lamia in *The President’s Cake.*

The film is littered with pensively powerful moments, like Bibi giving Lamia a shopping list for the cake while sorting through personal family items they will have to sell to acquire the ingredients. The crippling weight of political forces bears down on each individual we see. The dictatorship and UN-backed sanctions are visibly fraying the knot of community in this Iraqi village and city.

Once the film separates Bibi and Lamia on their trip to the city to collect ingredients in several heartbreaking sequences, the story blooms. Lamia is driven to acquire the ingredients and persevere, while Bibi is trying to give her granddaughter a better life as she grapples with the limitations of herself as her guardian. As the film is primarily focused on a child’s perspective of the world in a state of turmoil, this bifurcated narrative is purposely unbalanced, which can lose some audience members while engrossing others.

We see the crippling rule of dictatorship through a child’s eye and how that perspective ripples through others. As Lamia and her friend Saeed encounter various strangers on their journey for eggs, flour, and sugar, we see the callousness the regime has instilled in people, where even the sharing of small kindnesses seems impossible.

(From left) Sajad Mohamad Qasem and Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Saeed and Lamia in *The President’s Cake.*

Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as Lamia is one of the best child performances in years. She carries with her a pathos that never derails her fierce determination to succeed despite her situation, making her a vital screen presence in a film that too easily could’ve sunk under the weight of its circumstances.

What also allows the film to float above the muck is the gorgeous work of cinematography by Tudor Vladimir Panduru. The President’s Cake maintains a propulsive energy, never luxuriating in the search for that one perfect shot that derails all too many films.

A film about the futility of a stable life under a cripplingly arrogant dictatorship, Hadi savvily avoids the potholes of despair with a gliding approach from scene to scene, focusing on the childlike goals at hand that ground the story in the familiar despite the circumstances. Too often, films of this nature root themselves too heavily in the past and its specifics, which feel bound by their circumstances, allowing the audience to separate their lives from the ones we see on screen. That is not the case here, and it is all the more powerful for it.

A vital and poignant film that collides with the madness of oppression with a child’s resilience, Hadi’s film is indebted to classic Iranian filmmakers like Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami while still matching contemporary urgency with a reflective look at the past. As the children move through the city ravaged by poverty through recent sanctions, all in a desperate search for money and supplies to get through the president’s birthday, we reflect on each passing individual and how they are forced to look out for themselves instead of these desperate children.

The President’s Cake is in select theatres now.

98th Academy Awards: Predictions

March 15, 2026March 15, 2026ratingframesau

We may have waited a little longer than usual, but at last our favourite event of the year is finally upon us: Oscars Night at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre! And our three resident scribes are here once again to offer their tips as to who will be victorious in each of 24 categories — including the all-new prize for Best Casting.

Head below to see the titles that Arnel, Darcy and Tom are predicting will head home with a statuette at the 98th Academy Awards which, by the way, are happening from 10am on Monday, March 16th (Naarm time).

Best Picture

What will win // What deserves to win

Arnel: One Battle After Another // One Battle After Another

Darcy: One Battle After Another // One Battle After Another

Tom: Sinners // Sinners

Best Director

Arnel: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle…) // Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle…)

Darcy: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle…) // Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle…)

Tom: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle…) // Ryan Coogler (Sinners)

Best Actor

Arnel: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) // Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle…)

Darcy: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) // Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent)

Tom: Michael B. Jordan (Sinners) // Michael B. Jordan

Best Actress

Arnel: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) // Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You)

Darcy: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) // Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value)

Tom: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) // Emma Stone (Bugonia)

Jessie Buckley is a firm favourite to win Best Actress for her role as Agnes in *Hamnet*

Best Supporting Actor

Arnel: Sean Penn (One Battle…) // Sean Penn (One Battle…)

Darcy: Sean Penn (One Battle…) // Benicio Del Toro (One Battle…)

Tom: Sean Penn (One Battle…) // Delroy Lindo (Sinners)

Best Supporting Actress

Arnel: Amy Madigan (Weapons) // Teyana Taylor (One Battle…)

Darcy: Amy Madigan (Weapons) // Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value)

Tom: Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners) // Teyana Taylor (One Battle…)

Best Original Screenplay

Arnel: Sinners // Sinners

Darcy: Sinners // Sentimental Value

Tom: Sinners // Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay

Arnel: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Darcy: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Tom: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Best Animated Feature

Arnel: KPop Demon Hunters // Zootopia 2

Darcy: KPop Demon Hunters // KPop Demon Hunters

Tom: KPop Demon Hunters // KPop Demon Hunters

*KPop Demon Hunters* should get it Done, Done, Done in the Animated Feature category

Best International Feature

Arnel: Sentimental Value // It Was Just an Accident

Darcy: Sentimental Value // Sentimental Value

Tom: Sentimental Value // Sentimental Value

Best Documentary Feature

Arnel: The Perfect Neighbor

Darcy: The Perfect Neighbor // The Perfect Neighbor

Tom: The Perfect Neighbor

Best Documentary Short Subject

Arnel: All the Empty Rooms

Darcy: All the Empty Rooms // All the Empty Rooms

Tom: All the Empty Rooms

Best Live-Action Short

Arnel: Two People Exchanging Saliva

Darcy: Two People Exchanging Saliva // Two People Exchanging Saliva

Tom: The Singers

Best Animated Short

Arnel: Retirement Plan

Darcy: Butterfly // Butterfly

Tom: The Girl Who Cried Pearls

*Sinners* has the most nominations at this year’s Oscars

Best Original Score

Arnel: Ludwig Göransson (Sinners) // Sinners

Darcy: Sinners // Sinners

Tom: Ludwig Göransson (Sinners) // Sinners

Best Original Song

Arnel: “I Lied To You” (Sinners)

Darcy: “Golden” (KPop Demon Hunters) // “I Lied To You” (Sinners)

Tom: “Golden” (KPop Demon Hunters) // “Golden”

Best Sound

Arnel: F1 // One Battle…

Darcy: F1 // Sinners

Tom: F1 // F1

Best Production Design

Arnel: Frankenstein // Frankenstein

Darcy: Frankenstein // Marty Supreme

Tom: Frankenstein // Sinners

Best Cinematography

Arnel: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Darcy: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Tom: One Battle After Another // Sinners

*One Battle After Another* has multiple nominations this year, and is tipped to win more than once

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Arnel: Frankenstein // Frankenstein

Darcy: Frankenstein // Frankenstein

Tom: Frankenstein // Frankenstein

Best Costume Design

Arnel: Frankenstein // Frankenstein

Darcy: Frankenstein // Frankenstein

Tom: Frankenstein // Sinners

Best Film Editing

Arnel: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Darcy: One Battle After Another // One Battle…

Tom: One Battle After Another // F1

Best Visual Effects

Arnel: Avatar: Fire and Ash // Avatar: Fire and Ash

Darcy: Avatar: Fire and Ash // Avatar: Fire and Ash

Tom: Avatar: Fire and Ash // Sinners

Best Casting

Arnel: Sinners // Sinners

Darcy: Sinners // The Secret Agent

Tom: Sinners // Marty Supreme

The Secret Agent is a Biting and Playful Political Thriller

January 23, 2026January 23, 2026Darcy Read

Set in the Northeast of Brazil in the city of Recife in 1977, just as the country’s military dictatorship rounds third base, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s relaxed but probing political film The Secret Agent (2025) is like nothing else you’ll encounter in a cinema this year. Able to open a double feature with either Dazed and Confused (1993) or Army of Shadows (1969), the film wears many hats that in less assured hands would appear frayed and confused. Thankfully, Filho has levelled up as a filmmaker and storyteller, letting his playful tendencies heighten the moments of potent tension and violence that in less capable hands would beguile an audience.

Centring a former professor and widower with a political target on his back, Armando (an exceptional Wagner Moura) returns to Recife to collect his son from his in-laws, seeking refuge in the warm embrace of a small community of political refugees helmed by Dona Sebastiana, in one of the year’s best supporting performances by Tânia Maria that feels achingly real.

Wagner Moura’s work shifts elusively from room to room as Armando quickly surveys his surroundings to uncover how he needs to respond to each interaction. The highly regarded actor is given the role of a lifetime and is set to acquire several awards, as a man with a committed goal, but never stops living his elusive life, even as the violence around the corner draws nearer.

Wagner Moura as Armando in *The Secret Agent* (2025).

By placing this political and community-based struggle in the veins of a hangout film, Filho supports Moira’s performance with an outstanding cast that gives life to the past by giving a beating heart to this community of political refugees of his own country.

Echoes ripple through buildings, but the truth in history is something that must be searched for. Filho explores his country’s past and the people who inhabit those histories not as vessels for political tropes and ideologies, but as human beings who pass away long before their heroism is uncovered. The secondary narrative device of university students seeking to uncover the truth through tape recordings of our central story is surprising when it first appears, but it allows a dense exploration of ideas to occur. Filho’s way of shooting these scenes gives what could’ve been a contrived narrative crutch a potent level of emotional intimacy, allowing the film’s final sequence to sing.

In voicing The Secret Agent in the language of De Palma and Pakula, masters of the genre and time period the film is based, Filho is placing his film in conversation with the genre of political thrillers that most audiences are familiar with, allowing a discourse to occur across the screen between time and continents, ideas that are very much at the heart of the narrative. Alongside this, the film is a Cinema Paradiso (1988) level love affair with cinema itself, playing out in large swathes at a theatre, set against the backdrop of the sweltering summer backdrop of Jaws (1975) and the way it took the world by storm. Opening the film is the beguiling discovery of a leg inside a shark being studied at a local university, sweeping us up in the strange and playful mode Filho builds the world around, all while leading us down deeper and deeper with an unnerving sense of impending violence.

Like his previous film, Bacurau (2019), a rhythmic playfulness quickly sweeps an audience into a story, but a moment of visceral violence and aggression can pierce through that world like a stray bullet. With The Secret Agent, Filho’s eye is sharper and more directed, but playfulness is still the engine that drives his work. People do not stop living as the plots of his films take place; everything and everyone is transient, a poignant concept to maintain in a political thriller of this kind.

(From left) Robério Diógenes, Wagner Moura, and Igor de Araújo in *The Secret Agent.*

While the political thriller genre is defined by American filmmakers like De Palma and Pakula, peaking in the conspiratorial aftermath of Watergate and the Nixon administration, in recent years, the genre has been defined by international cinema. The Secret Agent asks much of its audience in terms of prior knowledge of Brazil’s military dictatorship, but in a modern climate of authoritarian spot fires around the globe, many audiences will see themselves in the images Filho shows us. Scenes of political refugees commenting on the limited groceries that are handed by a local farmer trying to assist them are as keenly observed as the moments of shocking violence.

Returning to the present day with the students weaving themselves into the stories of the past, we are in a constant meditation with ideas of bearing witness through aural recollection and the intimate but limited way of history being investigated. A pivotal scene in the film’s movement towards the thriller genre plays out when Armando and Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) discuss getting his family out of the country and the hit being put on his head, all while recording the conversation. This gripping scene is shown alongside Flavia (Laura Lufési), a heavily invested student, probing the moments we are shown, trying to glean insight into this moment and what may have occurred in that room outside of the captured audio.

What does it mean to tell a story of such darkness with this level of lightness? The film’s Godardian level of bounce and freedom activates a unique form of scene-to-scene tension not often seen in the political skin that Filho’s film wears. But, while the tension of these genre moments is usually played for excitement, The Secret Agent conditions us to find these moments profoundly reflective, peering into these lives with an open heart and a wry smirk of the absurdity of buffoonish political violence. A high-wire act that appears shockingly relaxed.

The Secret Agent is in select theatres now.

No Other Choice is the Work of a Master

January 16, 2026Darcy Read

A showman like no other, Korean visionary Park Chan Wook elicits more joy and wonder out of an audience from a perfectly timed cross-dissolve than most car chases filmed this decade. A filmmaker who is constantly looking to find the tipping point of extremity without falling into the world of camp, Park has cultivated a devoted fanbase that expands with each new entry, especially in recent years, with his fearlessness to work in the grime of modern life

Upon exiting No Other Choice (2025) in a delirium, it is clear that Park is the greatest modern visual stylist. While his stories can vary in interest and quality, as a filmmaker who is obsessed with the power of the art of editing, you will always leave his films satisfied. Adapted from the legend Donald Westlake’s The Ax from 1997, Park’s screenplay makes the key decision to maintain the protagonist’s occupation and narrative arc, showing how, as time passes, the crushing weight of modern capitalism has only increased. Centring a literal paper pusher, we walk hand in ham-fisted hand, gliding on the back of whip pans and transitions that will make film students furiously scribbling notes.

After being made redundant after the acquisition of the paper company by an American conglomerate, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is sent to a support group for the newly unemployed, selling self-worth and virtue as its own reward. But, after tasting mild success and a bountiful life with his family, Man-su is after a return to cold, hard reward.

Built on the late capitalist mindset that success can only be achieved through the pain of another, Man-su’s plan ultimately lands in Park’s wheelhouse, getting rid of the more hireable paper men in town, so he is all that remains. Amongst all the extremity and chaotic joy gushing out of wild filmmaking choices, the story elicits an overwhelming sense of pain as we see a group of men that should be in community with one another, forced to compete for what will ultimately be a hollow prize.

Lee Byung-hun as Man-Su in *No Other Choice*.

Sitting somewhere between Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (2024) and Tokyo Sonata (2008) as modern tales on the devolving psyche of work culture and living under the cruel thumb of capitalism. That Neon in a marketing push sent an open invite to the fortune 500 company CEO’s says everything about how pointed the film aims to be at its primary villain.

Lee’s performance holds down the film’s extremity, preventing it from turning into a circus. His desperation exudes from him as a flop sweat, gritting his teeth through every moment, anxious that the moment he stops to consider the repercussions, it will all crash down. In moments where the world appears to react based on Man-su’s emotions, anything seems possible in this farcical satire that moves with a feverish pace. There is a fleeting moment when a potential final victim offers a job that we feel an unexpected glimmer of hope that we can get off the road. But as is the case with most Park Chan Wook films, that road, once entered, is one-way.

Park is in a tier above all when it comes to pushing the visual medium forward with a fever pitch and an unmatched style. Like his idol Alfred Hitchcock, Park sees his role as both old school entertainer and cinematic visionary who asks what is possible in the medium they have devoted their life to. In his recent work, Park has devoted an enormous amount of time to uncovering ways to use the reflective world of phone and computer screens to tell a story that is still compelled by the characters holding them. When we see Man-su’s reflected face alongside his screen as he drives himself further and further into his doomscroll, we so easily see ourselves. These scenes are comedic but intensely revealing, and make almost all contemporary filmmakers look like cowards for hiding in period filmmaking.

(From left) Son Ye-Jin as Miri and Lee Byung-hun as Man-Su in *No Other Choice*.

Always veering into doing too much, Park hides as much in its maximalist frames as he shows. Many have criticised the filmmaker for over-directing his screenplays, never allowing the writing to gleam through the forest of his craft, which I believe to be a false and overly simplistic reading of his work. In his very best films, whether original scripts or adaptations like in No Other Choice, he highlights the power and potency of the writing by its sheer ability to stand alongside some of the most visionary filmmaking this century through iconic characters and set pieces. It is only in his films like Stoker, with lesser scripts, that become mostly known for a scene transition (show hair transition scene from YouTube).

What allows Park to ride so close to the edge of camp absurdism without toppling over is his ability to play to a crowd, both in enjoyment and the collective experience of being surrounded by strangers, all uncertain of what will happen next, which makes live sports an enduring event. With all respect to the perfect chase scene at the conclusion of One Battle After Another (2025), the legend of the final act, Park Chan Wook’s No Other Choice, has the finale of the year. A glorious send-up of modern late-stage capitalism as a ‘be careful what you wish for’ fairy tale that blends melodrama into a living nightmare into the best satire in years. It is a farcical screed of capitalism that gloriously blooms into something unexpectedly transcendent in its conclusion.

The poetic irony in its final moments play like the deterministic singularity point that all modern art about the crushing weight of capitalism arrives at, there is literally no other choice. How Park doesn’t arrive at a place of crippling nihilism in its final moments but of cruel irony and humanity is nothing short of astounding. His revenge fables are without equal in modern storytelling, with No Other Choice arriving into this extended canon in surprising ways.

No Other Choice is in select theatres now.

Best of 2025: Darcy’s Picks

January 14, 2026January 20, 2026Darcy Read

With 2025 having drawn to a close, Rating Frames is looking back at the past twelve months of cinema and streaming releases that have come our way. In the second of our series of articles, Darcy is taking a look at his ten favourite films of the year that was.

The medium is the message of films in 2025. In a time where feature filmmaking has to, in some form or another, justify its existence on the screen in comparison to TV or internet slop fed through an infinite reel, the best work to come out this year weaponises the stranglehold a great long-form story can have on an audience. A mixture of old masters and bright new talents across genres and styles, the top of a terrific year in film was all improved by viewing them in a packed theatre, demonstrating that cinema is still at its best as a communal experience, from incisive documentaries and quiet family dramas to a provocative action spectacle that invites an audience to question its worldview.

10. The Perfect Neighbor

So much of good documentary work comes down to access and editing, and Geeta Gandbhir’s heartbreaking portrait of a Ajike Owens’ Florida community and the very active role racism can take in someone’s life has both in droves. Using almost exclusively bodycam footage, police station security tapes, and 911 calls, Gandbhir and editor Viridiana Lieberman weave a poignant and incisive story of the state’s Stand Your Ground laws and the reality of how they are abused. No other film this year will make your blood boil and your heart sink.

9. 28 Years Later

Returning 18 years later with a supposed three screenplays in hand, Alex Garland (a personal favourite writer) wanted to tell the story of the UK in recent years in a franchise that has defined a lot of 21st Century English cinema, with a remarkable and unexpectedly emotional film. Centring on a young family led by an impressive newcomer in Alfie Williams, the rich level of depth and commentary in 28 Years Later allows what could’ve easily been a quick money grab by Garland and Danny Boyle to become an instant Brexit classic. With its exploration of community and isolationism with the backdrop of a widespread outbreak, 28 Years Later places itself at the forefront of art in conversation with the world in the 2020s.

8. The Mastermind

A sleepy political heist hangout with the actor of the moment, Kelly Reichardt’s 70s whisper-of-a-film will leave a long tail that may define the year in the future. Starring Josh O’Connor in his best performance to date as an uninspired suburban dad wanting to pull off an art heist, The Mastermind glides through its own world with a protagonist who believes himself smart and savvy enough to pull off the crime. Reichardt’s hidden sharp blade of focusing on someone causing chaos through their quiet ego of knowing better than those around them allows the world around O’Connor to build from gentle embers to a raging fire.

7. Sorry, Baby

A wonderfully modern dramedy, Sorry, Baby may just usher in a new era of 2020s mumblecore with a shining new voice in Eva Victor. A story that easily could’ve landed on television and overextended, Victor, who wrote, directed, and starred in this thorny comedy of unsurety, loves cinema enough to operate and thrive within the condensed medium. As a young, depressed literary professor, Victor’s Agnes is one of the best cinematic characters of the year, a charming and thorny person you can’t help but connect with. A film that handles heavy subjects with grace and clarity, Victor has emerged as one of the brightest emerging filmmakers and performers in years.

6. Sirât

A modern experiential travel saga akin to William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977), Oliver Laxe’s Sirât must be seen to be believed, with several earth-shaking moments that will dig into your bones and leave scars. A shocking cinematic experience, Sirât follows a father and son as they search through an underground Moroccan desert rave scene to find their daughter and sister. The film explores community and connection, propelling you forward in line with Kangding Ray’s incredible music soundscapes.

5. Sinners

The future promise of exciting blockbuster cinema is also one of the most enjoyable and prickly films of the year. Ryan Coogler’s exploration into race, music, and history is tied to an explosive vampire action film that proves adults will still show up if given some real meat to sink their teeth into. With a terrific ensemble and a remarkable breakout by Miles Caton (so good you do not question his future self played by Buddy Guy), Coogler’s musical knows how to entertain a crowd while still provoking thoughts about how culture and music are consumed.

4. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions

My most anticipated film experience of the year delivers and beguiles like no other. Perhaps the greatest music video director around, working with Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, FKA Twigs, and Flying Lotus, Kahlil Joseph has a visual eye that blends hyper-modern documentary styles — which includes YouTube clips and memes — with his love and influence from the legendary Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Debuting the first iteration of BLKNWS at the Venice Biennale in 2019 as a video installation, Joseph and A24 collaborated to expand the work into a feature-length experience like no other. The film will be hard to track down, but it is as essential a watch in 2025 as any film on this list. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a dense yet enjoyable work that will have you asking more from documentary and experiential cinema for the rest of the decade.

3. Sentimental Value

A tremendous follow up to Joachim Trier’s millennial classic The Worst Person in the World (2021), Sentimental Value pulses and ripples through generations of familial connection and disconnection with grace and power that feels open and inviting even in its thorniest moments. Trier and all his creative collaborators understand that to create is to bridge an ocean of the unsaid, even if that means building a replica of your generational family home on a soundstage, only to have it hidden on the 18th page of the Netflix arthouse section. Trier and Vogt understand deeply how, even through that artifice, true openness and connection can be translated into a final, powerful image of understanding but not resolution.

2. No Other Choice

With all respect to the perfect chase scene at the conclusion of the film at the top of my list, the master of the final act, Park Chan Wook’s No Other Choice, has the finale of the year. A glorious send-up of modern late-stage capitalism as a ‘be careful what you wish for’ fairy tale that blends melodrama into a living nightmare into the best satire in years. How Park doesn’t arrive at a place of crippling nihilism in its final moments but of cruel irony and humanity is nothing short of astounding. His revenge fables are without equal in modern storytelling, with No Other Choice entering this extended canon in surprising ways. No one is pushing the language of cinematic storytelling more than Park with his visualisations of doomscrolling as a uniquely modern debilitation.

1. One Battle After Another

A film that leaps off the screen in an instant, One Battle After Another works the way most immediately immortal films do. And much like many of the great immortal films, I find myself reading rather than writing about Paul Thomas Anderson’s incisive work of contemporary revolutionary cinema that even when it pulls punches, compels you forward. I’m not surprised a new PTA film that finally delves into contemporary life is my favourite film to be released in its 2020s, as his deeply humanist approach to writing over the last 30 years has defined so much of my taste in art. Combine that with subject matter I find endlessly compelling as a modern look at the humanity and personhood of revolutionaries that is fuelled by the past but never backwards-looking, and you have a film that will be the yardstick all other films will be measured against.

Honourable mentions: Black Bag, Caught By The Tides, Eephus.

Sentimental Value is The Moving Family Drama to See

December 26, 2025Darcy Read

Arriving on Australian shores on Christmas Day, Joachim Trier’s follow-up to the Millennial instant classic The Worst Person in the World (2021) follows a family collision of artists that may be the perfect film for the holiday. Sentimental Value (2025) is a film about artists unable to articulate their feelings but are able to embody them and translate it to a captive audience. Trier and frequent collaborator Eskil Vogt have moved from dense single-character explorations into a wider canvas of a family, allowing their humanist writing style to weave between the said and unsaid.

Centred is Nora Borg, played by another frequent collaborator in Renate Reinsve, a respected theatre actor suffering from immense stage fright; Agnes (a remarkable Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), her younger sister who has escaped the arts to make a more grounded life for herself; Gustav (a tremendous Stellan Starsgård), a well respected arthouse director and their distant father; and Rachel (Elle Fanning), an American star who aches to work on more meaningful work.

The film focuses on the return of Gustav, who has written a script that explores the past and present of the family’s history, set in the old family home, most of where Sentimental Value is set. He believes this script will launch him out of the retrospective tour space and back into the forefront of modern cinema; he just needs his estranged daughter, Nora, to agree to collaborate with him and star in the film. When she refuses to work with her father on the film, Gustav, after a chance encounter at a film festival, asks the young star Rachel to perform the role instead.

The act of writing a lead role for a loved one is something the film does not take lightly, whilst never allowing the work to unfold into a navel-gazing melodrama. A shaggy family drama about the film business and artistry would quickly implode, but Trier and Vogt’s script has a dedication to the central three family members that always feels generous.

Renate Reinsve in *Sentimental Value* (2025.)

While a gut punch on first viewing, upon multiple viewings, it becomes clear that this is a generational performance by Skarsgård. This is made all the more extraordinary due to his health and his inability to memorise lines post-stroke. It is too rare where a character and performer to become as intrinsically linked as Skarsgård and Gustav do here, as an aging artist looking to the past, present, and future of their family line to understand themselves and those around them.

Bergman is always on the mind while interpersonal scenes float from moment to moment. The film dances between influences in Persona (1966) and Vertigo (1958) with Fanning’s character Rachel, arriving at an equal power through a balance of influences. While Hitchcock’s complicated masterpiece wields the weight of comedically heightened mirroring and Bergman’s film of duality that revel in never fully eliding its meaning to the characters, Trier’s mirroring achieves its power through its late decision to voice itself clearly and openly.

A key scene of mirroring occurs in a pair of scenes that opens up the film into a world of collective humanity that is often the goal of Trier’s films. On one side of the glass is a monologue rehearsal scene with Rachel (after dying her hair to more closely resemble Nora) and Gustav, who is struggling to reach the impossible place he is searching for. On the other, a gorgeous scene where Nora finally reads the script after being given it by her sister, after she also finally reads it. After finally reading the script and releasing the intimacy that Gustav is pouring onto the page — something he would never articulate to them personally — the sisters are profoundly moved, and a point of familial understanding overwhelms them.

(from left) Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in *Sentimental Value* (2025.)

Whether the film too neatly arrives at its climaxes is up to personal taste, but much needs to be credited to Trier and Vogt for the level of clarity and emotional weight they give to the struggle artists have with connecting to those they love without using their art. And the exploration Gustav has in writing extends as an olive branch to Nora, to tell her he sees her struggles, but gives her the medium of her art to explore them together.

It is in these moments of generous openness and charged, yet elided, dialogue that Sentimental Value becomes a beautifully emotive family drama. Trier and all his creative collaborators understand that to create is to bridge an ocean of the unsaid, even if that means building a replica of your generational family home on a soundstage, only to have it hidden on the 18th page of the Netflix arthouse section. Trier and Vogt understand deeply how, even through that artifice, true openness and connection can be translated into a final, powerful image of understanding but not resolution.

Sentimental Value is in select theatres now.

MIFF 2025: Darcy’s Notebook

August 21, 2025Darcy Read

Another year, another chaotic year of MIFF. With some dizzying heights and impressive debuts, cinema feels in good hands as we march headfirst into the tail end of the 2020s (a wild thought). The festival is the highlight of the cinematic calendar for the city, defining the landscape as it shifts towards awards season, with a tremendous work of curation and bold decisions as addressed below that make August the best month of the year.

Twinless (2025) – James Sweeney

A proper dramedy with a complicated but compelling pair at its core, Twinless is a charming and confident debut not weighed down by its writer, director James Sweeney’s decision to also star in the film. Following a pair of twins who have recently lost their other half and meet at a support group, Dylan O’Brien’s Roman (and Rocky) and Sweeney’s Dennis fall into a quick friendship as they look to fill the void.

Would make an interesting double feature with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship (2024) as a perceptive and darkly funny look at the pursuit of modern male friendship, with many screwball moments in Sweeney’s film feeling like I Think You Should Leave (2019) pitches. Sweeney excels in wrongfooting the audience into a charming dramedy that gives space to both sides of the genre mash.

The Mastermind (2025) – Kelly Reichardt

No one is operating on Kelly Reichardt’s small but vital level. With an autumnal romp that makes way for a surprisingly poignant introspection into one’s relationship to political change, Reichardt’s period heist mood piece captures you in a breathing world, and will linger on you long after you leave like the smell of last night’s smoke break.

Josh O’Connor’s niche as a dirtbag charmer continues with his best Elliot Gould here (absolute cinematic catnip for me) as an art school washout living in suburbia with a wife (an underused Alana Haim) and two kids who have a side hustle-slash-obsession with art heists. While not on the level of O’Connor’s recent classic La Chimera (2023), this cool, warm-hued hangout film will only expand as the months go on, where I would not be surprised if it lands on end-of-year lists and amongst Reichardt’s most beloved films.

Blue Moon (2025) – Richard Linklater

A frenetic script by novelist Robert Kaplow and a high-level performance from Ethan Hawke allow Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon to shine through its humble boundaries as a film that should’ve been a play. Set against the background of the opening night of Oklahoma! On Broadway in 1943, Hawke plays the famed but troubled songwriter Lorenz Hart, who is stewing at Sardi’s, the bar soon to be the venue for the show’s party.

Hawke is flanked by a terrific cast who bounce off and counter his manic energy wonderfully, including Bobby Cannavale, Margaret Qualley, Andrew Scott, and Patrick Kennedy as an array of famous names the film nods to. Thankfully, Linklater’s love and curiosity for these artists and individuals dance energetically around the screen, allowing even those with no Broadway knowledge to understand and appreciate the film.

Sirât (2025) – Oliver Laxe

In a year of great horror and thrillers, there is no more visceral or dire theatre going experience than Óliver Laxe’s Cannes Jury Prize winning film Sirāt. Aided by the festival’s bold decision to screen this anxiety ridden, grim family nightmare at IMAX. We follow father and son Luis (Sergi López) and Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) into the Moroccan desert in search of their daughter and sister Mar, leading them into an EDM festival where they are briefly liberated from the bounds of society. With its pounding techno score and 16mm film stock, Sirāt is a sensory marvel that pulls you into its world and commands you to walk desperately into the desert and into the unknown.

With a political undercurrent and bare-boned family drama, Sirāt uses the visual language of the immortal William Friedkin fever dream Sorcerer (1977) to illustrate an Odyssey-like adventure in a world quickly becoming unrecognisable. This is a film that will take days to process, asking unique questions of yourself and to what extent you’ll chase exhilaration in your own life and in an experience on screen.

Exit 8 (2025) – Genki Kawamura

No experience illustrates the power the festival has over the city than the sold-out IMAX screening of Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8, a chaotic and mesmerising Escher painting of a horror film about being trapped in a loop in Shinjuku station. With a dozen references to The Shining (1980), Kawamura focuses on mood and engagement with a game audience to draw us along its short and concise runtime. We are given just enough narrative to fill a feature, trapped in a propulsive active viewing experience, a wonderful feeling in a sold-out crowd. In a great year for horror, this is not one to miss when it enters theatres.

Resurrection (2025) – Bi Gan

What to say about the film that has everything. Bursting at the seams with plots in miniature and arthouse bravura, Bi Gan’s follow-up to the extraordinary Long Days Journey into Night (2018) is the cinematic odyssey Resurrection. An undefinable tapestry that wears many genre hats as a sci monster powered like a projected as the line dreamer in a world that has learnt the secret to eternal life, so long as they don’t dream. Or something like that. While Gan’s previous film is expansive but intimate in its storytelling scope, Resurrection operates as basically six short genre pieces that have the density and plot to inhabit for its entire 160-minute run-time. That is a testament to Gan’s visual style and conceptual scope, even if he can get caught up in its own luxuriating to succeed as a narrative.

An interesting film to compare this expansive odyssey with is Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (2023). Both grand-scale odysseys following a pair of characters that can’t help but pursue one another, across time or across cinematic dreams. The key distinction is that Resurrection is a work of sentiment told across cinematic history, akin to Babylon (2022), whereas Bonello’s film operates as an incisive look at relationships through the lens of their pair.

With wonderful performances by Jackson Yee and Shu Qi, played across many genres including silent film, noir, and a gangster vampire romance shot as a 30 minute oner on New Years’ Eve 1999, Resurrection can and will show you its whole heart if you’ll let it, overwhelming you with ideas and concepts rooted in the undeniable truth that the cinematic dream is irreplaceable.

Dreams (Sex Love) (2025) – Dag Johan Haugerud

A delicate exploration of teenage love and obsession that treats it with sensuality and respect, while allowing space for realism and reflection. The third part of Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud’s collection of films on love and desire made in quick succession, Dreams (Sex Love) centres on a teenage art student Johanne (Ella Øverbye) who pines for her new teacher Johanna (Selome Emnetu), eventually pouring her feelings and desires into a book she gives to her poet grandmother.

The film shifts in unexpected ways while still following Johanne’s emotional journey that resonates with the fresh wisdom of a good teen romance novel. The prolific nature of Haugerud’s work does not diminish the literary quality of his films, which leave room for many poignant interpersonal conversations that span generations. I was only able to catch this single entry in the collection, but I will endeavour to complete the trilogy by year’s end.

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions (2024) – Kahlil Joseph

Kahlil Joseph did not set out to make a documentary. Expanding on his two screen art installations of the same name, Joseph explodes his vision of an intertwining Black past and future through an extravagant reimagining of history and form with a frenetic energy that bounces from lush Afrofuturist narratives with some of the best production design of the year to reaction memes.

With cinematography from the great Bradford Young and a pulsating score by experimental artist Klein, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions sees beauty in the interplay between sweeping science fiction storytelling with dense, academic dialogue and modern internet culture, something rarely seen projected on a large screen. While not an easy film to grasp or comprehend in real-time, Joseph and his writing collective have crafted a dizzying piece of art that will hopefully inspire new nonfiction visual artists to explore their craft in inventive and genre-breaking ways. The film of the festival for me.

Cloud (2024) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa

A cynical master storyteller returning to the twisty world of revenge cinema through the lens of a modern huckster dirtbag trying to turn a quick buck as an online reseller, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud forces us to confront our relationship to ground-level late-stage capitalism in unexpected and darkly comedic ways. Unaware of the mild carnage he leaves behind him as he attempts to secure a comfortable life on his own terms, Masaki Soda’s Ryôsuke Yoshii is just smart enough to spot an opportunity to coldly swindle desperate people out of their undervalued goods, but not smart enough to avoid danger and risk.

There’s no greater feeling in the theatre than when Kurosawa is moving through his spider web plots with the tension of a vintage paranoia thriller. When a true master of form and craft is still interested in the modern world and can critique and perceive it in compelling ways, we can’t afford to ignore it. Especially when they’re this enjoyable in a crowd.

Brand New Landscape (2025) – Yuiga Danzuka

Danzuka’s debut feature made waves as the youngest Japanese director ever to be featured in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, beginning with an extended Ozu-like exploration of a family in quiet crisis. Brand New Landscape wears its compelling, if slightly clouded themes proudly of a shifting Tokyo, and more specifically Shibuya, as a space aimed to accommodate a younger generation, even if it harms its current occupants.

The film displays the ripple effects from an unimaginable event that fractures a familiar family structure alongside the construction and evolution of several key spaces in the famous Tokyo area. Brand New Landscape never reaches a triumphant peak of dramatic storytelling, but it does leave you with both a unique perspective of Tokyo and of your own experiences in your own city and neighbourhood. A rather remarkable feat for a young filmmaker to garner.

Sorry, Baby (2025) – Eva Victor

The most assured and confident debut of the year, Eva Victor writes, directs, and stars in a playful yet poignant dramedy on the lasting impacts of trauma that finds new ground in the familiar lane of modern storytelling. As a liberal arts grad still living near campus and on the verge of starting a full-time teaching position while still processing and working through deep trauma, Agnes (Victor) feels stuck while her closest friend Lydie (Naomie Ackie) returns to tell her she’s pregnant.

A film about the adult anxiety of never being sure of the right thing to do or feel in any situation, Victor is perceptive with a sharp eye for when to be kind and when to be cutting. Sorry, Baby has such a strong command of a difficult tone throughout that the audience quickly settles into the hands of a commanding filmmaker, a rare feat in a first feature. There may be no better scene in indie cinema this year than the jury duty scene in this film with its ability to float between wry humour, female camaraderie in unlikely situations, and quiet character storytelling that announced Victor as am impressive filmmaker and performer.

The End (2024) – Joshua Oppenheimer

A film about a family resolute in their self delusion, unflinching in their avoidance of personal reckoning after a climate apocalypse they helped create, played out as a musical, the genre defined by its characters constantly reckoning with their own feelings and decisions through song.

A remarkable ensemble that elevates the film above an impressive academic genre experiment, particularly George Mackay, who, after starring in Bonello’s The Beast (wow, two nods in one festival for this film), has more than proven his bona fides as a young star able to breathe life into some art cinema trappings. Oppenheimer clearly has a lot on his mind with the ability of the most powerful people in the world to craft self-delusions to survive within and what happens when others encounter and potentially destabilise those delusions, a throughline that ties his totemic documentary films to The End. The decision to mine new thematic ground in a wildly different way may go down as a defining cinematic decision of the decade, and while this film does not reach some of the transcendent moments of The Act of Killing (2012) or The Look of Silence (2014), The End is certainly worth your time and hopefully not a final foray into narrative film.

97th Academy Awards: Predictions

March 2, 2025March 3, 2025ratingframesau

It’s the most wonderful time of the year if you’re a cinephile, and it’s just around the corner.

Yes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Night of Nights —otherwise known as “The Oscars”— will be taking place this Monday morning, March 1st (Naarm time) and the team at Rating Frames is as excited as ever.

As they did last year, our three resident critics have made their predictions as to what, or who, will be victorious in all 23 categories.

Below are the films that Arnel, Darcy and Tom are predicting will walk away with a coveted statuette at the 97th Academy Awards, and their personal vote, in each category

Best Picture

What will win // What deserves to win

Arnel: The Brutalist // Anora

Darcy: Anora // Nickel Boys

Tom: Conclave // Dune: Part Two

Best Director

Arnel: Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) // Sean Baker (Anora)

Darcy: Sean Baker (Anora) // Brady Corbet (The Brutalist)

Tom: Sean Baker (Anora) // Sean Baker

Best Actor

Arnel: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) // Adrien Brody

Darcy: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) // Adrien Brody

Tom: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) // Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)

Ralph Fiennes, nominated for his performance in *The Conclave*

Best Actress

Arnel: Mikey Madison (Anora) // Mikey Madison

Darcy: Demi Moore (The Substance) // Mikey Madison (Anora)

Tom: Demi Moore (The Substance) // Mikey Madison (Anora)

Best Supporting Actor

Arnel: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) // Kieran Culkin

Darcy: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) // Guy Pearce (The Brutalist)

Tom: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) // Yura Borisov (Anora)

Best Supporting Actress

Arnel: Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Perez) // Zoe Saldaña

Darcy: Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Perez) // Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown)

Tom: Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Perez) // Isabella Rossellini (Conclave)

Best Original Screenplay

Arnel: Anora // Anora

Darcy: Anora // Anora

Tom: Anora // Anora

Best Adapted Screenplay

Arnel: Conclave // Conclave

Darcy: Conclave // Nickel Boys

Tom: Conclave // Conclave

Best Animated Feature

Arnel: The Wild Robot // The Wild Robot

Darcy: The Wild Robot // The Wild Robot

Tom: The Wild Robot // The Wild Robot

*The Wild Robot* is a hot favourite for Animated Feature

Best International Feature

Arnel: I’m Still Here // I’m Still Here

Darcy: I’m Still Here // The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Tom: I’m Still Here

Best Documentary Feature

Arnel: Porcelain War // No Other Land

Darcy: No Other Land // No Other Land

Tom: Porcelain War

Best Documentary Short Subject

Arnel: Incident // Instruments of a Beating Heart

Darcy: I Am Ready, Warden // Incident

Tom: Instruments of a Beating Heart

Best Live-Action Short

Arnel: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent // The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Darcy: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent // The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Tom: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best Animated Short

Arnel: Yuck! // Yuck!

Darcy: Beautiful Men // Yuck!

Tom: Magic Candies

Best Original Score

Arnel: The Brutalist // The Brutalist

Darcy: The Brutalist // The Brutalist

Tom: The Brutalist // The Wild Robot

Best Original Song

Arnel: “El Mal” (Emilia Perez) // “El Mal”

Darcy: “El Mal” (Emilia Perez) // “Like a Bird” (Sing Sing)

Tom: “El Mal” (Emilia Perez)

Best Sound

Arnel: Dune: Part Two // Dune: Part Two

Darcy: Dune: Part Two // Dune: Part Two

Tom: A Complete Unknown // Dune: Part Two

*Dune: Part Two* is nominated for multiple categories, including Best Sound

Best Production Design

Arnel: Wicked // Wicked

Darcy: Wicked // The Brutalist

Tom: Wicked // Conclave

Best Cinematography

Arnel: The Brutalist // Dune: Part Two

Darcy: The Brutalist // The Brutalist

Tom: The Brutalist // Dune: Part Two

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Arnel: The Substance // The Substance

Darcy: The Substance // The Substance

Tom: The Substance // Nosferatu

Best Costume Design

Arnel: Wicked // Nosferatu

Darcy: Wicked // Nosferatu

Tom: Nosferatu // Conclave

Best Film Editing

Arnel: The Brutalist // Anora

Darcy: Anora // Anora

Tom: The Brutalist // Anora

Best Visual Effects

Arnel: Dune: Part Two // Dune: Part Two

Darcy: Dune: Part Two // Dune: Part Two

Tom: Dune: Part Two // Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Best of 2024: Darcy’s Picks

February 6, 2025Darcy Read

With 2024 having drawn to a close, Rating Frames is looking back at the past twelve months of cinema and streaming releases that have come our way. In the second of our series of articles, Darcy is taking a look at his ten favourite films of the year that was.

With a dense collection of titles with no clear standout, 2024 was the hardest year to rank recent releases in a long time. With a collection of new voices and revered personal icons, 2024 had a wide mixture of films that went head-on in tackling modern life, something that has felt lacking in the last few years. The only key omission to this list upon release is Ramell Ross’ Nickel Boys, a book I love from an exciting new artistic voice in the medium I’ve been desperate to see all year, which is releasing via Amazon at the end of the month. With that being said, I’m happy with how this list came together and hope these rankings get someone to check out a new exciting film.

10. Chime

I struggled with whether to include this short film by one of my favourite filmmakers Kiyoshi Kurosawa ahead of more ambitious titles (like The Brutalist 2024), but ultimately this sinister snapshot of reality was impossible to shake. In a year, and what’s shaping as a decade defined by crucial filmmakers reflecting on their lives and creative work, Kurosawa used multiple 2024 projects to open a dialogue with his early and defining work, even going as far as remaking his 1998 film Serpent’s Path with the same name but in the French language.

In Chime, Kurosawa continues his pursuit into modern perceptions of evil and the malice of life through a brief lens into a culinary school, with a student seemingly driven mad by a noise no one else can hear. What happens next is a remarkable level of cinematic dread that burrows deep into your skin, taking up space in your soul. Kurosawa’s ability to communicate complicated ideas within the short film format is astounding, making this film a must-watch whenever it becomes more widely available.

9. Perfect Days

In a year stacked with esteemed filmmakers returning with a work deep in reflection of their first works, none felt as complete as Wim Wenders’ Japanese-language quotidian reflection piece Perfect Days. Centring on a Shibuya public toilet cleaner, Hirayama, performed by screen legend Kôji Yakusho, Wenders’ film reflects his global curiosity and evolving perspective on humanity through humour and grace. It will be a film I return to often in the coming years.

8. Janet Planet

Janet Planet is a film that knows the smell and crunch of autumn leaves outside a family home that can define a childhood. Annie Baker’s debut work in the cinema space (after years as one of Broadway’s great unsung playwrights), inhabits the in-between with an honest curiosity.

Centring on a wonderful child performance by Zoe Ziegler as the 11-year-old Lacy and her mother Janet (a gravity-altering Julianne Nicholson), Janet Planet is keenly aware of the way a child can refract the adults around them, revealing new parts of a parent and child that is rare in its respect for both sides.

7. Red Rooms

No film crawled under my skin more in 2024, where it continues to remain. While Canadian filmmaker Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms contains no violence, it is the most violently confrontational film you’ll encounter from the last year. At once a spiritual successor to David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and a keenly modern devolution of how the internet has isolated and festered our worst impulses, Red Rooms is one of the great underground discoveries of the year, a chilling interrogation into modern life through the lens of true crime, dark web violence, and modern voyeur culture.

At the front of the lens of the film is Kelly-Anne, portrayed by Juliette Gariépy as an all-time thriller character on the level of Patrick Bateman. A statuette beauty who spends her time modelling, crushing people in online poker, and obsessively attending the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a serial killer of adolescent girls who uploads his extreme violence to the dark web for those who wish to see, can. With Vincent Biron’s dexterous and compelling camera, we are intoxicated by a mesmerising oscillation between extreme unwatchability and an engrossing thriller, caught in a spiderweb where escape is too late. Achieves a lot from very little.

6. Evil Does Not Exist

The best score of the year can be found in Ryuichi Hamaguchi’s follow-up to this decade’s best film Drive My Car (2021), Evil Does Not Exist (more than halfway through the decade these lists should be beginning to solidify), with its elegiac jazz progressions that evolve into a haunting rapture from Eiko Ishibashi.

As a tale of eco-modernism that leaves room for the farcical ways contemporary metropolitan life seeks to corrupt what remains of the natural world which displays Hamaguchi’s breadth and quality as a writer. When consultants for a work retreat glamping company seek to operate within the small village of Mizubiki, they are confronted by an uncooperative community.

Like its overwhelming musical compositions, Evil Does Not Exist climaxes in a confounding but engrossing final moment that lingers and provokes long after you leave. Ishibashi and Hamaguchi are carving out a place as the composer-filmmaker collaboration which the industry should be measured up against.

5. Anora

The unexpected hit out of Cannes, making it the first American film to win the Palme d’Or since Tree of Life (2011) on top of being a Best Picture contender, Sean Baker’s eighth feature Anora is larger and broader than any film he’s made before while still capturing his uptempo yet sobering look into the contemporary American underbelly.

The modern chronicler of contemporary fringe America maintains his scepticism-bordering-on-cynicism about his homeland throughout his filmography, which is stretched to a compelling breaking point here. The internet has explained the film as a modern-day Pretty Woman (1990) by way of Uncut Gems (2019) with a Goodfellas (1990) like structure, but Sean Baker and star Mikey Madison are more interested in exploring how Ani is placed within different worlds than how the world changes her. Anora is a fully realised character that still carves out space to surprise us in moving and memorable ways.

4. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

A film with a backstory as compelling as its on-screen drama (filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, the cast and creatives were forced to flee during production due to a warrant out for their arrest in Iran for filmmaking that goes against the regime), Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig speaks generationally about the modern Iranian moment through the language of family drama and genre filmmaking.

Through the use of social media footage from a recent student protest that turned violent—surprisingly a late addition in the editing process once they had fled the country—Rasoulof creates a certain surreality that arrives through this directness. This allows the simmering political drama to expand past the confines of the narrative into an explosive condemnation of authoritarian rule. While its final tonal shift won’t be for all audiences, it complicates and transforms the film into something larger and more elliptical than its humble and understated beginnings.

3. I Saw the TV Glow

In the days since the passing of the great David Lynch, much has been made about how modern cinema has increasingly lacked this effervescent feeling come to be known as ‘Lynchian’. But with the emergence of Jane Schoenberg and their second feature, I Saw the TV Glow in 2024, that essential Lynchian sensation that has defined indie filmmaking for 40 years has returned to breathe new life into our contemporary world.

With a close kinship to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) — in contention for best film of the 90s — I Saw the TV Glow ties 90s television fan nostalgia with the dissociative world of the adolescent trans experience that is willing to go to some deeply uncomfortable depths of the soul. Schoenberg’s modern reflection of the trans experience as a Lynchian world won’t place it within the awards season conversation, but alongside the extraordinary documentary No Other Land (2024), I Saw the TV Glow is the only essential film to arrive in theatres this year.

2. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

The funniest film of the year is also the hardest to wrestle with. Rade Jude is indie cinema’s great punk rocker, throwing rotten fruit at those that need it. After releasing what will eventually be seen as the definitive Covid satire, 2021’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, the Romanian satirist Jude returns to take aim at the capitalistic infrastructure of modern Bucharest, the gig economy, and the iron claw multinational corporations hold over even small production companies just trying to get by.

With Ilinca Manolache at the centre of his film as production assistant and part-time TikTok satirist Angela, Jude has the perfect muse for life in the Romanian capital, strained in every direction to get by, all for the financial security of a soulless multinational corporation, personified by a great cameo by Nina Hoss.

With its expansive 163-minute runtime, Jude holds many feet to the fire, concluding with a virtuosic yet simple long take for a workplace safety video which will prevent the families from suing the company for culpability, that both cements and brushes off its themes and frustrations like a poetic middle finger to the ruling class.

By culminating this long-form screed on modernity with a capitalistic nightmare version of Bob Dylan’s iconic music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues, with the family of a worker injured at work told to hold up blank pages meant to express their side of the story but will be written in post instead of in their own voice, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World cements Jude as the modern satirist to compare all others to. No one is doing it like him, but I wish more tried.

1. All We Imagine as Light

In a deep movie year with no real standouts like previous years have had, picking a number one was exceedingly difficult. That being said, no film expanded and deepened in my mind on rewatch as Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light. I was recently able to review this film properly since its showing at MIFF left me staggered. Kapadia’s soulful rendering of modern-day Mumbai is gorgeous and a must-see while it remains in theatres.

With a refined hand through documentary work, Kapadia flourishes in small moments. Whether it’s the embrace of a rice cooker given by a distant-slash-estranged husband working in Germany, or the small gesture of helping an older colleague move her things back to her old home after being wrongfully evicted, All We Imagine as Light embraces the aching emotionality of the quotidian, knowing these fleeting moments create a mosaic that reflects the light of human experience.

Honourable mentions: The Brutalist, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, Challengers, No Other Land.

All We Imagine as Light is Unforgettable

December 26, 2024December 26, 2024Darcy Read

Screener provided by Rialto Pictures.

“I’ve lived here maybe 23 years. But I feel afraid to call it home. There’s always the feeling that I’ll have to leave.” These opening words, by a nameless individual, ring out throughout Payal Kapadia’s extraordinary film All We Imagine as Light (2024), shot against the backdrop of Mumbai, focusing on the women who inhabit it.

The most soulful film in years is also perhaps the best feature of the year, documentarian turned fiction filmmaker Kapadia exploding onto the scene with an honest and poetic portrait of humanity in modern India. A powerful blend of personal womanhood inside the political sprawled across modern Mumbai, Kapadia’s gorgeous and lyrical film centres on three multigenerational nurses navigating a world unwilling to accommodate their lives.

Centring on a pair of nurses, seasoned veteran Prabha (Kani Kusruti), and the youthful and expressive Anu (Divya Prabha), navigate an economically and politically uncertain time in Mumbai, along with older nurse Parvarty (Chhaya Kadam), who is facing eviction after the death of her husband. Prabha is dealing with the extended absence of her husband. This arranged marriage almost immediately left Mumbai to work in Germany, sending gestures to her home like a European rice cooker that only highlights the void he has left. On the other hand, Anu is attempting to balance her life while forming an interfaith romance with Muslim boy Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), an increasingly contentious issue in current-day India.

Kani Kusruti as Prabha in *All We Imagine as Light.*

We first see Anu and Prabha on public transport on their way to work, inside the lyrical six-minute opening sequence that guides you immediately into the world Kapadia is sharing with us. Anu is asleep on her side on a train seat, demonstrating her naive sense of safety in her position while also telling the audience her level of preparedness to arrive at work. In the immediate next shot, we see Prabha, gracefully shown in a medium closeup holding onto the pole of the same train for stability (seen above). By only showing Prabha from the shoulders up here, Cinematographer and frequent collaborator Ranabir Das portrays the battle-hardened nurse in grace with the world around her, yet never settled into one place.

There is a fear this remarkable film will be lost in the awards race shuffle due to India’s increasingly conservative film body and government not submitting it for the Academy Awards, even with the film winning the Grand Prix at Cannes. This is a sad but unsurprising occurrence after Kapadia emerged onto the film scene with her 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, also critical of India’s patriarchal system.

The sweet centre of the film lies in the blossoming romance between Anu and Shiaz, a relationship that blends religion and the modern political moment in the city. In a series of push-pull romantic moments which includes a heartbreaking yet comedic booty call where Anu must purchase a hijab to visit him in the Muslim district where he lives. Kapadia avoids easy exits with this romance, concluding powerfully with an honest and poetic moment of acceptance and beauty, tied into an honest moment of private security.

In contrast to this romance, Prabha and her complicated relationship with her absent husband fills the remaining emotional bandwidth. Born of an arranged marriage that ties her to the city she does not call her own. In the opening prologue, a resident tells us, “That’s life. You better get used to the impermanence”. In a film centred on the relationship between people and the places they inhabit, this line pangs with an honest awareness.

Divya Prabha as Anu in *All We Imagine as Light*.

A film that comes to mind while watching Kapadia’s film is Steve McQueen’s Lover’s Rock (2020) from his Small Axe series, and not just because composers Dhritiman Das and Topshe’s playful piano score could’ve fallen out of one of his films. The short and sweet feature is in contention for the film of the decade, a complicated work of desire and connection inside a wealth of sumptuous visual storytelling and guile that simply overwhelms you. Both films use colour and vivid travelogue-styled cinematography to embrace the human connection of place. What separates the two films is Kapadia’s deceptively critical eye when depicting modern Mumbai, especially the three women’s place within it.

The slow, simmering drama underneath the film’s central pair is the wrongful eviction of a third nurse at the hospital, the older woman Parvaty. Her husband has died, removing her right to live in her own home. The potency of the feminist politics that simmer underneath All We Imagine as Light is in the grounded reality of the characters’ situation, one they are helpless to improve, finding solace in their own uneasy but accepting companionship.

The film operates within two acts, the first within the city that flows downstream into its latter half as the trio of women go to the beachside village that Parvaty grew up in. Kapadia, through her documentary lens, views characters as people who have been steeped in a certain place like tea, becoming more like a place the longer you inhabit it. While Mumbai is described as a place of impermanence and instability for the characters we meet, it is only in venturing out of the rapid city do they begin to view their life and their wants more clearly. In its final moments, would Anu and Shiaz ever have the courage to meet Prabha without this opportunity outside the city? And would Prabha’s spiritual exchange with her husband which opened her eyes to what she is holding onto and what she needs to give up to change have occurred in the melancholy that followed her throughout Mumbai?

Kapadia, with a refined hand through documentary work, flourishes in small moments. Whether it’s the embrace of a rice cooker given by a distant-slash-estranged husband working in Germany, or the small gesture of helping an older colleague move her things back to her old home after being wrongfully evicted, All We Imagine as Light embraces the aching emotionality of the quotidian, knowing these fleeting moments create a mosaic that reflects the light of human experience.

All We Imagine as Light is in select theatres now.