The breakout film of Cannes, with a loud purchase by Netflix and an eye towards the Academy Awards, Spanish queer epic La Bola Negra (2026) has a deeply felt connection to the stories of the untold and how that untelling can create the uneasy ground for future generations to live on.
Inspired by the unfinished work of the same name by Federico García Lorca, as well as the play La piedra oscura by co-screenwriter Alberto Conejero, filmmaking duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, commonly known as Los Javis, have announced themselves to the wider world with a bold and evocative epic spread across decades in Spain.
In 1932, Carlos (Milo Quifes), at the behest of his father, seeks to gain membership in the city’s exclusive casino but is denied (blackballed) on account of local rumours of him being homosexual. In 1937, listless musician Sebastián (Spanish singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente in one of the best performances of the year) is conscripted into the Spanish Civil War by the pro-Franco army, where he meets and falls for a leftist POW. In 2017, Alberto (Carlos Gonzalez), a playwright turned historian, receives an unexpected inheritance from a distant grandfather, causing friction in his already fraught relationship with his mother.
Guitarricadelafuente as Sebastián in La Bola Negra
From the opening images, we see that Los Javis are interested in the great human scale of classic Hollywood, but with the modern digital lens rather than pure nostalgic lens that would’ve been terminal to a film of this kind.
The film is a tragedy of what happens when we deny ourselves; this queer identity triptych is didactic and bold, wearing its desire for acclaim proudly across its shoulders. With an eye towards One Perfect Shot maximalism, the Carlos sequences in particular. La Bola Negra is constantly pressing meaning out of every camera placement and blocking choice. When it is revealed the nature of why these moments are so heightened, the film more naturally locks into place.
Sebastián, in the centre of the film’s timeline, is the beating heart of the film. A mess of emotions and desires, forced into the most rigid of boxes, he discovers a glimpse of a brighter and more expansive Spain upon meeting Rafael Rodríguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau). A real life footballer, soldier, and personal companion of Lorca, Rapún blends the timelines together in unexpected ways, pulling beauty, tragedy and melodramatic poetry out of difficult scenes that require a delicate touch.
Sebastián, whose inability to navigate the moment has him retreating to a bathroom windowsill, frantically playing his trumpet to calm himself. The film has supreme confidence in landing these moments of overwhelming emotion, using Guitarricadelafuente’s embodied tumult and heartbreak as a pillar that generations will be built upon.
Guitarricadelafuente Miguel Bernardeau as Sebastián and Rafael Rodríguez Rapún in La Bola Negra
There is a palpable modernity to Alberto that allows the torch-passing cuts from story to story to land with potency. A digital alarm. A Grindr notification. Martin Solveig and Dragonette’s Hello, the directing pair know how to use modern moments to create friction with the past. His search for meaning in the past is more grounded and elliptical than the narratives taking place in the 30s, turning a film that begins with a shout into a more measured narrative speaking volume. This does create an inconsistent tone that, while clearly intentional, lacks the avalanche-like structure Los Javis are striving for.
Weaving these stories of queer men unmoored and uncertain on how to navigate a combative, fascistic Spain across decades with dedication, La Bold Negra flitters between a tactile poetry and uninspired melodrama until finally arriving at a surprisingly emotional and potent final act.
With a second half in need of a jolt, the film offers us an explosive performance by Penélope Cruz. Arriving at the perfect time in the epic, giving Sebastián a true north star with the promise of a future in Madrid.
Where the film discovers transcendence is in its moments of musicality, either through the original song “La Nieve” (“The Snow”) by Guitarricadelafuente, or through composer Raül Refree, who is given key scenes to shine through a combination of modern synths and older instrumentation. The film has an air of deep collaboration and heart from many great Spanish artists, with an eye to telling the stories of Lorca’s unfinished work to a new audience eager to hear it.
“This country has too many love stories buried in the fields”. Operatic in theme and style, La Bola Negra knows how to land its climax with La Nieve, pushing past melodrama to arrive at a moment of poetic, emotional clarity that defines the ambitious goal Los Javis are searching for in their epic. With a groundbreaking performance from multi-hyphenate Guitarricadelafuente, La Bola Negra has a pillar to build an ambitious queer epic we too rarely see in modern cinema. While occasionally dipping into rote melodrama that can feel manicured, Los Javis still achieves moments of emotional reckoning most films only hope to glean, with characters that live long in the minds of its audience.
La Bola Negrais in select theatres from October 15th.
It’s taken almost 9 years, but we finally have a new Michael Bay Transformers film, except it isn’t Transformers and it isn’t by Michael Bay. Na Hong-jin’s Hope (2026) hails from South Korea and is carved from the same rowdy, loud and unshamedly plotless stone as a Bayhem Transformers film, and the result is a wild experience that you’re either with or against, with no room in-between.
The context for this wild experience is as such: a creature is wreaking havoc across a small mining/fishing town called Hope, with some locals saying it’s a bear, and others claiming it’s a tiger, and it’s up to police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) to get to the bottom of what is going on. I’ll admit, I wasn’t feeling convinced that Hope would be worth seeing through beyond the first hour where nonsensical gunfire and chase scenes seem to just repeat on a loop with little to show in the way of any plot or character development. These scenes, while technically sound, left me on the edge of my seat, and less in the the “I’m gripped” way and more in the “I’m about to leave this cinema” way, but then the turning point happens: we see the creature.
Like Bay’s Transformers films, there’s more than meets the eye to this foreign, 10-foot green looking being, and it’s enough for Na to show a tear drop on its face in a close up as it’s being hunted to tell you that the first hour was worth your patience. This one close-up flips the film on its head by turning what was essentially a hunt you were rooting for, to a revelation where you quickly realise that even in moments where a human can recognise suffering on a foreign being, the urge to gun it down is too tempting.
A still from Na Hong-jin’s Hope (2026)
Na cleverly relegates the humans to one-dimensional, underwritten goofballs —a feature, more than a shortcoming in Korean films— and this gives the second and third act an edge that reduces the idea of the Western hero (someone who fights for their land, for justice) to something more akin to a monster than the monsters themselves.
That’s right, there are multiple monsters, with Taylor Russell, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender each playing them. Whether it was clever marketing, a decision to cut costs, or both (I think the latter), the A-list actors have almost nothing to do as they’re masked behind shoddy CGI that, weirdly, I found quite memorable. Much of the film is cleverly shot with frenetic tracking shots and haphazard editing that gives urgency even when the setting (as beautiful as it can be, like in the final act) is barren and lifeless; it’s a testament to the commitment to just lean into the gung ho of it all and double down on the nonsense, with a particular monologue from an older gentleman that had my cinema of established Melburnian critics in hysterics.
It’s hard to believe that Hope exists. In his recent press tour for The Odyssey (2026), Christopher Nolan noted that Guillermo del Toro taught him that “a monster is never just a monster” and Na has taken that to the extreme by turning the mirror back on the audience, subverting expectations and flipping the film on its head to almost make you want to believe that it’s really the humans who are encroaching on these extraterrestrial beings. Hope is a thought-provoking genre picture that takes sharp turns at every turn, challenging the audience to look inward while simultaneously seeing Na adopt an unwavering, uncompromising adrenaline-induced approach to filmmaking that doesn’t disappoint, punching above its weight boldly and assuredly.
From Cannes favourites to local newcomers making their mark, the Melbourne International Film Festival is a fixture in the Australian cinema calendar, with the 2026 entry in the loaded program having something for everyone. Whether you just want to get the jump on Oscar prediction morning or need to spend the last weeks of a brittle Melbourne winter in packed cinemas, the festival will provide. Below is part two of our resident festival obsessive Darcy’s notebook on what he’s seen and loved this year.
All of a Sudden (2026) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
As a keen Drive My Car (2021) evangelist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s newest film, a near 200-minute luxuriation on connection, empathy, and capitalism inside a nursing home in France, was the must-see event of the festival. And it did not disappoint. With a unique pair of performances from Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto (who shared the best actress award at Cannes) that glue you to the screen for its extended runtime, All of a Sudden has a dramatic and thematic engine you never want to leave. Whether it’s during a walk along the river or a whiteboard-assisted monologue on the cancerous nature of capitalism, Hamaguchi knows what he has in Efira and Okamoto and his characters, moving through a world of care and empathy without falling into saccharine traps that would doom a film of this nature.
But this isn’t just a talky film; it also contains perhaps the best use of natural lighting since Barry Lyndon (1975), particularly in its duration capture of sunrises and sunsets. There is a unique magic to having radical natural light changes within a durational scene, and Hamaguchi and cinematographer Alan Guichaoua build many of their extended sequences around it. Hamaguchi’s films may not be to everyone’s taste, but the observational clarity of storytelling he builds his work around should be required viewing for anyone still open to having their world altered by a work of cinema.
Minotaur (2026) – Andrey Zvyagintsev
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The weaving of a simmering political turmoil with a pulpy affair plot would be an ill-fitting suit, but with Andrey Zvyagintsev, we immediately feel a cool, meticulous guidance. Coupled with a ruthless consideration by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman to achieve a level of voyeurism that probes without gawking, Zvyagintsev’s film is impressive and engrossing. Even when the film’s gentle simmer reaches boiling point, we are asked to observe and consider its characters rather than place ourselves inside their lives. A reimagining of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 classic The Unfaithful Wife — also made into the erotic thriller Unfaithful in 2002 with Richard Gere and Diane Lane — against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, wealthy local CEO Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) suspects his wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) of hiding an affair. As the pressure mounts to sacrifice 14 workers to the war effort, Gleb’s family and personal turmoil begin to boil over.
The film excels as both high art drama and family melodrama through this melding of the weight of the personal and the existential. The political undertow pulling us to the violence of the sea is constant and powerfully considered, landing in a place of resonance in its final act that manages to echo Burn After Reading (2008) and postwar Soviet cinema. This high-wire act of tonal precision has to be seen to be believed, particularly with an active and engaged crowd.
Nagi Notes (2026) – Koji Fukada
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A gentle, clear-eyed look at human dynamics playing out across the struggling small town of Nagi, Koji Fukada’s probing drama Nagi Notes is deeply fascinated by places and their impact on people, unfolding itself slowly but warmly. 630 kilometres outside Tokyo, Nagi is a small farming town that was forced to sell off most of its land to the government for an army base, creating a transitory aspect to the once stationary place.
The film is centred around a coming and going. The coming: an ex-sister-in-law from the city, Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), moves in with sculptor and farmer Yoriko (Takako Matsu), to sit for an art piece. The going: the son of a military family, Keita (Kiyora Fujiwara), tells his friend and crush HarukiIguchi (Kawaguchi Waku) he has to move away in two weeks. The joy of Nagi Notes comes from how Fukada weaves narrative and character dynamics in unexpected ways through this seemingly simple story, so the less said before viewing the better; just know you are in the hands of a caring and inquisitive writer and filmmaker.
Sweet Milk Lake (2026) – Harvey Zielinski
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Harvey Zielinski bursts onto the Australian film scene with a debut to remember. Confidently entering the conversation for best Aussie film of the 2020s, Zielinski writes, directs, and leads Sweet Milk Lake (2026) in dual roles as sibling pair Sam and Jake.
Jake has recently transitioned and is struggling for their place in the city while living under the shadow of his more confident and successful brother Sam. While his brother is wonderfully supportive and offers a job to them, Jake is unsure where they see themselves. On an impulse, Jake travels down to the remote country town of Sweet Milk to see his terminally ill father (Kieran Darcy-Smith), who doesn’t know about their transition. After being mistaken for his brother Sam, Jake decides to stay longer than intended in Sweet Milk. The film is a charming and unique look into wider Australian culture and how gender is performed in different contexts while never losing its narrative drive. Zielinski’s writing is assured and moves with a syncopated rhythm that allows the awkward humour and piercing family drama to arrive and crescendo at unexpected moments, making for a thrilling watch.
Josephine (2026) – Beth de Araújo
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
“In some ways I’ve been writing this since I was eight years old”. A to-the-core film of devastation from the intimate perspective of a child who witnesses a sexual assault and the emotional ripples of that moment. Told from the perspective of Josephine (Mason Reeves), we view the failed attempts at comfort and understanding from the adults surrounding her, particularly her parents, played by Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum.
Beth de Araújo knows in her bones that the only way to tell a story like this is through force. Some may find moments or scenes manipulative or lacking subtlety, but that is to deny the argumentative nature of the filmmaking. This is a film to be shown to all who can see it, not to be watched passively or with any remove. To understand that perspective is to know the power of Josephine.
La Gradiva (2026) – Marine Atlan
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
A worthy winner of MIFF Bright Horizons competition, cinematographer turned writer and director Marine Atlan has crafted what could be a definitional coming-of-age film through its extraordinary blend of modernity and timelessness.
One of the best films of the year, Atlan and her co-cinematographer Pierre Mazoyer have an eye for documentary-like importance even as the scenes flow with the casualness of youth. Following a French school group on a trip to Pompeii on the precipice of their final exam results, Atlan is delicately placing her characters, with their youthful drive and view of eternality in a famous space of stolen time, swallowed by ash. There is depth here I will be mining for years to come, like staring at an ash-encased body, interpreting the life underneath by the surface and shape placed in front of us.
Erupcja (2025) – Pete Ohs
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
A soft wisp of a modern 71-minute Godard riff starring Charli XCX as Bethany, a Londoner visiting Warsaw with her soon-to-be fiancé Rob (Will Madden). Questioned why Bethany wanted to go to Warsaw over somewhere like Paris, she responds, “it’s more romantic”. This is a half-truth, as the answer is Nel (a magnetic Lena Góra), who owns a flower shop in town.
Their connection is tectonic, as the pair will tell you. Each time they encounter one another, a volcano erupts. Like the magnificent and frightening energy of the natural event, Bethany and Nel radically change the environment around their reunions, oftentimes leaving others in the ensuing ash. Filmmaker Pete Ohs was clearly working with fragments of ideas and a loose plot coming into production, allowing the ease of connection between the cast to drive the story like the French New Wave films Erupcja is indebted to. The key cast members all have writing and producing credits here, which is deeply felt scene to scene and allows the film to reach several poignant moments inside its modest framework.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (2026) – Noah Segan
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
A charming and thoughtful exploration of aging and legacy shot beautifully across the five boroughs, Noah Segan’s newest film as director longs for a previous golden age of cinema with New York streets operating as its veins. John Turturro excels as Harry, a career pickpocket making do in a world with fewer floating wallets and cash than ever before as he hustles to care for his ailing wife.
Segan’s film is Uncut Gems (2019) in a pair of moccasins, with the stakes never raising the blood pressure too high. An over-the-hill pickpocket moving through the city is a lovely way of weaving through modern life in New York. Harry’s reticence to change tactics to online or credit scams gives him an air of a Lupin-tinged gentleman thief, where even his detective rival, Allen (Giancarlo Esposito) respects him. A delightful film that works best on an older crowd.
The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Equal parts political war drama and samurai Columbo, horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s adaptation of the 2021 novel The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) moves to its own rhythms, knowing its audience is hooked to every moment.
Set in 16th-century Japan, samurai lord Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) is locked in his castle as Oda Nobunaga lays siege to his home. The film begins in earnest when rival envoy Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda) is captured by Murashige. The award-winning novel opens with the line “Toss him in the dungeon; do not let anyone see him and do not kill him. Keep him alive until I say otherwise.” In a time of ruthless killing and few prisoners of war, the stage is set for a defensively woven chamber drama that is keen to charm an audience by its movements towards Agatha Christie and other European-style mystery fiction. The pair of performances between Suda and Motoki is gripping and falls easily into Kurosawa’s unique film style that allows long sequences to play out naturally, ratcheting the tension inside a still frame that has made his horror features the best in the genre. Overlaying this perfected style of storytelling over a samurai chamber epic makes The Samurai and the Prisoner a wholly unique and captivating viewing experience.
The Man I Love (2026) – Ira Sachs
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
There is a certain surreality that occurs when you’re around a sick person who, after a gruelling treatment process, returns, however fleetingly, to their previous self. An almost religious experience. Screenwriters Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias know this intimately.
Handling the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York with a passion and care for those caught in its crosshairs, and how they choose to respond, Sachs imbues his characters with the dramatic tension of uncertainty and sharp edges, complicating each conversation scene with where we expect it to conclude. Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge have never been better, and with the introduction of Luther Ford to cinema with support from Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Sachs can paint with a wider canvas than his previous couple of films to show the community and isolation of this well-documented era of American history.
From Cannes favourites to local newcomers making their mark, the Melbourne International Film Festival is a fixture in the Australian cinema calendar, with the 2026 entry in the loaded program having something for everyone. Whether you just want to get the jump on Oscar prediction morning or need to spend the last weeks of a brittle Melbourne winter in packed cinemas, the festival will provide. Below is part one of our resident festival obsessive Darcy’s notebook on what he’s seen and loved this year.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (2026) – Clio Barnard
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
One of the finds of the festival, a gorgeous and riveting tableau from Clio Barnard based on the novel from writer and poet Keiran Goddard, cramming what felt like a season of a revered BBC miniseries into 109-minutes with the best editing of the year by Maya Maffioli.
I’m a total sucker for Northern UK street poeticism, with its blue collar groundedness with a powerful north star of where to point the millennial finger of ennui and uncertainty at. The film with the title of the year (sharing the name with the novel) follows a tight group of young Gen Z friends growing together and apart, set amongst a constantly shifting Birmingham. With an honesty and clarity into youthful modernity and the crippling weight of housing pressure on individuals and a community. A must see.
Maddie’s Secret (2025) – John Early
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
There is something magical about watching a film with an extreme amount of conviction that brings a totally game audience to the edge of a cliff but still begs for more. John Early had already made a name for himself as an impressive comedian and actor, but in Maddie’s Secret (2025), we see the emergence of Early as one of the most impressive comedic filmmakers to come out of a decade struggling for cinematic laughs.
The Far From Heaven (2002) for the Bon Appétit content mill sounds like a difficult pitch to audiences, but the power and potency of the satire Early is operating from, performance to lighting elevates this to astonishing levels. Dealing with the underdiscussed world of bulimia and eating disorders with the maturity and understanding that allows it to remain as silly and extreme as it is with the knowledge the audience will never jump ship. In a just world Early and Kate Berlant will be in awards conversations.
Wicker (2026) – Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
An incredibly well-cast 19th-century small-town fable about a fishmonger (Olivia Colman) who asks the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband, just to get her nosy neighbours off her back. The Weaver obliges, crafting her a perfect wicker husband — played wonderfully by Alexander Skarsgård, wrapped in an astonishing wooden body made by the Wētā Workshop — asking only for coin in return. The film is a riot. With a unique take on gender struggles with its bashful comedy and storytelling echoing the Brothers Grimm, Wicker comes by its fantasy matter-of-factly, with a lyricism that keeps you on the hook for where Wilson and Fischer want to take us.
Rose (2026) – Markus Schlesinger
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
All gender is performance, and it can give you desires you didn’t think you possessed if you embody the performance for long enough. Markus Schlesinger and Sandra Hüller are on a very targeted wavelength in Rose, a period film about the not uncommon situation of a woman assuming the role of a man to garner a level of respect and equity they see for themselves, particularly around wartime and, notably here, postwar time.
With a considered palette from Schlesinger and cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, Rose at once feels both in command of her situation and burdened by its crushing weight. The film gains some real drama and tension akin to The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) in its final act, with Hüller’s rugged demeanour giving way to an unkind world when the truth begins to leak out.
We Are All Strangers (2026) – Anthony Chen
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
A wide tapestry of a film on family, Anthony Chen’s compelling yet frustrating new work is a tale of almosts. A rare film set and filmed in Singapore and the first Singaporean film to screen in competition in the Berlinale’s 70-plus-year history, We Are All Strangers weaves in its setting well across its 157-minute runtime, even as it feels in a rush to arrive at its destination rather than ruminate and observe its surroundings. Centring a father and son trying to make it in the rapidly changing city flooding in with new money, characters come and go through their lives (in fascinating and infuriating ways) that propel you from scene to scene.
The Fox (2026) – Dario Russo
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Dario Russo’s Adelaide set film The Fox is the hottest ticket of the festival. A charming and well-cast comedy that would make a fascinating double feature with Obsession (2026), with its ideas on relationships, control, and gendered violence inside a gnarly and knowing bit of magical realism. With brilliant voice performances by Olivia Colman and the late great Sam Neill as a fox and magpie, respectively, in a quiet town, Russo’s ear for Australian idiosyncrasies makes for a wall-shaking cinema experience of locals, as the film raises its brow up at our culture of quiet contempt subdued by our heavy drinking tendencies. While not groundbreaking in any form, it is refreshing to have a proud Australian comedy making waves at the festival.
Lost Land (2025) – Akio Fujimoto
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
There is an overwhelming nature to docufiction that makes it a uniquely cinematic genre of storytelling, and Akio Fujimoto’s Lost Land (2025) is as good an entry point for audiences as you’ll find. The film approaches the stories of Rohingya asylum seekers through a pair of real siblings, Shomira Rias Uddin and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin playing nine-year old Somira and four-year old Shafi, as they have to journey from a Bangladeshi refugee camp to Malaysia to hopefully get confirmed asylum status, a necessity for a stateless people.
There are questions to be had about filmmaking ethics here akin to Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (2022), but the power of docufiction comes from the blurred line of ethical artistry when a subject of such weight centres the work. Left with more ideas and questions than anything I’ve seen at the festival this year.
Mad Rush (2026) – Madellin McKenna
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
There’s nothing like seeing a hometown success story at the festival. At the premiere of Madellin McKenna’s debut, the Capitol was buzzing with locals eager to wrap its arms around a film so invested in the city. A madcap rush of blood to the head pierces through Melbourne streets after Madisha (Senuri Chandrani), a struggling young person fresh out of work and potentially forced to return home, is targeted by an ATO phone scam trying to bleed her for everything she’s got.
Mad Rush attempts to walk a difficult thematic and narrative tightrope, as McKenna tries to blend a high-octane movement-based thriller with a contemplative and lyrical exploration of modern life as a 20-something. Albeit in rare bursts, when the performances, editing, and narrative settle into a groove that has both tracks building together, the audience is quick to be swept up into Madisha’s world.
Rose of Nevada (2025) – Mark Jenkin
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
No one is doing it like Mark Jenkin. A truly singular artistic expression of the British community, wielding vintage Bolex cameras that capture no audio, giving the film a detached and mythic distortion, Rose of Nevada is a bitter, acquired taste. It touches on truly weighty subjects like the destruction of personhood for the benefit of those you may never meet through its jagged edges and abrasive storytelling, leaving the door slightly ajar to lose yourself in.
Indie film’s lynchpin weirdo, George Mackay, plays wonderfully alongside the more laissez-faire partner in Callum Turner, giving the film a beating heart surrounded by the rust and the chains. The story is best left unsaid, as it is best to uncover the strangeness of Rose of Nevada alongside its characters, entering its brittle trance at the same pace.
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.
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).
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.
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 BattleAfter 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.
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 Valuepulses 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 Anotherworks 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.
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.
