Today, Cinema Year Zero presents a new essay by Nikolai Phoya on This is England, situating Shane Meadows’ film between its social realist aesthetic and the historical context of white nationalism. Happy St. George’s.

Nikolai is a writer based in Greater Manchester, with essays and short stories on affinities.world and the T A P E Collective.

On the 8th May, NOT BY LYNCH returns to The Cinema Museum with The Hidden (1987). Tickets are available now.

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“What has happened before will happen again,” King Solomon tells his student.

“It’s like looking in the mirror,” Combo (Stephen Graham) tells Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), “twenty years ago, when I was fucking twelve.” In the tight space of the car they share, the camera barely fits the former’s wry face, where, etched in ink and bridging his brow, his warrior saint’s cross bobs in and out of view. This Is England (2006) was pulled heavily from Shane Meadows’ own childhood, where Combo’s white-nationalist vision of the future as a hallowed past is ultimately rejected by Shaun, the writer-director’s self-insert. Yet twenty years after the film’s premiere, Combo’s reflection has never been clearer.

After losing his father to the ten-week Falklands War, Shaun finds himself bullied, angry and listless in a Midlands town that was being stripped of its industry by a burgeoning neoliberal government. By setting this film in 1983, Meadows takes a snapshot of Britain’s political and cinematic landscape. Two television films released that same year—Alan Clarke’s Made In Britain and Mike Leigh’s Meantime—outlined, in differing ways, how easily that anger and listlessness metastasise into fascist ideology. From Leigh, Meadows borrows his ‘deviser’-director methodology, spending weeks of pre-production in actor-collaboration sessions, improvising and growing the characters and story from scratch. The developed chemistry among the actors leads to the first third of the film’s cosy, wholesome camaraderie as the skinhead gang takes Shaun in to help him cope.

But Combo’s fated arrival from prison reintroduces British New Wave’s ‘angry young men’ trope to a twenty-first century audience. Tony Richardson’s Look Back In Anger (1959, from John Osborne’s play) being the blueprint, the protagonist Jimmy (Richard Burton), despite his petulance and foibles, possesses enough virtue to defend his British Indian friend from the bigotry of their Midlands town. Believing a police officer to be responsible for revoking Kapoor’s licence, Jimmy discovers it was his own fellow marketplace vendors who are to blame. “You don’t want him here,” they profess at the pub. “You’ve seen his prices, son. We’ve got to eat.” This terror of the colonised was in opposition to Jimmy’s values, which the following generation of filmmakers found, however radical, insufficient. By the time we reach Meadows, Britain’s former colonies, without the supposedly guiding, Christian light of the empire, assume the form of a westward, Islamic dragon, “raping and pillaging,” according to the likes of Combo, the helpless damsel this country has become. Who else but Saint George and his “proud fucking warriors” could save her?

Clarke’s direction of David Leland’s script for Made In Britain warps Osborne and Richardson’s righteous indignation into something altogether repugnant. This angry young man has no backstory, no excuses. Clarke and Leland’s construction is barely a character, barely a man. Tim Roth initially plays Trevor as though his neo-Nazism is just another facet of youthful acting-out, of his need to be heard, which is a trait Western media commonly frames as a valid excuse for causing pain; a rite of passage white adolescents embark upon on their way to total liberal self-actualisation. The fact Trevor’s partner-in-crime is Errol (Terry Richards), his Black roommate at the assessment centre, almost further supports this idea he does not truly believe these things. That maybe Trevor can redeem himself. But near the story’s midpoint, in response to the superintendent’s bleak estimation of his past and future, Trevor lashes out for ten unbroken minutes of ranting: he explains, with Crusader logic, how sending the Pakistanis “back” would be a kindness rather than a cruelty, lest they all get a brick through their window, “and piss, and shit, and petrol,” because they “don’t even speak fucking English”; and when talking about Black people, he claims, “You lock up anything that frightens you … I hate you for putting me in here. Blacks in here are thick as shit with no brains—you know it. Admit it. I had to sit in school and watch these wankers add up on their fingers. I was held back. All the white kids were held back.” Blackness is, to him, Heidegger’s abyss: the groundless foundation of Being upon which the Western imagination flounders. The terror of becoming The Nothing, becoming The Death, that Blackness represents, powers his anger. The terror of the supposed Islamist horde from the eastern horizon powers his anger. Trevor’s final acts of freedom are bricking the window of the same Pakistani family who got him sent to the assessment centre in the first place, and getting Errol arrested for the van they stole together. There is no redemption for him. No hope.

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Leigh’s process loses the didacticism of the British New Wave that Clarke had tapped into. In place of anger, the centripetal force around which his characters’ psyches orbit becomes shame. Besides the occasional anti-Thatcher graffiti, the characters of Meantime are too disenfranchised to assemble why they feel this loss of dignity. All they can do is steal it from others they deem lower. When the Black patron (Herbert Norville) in the pub takes up the offer of a pint, Mark (Phil Daniels), almost like a tic, blurts, “Piss off, you Black bastard. Nah, I’m only joking,” before buying him his lager. When Coxy (Gary Oldman) and Colin (Tim Roth) share an elevator with another Black man, Coxy, in the punning style of the film’s dialogue, says, “I’m all-white, you all-white?” and attempts another racist joke before being intimidated out of finishing it. These interactions are not the film’s focus, because the film, like the characters within it, has no focus, only the desperate fumble in that groundless dark for some foothold that can never be found.

Meadows borrows Leigh’s methods for character construction, and from Clarke, he maps the differing relationships his skinheads have between the West Indians and the South Asians. It is the brown boys in jacketed thobes who they siege, whose ball they plunder; the P-word with which they graffiti the underpass and Mr. Sandhu’s shop. Yet it is from Black people the gang derives their skinhead culture, a degree of appropriation that only happens when the originators are seen as nothing, as already socially dead. “How does metaphysics transform Nothing into Something so that it can dominate this Nothing?” Calvin Warren asks in Ontological Terror (2018). “Through Blackness—it gives a form for the formless, but a form that perplexes and threatens … Blackness is invented to absorb the terror of this Nothing, of the interruption of time and space, within modernity.” The skanking chords of Toots & the Maytals are the foundation of This Is England’s soundtrack, following the skinheads’ surreal shift from their Jamaican British roots to Neo-Nazism; from the gang’s cosy camaraderie in the film’s first third to the caustic resentments in its remaining runtime. As the gang unwinds with some weed in the film’s climax, Milky, the gang’s lone Black member, confronts Combo over this subculture’s burgeoning contradiction. Combo explains, honeyed and high, how the uncles who introduced Milky to the ska, the rocksteady, the fashion, are the same who introduced Combo himself. But as the conversation lingers on those uncles, on Milky’s loving family, the Nothingness that floundered Trevor, that flounders Western imagination, begins floundering Combo; hardens his gaze. All he can do at that point is beat Milky half to death. This Black man’s ability to give and receive love interrupts and disturbs Combo’s understanding of himself and the world. It is equal parts anger and terror.

It is this same dangerous concoction Nadine El-Nany observes in her book (B)ordering Britain (2020). She illustrates how migrants were constructed by the 2016 Leave campaign as “unjustly enriched and undeserving of access to territory and resources,” when the irony is, like everything else on this island, their venerated defender against the hordes is himself an import. Born in Turkey, buried in Palestine, Saint George still finds the pointed steel of his lance fed by Rupert Lowe’s lust for “widespread stop-and-searches”; by the Grenfell Tower disaster Simon Dudley laments has “stopped housebuilding of any tall buildings” because, ultimately, “everyone dies in the end.” The poplar wood of the Crusader Saint’s shield is reinforced by Reform UK’s policy to “withdraw from every treaty that prevents a full lockdown of the nation’s borders”; by the multi-partisan desire to “stop the boats.” The Labour government that ended fourteen years of Conservative rule has since increased the difficulty of English-language citizenship tests, decreased the jobs eligible for skilled worker visas, nearly halved the standard length of graduate visas, while doubling the qualifying period for permanent residence. At the National Front meeting Combo takes the gang to, we hear the spokesperson explain: “We’re not racists, we’re realists … People who work hard, pay their way—it don’t matter their ethnic background—I welcome with open arms. People who think we owe them a living, these are the people that need to go back.” His words hit like an ocean wave at the abyss within his audience, amplifying in its depths all their anger and terror, which have been given, for the first time, a direction toward a shore: “Send them back,” they crash and foam, “send them back.”

The Biblical book of Ecclesiastes attributed to King Solomon teaches the student to wrangle life’s meaninglessness, and the listlessness and anger it inspires, under the feared, coveted banner of God. Combo two-thousand years later, in the squalor of his gang’s squatted flat, points to the ground, to his heart, to his head, professing, “this is England, and this is England, and this is England.” The room is all slumped shoulders and curious eyes, any seeding dissent salted in his fervour. “And for what?” he then asks them. “What now?”

NOT BY LYNCH continues tomorrow, Wednesday 22nd April at The Cinema Museum with Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974).

Below, Maria J. Pérez Cuervo situates the film within the classical literary tradition which Rivette and his cast and crew deviously rip up. Maria is the founder and editor of Hellebore magazine. She’s written about film and myth for Severin, Radiance Films and Indicator.

Tickets are available here, and come with a print booklet which includes the essay.

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The Triumph of Whimsy

On the 4^th of July 1862, Lewis Carroll first told the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on a boat trip that departed from near the aptly named Folly Bridge in Oxford. Over a century later, the heroines of Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) embark on a journey that culminates with another boat trip. Their journey started with another nod to Alice, with magic-seeking Julie (Dominique Labourier) following Céline (Juliette Berto), who embodies the chaotic energy of the white rabbit, down the rabbit hole of the streets of Montmartre, the Bohemian heart of Paris. Thus unravels one of the most interesting female friendships seen on screen, amusingly recognisable yet imbued with something ineffable and almost mystical. As they explore an unsolved mystery from the past, both women become ultimately interchangeable, mirror images of each other.

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Welcome back to Cinema Year ‘26, our monthly review supplement. This month we caught up with PS2 surrealism, a striking Ishiguro adaptation, Glenn riffing on Ealing, and a document of vital community activism.

Don’t forget to subscribe to receive this and more film writing direct to your inbox.

NOT BY LYNCH continues on Wednesday, 22nd April at The Cinema Museum with Celine & Julie Go Boating (1974). Tickets are available now.

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Return to Silent Hill (Christophe Gans, France / USA, 2026)

Cinematic Impressionism has been difficult to pinpoint. Considered more of an impulse than a method; a way of doing and experiencing guided by affection and spirituality instead of prowess and rationale. From Gance to Dulac, each filmmaker understood this differently, with their own unique way of manipulating the film image as an open inquiry towards transcendental truth.

The Francophone impressionists posited that aspiring for this meant revolting against the narrative paradigms of commercial filmmaking, embracing the erratic swings of symbolism and the exalted subjectivity of poetry. Their existence within the auteurist framework is in that sense a point of contention, precisely due to their unfathomable qualities, spectres of a bygone era of esoteric image-making. Christophe Gans’ Return to Silent Hill presents a counterpoint, a sort of aesthetic séance that looks to connect the oneiric logic of the 1920s to the jagged digital pixels of the Sony PlayStation 2 era.

The clunky videogame dialogue and top-down camerawork are indeed first experienced as a jarring affront to cinematic conventions, but as the film’s Gothic atmosphere becomes more and more pervasive, Gans double downs on the uncanniness as an expressive form to fully inhabit a sort of liminal space between mediums. After all, he’s working with one of the most revered source materials in the history of videogames, one of the pioneering exhibits of the “videogames as an artform” banner: Masashi Tsuboyama’s Silent Hill 2 (2001).

Just by itself, merely attempting to touch such a cultural touchstone will inevitably draw vitriol from purists, which isn’t helped by the fact that Gans goes even further: not trying to retell Silent Hill 2, but embody it. Like the impressionists before him, he molds cinematic power towards capturing the essence of subjects, and then being consumed by them. The film’s visual grammar intertwines kitsch digital textures and grotesque practical imagery, artificial camerawork and abrasive, Nu-metal editing choices as an open inquiry into protagonist James’ tortured psyche as he looks for lost lover Mary and confronts the myriad of manifestations of his dark past.

More than a narrative, Return to Silent Hill is an overflowing nightmare. Hallways change as soon as they are crossed, walls are in constant collapse and from their hubris rise harrowing constructs of projected guilt and rotten flesh. It’s disorientating while doomladen. Oppressive while mournful. Always elusive. Only an unrestrained maximalist like Gans could come up with a thing such as January-release photogénie. Alonso Aguilar

A Pale View of Hills (Kei Ishikawa, Japan / UK, 2025)

Kei Ishikawa’s A Pale View of Hills is largely faithful to its source, Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel of the same name, except for one key difference - the perspective from which we are told the story. By framing through the daughter’s interrogation, rather than the mother’s recollection, the film diverts away from the novel towards a plot that seeks to uncover the secret of the past. Letters, postcards, and photographs are closely examined as evidence of the mystery tucked away in Etsuko’s past. Much is dedicated to Niki’s search: her investigation of the house, her confrontations with her mother, her desire to write about Nagasaki. But this feels ceaseless when the film is devoted to telling us secrets without us even beginning to ask.

Everything is spelled out - we know exactly what happened to Keiko, Etsuko’s older daughter, because Niki tells us: ‘she’d hung herself, all alone up there’. We know that it happened in her room. We know that Etsuko shies away from discussing it. The mother slaps the daughter for saying that she is ashamed. Violence intrudes like the flashes of light protruding from the estate agent’s camera in Keiko’s room - sudden, sharp, and all on the surface.

Ishiguro’s writing is at its best when it exposes and restrains, in equal measure, the violence of his characters. Ishikawa’s direction, instead, transforms restraint into pure, showy action. By ending with a montage that makes Etsuko’s secrets exceedingly clear, Ishikawa takes away our readerly delight in uncertainty, thereby removing any dread that could have been left to linger. Bethan Ingman

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How to Make a Killing (John Patton Ford, USA, 2026)

The arc of Glenn Powell’s stardom is long but it bends towards justice. A year ago, he was the anointed one, a Cruise mentee whose not-so-ironic chad energy had him earmarked for A-list phenom. But a sequence of disappointments, including an unloved Running Man remake and a Hawk Tuah-cameoing Eastbound & Down rip-off have damaged the Texan. Take his latest, How to Make a Killing: is Becket Redfellow an incel? Sociopath? Socialist? We cannot know because Powell doesn’t either.

Per Wikipedia, it’s “loosely inspired” by Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, though to my eye How to Make a Killing is a fairly straightforward remake. In lieu of Alec Guinness’ elite Klumping (the practice of playing multiple family members in a single film), Patton Ford casts a range of character actors, including Bill Camp as a finance mogul, and Ed Harris as a sinister patriarch. The doofus amateur photographer Henry is updated to become a downtown New York hipster (Zach Woods).

It’s a parting shot in the Eat The Rich cycle of social satires for the ‘gestures at everything’ crowd in Hollywood, which broadly started with the success of Parasite. This one doesn’t have much to say on what the interplay of wealth and class in America does to a person, relying on a series of affectations associated with supposed good filmmaking. Patton Ford rattles through scenes as a sequence of depersonalised zooms early PTA’s Magnolia; frantic scenes in grotty locations like a prison, or New Jersey, recall the Safdie-verse; a mansion’s closed gate is answered with a threatening typewritten letter à la Eyes Wide Shut. The simple symbolic elegance of Kind Hearts & Coronets’ hunting/beartrap denouement is injected with some green de-ageing substance, so it becomes a cat-and-mouse rifle chase through a billionaire’s mansion.

One can’t help but feel sorry for Powell. It seems the harder he tries to relate to mankind, the more bland his performances become. I wonder, is this sympathy the marker of some star quality, after all? Ben Flanagan

Everybody to Kenmure Street (Felipe Bustos Sierra, UK, 2026)

The documentaries of Chilean-Belgian, Glasgow-based director Felipe Bustos Sierra bring hope to his leftist-liberal British audience. His first feature, Nae Pasaran (2018), about the Glaswegian unionised factory workers who stalled production of fighter jets being sent to support Pinochet’s fascist dictatorship, used its interview subjects to hone in on the nitty-gritty of what leftist politics means, and what they can achieve, which perhaps also narrowed its audience. It follows a certain logic that his second feature-length doc should expand on these Scottish social and political connections, to highlight a more recent example of the collective action and solidarity needed for a successful political movement: the 2021 protest against the attempted Home Office deportation of two Sikh Indian men in Glasgow’s Pollokshields neighbourhood, in his latest film, Everybody to Kenmure Street.

Bustos Sierra plays to his strengths by engaging the ordinary people who participated in the protest as the majority of his interview subjects, some who were there from the very beginning as neighbours on the street. Where this isn’t possible for sake of anonymity, well-respected British thesps recreate their parts verbatim in solo reenactment scenes. One particular British A-lister, in a gender-swapped role, reenacts the person who, incredibly, managed to slide under the Home Office van in the early stages of the deportation, wrap their arms around the axel and remain there for the endurance of the protest, preventing the men from being deported. Archive is cheekily employed, with footage of a comrade rolling a water bottle under the van, and a mystery hand reaching out from under the bumper to snag it. By adhering to a straightforward chronology of events, Bustos Sierra brings to life what those who followed the protest in real time on social media could only glean in part, and in doing so heightens the stakes.

Despite its stirring content, there are puzzling gaps in Bustos Sierra’s process. The only interviewee to receive a name card is the firebrand lawyer Aamer Anwar who is parachuted in to save the day. This leaves the film at times absent of some very necessary context, like formally identifying in archive the legendary Glaswegian trade unionist Jimmy Reid, whose still-living daughter lives on Kenmure Street and witnessed the entire proceedings. The persistent attention paid to the Home Office and Priti Patel’s refusal to acknowledge the burgeoning situation, having caused the chaos in the first place, hints at an argument for Scottish Independence that is never fully explored.

As heartening as the story of this left-wing cause may be, one can’t help but note the concerning acceleration of far-right mobilisation in the streets that has occurred in the five years since. Everybody to Kenmure Street leaves the open question: would the results play out with such success today? Kirsty Asher

NOT BY LYNCH continues tomorrow, Friday 20 March at The Cinema Museum with Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962).

Below, film critic and folklorist Kirsty Asher introduces the film as a liminal terrain. Alongside her role as Associate Editor of Cinema Year Zero, Kirsty runs the Substack A Place With Such A Name.

Tickets are available here, and come with a print booklet which includes the essay.

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Death’s Waiting Room

“I hope she does leave.”

“I hope she can.”

Carnival of Souls, Herk Harvey’s only feature film, was relatively overlooked by critics and audiences upon release in 1962. With only around $30,000 to spare for his neo-noir fantasia, most of the location filming in Salt Lake City was done either at night in empty buildings or guerrilla-style with bribed locals playing brief parts.

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The first draft of this essay by Tom de Lancy Green was submitted to Cinema Year Zero’s editors on February 12th. Frederick Wiseman turned it into an obituary four days later.

A BFI-led retrospective across Britain is still disproportionate and meagre in comparison to the place Wiseman had in Western film culture (Tom’s dispatches from the first two months of the season can be found here and here). The name Wiseman was always on the lips of those in the constellation of this publication, a load-bearer for an art form that increasingly felt years behind him. His work is out there for those of us who look, but now some of its possibilities have been foreclosed, which is perhaps the thing he fought against most in his art. At all moments, the world can be re-shaped, potentialities await actualisation, the social sphere’s death has been exaggerated.

One can resist the urge to lionise, and it certainly wouldn’t be in Wiseman’s interrogative nature to do so, but sometimes the heart must win out: 96 years of age was simply too young to have lost him.

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Frederick Wiseman’s works belong to that strange cultural decline from the late 1960s through Reagan and Clinton. As the capitalist machine realised it would not be able to satisfy its polity with reality, postmodernism slowly took over, reducing things, people, and ideas to iconography and fantasy. President Clinton himself said: ‘It depends on what your definition of “is” is.’ Existence became contingent, co-opted, re-moulded, unstable. By now, candidness is never value-neutral, and images are never unloaded or unsmeared with idealist dust and grime. Fighting this tide, Wiseman is perhaps D. A. Pennebaker’s only true disciple, an American lapsed radical with a cool, hip punchiness undergirding an agitated fly-on-wall scanning.

Radicals, however, have a tendency to calcify as scepticism sets in. In this regard, Wiseman is a peculiar case study. The tone of his films from anywhere south of 1980 sits opaquely between jaded rebellion and a more studied, fraught contemplation. Wiseman’s involvement in the 60s moment of high-modernism naturally leads one to look for a treatise on something as lofty as The American Nation. It’s rare for any one artist to even attempt this, but when they do, it inevitably leads them to the melting pot gateway of Staten Island (James Gray’s The Immigrant [2013]), the flatlands of the White Sands Proving Ground at the site of the Trinity Test (David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return [2017]), the racism of the American South (Toni Morrison’s Beloved [1987]), or even a consciously freewheeling sprawl across the country’s culture (Thomas Pynchon’s works, Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ [1965]).

Wiseman surely belongs to the latter category. A single film mightn’t be enough to do this alone, although Belfast, Maine (1999) comes close. But Wiseman’s maturation brought with it a curiosity that pokes around the fluffy skirting boards and rusted plumbing of God’s United States, a termitic burrowing that marks genuine growth from those iconoclastic days in Pennebaker’s long shadow.

His later works are more reminiscent of poetry than essays, though none are without their discursive qualities. It’s one of the cinema’s finer pleasures to sit in Wiseman’s meeting rooms as discourse unfurls, be it on the obligations of public institutions to accommodate commercial interests (National Gallery, 2014), the capacity for sympathy in Flaubert’s novels (1990’s Aspen), or fathers searching for answers to the questions of post-carceral reintegration (Public Housing from 1997, which we discussed in previous dispatches).

One thing Wiseman was not credited for enough: drawing back the veil on menial jobs, processual labour, working with one’s hands. And these forms of work are always extensions of a broader idea: those hands might belong to framing craftspeople in the National Gallery, but they are not neutral aestheticians. Everyone is doing their part in the maintenance (!) of a certain kind of superstructure. Why do paintings need frames? Maybe for the same reason that, in the very next sequence in National Gallery, an exhibition needs a lavish opening night with media attention. This is The Way Things Are Done.

Althusser tells us: it’s the ideology, stupid. Always immanent to organisations, any idiot can say that they are operating within the contradictions of society. But, surprise: the contradictions of society are also operating within you! One would be silly to pretend otherwise. Maybe this is why so many of Wiseman’s films come across so caustically. He happens upon a great many people—bureaucrats, mainly—who tell on themselves so easily. Recall Mark Twain’s apocryphal dictum: ‘If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it’—and if openly revealing oneself to be a morally disinterested footsoldier of the superstructure had any real consequences, I doubt Wiseman would have much to do with any of this.

Aspen is all about the superstructure. Wiseman here skirts the twin problems of metonymic symbolism and detached, hyper-observant ‘realism’ with a hilarious overview of a Colorado mountain town fueled by the concurrent economies of bourgeois lifestyle tourism, mining, and the church.

Like scaffolds in the film’s architecture, the church appears in four variations. Gregorian chants open the film—patience is already set in, and Wiseman watches intently, monastically. A men’s discussion group asks what marriage means in the eyes of the Lord; a seminar later on asks the same about living in the then-current economy. Finally, at the film’s end, the leap has been made from Protestant asceticism to Evangelist proselytising. American capital’s white, snowy vapours have infused Aspen’s wood-panelled nervous system. This orange on white—the Donny T special—recurs frequently. A cabal of tanned investors gather in one of the town’s snowy lodges, pulling the shades and running a gamut of plastic surgery phenotypes that flatten racial differences—noses, eyelids, cheekbones—into a Caucasian nightmare of loveliness.

At least they’re semi-open about it. At the opening of a local artist’s gallery exhibition, the artist’s underhanded philosophy is to paint ‘what she sees’, a loaded phrase as ever. Once again: the superstructure is within you. Her paintings are flattened, photo-realist depictions of phone booths, pantries, and more four-walled boxes. Wiseman takes the American bourgeoisie as a frequent subject—they have more than enough rope to hang themselves with, after all. But it’s ironic that he so often happens upon images so delicate and fleetingly special whilst spending so much time with this loutish, repugnant class: these paintings, and the taste they represent, are terrible.

Postmodernism in Aspen lurks around the corner like the bum behind Winkie’s in Mulholland Dr. (2001). Fredric Jameson wrote in Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism that commodity and aesthetic production had effectively merged in that dreaded, Fukuyamist breakdown of history’s grand arc. Well, in Aspen’s funniest sequence, set in a cavernous house on the mountainside, an art lesson is delivered by the owner of a wall-size print of Warhol’s Mao (1972-73). The Chairman is mounted to get a full view out the double-storey windows towards the town, whilst the monied class inside the citadel get a crash course in perspective. West and East collapse at the ice caps, the frontier—the End of History is upon us!

Welcome back to Cinema Year ‘26, our monthly review supplement. This month’s selection includes four features of renewal, films that in some way remake or reconfigure past historical images to signal the frightening political present.

Don’t forget to subscribe to receive this and more film writing direct to your inbox.

NOT BY LYNCH continues on Friday, 20th March at The Cinema Museum with Carnival of Souls (1962). Tickets are available now.

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All That’s Left of You (Cherien Dabis, 2025, Palestine/Jordan)

An astounding span of history drives director Cherien Dabis in All That’s Left of You. With a story that spans more than seventy years, Dabis—whose eye for a carefully crafted shot has never felt more keen—has created a sweeping historical epic that acts as both archival documentation of a brutal occupation, and a tale of survival in the face of relentless persecution. Any notions of Palestinian suffering as a recent occurrence are refuted here; the violence didn’t begin three years ago, it began more than three generations ago.

Seventy four years of struggle, joy, and resistance are masterfully woven into this tapestry of Palestinian history, from the Nakba in 1948 to the modern day. The film focuses on a father and son, Sharif and Salim, played across the generations by Palestinian cinematic legend Mohammad Bakri and his two sons, rooting the film’s fictional familial bonds in real ones. The recent passing of Mohammad Bakri brings a solemn profundity to the film—it’s hard not to see his performance as a culmination of his life’s work, a grandfather of Palestine bidding farewell.

Memory, grief and nostalgia are intertwined as we bear witness to tragedy. The burning of Jaffa’s famed orange orchards (“Queen Elizabeth ate our oranges,” Sharif declares), news reports of ground assaults, and a child’s account of the Deir Yassin massacre punctuate this story of a family’s determination to remain in their homeland while bearing witness to its destruction. When Salim returns to Jaffa, now unrecognisable as modern day Tel Aviv, it’s a moment weighed down by the immeasurable grief of all that has been lost. “These used to be our homes,” he laments as he gazes forlornly into a soulless trinket shop.

All That’s Left of You is a breathtaking work of art soaked in poetry and resistance. It’s occasionally hampered by didactic dialogue, but after years of non-stop bombardment from a violent military occupation, a desperation to inform the world of such travesties is to be expected. Dabis’ aim is clear: for the audience to acknowledge, celebrate, and mourn all that Palestinians once had. So, as film festivals censor “political” (read: pro-Palestine) speech, and institutions cave to the demands of pro-Israel lobbies, seek out this film—it’s a defiant act of resistance that affirms a history of Palestine which the Western film industry seems eager to ignore. Nadira Begum

Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025, France/US)

Back when Nouvelle Vague premiered at Cannes, the prospect of Richard Linklater tackling the French New Wave mythos sounded woeful—coming, as it was, off the back of an uncharacteristically turgid run. Where those filmmakers broke free from convention, ushering in a new era, Nouvelle Vague seemed indicative of the modern state of arthouse cinema: backwards-facing and insular. Another ageing auteur preaching to the choir.

It brings me no small pleasure, then, to say that I was wrong. With the one-two punch of Blue Moon (2025) and Nouvelle Vague, Linklater has rediscovered his knack for spry pop philosophy, taking hackneyed biopic material—make no mistake, both of these films feature scenes in which a middlebrow easter egg is pointed to loudly and at great length—and nevertheless finding a heart and rhythm therein. Nouvelle Vague, in particular, toes the line between earnest and irritating, depicting a young Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) as committed, even brilliant, but overflowing with artistic pretensions that readily rankle those around him.

It’s that grinding creative process that gives Nouvelle Vague much of its meat and humour. The narrative follows a simple forward march through the inception and production of Breathless (1960), but in the clashes between Godard and his producer, and Godard and his lead, and Godard and… his world, Linklater scratches at the veneer that arthouse cinema’s most beloved iconoclast has accumulated in the decades since. Godard’s endless quoting of philosophers and canon filmmakers, for example, at first appears to be pure affectation—but the moments where Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) imitates his po-faced delivery and he cracks a smile, or when the quotes seep into the “script” for Breathless, reveal a director who wasn’t just constructing a film in real-time, but a sense of artistic self.

Still, some frustrations do emerge by the nature of Linklater’s character behind the camera. Where Godard extols the virtues of spontaneity and friskiness, of cinema as full of revolutionary possibility, Linklater’s images are mostly pretty; orderly; patient. And yet even in these moments of seeming aesthetic conflict, the result is energising. Because how else did Godard discover his drive to sit in the director’s chair, except through observing such tensions himself? The New Wave may have long since crested, but the industry-wide drawdown we’re living through raises the prospect of small-scale art being truly antagonistic again. Could it be that there’s still another way? Blaise Radley

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Camata (Pierre Huyghe, 2024, France)

Pierre Huyghe is interested in filming uncanny and inanimate human forms. Often statues, or a monkey in a mask, as in his most regarded short, Untitled (Human Mask) (2015). Camata, a feature length work, is currently playing in The Bourse de Commerce Rotunda. In this vast, domed room, Camata screens to a few long benches half-filled with TikTokking tourists and bored fashion students.

Pierre Huyghe’s 100 minute film spans across a night and day in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where machines study the skeletal human remains of an unburied body. They are equipped with cameras which survey the scene, edited in an algorithmic pattern unknown to the viewer. The programme note describes these machines as performing a ‘ritual’. If they are, they know nothing of it.

The image itself has a hyper-clarity not unlike that you would encounter in a high frame rate Dolby screening of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Cameron’s Prometheus-like hunt for new technology is one of many tendrils that has led contemporary humanity down the dark, dehumanising path of artificial intelligence.

As corny as ‘machine-learned editing’ is (we have enough Heated Rivalry fancams without them taking up major gallery spaces too), I found something aesthetically satisfying about watching the camera scan up and down a skeleton, the light captured with vivid contrast on that HFR camera. Yet the medical, mystical, environmental connotations of the sequence are undone when one knows that nothing sits behind the filmmaking apparatus to feel any regard toward its own gestures.

I’m not sure it’s achieving anything that, for instance, Michael Snow didn’t before with his literally-nauseating spinning cameras. If you feel so inclined at the Bourse de Commerce, your eyes can leave the screen to look up to the ceiling at that interior mural (completed 1889): four seasons, depicting France’s global expansion during the industrial revolution. Fitting, then, that it all leads to Camata: art for a machine’s sake. Ben Flanagan

Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell, UK)

Emerald Fennell continues to make films with the finesse of a small child bleating “Mummy! Daddy! Watch!” before backflipping off a sofa face first into the Axminster. The burgeoning hallmarks of a Fennell joint are all here: paint-by-numbers dialogue and screenplay; derision of the lower classes; hellish costume and production design to hollow out your corneas. But I am almost relieved by Wuthering Heights’ flat conformity, compared to the empty provocations of Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023).

Wuthering Heights is a story of cruelty and generational trauma which today might only be found in the pages of a social worker’s case file. In many ways, it is a testament to how isolated communities before the Welfare State suffered so catastrophically at the hands of a patriarchal class system. Nevertheless, the ossified cultural significance of the names ‘Cathy and Heathcliff’ overbears all of this, and for Fennell this has resulted in a bizarrely tender-hearted, traditionally romantic outing which manages to circumvent all of the novel’s most challenging themes. Rather than two almost-siblings whose fierce bond is forged in the wild Moors and then cracked by class divide, race, and each other’s learned cruelty, Fennell’s Cathy and Heathcliff are star-crossed lovers whose entwined souls are cruelly ripped apart by unfair happenstance and the interference of Cathy’s servant and nursemaid Nelly (Hong Chau). It is a ridiculous misreading of the source material, but Fennell’s ideas are at this point seemingly beyond an editorial eye.

I’ve seen this film dismissed online as ‘Mills & Boon cinema’ but having actually flicked through a couple of M&B’s in my time, they at least have some honest to goodness filth within their blousy pages. It begs the question of whether the frothing early test screening reactions resulted in a toning down of the final product, which is neither particularly provocative nor abrasive. Kirsty Asher

Welcome back to part II of Anand Sudha’s new reading of auteur film criticism. Today, he digs into Alexander Horwath’s 2024 essay film Henry Fonda for President, which screened last week via Le Cinema Club.

You can read part I here.

And don’t forget that after our packed screening of Kiss Me Deadly, tickets are now available for Carnival of Souls on March 20th.

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Ideas Take Flight: Auteurist Criticism and Henry Fonda for President

Part 2: Cross-Media Communication

The perils of auteurist criticism don’t necessarily stem from a lack of trying. More often than not, the choice or combination of approaches discussed in part 1 are governed by the magazine rather than the critic. This is especially true when auteurist essays are centred around a theme, which range from the modest to the grand. The “modest” includes topics such as framing, mise-en-scene, shot composition or something incredibly specific pejoratively relegated to the inaccessible realms of esoterica, such as Adrian Martin’s piece on characters exiting buildings in Becker’s films, while character psychology, “human condition” (whatever that means) or sociopolitical scenarios and histories form the fabric of the “grand”. These latter contextual pieces are the domain of the “classical” approach, and by extension, more widely published, as in this essay on Jia Zhangke and China’s transformations, with plot and biographical detail acquiring the centre stage here even as the critic expounds on an auteur’s formal choices. The troubles of humanity cannot be trifled with through centring cinematic technique, it seems.

Criticism’s roots are not firmly grounded by the medium alone, and just like other art forms, it can easily extend its branches into political and historical spheres which might be dated linearly, but are experienced non-linearly. Here is exactly where the chronological sprawl of the classical approach meets the associative flights of the associative. Chronology provides the structural grounding to anchor the overlying history(ies) and politics, while a freely associative interpretative mode allows one to pluck films from the cinematic ether. Essayistic forms need to account for the elasticity of historical memory and its fragmentary (re)appearances, and cinema’s spatiotemporal malleability when critics expound on an auteur and their grand themes.

However, when we shift our medium of auteurist criticism to the cinema, the plot-centric linearity of the classical approach, though indeed pleasurable, is not as strong a use of the potentiality of the cinematic medium, as a theme often sparks associations from the cinematic unconscious that a good director cannot repress. Therefore, the lucid, hybrid approach to auteur studies often finds fruit in cinema itself. Perhaps the critic and curator, Alexander Horwath, whose curations themselves are famed for their unique pairings, wanted to go even further by elucidating both his theme and auteur in Henry Fonda for President (2024, from now called HFFP), not one through the lens of the other, but as a feedback loop which constantly shifts the meanings of both.

Horwath’s familiarity with criticism allows him to blend the best of different essayistic approaches, something which cinema permits more readily than the written medium, in his multi-layered critique of Fonda as an auteur and the “quintessential American.” Horwath proceeds with a near chronological approach to Fonda’s biography (“classical”), from his Dutch ancestors to his honorary Oscar, while organising his films not according to their year of release, but largely by the period they are set in and their thematic resonances (“associative”). Developing an essay through cinema not only allows the opportunity to (re)experience the films in question but also allows thematic resonances to commingle through what Rosenbaum terms as “indexing” , where scenes from different films are piled up together to let them interact through the theme and motif being discussed. This is a method that has its similarities to essays written on genre or based on a particular trend, where strikingly dissimilar films are brought together to illuminate on aesthetic/commercial /sociopolitical themes (eg: Robin Wood’s ‘Return of The Repressed’).

Cinematically, however, Horwath’s HFFP is clearly an inheritor of both Mark Rappaport, whose essay films on actors Jean Seberg and Rock Hudson also link the actors’ image to other films not involving them and sociopolitical scenarios, and Thom Andersen, whom Horwath cites as an influence. But neither of these two directors can be considered as outsiders with regard to their cinematic subjects. Horwath’s outsider angle certainly imposes a mystique on the celebrity personas of Hollywood stars who formed a major portion of his cinephilia, and thereby becomes a major cinematic question, as many American directors constantly engage with and reframe the star personas when constructing their films. Therefore, Horwath’s essay film becomes a disquisition on the contradictions raised by a seemingly simple question which forms its organising principle: What does it even mean to be a quintessential American?

The slipperiness of the term constantly reshapes and is being reshaped by the films and images, and Horwath, instead of suppressing the multidirectional complexities his stream of words and images raises in favour of an airtight structure, backtracks and flashes-forward to films already discussed and films which do not fit the biographical period in Fonda’s/America’s history, treating his film as a means of discovery and reassessment similar to Manny Farber’s brief interlude of bullet points when writing on Don’t Look Now (1975). Horwath accommodates micro-questions and themes emerging from multiple directions into his form without seeking to provide the final word on the subject, reminding us that criticism is a welter of multiple lenses – objective and subjective – biases, facts and fictions, where moulding them into a discernible structure doesn’t necessarily mean flattening and force-fitting discontinuities.

The sheer scope of his subject(s) cannot be limited to Fonda’s films alone, and like the best criticism, Horwath interrupts the flow of clips to interrogate his question and clarify his limitations and biases. In the case of HFPP, Horwath cannot ignore American history. Therefore, like Rosenbaum bringing his experiences of visiting the sets of Gohatto (1999) and Oshima’s talk-show duties while discussing his auteur status, Horwath overlays his personal history of his encounters with Fonda’s films on the clips while relating to Fonda’s history, which he then maps onto (inter)national history itself. But history itself is an act of recollection, and to penetrate the mystique of the past, Horwath summons its spectres in the present through footage of the hallowed cinematic locations shot by him and his collaborators, Regina Schlagnitweit and Michael Palm, only to find its traces contained in transformed vessels and spaces (the pulpit of the pilgrims is housed in a church that bears no resemblance to its European origins). HFPP becomes a blend of historical fact and fiction, just like the cinema itself, where John Ford’s mythologised history in My Darling Clementine (1946) manifests as a kitschy pageant in Tombstone, Arizona. It’s almost as if the past is interacting with fiction through art, as Horwath overlays Fonda’s dialogues on the present-day locations of his films – echoes of a cinema and sentiment, not lost, but reconfigured to the shifting socio-economic transformations of our era. The role of a critic engaging with a past auteur, regardless of the medium, isn’t merely a matter of eloquence and research, but also an act of interrogation and intervention of their personality and environment.

In this vein, Horwath emphasises his “foreignness” to both his subject and auteur in a manner similar to critics approaching foreign directors through national correlatives. However, the complexities introduced by celebrity, history and the sheer sprawl of his theme forces Horwath to stretch his arms into places criticism seldom goes to. Horwath’s Fonda obsession is both out of time and place, assembled from interviews, critical pieces, news articles and the cinema, and is neither in sync with the American people of then and now. This spatiotemporal displacement manifests not only in Horwath’s narration in German for a project which is “quintessentially American”, but also in his alien, oneiric landscapes that sometimes necessitate Fonda’s dialogues to anchor him in those transformed spaces. Landscapes which seemed so momentous in cinematic retellings of American history are seemingly populated only by alienated motels and gas stations. This outsider lens of America shows how “mere” works of art can bridge worlds – historical and fictional – while muddying them through our subjectivities and the sociopolitical contexts. HFPP is a chronicling of histories in all their contradictions and forms, and all this stems from asking a rather simple question.

HFPP has been rightfully heralded as an insightful critique of Fonda’s films and choices, a document of “real” histories warped by the “reel”, and a Tocqueville-style travelogue. In addition to these, HFPP is also an exemplary reminder of the breadth of topics that “trifles” like cinephilia and criticism can encompass, how questions regarding the medium and its artists can extend beyond our self-contained formulas. Jonathan Rosenbaum frequently alludes to the outlook of cinema as “literature by other means” in France. While there is the sense that this quote simplifies the complexities of the medium, the sentiment informs my ways of looking at criticism, with the hope that the quote is equally applicable in the reverse. If some of the finest essay films on auteurs have taken inspiration from great film writers, then one can hope that these essay films also transform our ways of thinking and approaching auteurist essays.

This week, Cinema Year Zero presents a lively and discursive two part essay from critic Anand Sudha on forms of auteurist criticism, via Alexander Horwath’s 2024 essay film Henry Fonda for President, which screened last week via Le Cinema Club.

You can read part II here.

And don’t forget that after our packed screening of Kiss Me Deadly, tickets are now available for Carnival of Souls on March 20th.

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Ideas Take Flight: Auteurist Criticism and Henry Fonda for President

Part I: Brochures and Brickbats

A common approach to written essays on film auteurs (not necessarily directors) is essentially a journalistic one. Consider a “classical” approach to criticism along artistic lines, with a beginning, middle and end, that, contrary to Godard’s famous quote, are necessarily in that order. An airtight structure prevails even with backtracks and forward projections, functioning more as reinforcements of the “central” thematic preoccupations invoked in the introductory paragraph rather than jumps that disrupt the direction of the essay.

A biographical description follows from an introductory paragraph - the “hook” of the essay - which, at the very least, traces an auteur’s influences, artistic initiations and (shifting) reputations, setting up the reader for what they have been presumably waiting for – the description of the individual works in the auteur’s oeuvre. These descriptions are generally capsule pieces arranged chronologically, accounting for omissions of works that have slipped away from the critic’s grasp, generally due to the lack of availability. The length of these capsules are normally tied to the critic’s interest in that work, editor wordcounts, or both, but there’s little doubt that they adhere to a compressed version of the review format, beginning with biographical details that provide context for the nature and direction of the work followed by a plot summary, and a brief exposition of the themes, replete with echoes of the past and teasing calls to the future. Despite the frequent callbacks to the opening paragraphs, there is still the sense that these capsules are self-contained pieces which can even be detached from the overall essay for the reader interested only in the particular work, condensing the depths of a larger review while minimising time investment, like this thorough essay on Don Siegel by Lawrence Garcia.

This “brochure” quality of such essays does lend itself more easily as a guide for the uninitiated, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of insights, and its linear organisation does allow one to observe the evolution of an artist, similar to a curation based on timelines in an art gallery. These essays can also be viewed as compressed director studies, mimicking multiple books that follow a similar format with chapters accorded to each film, though these nested mini-chapters unfurl by the rules of the review, a format and style which I am guilty of perpetuating as well. But the concern that the introductory paragraphs serve as mere window dressing to the “meatier” capsules remains, as the theme often gets swallowed by the organisation and self-contained constituents, limiting associations and conversations between the works. Even when we consider the best examples of this approach, of which the aforementioned Garcia essay is certainly among them, the constituents corresponding to each film still feel detachable, rendering the essay as a collection of reviews contextualised by the introductory paragraphs.

This privileging of plot and linear structure smoothens all discontinuities, especially when elaborating on a director’s oeuvre through the prism of a particular theme. A rupture in an artist’s oeuvre that runs in flagrant contradiction to the main theme of the essay is dispensed with a single line or two before the gears of linearity chug the essay train forward, not even leaving them as “subjects for further research” (to borrow Sarris’ categorisation of auteurs). Stumbling blocks are mainly included for chronological continuity, seldom allowing the critic the space to reassess and reflect themes in light of these ruptures.

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NOT BY LYNCH #2, Saturday 7 February at The Cinema Museum: Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955).

Below, Alison Rumfitt (Brainwyrms, Tell Me I’m Worthless) introduces the film with a new piece on its schocking inversion of film noir, and imprint on David Lynch.

Tickets are available here, and come with a print booklet including the essay.

Gumshoe Apocalypse

Contains plot elements.

“Whatever is in that box, it must be very precious… so many people have died for it.”

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Welcome back to Cinema Year Zero. Reviews of three British/international co-productions kick off our new release segment for 2026.

Don’t forget to subscribe to receive this and more film writing direct to your inbox.

NOT BY LYNCH continues next Saturday, 7th February at The Cinema Museum with Kiss Me Deadly (1955). A programme note by Alison Rumfitt will be exclusively available at the event.

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28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta, 2026, UK/US)

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has inadvertently turned me into a bonafide Danny Boyle believer. Shot back-to-back with Years, you might expect The Bone Temple to benefit from the continuity of such a process, developing the warped digital aesthetics that made Boyle’s film (our number 5 of last year!) such an offbeat surprise. Unfortunately, the temporal and textural proximity of Nia DaCosta’s fourquel only emphasises what is desperately lacking by comparison. Like the cultish island community in Years, I can’t help but yearn to RETVRN.

At the time, much was made of the final scene of Years, in which eight youngsters dressed in Jimmy Savile cosplay acrobatically dispatched a swarm of “zombies”, their colourful tracksuits tripling as nods to the Power Rangers and the Teletubbies as well. The tonal incongruity promised something even more blockbuster-agitating than Years—but rather than disrupting the status quo of the 28 franchise, where nihilism is the dish of the day/week/year, the Saviles are instead absorbed into DaCosta’s humdrum post-apocalypse. As head Savile impersonator Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, Jack O’Connell pontificates at length, as all memorable villains do. But when so much of the dramatic tension leans on him monologuing before *slam* banging a table or curling his lips as he says something nasty, every charismatic psychopath from the past thirty years of cinema flashes before your eyes.

Not only does DaCosta mishandle the Savile situation by reshaping his specifically-British heinousness into a more recognisable pop culture template, she simplifies the rest of the production too. Gone are the iPhone 15 Pro camera rigs, replaced with everyone’s favourite Arri Alexa. Gone are the punk-flex hyperreal images and bonkers editing, replaced with steadicam stability and swooping tracking shots; a creative choice that feels a particularly poor fit for the galling violence of Jimmy and his seven fingers. And gone is Young Fathers’ harmonising score, reverent and disturbing all at once, replaced with Hildur Guðnadóttir’s trademark droning cello and, worse still, a number of ironic (literal) needle drops. Because we love when a song that’s tonally out of step with the situation gets played, don’t we folks?

What frustrates most is that there are kernels of interest in Garland’s ham-fisted script. There’s a soporific quality to the bonding scenes between occult pacifist Dr. Kelson and hulking alpha zombie Samson, which, while dulled by DaCosta’s adherence to formula, still plays in novel contrast to the perverted theism of Jimmy and his Savilian skin-flayers. The finale, too, stages an intriguing confrontation between the film’s two opposing philosophies, a far cry from the hordes of infected the zombie format normally demands. And then Cillian Murphy shows up to explain The Themes in a coda that exemplifies the placid earthbound qualities of this entry over its nutty forebear. Maybe I need to give Yesterday (2019) another shot. Blaise Radley

Saipan (Glenn Leyburn & Lisa Barros D’Sa, 2025, UK/Ireland)

It can be tempting to boil contemporary football culture down to narrative. We are compelled to look beyond the sport’s corporate takeover by projecting personality onto individual and team performances. The pundit class of ‘Barclaysmen’, which is dominated by ex-Manchester United players of the Alex Ferguson era, uses this storytelling to prey on viewers’ nostalgic romances with the sport.

Inevitably, a film has emerged from this phenomenon. And given the popularity of self-parodic angry man Roy Keane’s persona, it stands to reason that the Saipan Incident would become the subject. The confrontation on the eve of their 2002 World Cup bow between then-Republic of Ireland captain Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) and his manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) led to the former’s (self-imposed?) exile from the national side, a subject of continuing controversy.

The openness of this story asks for an adaptation to go beyond tabloid moments. But scribe Paul Fraser doesn’t find much beyond the headlines. There was room for an Eastwoodian take on this material: a film which elevates football iconography to the stuff of myth, and then pushes the elements against each other to reveal their contradictions. But Leyburn and Barros D’Sa fail to synthesise the off pitch drama with the game itself.

This is hardly an impossible task. Nick Love’s hooligan cycle captures the immediacy of the crowd, while Mike Bassett: England Manager satirises the media circus in its deconstruction of a Proper Football Man. Directors as varied as Wim Wenders and Corneliu Porumboiu have explored the metaphysical space that football can occupy. But Saipan doesn’t even attempt a visual expression of the sport’s pleasures, leaving the film as an inert stage play.

Alongside this, Britpop-backed training montages stand in place of character development for further members of the squad. Flashbacks of Keane as a nipper, kicking a tattered ball against the walls of a terraced house, are painfully juxtaposed with the adult Keane playing in his back garden. By the fifth time, you may ask: it can’t go on like this, can it? Ben Flanagan

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The History of Sound (Oliver Hermanus, UK/USA)

The collecting and field recording of folk songs in the early twentieth century endures as a sticking point for folk music purists. Once it is sealed in Edison wax, the music is no longer transmitted through oral tradition, but through modern technology–so how can it still be considered “folk”? When the hidden lives of queer people factors into the story, as it does in The History of Sound, this is further complicated.

The History of Sound is a warm albeit formulaic story of two gay men in 1910s America from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds who form an indelible bond over their love of folk. It conjoins two of screenwriter Ben Shattuck’s own short stories. Paul Mescal rehashes Connell from Normal People (2020) as Lionel, a rural working class Kentuckian whose synesthesia and ensconcement in Appalachian music leads him to the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music. Josh O’Connor also finds familiar footing as David, whose bourgeois Transatlantic upbringing leaves him with a closed-off ennui that, despite their growing love, always remains a wedge between them.

Shattuck cleverly weaves the tone of the chosen folk songs into the narrative, with the lovelorn story of a star-crossed impoverished maid urging her love to find a richer wife in ‘Silver Dagger’ being the song that brings two together, but ultimately becoming a harbinger for their complicated relationship. Similarly, ‘The Unquiet Grave’ brings prescience to Lionel during a period of mourning. As the pair embark on an ethnomusicological quest to capture the songs of America, often from isolated rural people who have never encountered a phonograph before, the warmth of the tale seeps through in this recreation of groundbreaking history, of voices being captured for eternity: the voice of a 1910s farmer’s wife now available to play on the Smithsonian website.

There proves to be contention regarding the purpose of the collection project, leading to devastating revelations for Lionel. Nevertheless, one cylinder secretly remains, specifically made for him. A permanent imprint of the lives of two gay men during a time when their own oral history would have been otherwise shunned, forgotten, or deliberately destroyed. When framed as such, the capacity to capture such history overrules the fussiness of old tradition. Kirsty Asher

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NOT BY LYNCH opens tonight at The Cinema Museum, London. Ahead of the screening, programmer Arta Barzanji introduces his nine-film series, presented in association with Cinema Year Zero. Then, Alonso Aguilar introduces the main feature, Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond The Door (1947). A few tickets are still available here.

Not Lynch, but Lynchian

Season introduction by Arta Barzanji

When we talk about affinities between films or filmmakers, we often default to the language of influence: who saw what, who inspired whom, which images or ideas travelled from one body of work to another. This way of thinking is useful, but it can also be limiting. The “Lynchian” transcends influence altogether. It has become a widely used adjective, not only within cinephile or critical circles, but also in everyday speech. People speak of spaces, moods, political moments, even personal experiences as feeling “Lynchian”. Very few filmmakers’ names make this leap into common parlance. Hitchcock perhaps did so before, but even that term remains more tethered to cinema style. The Lynchian, by contrast, has entered a broader cultural vocabulary à la Kafka.

This suggests that something more than stylistic singularity is at work. David Lynch was undeniably a unique artist, yet his work gave especially sharp form to a way of perceiving the world that many people already sensed but could not articulate. His films repeatedly stage a tension between surfaces and depths, between the reassuring order of everyday life and what festers beneath it, between the conscious and the unconscious, between reality and something stranger that bleeds through it without warning. The Lynchian names this uneasy coexistence, this sense that the familiar world is structured around profound instability.

It is no accident that this vision emerged so forcefully from within the United States, a society built on extreme contradictions. The promise of democracy, equality, and normalcy sits alongside an ongoing legacy of violence, domination, and repression—both at home and abroad. Lynch’s cinema does not offer a programmatic political critique, yet it uncannily mirrors this structure: a bright façade masking something brutal, uncanny, or monstrous beneath. His films feel truthful not because they explain these contradictions, but because they allow us to experience them.

The films in this season, none of them made by Lynch, trace this sensibility across time. Some precede him, others follow him, but all give form to similar tensions: ordered worlds that fracture, images that betray their own stability, realities that cannot contain what they have repressed. Whether working through noir, experimental cinema, or digital image-making, these films reveal the Lynchian not as a lineage, but as a shared way of encountering a world that is, at its core, profoundly unsettled.

The mysterious world of Secret Beyond the Door

The enduring cult legacy of David Lynch in pop culture can be attributed to the joyfully cryptic and obtuse ways he expressed his disgust with, and outright rejection of, narrative logic. Famously a proponent of approaching films intuitively instead of rationally, the Lynchian ethos could be read as less of an identifiable aesthetic and more a philosophy that guides how one approaches the world around us. This position, however, collides with the spectatorial expectation of finding some sort of hidden meaning behind any assortment of images and sounds. “Not understanding” at face value is interpreted as a need for further inquiry. There has to be a sense of profundity that’s deliberate, no matter how buried beneath the surface. Withholding a sense of resolution is voiding the silent agreement for those who decide to engage with “difficult art”. If there’s no puzzle to be solved, then what’s the point? That sort of structure, however, is antithetical to the liquidity of Lynchian flows, which edge closer to that tenuously called “dream logic”.

In this cinematic dream state, there are glimpses of the unfiltered expressiveness of abstraction; dissonance corroding the soundscapes of daily life, crooked angles evincing unease, characters behaving less like “people” and more like manifestations of concepts, ideas, fears… The genius of that which can be termed Lynchian, however, is never letting hysteria run rampant, only allowing it to take over when catharsis is earned, as all senses fail. Before that, it’s held back by an ongoing tension with the assumed groundedness of figurative “reality”. This diffuse border, this liminal estate of uncanniness and half-truths, is guided by the mercurial twists and turns of affect, eventually leading to a point where the only path forward implies surrendering and being fully consumed by the unknown and the unknowable.

Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond The Door (1947) has a historical standing as a flawed entry within the German filmmaker’s acclaimed run of bleak and formally stark noirs in 1940s Hollywood. It even shares the same narrative facade on paper: Celia (Joan Bennet), a gorgeous heiress, falls for the cryptic Mark (Michael Redgrave), a man she barely knows, after a rambunctious romance in Mexico, and quickly moves to his New York home, where his true nature hides behind locked doors. The film’s divergent nature is readily apparent from the start, as a haunting cacophony of bells and diffuse water reflections evoke Celia’s wondrous soliloquy about dream interpretation. Unlike the Hitchcockian tradition of psychoanalytical tirades, Lang doesn’t use Freudian iconography for conceptual blunt force or out of narrative motive. His positionality is that of sensuous fascination, embracing the inherent contradictions of this cognitive spiral and letting it wash over the film’s perceptive anchors.

Both audience and characters are unknowingly (and perhaps unwillingly) submerging themselves into a realm of pure delusion. The spiritual influence of Charles Perrault’s eternally ominous Bluebeard fairytale fully comes to the forefront as the film starts mirroring the motifs of folk archetypes and gothic hallucinations. Bennet’s narration quickly loses the existentialist angst of usual noir monologuing, and delves into a pure stream of consciousness, flowing erratically as the film’s rhythm and tone turn more and more delirious. The veil of objective reality is pierced by a violent intrusion of subconsciousness and primal desire, and Lang’s visual grammar acknowledges this by harkening back to the steep angles and stirring shadowplay of his German Expressionist period.

Secret Beyond The Door is pure monochrome phantasmagoria. It embodies the kind of frenzied state of sensory second-guessing and conspicuous hyperreality that could never be fully understood, yet is undoubtedly deeply felt; a dark reverie whose allure lurks stealthily before consuming pervasively.

Alonso Aguilar is a film critic, audiovisual producer and programmer from Costa Rica / Panamá.

Yesterday we published our top 10 films of the year 2025.

Votes were cast for 221 new releases, which shows a segmented distribution cycle splitting the critical consensus. While our top three all recieved around a fifth of the total votes cast, no one film stood out as the favourite as in past years.

Below are the full ballots, cast by past contributors, colleagues, and personal heroes of the Cinema Year Zero team.

Alongside 2025 films, as ususal we asked for voters’ discoveries of the year. From sacred cows to instagram personalities gone wild, there’s enough gems from the history of the moving image to pore over until the next one.

Finally, a reminder that NOT BY LYNCH kicks off next Friday, January 16th with Fritz Lang’s The Secret Behind the Door (1947).

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Alistair Ryder (Occasional Critic)

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)

3. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

4. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

5. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

6. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

7. Kontinental ‘25 (Radu Jude)

8. Happyend (Neo Sora)

9. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)

10. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

Discoveries

• Matewan (1987, John Sayles)

• 10 Rillington Place (1971, Richard Fleischer)

• Variety (1983, Bette Gordon)

• Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991, Eleanor Coppola et al)

• The Beaches of Agnes (2008, Agnes Varda)

• Dick Tracy (1990, Warren Beatty)

• Tokyo Sonata (2008, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

• Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995, Aditya Chopra)

• Dick (1999, Andrew Fleming)

• Mississippi Mermaid (1969, François Truffaut)

Alonso Aguilar (Film critic, audiovisual producer and programmer from San José, Costa Rica)

1. Deathstalker (Steven Kostanski)

2. dedonde son los cantantes (Bruno Varela)

3. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

4. Havoc (Gareth Evans)

5. Homme-Sick (Julian Konuk)

6. In The Lost Lands (Paul W.S. Anderson)

7. L’Aventura (Sophie Letourneur)

8. La Corazonada (Diego Soto)

9. Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) (Joel Alfonso Vargas)

10. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

Discoveries

• Bacchanale (1970, John & Lem Amero)

• Sonnensucher (1972, Konrad Wolf)

• Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933, Lewis Milestone)

• Ignacio (1956, Ángel F. Rivera)

• Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933, Lewis Milestone)

• La légende du fantôme (1908, Segundo de Chomón)

• Merry-Go-Round (1980, Jacques Rivette)

• Nie wieder schlafen - Nie mehr zurück (1992, Pia Frankenberg)

• Passport to Pimlico (1949, Henry Cornelius)

• Park Lanes (2015, Kevin Jerome Everson)

• The Terror and the Time (1978, The Victor Jara Collective)

Anand Sudha (PhD in Applied Physics, fledgling film critic)

1. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

2. The Story of Scenarios (Jean-Luc Godard, Fabrice Aragno, Jean-Paul Battaggia, Nicole Brenez)

3. Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)

4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

5. A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang Soo)

6. Caught By the Tides (Jia Zhangke)

7. Eephus (Carlson Lund)

8. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

9. Broken Rage (Takeshi Kitano)

10. Pepe (Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias)

Discoveries

• A Camel (1981, Ibrahim Shaddad)

• Maine-Ocean Express (1986, Jacques Rozier)

• The Hypothesis of Stolen Painting (1978, Raul Ruiz)

• New Rose Hotel (1998, Abel Ferrara)

• At Land (1944, Maya Deren)

• The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, Jean Epstein)

• Cure (1997, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

• L’Enfant Secret (1982, Phillipe Garrel)

• Toute une Nuit (1982, Chantal Akerman)

• Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Anna Devereux (PhD Researcher at the University of East Anglia and the Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin)

1. Tube Film (Orla Smith, Kimia Ipakchi)

2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

3. Friendship (Andrew DeYoung)

4. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)

5. Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)

6. Weapons (Zach Cregger)

7. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

8. The Day the Earth Blew Up: a Looney Tunes Movie (Peter Browngardt)

9. Ella McCay (James L. Brooks)

10. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

Discoveries

• Belfast, Maine (1999, Frederick Wiseman)

• Secret Honor (1984, Robert Altmann)

• Trust (1990, Hall Ashby)

• Hud (1963, Martin Ritt)

• The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991, David Zucker)

• Shared Resources (2020, Jordan Lord)

• The Annihilation of Fish (1999, Sydney Burnett)

• Crimes of Passion (1984, Ken Russell)

• The Haunting of Julia (1977, Richard Longcraine)

• The Ladykillers (1955, Alexander Mackendrick)

Arta Barzanji (Critic, curator, filmmaker)

1. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

2. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

3. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

4. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

5. Dracula (Radu Jude)

6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

7. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel)

8. Lover, Lovers, Loving, Love (Jodie Mack)

9. Fiume o Morte (Igor Bezinović)

10. Where to Land (Hal Hartley)

Discoveries

• Va Savoir + (2001, Jacques Rivette)

• Cheyenne Autumn (1964, John Ford)

• Man of the West (1958, Anthony Mann)

• Near Orouët (1971, Jacques Rozier)

• Gentleman Jim (1942, Raoul Walsh)

• The Damned (1969, Luchino Visconti)

• The House of Mirth (2000, Terence Davies)

• Moonfleet (1955, Fritz Lang)

• Till We Meet Again (1944, Frank Borzage)

• So Is This (1982, Michael Snow)

Ben Flanagan (Editor, Cinema Year Zero)

1. Castration Anthology i + ii (Louise Weard)

2. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

3. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

4. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin)

5. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)

6. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Peter Browngardt)

7. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

8. The Fence (Claire Denis)

9. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

10. Weapons (Zach Cregger)

Discoveries:

• Belfast, Maine (1999, Fred Wiseman)

• Va Savoir (Who Knows?) (2001, Jacques Rivette)

• Cutter’s Way (1981, Ivan Passer)

• UFO Abduction (1989, Dean Alioto)

• Wendigo (2001, Larry Fessenden)

• Sex Is Crazy (1981, Jesús Franco)

• Hud (1963, Martin Ritt)

• Maine-Ocean Express (1986, Jacques Rozier)

• It Always Rains on Sunday (1947, Robert Hamer)

• Seed of Chucky (2004, Don Mancini)

Blaise Radley (Reviews Editor, Cinema Year Zero)

1. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

2. Magellan (Lav Diaz)

3. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

4. I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho)

5. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

6. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

8. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

10. Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)

Discoveries:

• Judex (1916, Louis Feuillade)

• The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton)

• Rosa la rose, fille publique (1986, Paul Vecchiali)

• Black Panthers (1968, Agnès Varda)

• Public Housing (1997, Frederick Wiseman)

• The Other Side of the Wind (2018, Orson Welles)

• The Ceremony (1971, Nagisa Ōshima)

• Night and Day (1991, Chantal Akerman)

• Totally Fucked Up (1993, Gregg Araki)

• Night and Fog (1956, Alain Resnais)

Carmen Paddock (Fan of musicals, maximalism, and adaptations)

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

3. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

4. Hedda (Nia DaCosta)

5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

6. The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)

7. Friendship (Andrew DeYoung)

8. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)

9. The Phonecian Scheme (Wes Anderson)

10. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)

Discoveries:

• Lisztomania (1975, Ken Russell)

• The House of Yes (1997, Mark Waters)

• Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988, Mark Lewis)

• Grey Gardens (1975, Muffie Meyer / David Maysles / Ellen Giffard / Albert Maysles)

• Far From Heaven (2002, Todd Haynes)

• The Pirate (1948, Vincente Minnelli)

• All About My Mother (1999, Pedro Almodóvar)

• Harlan County USA (1976, Barbara Kopple)

• Malcolm X (1992, Spike Lee)

• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)

Dan Wilkinson (Screening the sublime and underseen, I also direct and produce on the side. The next DW to look out for is the 24 hour cinematic marathon I’m putting on April 10th-11th)

1. The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man (Braden Sitter Sr.)

2. Parthenope (Paolo Sorrentino)

3. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

4. Fackham Hall (Jim O’Hanlon)

5. Imperial Green (Zachary Lacosse)

6. Marching Powder (Nick Love)

7. Jail Saga (Peter McIndoe)

8. Blondi (Jack Salvadori)

9. Megadoc (Mike Figgis)

10. The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko)

Discoveries:

• Up! (1976, Russ Meyer)

• Travolta and Me (1993, Patricia Mazuy)

• Dr. Caligari (1989, Stephen Sayadian)

• Take Out (2004, Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker)

• Nightshift (1981, Robina Rose)

• A New Life (2002, Philippe Grandrieux)

• Dream Journal 2016–2019 (2019, Jon Rafman)

• The Brick and the Mirror (1966, Ebrahim Golestan)

• Hard Truths (2025, Mike Leigh)

• Sound Barrier (2005, Amir Naderi)

Daniel Turner (Film programmer at ICA)

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. Gangsterism (Isiah Medina)

3. MACDO (Racornelia)

4. I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho)

5. Notes of a Crocodile (Daphne Xu)

6. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo)

7. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović)

8. Fire of Wind (Marta Mateus)

9. Phantoms of July (Julian Radlmaier)

10. Dry Leaf (Alexander Koberidze)

Discoveries:

• Amor de Perdição (1978, Manoel de Oliveira)

• The Razor’s Edge (1985, Jocelynne Saab)

• The Wild Palms (1967/2025, Jean-Luc Godard)

• Van Gogh (1991, Maurice Pialat)

• Sauve la vie (qui peut) (1981, Jean-Luc Godard — Assembled by Michael Witt)

• From the Clouds to the Resistance (1979, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)

• After Manet, After Giorgione – Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe or Fete Champetre (1975, Malcolm Le Grice)

• The Crimson Curtain (1953, Alexandre Astruc)

• City of Pirates (1983, Raúl Ruiz)

• Red River (1948, Howard Hawks)

Digby Houghton (Film critic based in the antipodes (Melbourne, Australia) currently completing a Masters by Research comparing the cinema of France of Australia)

1. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay)

2. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)

3. What Does That Nature Say To You (Hong Sang-soo)

4. Kontinental ‘25 (Radu Jude)

5. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)

6. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)

7. The Eviction (Rebecca Metcalf)

8. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

9. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)

10. Edington (Ari Aster)

Discoveries:

• A Real Young Girl (Catherine Breillat)

• The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Eric Rohmer)

• I’m Hungry, I’m Cold (Chantal Akerman)

• The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)

• Dirty Harry (Don Seigel)

• The Hangover (Todd Phillips)

• The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)

• Animal Kingdom (David Michôd)

• Snowtown (Justin Kurzel)

• Hannah Montana: The Movie (Peter Chelsom)

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Ellisha Izumi (Ellisha Izumi is a freelance film historian based in London. She specialises in Frank & Eleanor Perry and ‘denpa’, a little-known genre of Japanese Y2K cinema and anime)

1. Twinless (James Sweeney)

2. Edhi Alice: REVERSE (Il-ran Kim)

3. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

4. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)

5. Bel Ami (Geng Jun)

6. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

7. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

8. My Sunshine (Hiroshi Okuyama)

9. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

10. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

Discoveries:

• Deep End (1970, Jerzy Skolimowski)

• The Gorge (1968, Christopher Morahan)

• Double Suicide (1969, Masahiro Shinoda)

• D.E.B.S (2004, Angela Robinson)

• Camp Hollywood (2004, Steve Markle)

• The Barber of Stamford Hill (1963, Casper Wrede)

• The Fall of Otrar (1991, Ardak Amirkulov)

• A Tale of Springtime (1990, Éric Rohmer)

• The Steamroller and the Violin (1961, Andrei Tarkovsky)

• Letter to Brezhnev (1985, Chris Bernard)

Emily Jisoo Bowles (British-Korean film critic and a programmer at Queer East festival)

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

2. I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho)

3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

4. Kontinental ‘25 (Radu Jude)

5. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

6. By the Stream (Hong Sangsoo)

7. No Other Choice (Park Chanwook)

8. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)

9. Underground (Kaori Oda)

10. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo)

Discoveries:

• The Devil Probably (1977, Robert Bresson)

• Romance (1999, Catherine Breillat)

• Sanrizuka - Peasants of the Second Fortress (1971, Ogawa Productions)

• Duelle (1976, Jacques Rivette)

• La Ronde (1950, Max Ophüls)

• Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (1989, Bae Yong-kyun)

• Turang (1957, Bachtiar Siagian)

• Marseille (2004, Angela Schanelec)

• The Wicked Lady (1945, Leslie Arliss)

• Spacked Out (2000, Lawrence Ah Mon)

Farzad Azimbeik (cultural worker)

• What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sang-soo)

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

• Viet and Nam (Truong Minh Quy)

• Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović)

• Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)

• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

• Invention (Courtney Stephens)

• Ariel (Lois Patiño, Matías Piñeiro)

• Caught by the Tide (Jia Zhangke)

• Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs)

Discoveries:

• Marble Ass (1995, Želimir Žilnik)

• Oh Canada (2024, Paul Schrader)

• Loss of Sensation aka. Robot of Jim Ripple (1935, Alexandr Andriyevsky)

• Vampire Hunter D (1985, Toyoo Ashida)

• The Glass Harmonica (1968, Andrey Khrzhanovsky)

• The Monastery of Sendomir (1920, Victor Sjöström)

• The Inner Scar (1972, Philippe Garrel)

• Mati Manas (1984, Mani Kaul)

• The Written Face (1995, Daniel Schmid)

• The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (2024, Theo Panagopoulos)

Fedor Tot (Critic)

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

2. War of the Worlds (Rich Lee)

3. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

4. A Traveller’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)

5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

6. TRON: Ares (Joachim Rønning)

7. Dracula (Radu Jude)

8. Peacemaker (Ivan Ramljak)

9. Hysterical Fits of Laughter (Dušan Zorić, Matija Glušćević)

10. The Divided City of Mitrovica (Marko Grba Singh)

Discoveries:

• Dislocated Third Eye Series III: Bismillah / In Four Movements (1984, Sulejman Ferenčak / OM Produkcije)

• The Return (1966, Živojin Pavlović)

• Monday or Tuesday (1966, Vatroslav Mimica)

• Don’t Cry, Peter (1964, France Štiglic)

• Resident Evil (2002, Paul WS Anderson)

• Man Marked for Death, Twenty Years Later (1984, Eduardo Coutinho)

• Shanghai Blues (1984, Tsui Hark)

• Camera Buff (1979, Krzysztof Kieślowski)

• The Far Country (1954, Anthony Mann)

• High Plains Drifter (1973, Clint Eastwood)

Georgia Hunter (Siren Screen film programmer)

1. Happyend (Neo Sora)

2. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay)

3. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)

4. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)

5. Motel Destino (Karim Aïnouz)

6. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)

7. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)

8. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-ho)

9. Pillion (Harry Lighton)

10. Ocean with David Attenborough (Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey, Colin Butfield)

Discoveries:

• Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972, Robert J. Kaplan)

• The Wiz (1978, Sidney Lumet)

• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, Robert Aldrich)

• Moonstruck (1987, Norman Jewison)

• A Kind of Testament (2023, Stephen Vuillemin)

• Before Sunrise (1995, Richard Linklater)

• Microcosmos (1996, Claude Nuridsany & Marie Pérennou)

• Coming Out (2020, Cressa Maeve Áine)

• Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023, Ariane Louis-Seize)

• Femme (2023, Sam H. Freeman & Ng Choon Ping)

Ian Mantgani (Filmmaker)

1. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)

2. Here (Robert Zemeckis)

3. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)

4. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow)

5. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

7. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)

8. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

9. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Discoveries:

• The Arch (Tang Shu Shuen)

• Bona (Lino Brocka)

• Central Park (Frederick Wiseman)

• Combat Shock (Buddy Giovinazzo)

• D’amore si vive (Silvano Agosti)

• It’s Alive 3: Island of the Alive (Larry Cohen)

• The Last Horror Film (David Winters)

• Leo the Last (John Boorman)

• The Liberation of LB Jones (William Wyler)

• Strongroom (Vernon Sewell)

Jeremy Arblaster (Designer, CYZ)

1. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

2. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

3. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

4. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

5. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

6. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)

7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

8. The End (Joshua Oppenheimer)

9. Eddington (Ari Aster)

10. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)

Discoveries:

• Amadeus (1984, Miloš Forman)

• Life and Nothing More (1992, Abbas Kiarostami)

• Ucho (1970, Karel Kachyňa)

• Green Snake (1993, Tsui Hark)

• The Assassin (2015, Hou Hsiao-hsien)

• M. Butterfly (1993, David Cronenberg)

• Beauty & the Beast (1978, Juraj Herz)

• Gattaca (1997, David Niccol)

• Altered States (1980, Ken Russell)

• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy)

Joe Andreyev (Jellied Reels programmer)

1. Megadoc (Mike Figgis)

2. Perfumed By Mint (Muhammad Hamdy)

3. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)

4. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier)

5. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

6. The Summer with Carmen (Zacharías Mavroidís)

7. The Other Way Around (Jonas Trueba)

8. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)

9. Vermiglio (Maura Delpero)

10. Olso Stories Trilogy: Dreams Love Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud)

Discoveries:

• Better Go Mad In The Wild (2025, Miro Reno)

• Lady (2025, Samuel Abrahams)

• Rolling Papers (2024, Meel Paliale)

• Kill the Jockey (2024, Luis Ortega)

• The Visitor (2025, Vytautas Katkus)

• Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)

• L’Uomo in Più (2001, Paolo Sorrentino)

• No Rest For The Brave (2003, Alain Guiraudie)

• Zootopia (2016, Byron Howard & Rich Moore)

• My Dinner with Andre (1981, Louis Malle)

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Joel Whitaker (Curator of Anti-Reality Image Network, co-curator of Fumetti Funnies)

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

2. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel)

3. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

4. The End (Joshua Oppenheimer)

5. Scorigami (Jon Bois)

6. The Memory of Butterflies (Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski)

7. What Does That Nature Say To You? (Hong Sang-soo)

8. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

9. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch)

10. Afterlives (Kevin B. Lee)

Discoveries:

• Give Us Air (1923, Dziga Vertov)

• Side/Walk/Shuttle (1992, Ernie Gehr)

• You Hide Me (1970, Nii Kwate Owoo)

• Vampires in Havana (1985, Juan Padron)

• Leo es pardo (1976, Ivan Zulueta)

• The Plaint of Steve Kreines as Recorded by His Younger Brother Jeff (1974, Jeff Kreines)

• Orochi Strikes Again (1985, Takami Akai)

• Lacrima Christi (1980, Teo Hernandez)

• La peinture cubiste (1981, Phillipe Grandrieux & Thierry Kuntzel)

• Aspen 1970 (1970, Eliot Noyes, Claudia Weill)

Joseph Owen (Writer and researcher)

1. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)

2. Easy Girl (Hille Norden)

3. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

4. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

5. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

6. Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Sho Miyake)

7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

8. Sorella di Clausura (Ivana Mladenović)

9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

10. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

Discoveries:

• Year One (Roberto Rossellini)

• Midnight (Mitchell Leisen)

• Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)

• Shampoo (Hal Ashby)

• The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke)

• The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood)

• The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Éric Rohmer)

• Nashville (Robert Altman)

• Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman)

• Demonlover (Olivier Assayas)

Justine Smith (Film Critic)

1. One Battle After Another

2. The Secret Agent

3. Magellan

4. The Mastermind

5. A Poet

6. Dry Leaf

7. Miroirs No. 3

8. Left-Handed Girl

9. Fucktoys

10. The Phoenician Scheme

Discoveries:

• The Brick and the Mirror (1966, Ebrahim Golestan)

• Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)

• When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960, Mikio Naruse)

• Homework (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)

• Léon Morin, Priest (1961, Jean-Pierre Melville)

• Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)

• Silvestre (1981, João César Monteiro)

• Ace of Violence (1949, Fred Zinnemann)

• Shoeshine (1946, Vittorio De Sica)

• The Straight Story (1999, David Lynch)

Kirsty Asher (Associate Editor, Cinema Year Zero)

1. Fucktoys (Annapurna Sriram)

2. The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)

3. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

4. Pillion (Harry Lighton)

5. Fiume O Morte! (Igor Bezinović)

6. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin)

7. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi)

8. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

9. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier)

10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Discoveries:

• Crimes of Passion (1984, Ken Russell)

• Sugar Cane Alley (1983, Euzhan Palcy)

• Crash (1996, David Cronenberg)

• Barry Lyndon (1975, Stanley Kubrick)

• O’r Ddaear Hen (1981, Wil Aaron)

• Orlando (1992, Sally Potter)

• Perfect Blue (1997, Satoshi Kon)

• Sid and Nancy (1986, Alex Cox)

• The Holy Mountain (1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

• Far From the Madding Crowd (1967, John Schlesinger)

Kit Ramsay (Distribution clown at the circus)

1. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)

2. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)

3. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

4. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

5. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)

6. Engines (Charlie Jimenez)

7. Tube Film (Orla Smith, Kimia Ipakchi)

8. Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps (Louise Weard)

9. Twinless (James Sweeney)

10. Videoheaven (Alex Ross Perry)

Discoveries:

• Out 1 (1971, Jacques Rivette)

• The Draughtsmen Clash (1996, Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda)

• Café Müller (1985, Pina Bausch)

• Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1985, Alan Clarke)

• The Unknown (1927, Tod Browning)

• The Mangler (1995, Tobe Hooper)

• The Book of Mary (1985, Anne-Marie Miéville)

• Sentimental Romance (1930, Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov)

• Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001, Jorge Montesi)

• Green Snake (1993, Tsui Hark)

Max Lewis-Clarke (Semi-pro post-screening yapper)

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

2. The World of Love (Yoon Ga-eun)

3. Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou)

4. Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)

5. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

6. Levers (Rhayne Vermette)

7. Invention (Courtney Stephens)

8. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani)

9. Redoubt (John Skoog)

10. Ariel (Lois Patiño)

Discoveries:

• Tomorrow We Move (2004, Chantal Akerman)

• Zorn’s Lemma (1970, Hollis Frampton)

• Processo per stupro (1979, Loredana Dordi / Rony Daopulo / Paola De Martis / Annabella Miscuglio / Maria Grazia Belmonti / Anna Carini)

• La Région Centrale (1971, Michael Snow)

• Riso Amaro (1949, Giuseppe De Santis)

• Sylvia Scarlett (1935, George Cukor)

• Public Housing (1997, Frederick Wiseman)

• Riddles of the Sphinx (1977, Laura Mulvey / Peter Wollen)

• Hanagatami (2017, Nobuhiko Obayashi)

• Love in the Time of Twilight (1995, Tsui Hark)

MLP (MAXIMILIEN LUC PROCTOR)

1. The Phoenician Scheme (Wesley Wales Anderson)

2. Morning Circle (Basma Alsharif)

3. Full Out (Sarah Ballard)

4. Half Halt (Sofia Theodore-Pierce)

5. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich)

6. Levers (Rhayne Vermette)

7. The City & Her Stones (Maximilien Luc Proctor)

8. view of Ines and the Castle of Klein Glienicke (Liam Kenny)

9. Lingua Ignota (Larissa Krampert & Björn Schmitt)

10. Twenty Three (Wasima Farah & Kamyar Mohsenin)

Discoveries:

• Strange Fruit (1969, Skip Norman)

• FFFTCM (1967, Will “William Mayo” Hindle)

• Maternal Filigree (1980, Sandra Davis)

• Desert Hearts (1985, Donna Deitch)

• Raindance (1972, Standish Dyer Lawder)

• In Titan’s Goblet (1991, Peter Barrington Hutton)

• For rest (2017, Shinya Isobe)

• Madrid Études (2023, Jimmy Schaus)

• Generations (1969, Barry Gerson)

• Gloucester Skipper (19??, Peter Bundy)

Nadira Begum (Film critic and culture writer)

1. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)

2. Palestine 36 (Annemarie Jacir)

3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

4. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

5. Bad Apples (Jonatan Etzler)

6. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin)

7. Roofman (Derek Cianfrance)

8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

9. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)

10. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (Michael Morris)

Discoveries:

• The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)

• 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)

• My Brilliant Career (1979, Gillian Armstrong)

• Yeelen (1987, Souleymane Cissé)

• A Few Good Men (1992, Rob Reiner)

• Jerry Maguire (1996, Cameron Crowe)

• About a Boy (2002, Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz)

• Punch-Drunk Love (2002, Paul Thomas Anderson)

• Happy as Lazzaro (2018, Alice Rohrwacher)

• Sing Sing (2023, Greg Kwedar)

Oliver James Hunt (Film programmer & video artist)

1. Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine)

2. A Ladder (Scott Barley)

3. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

4. The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko)

5. Engines (Charlie Jimenez)

6. Shifty (Adam Curtis)

7. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)

8. Exit 8 (Genki Kawamura)

9. Marching Powder (Nick Love)

10. Putin (Patryk Vega)

Discoveries:

• Book of Days (Meredith Monk)

• Sound Barrier (Amir Naderi)

• The Thirsty Flower: Four by Four Equals One (Masatoshi Nagase)

• The Veldt (Nazim Tulakhodzhayev)

• People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am (Boris Gerrets)

• Interface (Justin Tomchuk)

• Mermaid (Aleksandr Petrov)

• Dragonfly Eyes (Xu Bing)

• The Rough River, the Placid Sea (Marat Sarulu)

• In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea (n/a)

Orla Smith (Orla Smith is a filmmaker, curator, and co-director of The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend)

1. Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud)

2. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

3. By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo)

4. What Does That Nature Say to You? (Hong Sang-soo)

5. Being John Smith (John Smith)

6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

7. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)

8. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

9. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)

10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Discoveries:

• One Lives by Love (1984, Silvano Agosti)

• So Is This (1982, Michael Snow)

• Salaam Cinema (1995, Mohsen Makhmalbaf)

• The Black Tower (1987, John Smith)

• Drylongso (1998, Cauleen Smith)

• The Lacey Rituals (1973, The Lacey family)

• Within Our Gates (1920, Oscar Micheaux)

• The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987, Kazuo Hara)

• A Better Man (2017, Attiya Khan & Lawrence Jackman)

• Running Fields I-IV (2024, Flo Mavy)

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Owen Vince (Is a writer and filmmaker living in London)

1. No Other Choice – Park-chan Wook

2. Kontinental ’25 – Radu Jude

3. Miroirs No. 3 – Christian Petzold

4. Cloud – Kiyoshi Kurosawa

5. Afternoons of Solitude – Albert Serra

6. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued – Julian Castronovo

7. Sentimental Value –– Joachim Trier

8. What Does That Nature Say to You –– Hong Sang-soo

9. Being John Smith –– John Smith

10. Dry Leaf –– Alexandre Koberidze

Discoveries:

• Winstanley – Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo (1975)

• Wide Angle Saxon – Owen Land (1975)

• Out 1 – Jacques Rivette & Suzanne Schiffman (1971)

• The Catch –– Nagisa Oshima (1961)

• In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middleway Spells Certain Death –– Alexander Kluge (1974)

• Crazed Fruit –– Kō Nakahira (1956)

• City of Pirates –– Raúl Ruiz (1984)

• While the City Sleeps –– Fritz Lang (1956)

• Stray Dog –– Akira Kurosawa (1949)

• The Servant –– Joseph Losey (1963)

Patrick Preziosi (Patrick Preziosi is a Brooklyn, NY born and based writer. He’s written about literature, film and music for Cleveland Review of Books, Commonweal, We Jazz, Reverse Shot, The Quietus, and more. He is the small press curator and buyer for McNally Jackson bookstores.)

1. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

2. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

Discoveries:

• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet)

• Rising Tones Cross (Ebba Jahn)

• Mingus (Thomas Reichman)

• Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe (Johan van der Keuken)

• Stop for Bud! (Ole John, Jørgen Leth, Jens Jørgen Thorsen)

• Jackie McLean on Mars (Kenneth Levis)

• Speaking in Tongues (Doug Harris)

• Imagine the Sound (Ron Mann)

• Tony Williams in Africa (Willie Ruff)

• The Offence (Sidney Lumet)

Paul Farrell (Film Curator)

1. Happyend (Neo Sora)

2. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)

3. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sang-soo)

4. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

5. The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)

6. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

7. Presence (Steven Soderbergh)

8. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

9. Materialists (Celine Song)

10. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)

Discoveries:

• Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy (1988, Tony Buba)

• Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)

• Chimes at Midnight (1965, Orson Welles)

• Litan (1982, Jean-Pierre Mocky)

• Evil Dead Trap (1988, Toshiharu Ikeda)

• Night Moves (2013, Kelly Reichardt)

• Dhoom 2 (2006, Sanjay Gadhvi)

• Duck Amuck (1953, Chuck Jones)

• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962, Karel Zeman)

• The Last Days of Disco (1998, Whit Stillman)

Rhys Handley (Rhys Handley is a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway UoL)

1. The Ceremony (Jack King)

2. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)

3. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

4. On Falling (Laura Carreira)

5. Lollipop (Daisy-May Hudson)

6. To A Land Unknown (Mahdi Fleifel)

7. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Pahani)

8. Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik)

9. The Encampments (Michael T Workman, Kei Pritsker)

10. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

Discoveries:

• Taste of Cherries (1997, Abbas Kiarostami)

• Harakiri (1962, Masaki Kobayashi)

• The Last Waltz (1978, Martin Scorsese)

• The Wages of Fear (1953, Henri-George Clouzot)

• The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (2024, Theo Panagopolous)

• Return to Haifa (1982, dir. Kassem Hawal)

• Mildred Pierce (2011, Todd Haynes)

• Paranoia Agent (2004, Satoshi Kon)

• Family Life (1971, Ken Loach)

• Road (1987, dir. Alan Clarke)

Rino Lu (Filmmaker, Critic, Curator)

1. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linkerlater)

2. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)

3. Enzo (Robin Campillo)

4. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)

5. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold)

6. Plainclothes (Carmen Emmi)

7. Yes! (Nadav Lapid)

8. 100 Nights of Hero (Julia Jackman)

9. Orphan (Laszlo Nemes)

10. Ariel (Lois Patiño)

Discoveries:

• Rome 11:00 (1952, Giuseppe De Santis)

• Odd Obsession (1959, Kon Ichikawa)

• Young Hearts (2024, Anthony Schatteman)

• Tangerine (2015, Sean Baker)

• In the House (2012, François Ozon)

• A Summer’s Tale (1996, Éric Rohmer)

• The Beaches of Agnès (2008, Agnès Varda)

• A Traveler’s Needs (2024, Hong Sang-soo)

• His Motorbike, Her Island (1986, Ôbayashi Nobuhiko)

• To Sleep So As To Dream (1986, Kaizo Hayashi)

Rory Doherty (Freelance critic and writer)

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

2. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

3. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

4. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

6. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

7. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari)

8. Magellan (Lav Diaz)

9. Seven Veils (Atom Egoyan)

10. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

Discoveries:

• The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)

• Point Blank (1967, John Boorman)

• Wendy & Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)

• Bamboozled (2000, Spike Lee)

• In the Dark (2000, Clifton Holmes)

• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)

• Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (1970, Elio Petri)

• Penda’s Fen (1974, Alan Clarke)

• The Quiet Man (1952, John Ford)

• God Told Me To (1976, Larry Cohen)

Rose Dymock (Occasional writer/film critic, fan of multilingual cinema)

1. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

2. Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar)

3. Pillion (Harry Lighton)

4. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi)

5. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)

6. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)

7. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

8. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

9. I Only Rest In The Storm (Pedro Pinho)

10. The Brutalist (Brady Corbert)

Discoveries:

• Neighboring Sounds (2012, Kleber Mendonça Filho)

• Bicycle Theives (1948, Vittorio De Sica)

• Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean)

• Carmen Jones (1954, Otto Preminger)

• Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)

• Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)

• Le Bonheur (1965, Agnès Varda)

• Frenzy (1972, Alfred Hitchcock)

• Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975, Chantel Akerman)

• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)

Ruairí McCann (Film critic, programmer, musician and illustrator from Ireland. Co-editor of Ultra Dogme.)

1. Desert of Namibia (Yamanaka Yoko)

2. Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (Jean-Luc)

3. Gangsterism (Isiah Medina)

4. Go Ye Afar (Frank Sweeney)

5. hole in the stone (Holly Márie Parnell)

6. Kontinental ‘25 (Rade Jude)

7. Levers (Rhayne Vermette)

8. Morgenkreis (Basma Al Sharif)

9. Next Life (Tenzin Phuntsog)

10. What Does That Nature Say To You? (Hong Sang-soo)

Discoveries:

• Alabama Departure (1978, Peter Bundy & Bryan Elsom)

• Avetik (1992, Don Askarian)

• Bloody Spear on Mount Fuji (1955, Uchida Tomu)

• Dying (1976, Michael Roemer)

• The Inheritance (1970, Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias)

• Listen (1978, Bob Quinn)

• Maternal Filigree (1980, Sandra Davis)

• Scrap Vessel (2009, Jason Byrne)

• Trás-os-Montes (1976, Margarida Cordeiro & António Reis)

• The Zerda or the Songs of Forgetting (1983, Assia Djebar)

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Sam Moore (Writer, editor, and curator based in London)

1. One Battle After Another

2. Sentimental Value

3. It Was Just An Accident

4. No Other Choice

5. Marty Supreme

6. Sinners

7. Rose of Nevada

8. Hamnet

9. Black Bag

10. Reflections in a Dead Diamond

Discoveries:

• All the President’s Men (1976, Alan J. Pakula)

• The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982, Peter Greenaway)

• Kiss Me Deadly (1955, Robert Aldrich)

• Last And First Men (2020, Jóhan Jóhannson)

• McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971, Robert Altman)

• My Dinner With Andre (1981, Louis Malle)

• Night Moves (1975, Arthur Penn)

• Phoenix (2014, Christian Petzold)

• Rolling Thunder (1977, John Flynn)

• The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)

Sam Warren Miell (Editorial board of the film magazine Narrow Margin)

1. The Wild Palms (Jean-Luc Godard)

2. Fuck the Polis (Rita Azevedo Gomes)

3. Songs Overheard in the Shadows (James Edmonds)

4. Golden Chains (Flo Mavy)

Discoveries:

• The Thief’s Wife (Allan Dwan, 1912)

• Orphans of the Storm (D. W. Griffith, 1921)

• Club Havana (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

• Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948)

• I’d Climb the Highest Mountain (Henry King, 1951)

• Most Dangerous Man Alive (Allan Dwan, 1961)

• The Night of the Hunted (Jean Rollin, 1980)

• Extérieur, nuit (Jacques Bral, 1980)

• Berlin Chamissoplatz (Rudolf Thome, 1980)

• Le Complexe de Toulon (Jean-Claude Biette, 1995)

Shaghayegh Raoufi (Film curator and Programmer)

1. I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho)

2. Under the Flags, the Sun (Juanjo Pereira)

3. Living the Land (Meng Huo)

4. Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi)

5. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović)

6. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa)

7. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel)

8. Cover-Up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus)

9. L’Arbre de l’authenticité (Sammy Baloji)

10. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)

Discoveries:

• The Seats Of The Alcazar Cinema (Luc Moullet)

• To Sleep So as to Dream (Kaizo Hayashi)

• Hans - Ein Junge in Deuch Grabbe’s Last Summer (Sohrab Shahid Saless)

• The Truth About the Imaginary Passion of an Unknown (Marcel Hanoun)

• Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars (Howard Brookner)

• Regrouping (Lizzie Borden)

• Shades of Silk (Mary Stephen)

• Der var engang (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

• La Rosiere de Pessac (Jean Eustache)

• Speaking of Bunuel (José Luis López-Linares, Javier Rioyo)

Shelby Cooke (Shelby Cooke is an internationally known film curator and critic, focusing on British cinema and identity. Her complete writing portfolio can be found at shelbycooke.com.)

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi)

3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)

4. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)

5. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)

6. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

7. After the Hunt (Luca Guadagnino)

8. Eddington (Ari Aster)

9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Discoveries:

• Daisies (1966, Vera Chytilova)

• David Holzman’s Diary (1967, Jim McBride)

• Chungking Express (1994, Wong Kar-Wai)

• Erupcja (2025, Pete Ohs)

• Nowhere (1997, Gregg Araki)

• Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)

• No Bears (2022, Jafar Panahi)

• Jane B By Agnes V (1988, Agnes Varda)

Sick Girl Films (Sick girl films are two disabled queer people who love horror. We host London-based regular horror film screenings, and are creating a community for disabled and chronically ill horror lovers everywhere.)

1. Sinners

2. Ugly Stepsister

3. Frankenstein

4. The Shrouds

5. Together

6. Bring Her Back

7. Bugonia

8. Die My Love

9. Pillion

10. wake up dead man

Discoveries:

• Black Christmas (1974, Bob Clark)

• Blood and Black Lace (1964, Mario Bava)

• Possession (1981, Andrzej Zulawski)

• The Lure (2015, Agnieszka Smoczynska)

• Frankenhooker (1990, Frank Henenlotter)

• Bound (1996, The Wachowski Sisters)

• The Severed Sun (2024, Dean Puckett)

• Candyman (1992, Bernard Rose)

• The Love Witch (2016, Anna Biller)

• Ghostwatch (1992, Lesley Manning)

Simon Ball (Filmmaker and festival organiser, currently trying to crack the East of England.)

1. Fuck My Son (Todd Rohal)

2. Reveries the Mind Prison (Graham Mason)

3. About a Hero (Piotr Winiewicz)

4. Invention (Courtney Stephens)

5. Tornado (John MacLean)

6. One Battle After Another (PTA) (would be lower if I had seen more films)

7. End of History (Jacob Gregor)

8. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (Michael Almereyda, Courtney Stephens)

9. Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls) (this was actually pretty bad tbh)

10. F*cktoys (Annapurna Sriram) (most disappointing film of the year)

Discoveries:

• Reveries the Mind Prison

• Pimple (Fernando Alle)

• Anything by Juboraj Shamim

• The Reinvention of Marker (Rory Carroll) shout out the best boy mag

• Potato Potato (Josh Locy)

• The Man Without Qualities (Blake James Reid) playing east London early 2026

• Mysterious Purple House (Joshua Yates)

• The punk of natashquan (Nicholas Lachapelle)

• Goddam gorilla (Valentin Costs)

• Yellow MashiMashi Rhapsody (Masahiro Saito) actually my fav of the year

Theo Rollason (NFT2 mouse befriender)

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)

4. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

5. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

6. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

7. Vacances (Victoria Hely-Hutchinson)

8. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović)

9. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi)

10. Predators (David Osit)

Discoveries:

• Bitter Rice (1949, Giuseppe De Santis)

• Café Flesh (1982, Stephen Sayadian)

• Friday Night (2002, Claire Denis)

• The Jerk (1979, Carl Reiner)

• The Hole (1998, Tsai Ming-liang)

• A Moment of Innocence (1996, Mohsen Makhmalbaf)

• Summertime (1955, David Lean)

• They Have Changed Their Face (1971, Corrado Farina)

• Tomorrow We Move (2004, Chantal Akerman)

• Victor/Victoria (1982, Blake Edwards)

Tom Barnard (Freelance writer. Former editor of WeLoveCinema. Editor of Big Smoke, Big Screen.)

1. Marty Supreme

2. It Was Just An Accident

3. A House of Dynamite

4. Weapons

5. Sentimental Value

6. One Battle After Another

7. Sorry, Baby

8. Bugonia

9. Sanatorium

10. Warfare

Discoveries:

• Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2006, Quentin Tarantino)

• Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987, Eric Rohmer)

• Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)

• The Roaring Twenties (1939, Raoul Walsh)

• La Promesse (1996, Dardenne Brothers)

• Marked Woman (1937, Lloyd Bacon)

• Code Unknown (2000, Michael Haneke)

• When the Wind Blows (1986, Jimmy T. Murakami)

• Straight Time (1978, Ulu Grosbard)

• A Shock to the System (1990, Jan Egleson)

Tom de Lancy Green (Film teacher)

1. Tulsa (Scott Stark)

2. Levers (Rhayne Vermette)

3. Debut… (Julian Castronovo)

4. All These Summers (Therese Henningsen)

5. Green Leaves (Flo Mavy)

Discoveries:

• <—> (1969, Michael Snow)

• Belfast, Maine (1999, Frederick Wiseman)

• Bouquets 1-10 (1995, Rose Lowder)

• Gang of Four (1989, Jacques Rivette)

• Other Men’s Women (1931, William Wellman)

• Raindance (1972, Standish Lawder)

• Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992, Shinya Tsukamoto)

• Warm Broth (1988, Luther Price)

• Words of Mercury (2011, Jerome Hiler)

• Zipping Along (1953, Chuck Jones)

Tom Jowett (Cinema film programmer)

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)

3. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

4. Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton)

5. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof)

6. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

7. Little Trouble Girls (Urska Djukic)

8. Pavements (Alex Ross Perry)

9. Good One (India Donaldson)

10. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

Discoveries:

• Hardcore (1979, Paul Schrader)

• The Sadist (1963, James Landis)

• The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973, Wojciech Has)

• Uzak (2002, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

• Q (1982, Larry Cohen)

• Wendy And Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)

• Deprisa, Deprisa (1981, Carlos Saura)

• Crumb (1994, Terry Zwigoff)

• Still Life (2006, Jia Zhangke)

• Dogville (2003, Lars Von Trier)

William North (Filmmaker/Animator)

1. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sang-soo)

2. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)

3. Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc (Tatsuya Yoshihara)

4. Esper’s Light (Jung Jae-hoon)

5. In the Glow of Darkness (Tucker Bennett)

6. Ariel (Lois Patiño)

7. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

8. @dannyboy83.83.83.83.83 on Instagram

9. Happyend (Neo Sora)

10. Welcome To Jankspace, Babes (Daniel Felstead, Jenn Leung)

Discoveries:

• No Is Yes (1997, Laura Parnes)

• On the Far Side of Twilight (1994, Kohei Ando)

• Squish (2021, Tulapop Saenjaroen)

• Full Moon in Paris (1984, Eric Rohmer)

• Black Long Skirt (2010, Hoji Tsuchiya)

• Kingyo (2009, Edmund Yeo)

• After School Knife Fight (2017, Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel)

• Mirror Products Catalog (2024, Annapurna Kumar)

• Pale Cocoon (2005, Yasuhiro Yoshiura)

• A Matter of Facts (1982, Eric Mitchell)

Yui Antinomy (Film writer)

1. In The Lost Lands (Paul W.S. Anderson)

2. Red Sonja (M.J. Bassett)

3. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

4. Black Bag (Steven Soderbegh)

5. Shifty (Adam Curtis)

6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

7. 2025.03.17 (Taylor Turgeon)

8. Magellan (Lav Diaz)

9. Ella McCay (James L. Brooks)

10. Death of a Tiny Hat Man (Xavier Gamache)

Discoveries:

• The Arizona Ranger (1948, John Rawlins)

• Flowing (1956, Mikio Naruse)

• The Narrow Margin (1952, Richard Fleischer)

• Moonfleet (1955, Fritz Lang)

• Phantasm (1979, Don Coscarelli)

• The Wings of Eagles (1957, John Ford)

• Unrelated (2007, Joanna Hogg)

• Bonjour Tristesse (1959, Otto Preminger)

• God’s Little Acre (1958, Anthony Mann)

• Alias Nick Beal (1949, John Farrow)

Welcome to 2026. Let’s take a moment to remember 2025.

This was a big year for Cinema Year Zero. We moved over to Substack, which for all its faults has opened us up to a new readership and given us increased flexibility.

We branched out into reviews of contemporary films with our Cinema Year ‘25 supplement.

We launched our Ken Russell issue in July with a sold out event at The Cinema Museum.

We produced the print programme for The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend.

We announced a screening series, NOT BY LYNCH. It kicks off next Friday with Fritz Lang’s The Secret Behind the Door (1947).

Thanks to everyone who has read and followed us this year, popped by one of our events, picked up a print copy, supported us as a subscriber, or otherwise contributed as we continue to grow as a publication.

Now, the main event.

Cinema Year Zero polled 50 contributors, colleagues, and idols, on their favourite films of the year. Below, you’ll find the top ten. You can read the individual ballots and discoveries lists here.

Subscribe now

10. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović, Croatia)

At a time when the online far-right are obsessed with verbalising childish fantasies of their ideology, Igor Bezinović’s docudrama/heritage project Fiume o Morte! acts as a timely reminder of how the beginnings of fascism boil down to playing dress-up and putting on a show. The Croatian director’s home city of Rijeka, known in Italian as Fiume, was the one-time kingdom of Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio. Between 1919 and 1920 he occupied the city, declaring it the Italian Regency of Carnaro before eventually being ousted by the Italian state. The city’s population has varying opinions of D’Annunzio, from historical ignorance or fierce hatred (by the local Croats), to embarrassed acknowledgement or centrist descriptives of his poetic capability (by the Italian minority).

It feels pertinent, then, that this project of recreating the occupation through the plethora of archive footage and images was undertaken with the general population of Rijeka, many of whom have never performed or been on camera before. Bezinović enlists a range of suitably bald men to play D’Annunzio through different stages of the historic event and, among others, a band of local young men to play D’Annunzio’s eager fascist youth. Thinning the veil between the past and the present with such a close reenactment of archival material enables the reenactors, and the audience, to understand how perilously enjoyable the descent into fascism can be. That is, of course, before it all ends in blood and tears. Kirsty Asher

9. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China)

Few auteurs have emerged into the mainstream in the last ten years, but the release of Bi Gan’s Resurrection proves that his films have become major events. Its ascent to the Chinese box office summit, where it debuted at number 1, signals a potential for The New Cinephilia in our Chinese century. Did it all make sense? Not really, though its paean to cinema history is a captivating wormhole. Is it visually stunning? Yes, if you like the odd digital sterility that will remind you of Terry Gilliam.

I confess to having struggled with Resurrection during my first watch. Constantly reinventing itself, the plot is challenging at best. Yet, it swirls around the memory like film’s history, a flicker book of images, a Babylon (2022) montage, a Jay Kelly (2025) montage. The centrepiece New Year’s Eve section—three for three on Bi films culminating in a bravura tracking shot—is stunning even for those jaded by decades of rip-off Jancsó oners. It melts away with a final image that will make cinephiles, and people who are invested in cinema as a physical space to dream, tearful. Which other contemporary filmmakers so desperately attempt to prove that movies are still alive? Ben Flanagan

8. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo, USA)

A fake documentary about a real liar who went not-missing and tried to make a film about it, Debut, or Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued spills audience members into a hauntological Borgesian wormhole-vat. Its opening shivers its way through a slideshow of stark crime scene images. They are objects belonging to the missing Julian Castronovo (director) and they set up its central oxymoron: dispassionate curiosity. The voiceover made me feel like a typist receiving dispatches on a tape recorder, carrying the clinical indifference of a shipping forecast. But the film marries this tempering tone with the fascinating kind of trembling, digi-fungal images normally reserved for Silent Hill games and creepypastas. Inevitably, one is drawn into this mystery, getting the sense that Castronovo’s brain was fizzing with so many ideas that this is a great purge, a splattering of Stuff hemmed into a transom of frosty inventory and inquisitive policier bleakness. Tom de Lancy Green

7. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain)

What do you see when you look at your nation’s flag? Tradition? Honour? Hope? We get some idea of what the Catalan director Albert Serra sees in la Rojigualda, in this bloody and immersive mandala of the bullfighting ring. Across the a dozen or so corridas which constitute Afternoons of Solitude, Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey performs his ritual with pride and exquisite precision, and oft-referenced continent-sized balls.

For the educated cinephile class, it will be impossible not to read fascism, toxic masculinity, and the rest into the film. For others, this could become a new nationalist classic. But Serra’s lack of commentary is telling. Like Frederick Wiseman, a zoom in on a gorged bull, or the decision not to cut, is more revealing than any talking head. In his review, our colleague Blaise Radley noted “The friction that creates internally between revulsion and a repressed intrigue”. This friction reminds us of our humanity, and also of the inhumanity of our gaze, when we stare so long that we lose it entirely. BF

6. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada)

Grieving, in truth, is self-serving. That it is an important and necessary response to any great loss does not negate this fact. We grieve as a form of eulogy and to express our sorrow at someone’s passing, but unchecked grief often repositions the ‘I’ as the object of sympathy, simultaneously turning a loved one into something internalised that can be possessed indefinitely. This pain is yours; it is happening to you alone. Only you understood them, really.

In The Shrouds, a remarkably self-critical film inspired by the loss of his own wife, David Cronenberg scrutinises that instinct toward selfish preservation, and the way technology further blurs the line between body and soul. His author-insert, Karsh (Vincent Cassel, styled with Cronenberg’s trademark combed-back white hair), is surprisingly cold and off-putting. He’s the inventor behind “GraveTech”, a tombstone which livestreams the decomposing body beneath—his wife Becca is among the first “users”. At night, he dreams of her joining him in bed in various stages of disfiguration, seemingly mourning her corporeal being over her mind.

The conspiracy plot that drives the bulk of the film is difficult-to-parse and destabilising, but that’s exactly what it is—a distraction. Rather than pay tribute to his wife, Karsh immortalises (and fetishises) her corpse and carves out a narrative where he’s in control; a hero, even. A pointed reminder that body horror isn’t only about having a car bonnet for a head or a weird mutant leg. Blaise Radley

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5. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, UK)

A pained howl reverberating amongst the ruins of churches, dilapidated country houses and disused national train lines. Cannily shifting the locus of the ‘28 years’ franchise away from what was initially understood as the present of 2002’s 28 Days Later to 1997, 28 Years Later smuggles in via the existing 28 Days IP (courtesy of Sony Pictures) an experimental blockbuster that uses its canvas to take wild swings of form.

Gone are the student film-Bosnian war-9/11 prosumer aesthetics of Days, replaced by a medley of traditional digital handheld cameras, drones and iPhones (set up on Mad Maxxian rigs) to tell a grander tale; a (literally at one point) Wagnerian creation myth about the journey from birth to death, about the lionisation of the past and the follies of repeated history. Throughout we’re bombarded with Brexit and COVID imagery, collecting into a dour portrait of a small island wrested in fits of rage, cut off from the rest of the world and rotting from the inside. Small gestures of kindness aside, all we do is repeat the same traditions, hallucinate montages of the heroic past and pray that our rescue comes in the form of a figure that represents the UK’s truest ideals. Kit Ramsay

4. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)

There is something truly irresistible about a bourgeois wannabe artiste grasping at poetic existence only to fold under the gentlest scrutiny. In What Does That Nature Say to You, Hong Sang-soo takes his famed minimalist naturalism to a new level. Shot in Hong’s now-trademark lo-fi quality and static one-camera set-ups, What Does… finds quiet humour in the tale of 35-year-old poet Donghwa (Ha Seong-guk) who, after offering a lift to his casual girlfriend Jun-hee (Kang So-yi), ends up staying the day and night with her family. He ingratiates himself well with her father, getting tipsy together on makgeolli, and finds inspiration in their bucolic mountainside homestead. But, the more time he spends with the family, the more their curiosity about his privileged upbringing butts heads with his creative insecurity, crescendoing into a gloriously mortifying family dinner.

The grainy film and simple set-up evokes the naïve quality of a budding filmmaker realising their first feature, which mirrors Donghwa’s earnest but unfleshed desire to be imbued with the beauty of nature in his work. Shining a phone light on a flower at night does not a poet make, but the genius of Hong is that employing such a pared back filming process allows all of Donghwa’s foibles, as well as all the family tensions, to be laid brilliantly bare. KA

3. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Georgia)

Alexandre Koberidze’s third feature is beautiful despite itself. At least, it demonstrates a unique kind of cinematic rhythm and cadence. While the images themselves are deliberately blotchy and low-res, they cohere to yield a striking, almost transformative, aesthetic world. The film posits that the viewer only needs to see the silhouettes of pristine visions, or absorb obliquely the grand gestures of art, to inhabit some form of sublime experience.

In a recent interview, Koberidze emphasised his attraction towards “coincidence,” and his latest effort translates this interest into a technical and formal filmmaking approach. Koberidze’s desire to “let things happen” colours his storytelling. Literally, it colours: the blunt shuttering of darkness elides dawn and dusk, occasional shafts of light divide the screen, and a devoted attention to re-presentation iterates the football field, pockmarked by empty, netless goalposts and idle farmyard animals. In this way, Dry Leaf leans into the traditions of painting. A series of postimpressionist subjects haunt the compositions: Monet’s haystacks, Cezanne’s apples, Van Gogh’s home in Arles. The squinty home-video effect reacts dissonantly with these vibrant hues and alert images. It’s a big, daunting, mesmeric swing. Joseph Owen

2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)

Paul Thomas Anderson could well be considered a character director. He immerses his craft profoundly in the different cultural settings of his texts, yet his billowing style remains distinct. One Battle After Another, his most contemporary work to date, reflects PTA’s turn from paragon of the youthful kino upstart, the devil-may-care 24 year old with a cigarette dangling from his lip, to middle age with all its anxieties and conundrums. And who better to inhabit this than the aging Peter Pan himself.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays the former activist Bob Ferguson, who shakes off a generational sixteen-year stoner run to save his daughter from the racist homunculus Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a red-blooded American monster whose twisted prowl evokes Tom Berenger’s Sgt. Barnes in Platoon (1986). A plethora of Pynchonian eccentrics form the main cast, offsetting the political tone and obfuscating a strong political message—but, as is Anderson’s wont, the marvel of the scene, the performances, and the set piece are themselves his cinematic message. KA

1. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA)

Few scenes this year act as a better litmus test for audience perceptions than the ladder sequence in Kelly Reichardt’s excellent anti-heist film, The Mastermind. In it, the titular “mastermind” J.B. Mooney (played with a spirited lack of ego by Cinema Year Zero-fave Josh O’Connor) carries a box of stolen paintings to a barn, removes them one by one, takes each painting—and the box!—up a ladder into the hayloft, before placing them carefully back into the crate. It lasts around 10 minutes.

For those in tune with Reichardt’s brand of wry, understated Americana, it’s a delightful ellipsis, providing space to ruminate on the details of process à la Bresson, only to further jab at Mooney’s inflated ego and lack of foresight. For those, shall we say, less in tune, it’s a specifically arthouse form of anticlimax, a test of patience that could even be read as “trolling”. That it engages with Reichardt’s recurrent preoccupations concerning the conflict between individualism and community while simultaneously proving so divisive speaks to the film’s quiet, irreverent boldness. BR

Welcome back to Cinema Year ‘25, a monthly review supplement. December rounds off the year with films designed to challenge patience, the spoils of which are various. Words by Blaise Radley, Kirsty Asher, Ben Flanagan, Tom de Lancy Green.

We will be return in early January with the results of our year-end poll.

And you can get tickets for our screening series, NOT BY LYNCH, here. It kicks off on Jan 16th with Fritz Lang’s The Secret Behind the Door (1947).

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I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho, 2025, Portugal)

I’ve often found myself on the combative side of our new release capsules this year (though, in my defence, the blame for that lies with Del Toro et al), so I’m glad to end the year with something nice to say. And I Only Rest in the Storm, the latest work from Pedro Pinho, is certainly an easy film to pile superlatives on: for its extreme length at 211 minutes, for the many moral complications it throws at the viewer in its biting depiction of NGOs, and for its blurring of the lines between documentary and fiction. All that and some of the more disarmingly hot queer romance I’ve seen in 2025.

I Only Rest in the Storm follows Portuguese bisexual waif and environmental engineer Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem—all named actors share their names with their characters) as he travels to Guinea-Bissau to carry out an environmental impact report on the potential construction of a new major highway. Except, in the same fashion as the bureaucrats in Albert Serra’s similarly-barbed postcolonial critique, Pacifiction (2022), Sérgio spends most of his time getting loaded, cosying up to the locals, and trying to fuck anyone who looks his way—smiling all the while with polite good intentions. When confronted with the problematic aspects of his job and whiteness, he ‘sits his ass down and listens’, so to speak—but does any of it actually take root?

At times, Pinho’s filmmaking style is dryly anonymous, told mostly in floating handheld medium close-ups of the character’s faces and wides that place them small as ants in the hotly-contested landscape. But there’s also a pointed understanding of rhythm and the way editing can dilate time that gradually instills a dreamlike effect. Certain tasks are debated at length, only for the action to be skipped over; other times, we spend extended periods focused on a specific process, before realising the destination has suddenly been reached off screen. As Sérgio embeds himself further and further in West Africa, despite his every interaction being mediated (whether through an interpreter or different lenses of lived experience), you sense an end—or climax—won’t be forthcoming. Pinho, to his credit, keeps you guessing to the end. BR

Fiume o Morte! (Igor Bezinović, 2025, Croatia)

Mirroring my colleague Blaise, I am this month transformed from grumpy humbug to merry cinemagoer by way of the ICA. The root of this festive joy is Igor Bezinović’s documentary/historical re-enactment/local heritage project Fiume o Morte! which retraces every documented event from the takeover of the Croatian city Rijeka by the Italian poet, proto-fascist, and regular gak-huffer Gabriele D’Annunzio.

Bezinović’s home city has found itself within the borders of numerous states, empires and regencies, but D’Annunzio’s ascendence to its unofficial head remains a unique and notably bloody occurrence in its history. For a region that has been so embattled in its statehood, and for its people who have endured shifting national identity, it feels highly pertinent of Bezinović to create this project with the collaboration of Rijeka’s citizens, many of whom have never performed before, let alone been on camera. He selected a range of suitably bald men to play D’Annunzio through various stages of the historic event, and asked his collaborators to learn the Fiuman dialect (an Italianate dialect of the Venetian language) for the film’s narration.

I am always partial to performing the archive, and Bezinović cuts as close to the historic cloth as possible, recreating the numerous photographs and footage reels available with his merry band of locals. In doing so, these people with ancestral connections to the city deliver a fascinating and often whimsically funny piece of performance art, rediscovering a historic event through their involvement in its re-enactment. The expanse of time and progress between D’Annunzio’s illegal occupation and the present day is captured deftly by Bezinović—a man rides an electric scooter across the plaza where bloody fighting took place; a local binman, playing D’Annunzio during the takeover, delivers his triumphant speech from the balcony of the local authority building to an empty street, with only his wife and son applauding; reenactors of the fascists trashing Slavic businesses throw a chair out of what is now a smart phone repair shop.

Most chilling, though, is how easily and enthusiastically the reenactors take to their roles as the fascist footmen, marching and singing along lustily to the fascist hymn ‘Giovinezza’, having been adamant pre-performance that they would never want to be a real-life soldier. Placing one’s self in history’s shoes has its merits, but, as with the daydreamings of the online fascist movement, Fiume o Morte! serves to remind us how much of propagating ideology boils down to playing dress-up and putting on a show. KA

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Fackham Hall (Jim O’Hanlon, 2025, United Kingdom, USA)

Though I come not to praise Fackham Hall but to bury it, Jim O’Hanlon’s Downton Abbey spoof should be memorialised as one of the year’s most representative artefacts. For this may be the first occasion that ‘forwarded many times’-type humour has been literalised on screen with such shameless abandon. Wide shots of ballrooms or tea parties are filled with lashings of dead space. The stillness of the actors might resemble a take on Kabuki, if it didn’t serve to highlight the cheap imitation of class in the set dressing and costumes. All the better to crop you with. Written by a crack team of Footlights or thereabouts (notably including Jimmy Carr) Fackham Hall is slop crafted with the explicit intent of being sliced into clips for Facebook.

And still I laughed, alone in an empty Peckhamplex having bought a ticket from a suspicious usher. This must be what it felt like going to see Deep Throat in 1972, but without the comfort of the crowd. If Fackham Hall catches you in the right moment, you will laugh too: at the non-specific cockney pub set piece, at the extended murder reveal sequence, at the baffling references to such cultural touchstones as the Amazon Alexa and Jonah Hill. The real giveaway that it’s all directed to a Yank audience comes when Thomasin McKenzie says ‘Thank you for your service,’ to a British soldier—Winter Wonderland is thataway.

Carr, that paragon of ethics, has around a million views on a clip from the ‘Triggernometary’ podcast (hosted by comedians-cum-thought leaders Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster) in which he gives the sensible middle-ground opinion that the government should mine bitcoin. How many of those viewers went to see Fackham Hall? With its not-so-casual sop to American sensibilities, a large budget comedy vehicle should be the pinnacle of a guy like Carr’s career. Instead, the film is a promotional vehicle for him to appear on podcasts and further his brand as a political figure. Clearly, the big bucks are actually in reactionary podcasts and corporate events designed to cover up human rights abuses, like the Riyadh comedy festival and the British Museum’s ‘Israeli Independence Day’ celebration. In his hunt for accession, Carr has laid bare the endpoint for the contemporary fame rubric. BF

Belfast, Maine (1999, USA, Frederick Wiseman)

Orange gels enclose the sky in a rich tangerine slab above the deep blue water at the opening of Belfast, Maine (1999), overture to bloc 2 of Frederick Wiseman at the BFI. All these restorations shimmer and pop in 4K, and yet this opening image of an awakening horizon has more in common with the crushed, bleary dawn of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise than the sharp angularity of those black-and-white early features we saw last month.

One rarely thinks of Wiseman as a visual artist, at least in the pictorial sense. More often, his aptitude is taken to be structural, rhythmic, sociological. But once one notices the Monet/y shot, other painters, sculptors, sketch artists fall into his orbit.

Trace Hugo Gellert’s monochrome machinic lithographs in a cannery’s nervous system of conveyor belts and ashen sardine vats,. Edward Hopper returns repeatedly to flat, unobtrusive American street corners - Wiseman hurtles around sunny or lamplit Queens for the many In Jackson Heights (2015) establishing shots. Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières: peachy skin and tired blues bounce off the polis in the park at the height of an AIDS summer in Central Park (1990). Even the sheer proliferation of wood-browns and camo-greens in At Berkeley (2013) is enough to bring to mind Caravaggio’s lamplit sequestrations, Cézanne’s landscapes, countless others.

With the exception of At Berkeley, this second bloc favours habitation over examination. Precision is at play at the most minute level, almost unseen amidst the wandering, incidental shoulder-jostling with place and time. Central Park most especially fulfils Owen Hatherley’s long-running criticism of overdetermined architecture: that it neuters the accidental and spontaneous. Wiseman fixates on roads tangling up with plant-life like overlapping tree branches, and this weird oasis in mid-Manhattan, strangely, becomes the very place where the beautiful friction of the urbane is realised. Anarchic biology, clashing ecosystems, a blank canvas of encounters and chance. Every film of his is like this – a summary, of sorts. TDLG

Presented by Arta Barzanji in association with Cinema Year Zero, Not By Lynch is a new screening series exploring the “Lynchian”: an often-used but rarely examined term whose lineage stretches before, around, and after David Lynch’s own cinema. While Lynch’s films offer the clearest expression of this sensibility, the roots and afterlives of what we call the “Lynchian” extend across film history.

From haunted noir and ghostly Americana to experimental digital worlds and paranoid Los Angeles labyrinths, nine films—spanning the nine decades of Lynch’s life—trace different facets of the Lynchian: dream-logic beneath everyday life, the uncanny invading domestic space, identities slipping or doubling, worlds that bend at the edges, and dread that mingles uneasily with play, humour, and desire.

Beginning 16 January 2026, the first anniversary of Lynch’s death, the season unfolds monthly at The Cinema Museum. Each screening features a new commissioned essay and introduction.

Programme and tickets:
16 Jan: Secret Beyond the Door (1947)
7 Feb: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
20 Mar: Carnival of Souls (1962)
22 Apr: Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)
8 May: The Hidden (1987)
12 Jun: Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
10 Jul: Corpus Callosum (2002) + Sshtoorrty (2005)
4 Sept: Under the Silver Lake (2018)
23 Oct: Coma (2022)

Thanks to Jeremy Arblaster for the incredible poster design. Check out more of his work.

If you are a paid subscriber to Cinema Year Zero and would like to attend any screenings, please get in touch and we will sort you out with comp tickets. See you there!

Welcome back to Cinema Year ‘25, a monthly review supplement. November’s discoveries were a robust cross-section of what cinema is for, taking us from the Weimar Republic, to Mexico’s Golden Age, via Chicago’s south side and post-Python Thatcherism. Words by Blaise Radley, Tom de Lancy Green, Ben Flanagan, Kirsty Asher.

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Did you attend an interesting repertory film event this month and want to write about it? Get in touch yearzerocinema@gmail.com.

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Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (Fritz Lang, 1922, Germany)

Any film that starts with the line, “You’ve taken cocaine again, Spoerri! You know I don’t tolerate that!” bodes well. When it’s a 1920s two-part crime flick from Fritz Lang, you know you’ve got a banger on your hands. And bang it does, firing straight into one of the titular master criminal’s complex schemes: a shakedown of the stock exchange involving stolen commercial contracts and well-timed market manipulation. As Mabuse buys out the dirt cheap stocks (soon to go sky high once Mabuse reveals his hand), he stands on a counter above a sea of wobbling top hats, imperious to the last. A touch more mystique than today’s crypto rug puller.

At times Dr. Mabuse the Gambler strains against the silent filmmaking format, threaded through with a few too many written clues and dialogues. But when Lang comes to life, experimenting with form and process, the results are electric. See also: one of several hypnotism sequences, in which everything but Mabuse’s head fades into the black, the light colours of his disguise accentuating his stark white glow. The three magic words “Tsi-Nan-Fu” appear everywhere our would-be hypnotisee looks; on his playing cards, or on the table before him, superimposed on every aspect of his vision. As an audience, we too are drawn down the rabbit hole.

Later, Mabuse psychologically overpowers a prestigious Count in front of his wife, forcing him to cheat at cards before carrying her away—not only making a cuckold of him but dragging his good name through the mud. Through Mabuse’s further psychological manipulations, the Count begins to lose his mind, sitting booze-addled and alone at a table surrounded by double-exposed translucent phantoms that sap him of his last remaining sanity. As far as metaphors go for the director as trickster and hypnotist (Mabuse’s later appearance on stage, in which he beckons apparitions from behind the theatre curtain all but confirms this parallel), it’s an oddly cynical one, suggesting that perhaps the illusions of cinema are rooted in a desire to fleece and manipulate. Whether the ultimate triumph of good over evil at the film’s end dispels such notions is hard to say. BR

Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman, 1997, USA)

In programming a series of Frederick Wiseman’s films on the big screen, the BFI has countered their usual hollywood star retrospectives by presenting Londoners an opportunity to engage with an (incomplete but still representative) cross-section of America’s oldest documentarian’s oeuvre, and still one of its most modern.

The October-November bloc collected five ‘institution’ films, three of which (Titicut Follies [1967], High School [1968] and Welfare [1975]) are the earliest works in the programme. Rugged and iconoclastic, their 16mm chiaroscuro carries along a public-access hipness and countercultural disdain for war and poverty: High School and Welfare largely consist of a series of pas de deux between assailant bureaucrats (truancy officers, desk drones) and their prey, benign as separate incidents, but piled high in a juxtapository quagmire of disfunction. These are staunchly negativist, angry films about humanity hamstrung into filing cabinets and KIA telegrams by anti-dialogic public life.

The two films that round out this first bloc, 1986’s Multi-Handicapped and 1997’s Public Housing, showcase Wiseman’s born-again faith in the social fabric, or at least the possibility of one. Reverent and placid, Multi-Handicapped contemplates students at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind as a hushed auditorium might regard a ballerina. Public Housing shuffles around Chicago’s Ida B. Wells housing project, ambling in and out of community meetings pregnant with auguries of both self-determination and snake oil. His ambition comes across as modest; but more than any peer or adherent, he aims to browse and sift through the depth and spirit of American public life with a measure of success that makes this ongoing season about the most essential of the current London scene. TDLG

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Splitting Heirs (Robert Young, 1993, UK)

Picture it: you are an attendee of the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. You are still digesting the novelistic scope of Farewell My Concubine. David Thewlis’ incessant chatter in Naked rattles around your head. Body Snatchers and Falling Down flaunt the Hollywood production line at its most reactionary, paranoid, and thrilling. Next, you sit down for Splitting Heirs, directed by Robert Young, a British curio journeyman known for the odd Hammer, sex comedy, and for adapting The Worst Witch (1986).

Eric Idle plays Tommy Patel, who grew up in a British-Indian family in Southall. Despite being white and, in the film’s parlance, having no taste for curry, he doesn’t question his heritage. When he discovers his link to the Bournemouth Family dukedom and accompanying fortune, he sets about to knock off the sitting heir: Rick Moranis. It’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) for the post-Thatcher era, from the family tree murder spree down to its storybook voice over. Moranis, whose stardom is ever baffling, embodies the scourge of yanks in London—spouting Yuppie slang, he pratfalls through the city on rollerblades. It’s balanced with a starstruck Idle, whose nervous performance defers to Hollywood hegemony.

Given his history, the Cannes viewer might be desperate to read auteurism into Young, who is nothing if not a British workhorse. Films like Vampire’s Circus have a slight weirdness which always tends to get out of hand, to satisfying ends. His prior TV production, GBH (1991), has an anarchic energy atypical of the period. And here, attempts to titillate—like a young Zeta-Jones kinkily throwing herself upon octogenarian Idle—have a certain sleazy charm. But, caught between British tradition and yankee whizz-bang, it doesn’t capture the easygoing sexual politics that, say, Blake Edwards was achieving at the time.

You rise from your seat at the Théâtre Lumière. Enriched, enlivened, pleased that you saved a ticket fare. The film has been on general release in the states for a month already. BF

Streetwalker (Matilde Landeta, 1951, Mexico)

With Invisible Women’s ¡Too Much Mexican Melodrama! Season of Mexican Golden Age currently showing in cinemas across the country,, it was fascinating to witness a primordial telenovela in Matilde Landeta’s Streetwalker. The film concerns itself with Mexican sex workers, particularly Maria (Elda Peralta) who in the opening scene is hit by a car carrying a rich man and his trophy wife, who just happens to be her sister Elena (Miroslava). An incendiary love triangle soon develops when Elena begins an affair with the hawkish Rodolfo, Maria’s pimp (Ernesto Alonsoas), and earnest love is caught in the crossfire of practicality and precarity for women in a deeply patriarchal society.

Landeta experienced an uphill battle to get her films made during the Golden Age (mid-1930s to mid 1950s), and it shows in the production—creaking sets, wobbly takes, iffy edits and montages that gloss over budgetary restrictions. Nevertheless, the film persists in its task of spotlighting working class women and sex workers, all while barrelling towards the inevitable tragic ending of any worthy melodrama. Landeta offers a favourable, compassionate bent to the women, eschewing moralising about sugaring and sex work. When Ruth, Maria’s friend and fellow sex worker, lies on her death bed, Maria and the rest of the working girls keep vigil until she passes. The predictable tart-with-a-heart trope is ousted in how the women support each other as a team, not in one individual being morally superior.

The ending, with both Maria and Rodolpho dead and Elena turfed out on the street by her husband who glibly reveals he knew everything all along, is needlessly cruel as only a melodrama can be. Critics have debated whether or not its ending is supportive of the patriarchy, but I see it as a historiography of sex work. It reflects the tightrope that sex workers and women on the fringes of society have walked through the centuries when it comes to class and financial security, like the courtesans who reached the heights of the social strata only to die penniless. Landeta gives these women flair and dignity in their struggles, and for that I commend her. KA

Today, Cinema Year Zero closes VOLUME 21: Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend 2025 with a list of ten further films from throughout the short but vibrant history of the genre.

In the 1960s and 1970s, technological advances allowed for more lightweight cameras and audio equipment, making way for pioneers like Jonas Mekas, The Kuchar Brothers, and Agnès Varda to create limber, intimate works that combined diaristic autobiography with social or political concerns. This is a form that puts marginalised voices and perspectives under the microscope, while challenging the boundaries between objectivity, memory, and the camera itself.

Recommendations by Sam Moore, Owen Vince, Kat Haylett, Alonso Aguilar, Ben Flanagan, Kirsty Asher, Joseph Owen, Anna Devereux, Blaise Radley, Orla Smith

Thanks again to all everyone who contributed to the issue, and to CNFW for inviting us to collaborate. You can read the entire issue here.

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1. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, 1972)

There’s a hazy uncertainty to the images Jonas Mekas presents throughout Reminiscences; grounded in his rambling, exploratory narration, the director’s voice seems to exist as a way to try and ground the uncertainty of memory; the schism of loss and war. Mekas describes the immigrant communities he sees in Brooklyn as ‘sad, dying animals in a place they didn’t belong to. A place they didn’t recognise.’

And yet, Lithuania is just as unrecognisable as the America that Mekas struggles to call home. The country is presented in 100 glances; fragments of footage that are less grounded and realistic than the images of America. Mekas’ eye is uncertain, looking at the impossibility of home in the tentative way one looks at the sun. Sam Moore, writer, editor, and co-curator of TISSUE, a trans literary initiative.

2. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Kazuo Hara, 1974)

Breakups make for juicy dramas and even gutsier documentaries. When Kazuo Hara’s wife—the radical feminist Miyuki Takeda—announced that she was leaving him, the famously in-your-face director threw heartbreak to the wind and set about documenting their often emotionally convulsive split. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is the result; an uncompromising tale of intimacy and desire in which Hara pursues Miyuki’s journey toward sexual and social liberation with his characteristically voyeuristic lens—and a lot of self excoriation. In Hara’s own words: ‘I felt I had to do something; so I decided to make a film.’ Owen Vince, a writer and filmmaker.

3. Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)

Autobiographical to an extreme degree, this reflexive approach to docufiction is a cathartic reenactment of Coolidge’s own rape by an acquaintance when she was sixteen years old. Shifting between repeated rehearsals of the rape scene, interviews with the actors, and a more straightforward narrative, the film constructs multiple layers of spectatorship. I find it to be not only deeply arresting but profoundly confronting; as the audience, you are compelled to bear witness, just as Coolidge watches her own rape restaged again and again—a painful but deliberate excavation of her trauma. With each take, the performance becomes more and more violent, delving closer to the truth as it simultaneously transforms it. Kat Haylett, co-founder of Ecstatic Truths.

4. Cabra Marcado Para Morrer, or Twenty Years Later (Eduardo Coutinho, 1984)

Cabra Marcado Para Morrer is built around an absence: a gut-wrenching ellipsis where a cut to black obscures the lived experiences of a generation that came and went. There’s no audiovisual trace of those twenty years, lost to scorched-earth state violence, and yet their spectre still looms within the registers around them, past and future. If official history presents itself in a linear fashion, it is out of the convenience of patching things up to its benefit. Eduardo Coutinho provides an alternative, affective history where unspoken truths and unsung heroes come to life via the scattered memories of a community actively looking for itself through images; recognizing how the echoes of resistance can never fade away if there’s still someone to listen. Alonso Aguilar, freelance writer, programmer and audiovisual producer.

5. Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1985)

Ross McElwee’s diary films delve deep into the psyche of the ‘southern man’. His masterpiece, Sherman’s March, nods to literary tradition with a bifurcated structure: his attempts to make a historical account of Civil War General Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a brutal episode in the history of The South, are disrupted by McElwee’s efforts to find a wife. Cringeworthy confessionals ensue, but what lingers are the heartbreaking depictions of the women he leaves in his wake. This exploration of southern womanhood is part-Philip Roth, part-Confederacy of Dunces (1980), a chronicle of male romantic foibles, of ego and id in an era of perverse nuclear anxiety. Ben Flanagan, Cinema Year Zero editor-in-chief.

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6. Gallivant (Andrew Kötting, 1996)

Andrew Kötting’s debut feature is a landmark full of landmarks. In the vein of photographer Iain McKell’s Beautiful Britain (2012), he weaves the idiosyncrasies of Britain’s seaside semiotics, folklore, and Christian iconography into a deeply personal journey around the coasts of Britain with his daughter Eden, who has a rare condition called Joubert Syndrome, and his grandmother Gladys. Kötting’s work, but perhaps most especially Gallivant, has set the tone for the twenty-first-century folk revival and for collectives such as Weird Walk to embrace a re-enchantment of Britain’s landscape, and a modernised appreciation for its history and heritage. Kirsty Asher, Cinema Year Zero associate editor.

7. Bye Bye Africa (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 1999)

Chad’s Mahamat-Saleh Haroun would score an arthouse hit with 2021’s Lingui: The Sacred Bonds, but for our money his first feature, Bye-Bye Africa, deserves more attention. Haroun plays Haroun, who returns to Chad from Paris after a personal loss and sets out to make a film. But soon, he realises that his homeland’s cinema culture is falling apart, with cinema palaces replaced by sterile video rooms. Twisting travelogue into anti-imperialist manifesto, Haroun asks questions of who may access culture and history, with a limber camera that captures Godard’s spirit while trawling the reality of African filmmaking. BF

8. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)

Few terms in recent memory are as spoiled as ‘storytelling’. In cloddish hands, it becomes shorthand for reason, cause, chronology. Yet the best narratives not only articulate but retilt experience: they are shapeshifters, mechanisms for dissonance, discrepancy, contradiction. Stories can do it all. That’s the trouble. Sarah Polley understands the deceptive essence of story, and in Stories We Tell, she insists upon its plural. In reporting the tragic mysteries of her birth and upbringing, Polley attributes ‘equal weight’ to a family of witnesses. By doing so, she restates the challenge of truthful expression: how noble, eloquent, and impossible it is. Joseph Owen, research fellow at University of Southampton.

9. The Image You Missed (Dónal Foreman, 2018)

Belfast and Dublin are of no great distance from each other, but in 1985, when director Donal Foreman was born, violence and legacy brought a chasm between them. In this film, Foreman addresses his estranged father Arthur MacCaig, director of acclaimed Troubles documentary The Patriot Game (1978), displaying MacCaig’s stirring footage of the North side-by-side with his own part-joyful, part-searching home movies. Growing up in Dublin, the violence over the border barely touched MacCaig, although his father was embedded in Republican communities there. The film communicates the weight of such distances: Republic turning away from the North, father turning his back on son. Multiple times we are shown the Dublin-Belfast train crossing the Royal Canal. The journey looks deceivingly easy. Anna Devereux, PhD researcher at University of East Anglia.

10. Krabi, 2562 (Ben Rivers, Anocha Suwichakornpong, 2019)

That which dies is born again—a fact of life in the Krabi, a popular tourist spot and filming location in Southern Thailand. As a tourist destination, Krabi is forever looking backwards, a living, breathing town that survives, in part, by trading on its storied past. As a movie location, aestheticised beaches and national parks keep that same cycle in motion; a golden vision of a place that doesn’t exist designed to draw in a new crowd of paying mouthbreathers. To what extent directors Suwichakornpong and Rivers become part of that process with their strange, atemporal docufiction hybrid, Krabi, 2562, is a question they continuously probe. Part-inverted travelogue, part-observational documentary, part-personal diatribe, in a place where history only exists in the abstract, where is there to go next? Blaise Radley, Cinema Year Zero reviews editor.

11. The Rehearsal (Nathan Fielder, 2022 & 2025)

‘Creative nonfiction’ isn’t just high-minded and artsy; it’s also Borat, Jackass, and the works of such luminaries as Nathan Fielder—comedians playing characters (or characters of themselves) plunged into the real world to test its moral mettle. The Rehearsal is the high watermark: a twisty, unpredictable TV show where a deadpan Fielder puts real people through elaborate simulations to ‘rehearse’ conflicts they are afraid to confront in their actual lives. The final episode of Season 1 is as knotty and confronting an account of the moral conundrum of hiring child actors as you’ll find—more nuanced for the fact that its context is a comedy show that doesn’t offer neat conclusions. And the heights Fielder goes to in Season 2 for the sake of authenticity has to be seen to be believed. Orla Smith, The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend festival co-director.

Welcome back to Cinema Year ‘25, a monthly review supplement. November’s new releases drove us to question the sanctity of the cinematic apparatus. Words by Tom de Lancy Green, Blaise Radley, Ben Flanagan, Kirsty Asher.

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Did you attend an interesting repertory film event this month and want to write about it? Get in touch yearzerocinema@gmail.com.

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House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, 2025, USA)

House of Dynamite is turgid, zealous, cliched, visually blanched, and probably one of the better portrayals of American militarism’s perverted self-immolating destiny. Like Zero Dark Thirty (2012), it deserves a reputation as equally jingoistic and modernistically autocritical, Starship Troopers (1997) without the joke. Verhoeven throttled his barely-veiled cultish machismo in Scandi action figures like Casper Van Dien and a mélange of soap-opera lighting; Bigelow updates his stare into the abyss for the 21^st century, perfecting and pulling apart Paul Greengrass’ glassy long lens frenzy.

The style flattens the mise-en-scene like layers in a 2D collage skimming against each other. Appropriately, the film concerns the state’s fractured response to a nuclear launch that will flatten the Great Lakes region. The situation is replete with a hard-headed general (Tracy Letts), war room lanyards (Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso), a poignantly phlegmatic army drone (Anthony Ramos) and the President, who remains a faceless but obvious Idris Elba until the film’s third act. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim sketches these characters thinly enough that they can make for a nice addition to the machine. The enterprise (the film and the military state which it details) runs without bravado or friction, without haste or lethargy. Excitement instead stems from watching the different ways officialdom can be a synonym for submission—the missing character is the Logic that backs everyone into corners.

The film squeezes tight enough that strange details spurt out to create a third dimension to the ensemble. Strands of fatigued hair spattered around the edges of Ferguson’s kettle-shaped Swedish face; a brief sojourn to the women’s basketball league where Elba sinks a few three’s; the sallow pudge of Jared Harris’ beleaguered SecDef; a pointed and well-blocked Civil War recreation watched by the perfunctorily cast Greta Lee. Its final left-hook—a cowardly, ingenious closing move from Oppenheim—leaves one aghast at the film’s faithlessness, but convinced by it all the same. TDLG

Frankenstein (Guillermo Del Toro, 2025, USA)

For a long time I did my best to look past Guillermo Del Toro’s more eyerolling tendencies—the fedora-tipping nice guy schtick; the clockwork steampunk fetishism; the simplistic “man is the true monster” moralising—because, with the American mainstream in such dire straits, there were bigger fish to fry than blockbuster cinema’s most neckbeard auteur. But with his latest creature feature, a bloated, superficial adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the mothership of bloat and superficiality, Netflix, it’s time for us to concede—maybe he kind of sucks.

In taking on a cornerstone text in Frankenstein, you sense Del Toro aiming to complete his ascension to the throne of contemporary Gothic (bar the equally eyebrow-raising Robert Eggers, who else stands in his way?). In interviews he’s emphasised over and over that this is a passion project, a labour of love, a story that spoke to him deeply. And yet it’s hard to believe this is the work of a man who called Shelley’s original text ‘“the Bible”. Faced with the enormity of creation, the rippling after-effects of man’s ambition, and the essential loneliness of existence, his writing more often evokes “things that go bump in the night” childishness, while his formal tendencies skew increasingly toward the anonymous; long floating takes that do little but emphasise the scenery behind his characters. Better to focus on the immaculate detail of the production design than Oscar Isaac’s pantomimic turn as the now-moustache twirling Dr. Frankenstein, perhaps.

Regardless of his affinity for the book, in practice Del Toro is far more interested in finding visceral thrills in gory set pieces than in the horror of man reckoning with his hubris. By bending the source text to match his gruesome fairytale aesthete, the effect is flattening on every front—a film that exists solely within the visible confines of the meticulously constructed sets (borderline masturbated over by Del Toro’s roving lens) that serves up its massively-simplified philosophical answers with helpful airplane noises. “Neeeow,” says Del Toro, as his crying monster pulls a man’s jaw off, sad at having had to carry out such a sick finishing move. “Weeee,” he says, as someone helpfully tells the constantly repulsive Dr. Frankenstein, “You… are the monster.” Muster faint praise for the set dressing and Elordi’s quietly-weighted (though still annoying) performance as the monster if you must, but anything more is just opening wide for the spoon.
BR

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The Running Man (Edgar Wright, 2025, USA)

How good should an Edgar Wright film be? The West Country spoofsman-turned-hack should be no-one’s idea of a termite artist, but if he’s operating in this schlock space then I’d rather see his craft than Collet-Serra’s.

The Running Man is a plea for movie jail forgiveness. It’s in the plot, in which a Glenn Powell everyman participates in a gameshow: evade the media controlled authorities long enough to obtain personhood. The Stephen King source is ignored, vibes-wise, aside from a sequence set in Derry which leans heavily into the It-Christine school of Americana. The teacher? Baudrillard. Each new area in Powell’s run is a chance to explore a different set of aesthetic values—the metropolitan chaos of New York (populated by an abundance of ‘hookers’), the dingy dystopia of Boston (populated by an abundance of ‘hookers’), and then on and on through the more sparsely populated heartlands. But the film is steadfast, always reminding itself to be more normal.

Wright’s personality cannot help but get in the way, however. His virginal fear of hetero relationships—mined for millennial comedy in Scott Pilgrim, mined to male feminist ends in Last Night in Soho—suits the neutered Hollywood churn in which a male hero’s quest to return to family is never embellished beyond the connotation of the F-word. In that way, Glen Powell has taken all the wrong lessons from his mentor, Tom Cruise. Powell may be the great white hope, but his angry performance is one-note, comic quips landing with a smug thud.

Startling parallels with One Battle After Another (a revolutionary Gil Scott-Heron needle drop, an underground tunnel system, some awkward questions around race) do Wright’s film no favours, particularly as this was supposedly picture locked just a few weeks ago. When his overload of style is in motion, his quick editing, and clear blocking remain a thrill. But the air of self-hatred lingers around this piece of Eunuch Cinema. BF

Wicked: For Good (John M. Chu 2025, USA)

The late, great Howard Ashman asserted that the purpose of musicals is for the expression of an emotion too great to convey simply through speaking. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande understand this indefatigably as performers, and whether it’s their chaotic press tours or the troubling codependent relationship they’ve cultivated, it is their bond both on—and off—screen that has kept this Oz-ian juggernaut chugging.

That emotionality is essentially where any appeal of this film ends. Even the most ardent of Wicked musical fans will tell you that the second act is notoriously unwieldy, attempting to shoehorn the events of The Wizard of Oz (1939) and the origin of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodsman into Elphaba and Glinda’s story, leaving plot holes the size of the Deadly Desert. It should have been neatly storyboarded into the end of the first film. Instead, we have unnecessary and forgettable new songs, and a Glinda backstory that does nothing but give some precocious theatre kid her SAG membership. Michelle Yeoh remains bafflingly, catastrophically miscast as Madame Morrible since she simply cannot sing, with more or less all her solo parts cut from the film. The saving grace is that her wuxia training makes for excellent sorceress armography. Jeff Goldblum also surprisingly brings more depth and emotion to his closing arc as the Wizard than in any of his recent work.

According to Instagram user buildrbear, film critics are no longer necessary for discerning the merit of the Wicked films, or indeed any film with an overt influence on contemporary popular culture. Any fan who declares this as a form of liberating “let people enjoy things” consumption of art is in fact confining themselves to grin inanely through something they may actually, in their heart of hearts, not enjoy, all for the sake of ensuring its popularity. What a cold and fruitless life to lead. KA

Welcome back to VOLUME 21: The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend 2025. For our final essay in the sequence, Cinema Year Zero reviews editor Blaise Radley hails All These Summers, Therese Henningsen’s tactile self-portrait film.

We will close out the issue next week with a history of the personal documentary in 10 films. Until then, you can read the entire issue here.

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Blaise Radley

All These Summers opens on a city scene recognisable to anyone who’s been out late in London on the weekend (especially in the post-pandemic era)—a surprisingly high number of cars and a dispiritingly low number of people, the swallowing quiet only occasionally interjected upon by the mew of a tabby cat or the bristling movements of a city fox. Guiding us through this early morning metropolitan safari is Povl Christian Henningsen, a well-humoured ageing Danish man who offers musings on the rather tepid nightlife of Seven Sisters as he attempts to engage passersby in dialogue. Lurking by a bus stop, he has the air of a lion lying in wait near a watering hole, but getting more than a polite “Morning!” is nigh impossible.

It’s 5 minutes in before we establish the father/daughter dynamic between the filmmaker, Therese Henningsen, who occasionally chimes in from behind the handheld camera, and Povl. Indeed, what first appears to be an investigation of the nocturnal urban, where lone figures become mysteries to unravel and the sound of the city takes on an ambient texture (off screen, Therese explained that the project’s inception was her own insomnia, and a resultant desire to film encounters with people who were likewise awake at 4am), morphs into something more inward-facing and emotionally dense.

This personal inquiry develops in stops and starts once we meet Therese’s second subject: her Greek Cypriot neighbour Pete. A similar age to Povl, Pete has a kindred affinity with the twilight hours—though as he walks his dog around the city’s green spaces, he makes no attempt to drum up conversation with his fellow twilight hour park goers, viewing them instead with a slight apprehension. Pete’s tendency to create distance between himself and others is what paradoxically draws Therese toward him, finding a parallel between his curious solemnity and the previous depressive periods that Povl speaks of, periods that Therese clearly still carries the weight of from her childhood and adolescence.

As we get closer to both Povl and Pete—the former, as he undergoes treatment for cancer, the latter, as his affection for Therese blossoms—it’s Therese that emerges as the film’s most enigmatic character, revealed mostly through her choice of framing. For much of the runtime the camera positioning acts as a direct substitute for the director’s point-of-view; shot from eye level, bobbing in time with each step, an occasional hand appearing from one corner or the other to push a door open or brush past a wall. Only the shadows reveal the mechanical apparatus between Therese and the image on screen. Pair this with Therese’s decision to do away with straightforward documentary narrativising, cutting between the two storylines with limited exposition, and you’re left with a series of sensory impressions that gradually sketch out the shape of a human being.

The intimacy of the handheld camerawork makes the moments that aren’t shot from this perspective all the more startling. Indeed, it’s the wider static two shots in which Therese enters the frame, leaving the camera on a random nearby surface, that are often the most agonising and invasive; the camera’s presence made clearer by its being stationary, drawing further attention to Therese’s decision to document such private moments. Speaking to her father about her urge to mediate their time together through the camera, he claims it’s an honour to be filmed—but is he withholding something? And is Pete too? In the scant few moments that Therese, back behind the lens, feels the urge to look away from her subject, her camera drifting to one side in the process, the answers become ever more unclear—even as the parallels only become sharper.

We return to VOLUME 21: The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend 2025. Today, associate editor Kirsty Asher introduces Chloe Abrahams’ 2023 film memoir, which skilfully interpolates home video footage into an rumination on matriarchal bonds and sexual abuse.

You can read the entire issue here.

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Kirsty Asher

Chloe Abrahams’ mother appears to the audience first in gauzy haze; uncertain, in extreme close up. Then, her eyes lock onto the camera with a hard gaze that softens, the smile out of frame but implied. While the footage runs, Abrahams’s voice describes how her mother has passed down foodways learned from her own mother on the proper way to eat a mango, which gives this film its title. From the beginning, this touching anecdote of food lore introduces the link between these three women of Sri Lankan heritage, two of whom now live in the UK, of shared knowledge passed through generations, which will open their familial bonds up to the audience in more complicated and painful ways.

Recorded on a handheld camcorder, this personal piece of archive establishes the tone of Abrahams’ film as one of lo-fi home video familiarity, which complements the older archive she also utilises. The consistency of camcorder footage and its vintage quality speaks to one family’s issues and secrets rooted in a past not yet confronted. Abrahams sets out to clarify difficult emotional opacity, and bring forth emotional healing.

For those who have never embarked on such a personal documentary project, it could feel impossible to imagine the experience of placing three generations of family trauma, including one’s own, into a feature length film through such intimate footage. Yet the ready access to personal archive allows for frank discussion of the family’s timeline as it is gradually unspooled across the film’s run time. While extreme close ups pore over a family photo album, her mother’s voice gives the unseen context behind the smiles and poses - ‘That’s probably a year before I got beaten by my stepfather,’ a shadowy figure also known as ‘That Man’. The camera then drifts across the photo album to a picture of her grandmother where the other half of the photo has been very purposefully torn off, then pans across to another with the same treatment. The page is turned, revealing two halves of a photo which have been torn in half but put in the photo book side by side, evidently with someone missing from the centre of the image. A complicated family history is silently laid bare through these still fractures.

With subtle application, the archive speaks for itself as much as the film’s subjects do, gaining an intriguing rhythm as it progresses. Dreamlike sequences of B-reel accompanied by fluttery piano music are followed by a hard cut snapped back to her mother, shot on iPhone, discussing her family. There is a beautiful transition from her mother in the present day, sitting at the table in her London home contemplating, acknowledging and smiling at the camera, to the stylised recording of her wedding day. Her striking kohl-rimmed eyes admire their own reflection and acknowledge the camera’s presence in a mirror. Abrahams’s recollection of her parents discussing divorce accompanies a forced smile as her mother looks once again into the camera via her own reflection. A shot flipped down from a POV on a cycle ride to the relentless extreme close up of white lines on a fast moving road is set to her mother, in the present day, quietly discussing the violent beatings her stepfather subjected her to. This leads to an extreme close up of one of the ripped photos of Abrahams’s grandmother, where she gazes at ‘That Man’ no longer included in the frame, the man she has chosen to stay with in Sri Lanka for forty years instead of joining her daughter in the UK.

Through acknowledgement of trauma and betrayal comes acceptance, as Abrahams’s mother asserts, ‘You can’t change the past, you just have to live in the present.’ The purpose of a film like this, which uses such deeply personal historical archive, is to allow the past to breathe. It takes shape as an artistic endeavour to express love, sorrow and anger in the pursuit of reconciliation.