Tag: Short Review

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s debut film is a peculiar hybrid of drama and documentary. Haroun, playing a semi-fictionalized version of himself, returns from France to his homeland Chad upon hearing of his mother’s passing. While there, he bemoans a crumbling local cinema and ponders creating a film to capture the spirit of his home nation.

Mercifully short and non-exploitative, Lucile Hadžihalilović‘s debut is claustrophobic and tense and well-crafted. The film’s sense of dread never boils over into outright terror, but it’s nonetheless a fairly haunting little piece.

A slice of life drama about poverty in New Orleans, Below Dreams balances naturalist storytelling and audacious visuals to a nearly impressionistic effect.

Lemon starts as an investigation of how actors use performance to filter out their horrible lives before pivoting to a satire about how pitiful LA people are, I guess?

A movie so hell-bent on recreating the original that it casts the same voice actress for the villain, gives her the same design (but skinny), and declares her a “sister.”

Parched tells the story of a group of Indian women in a rural desert community dealing with a regressive, sexually oppressed society. Marriages are arranged, men can sleep around but women must remain faithful and subservient, marital abuse is routine.

Spencer Williams was an early Black filmmaker, a protege of the legendary Oscar Micheaux.