Rory O'Connor

[Berlin Review] Paris 05:59

In 2004, it looked as if Team America: World Police had hammered the last nail in the coffin for cinema's definitive sex scene. Then, last year, in Anomalisa, C...

[Berlin Review] Uncle Howard

How many great filmmakers have been lost as a result of disease and human catastrophe? That seems to be the question on the mind of documentary filmmaker Aaron ...

[Berlin Review] Midnight Special

Ambiguity might be the most useful item in the science fiction toolbox. Blade Runner’s mysteries still rob people of sleep, and you’d need a wall chart to work ...

[Berlin Review] Hedi

The protagonist and namesake of Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi certainly isn’t cinema’s first leading man to seek validation from a more free-spirited woman, and it's...

[Venice Review] De Palma

Earlier this year, Kent Jones’ Hitchcock /Truffaut -- a documentary on the famous interview sessions between the two directors -- boasted perhaps the most chaot...

[Venice Review] Heart of a Dog

As the Venice Film Festival enters its final phase, the competition throws up perhaps its most unknown quantity as celebrated New York City polymath Laurie Ande...

[Venice Review] Anomalisa

What exactly has been brewing in Charlie Kaufman’s head for the last 7 years? This heart-wrenchingly worrying film, it seems....

[Venice Review] The Event

If the films competing for the Gold Lion so far this year have taken an abstract, decorative or glamorized view of the real world, the ones being shown in the o...

[Venice Review] Janis

A chance oddity has occurred in the great European festivals this year. With no clear discernable connection between them, biopics of arguably the three most fa...

Rory O'Connor

Irish-born, Berlin-based, Rory O'Connor has been covering the European film festival circuit since 2012. A regular contributor to The Film Stage, his work has also appeared in Frieze, The Playlist, and CineVue.