Venice Review: Society of the Snow is J.A. Bayona’s Most Humanist Film to Date
In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed deep in the Andes, en route to Chile. The 45 passengers included the Old Christian Rugby team, friends, and fam...
Savina Petkova
Venice Review: Gasoline Rainbow is Another Mesmerizing Feat of Hybrid Filmmaking From the Ross Brothers
“The only difference between children and grown-ups is that the grown-ups are unsupervised.” This line, uttered in the second half of Bill Ross IV and Turner R...
Venice Review: Ava DuVernay’s Origin is a Perceptive Take on the History of Systemic Violence
The second part of this year’s Venice Film Festival shines with at least two firsts: Ava DuVernay is the first African-American female director competing for t...
Locarno Review: Family Portrait is an Audacious Debut Excavating Subterranean Familial Tensions
Texas, late summer, a family in the dozen: with only a few simple building blocks, artist-filmmaker Lucy Kerr rearranges domesticity into eeriness in her featu...
Cannes Review: Bertrand Mandico’s Conann Turns Barbarism into Pure Love
Following The Wild Boys and After Blue, Conann marks the third feature-length project from prolific shorts filmmaker Bertrand Mandico. Many are still not convi...
Cannes Review: Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand Sets Alicia Vikander and Jude Law in Engrossing Tudor Thriller
Few would have imagined that Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz––whose The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão won the top prize in Un Certain Regard four ...
Cannes Review: With Last Summer, Catherine Breillat Admits That Love Conquers All
Anne (Léa Drucker) is an esteemed lawyer: as uncompromising as she is in her line of work, she is free to enjoy her private life. In her '40s she has it all, t...
Cannes Review: Michel Gondry’s The Book of Solutions Digs into the Magic and Hardships of the Filmmaking Process
When the film you’ve always wanted to make gets shut down by unconvinced producers, you have two choices: you still try to make it, or you make it. This is the...
Cannes Review: How to Have Sex Examines the Ambiguities of Girlhood
Touching down in Heraklion, on the Greek island of Crete, marks the beginning of summer holidays for Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva ...
Savina Petkova
Savina Petkova is a Bulgarian freelance film critic, programmer, and academic, based in London, UK.