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Irkalla: Gilgamesh's Dream
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Self-importantly bleak and exasperatingly formulaic, Irkalla is the bastard child of Capernaum: a regressive piece of misery porn replete with child labour, terrorist plots, and underage prostitution.
Posted Jan 23, 2026
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Cotton Queen
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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The patchy, uneven performances fail to bring the emotion of the story to the fore. And the overstuffed script never takes the unpredictable left turns it constantly hints at.
Posted Dec 21, 2025
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A Sad and Beautiful World
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Love is hard work: a series of difficult compromises, Aris suggests, and living in the permanent purgatory that is Lebanon certainly compounds these compromises.
Posted Dec 21, 2025
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Hijra
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Part affecting tale of female bonding, part perceptive reflection on evolving intergenerational relationships, and part an incisive dissection of class and race in the kingdom, Ameen’s brilliant picture is one of the most daring Saudi films ever made.
Posted Sep 05, 2025
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Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Canto Due remains as light as a feather; a diverting wish-fulfillment fronted by a maddingly passive, soulless protagonist. Kechiche no longer has anything remotely fresh or noteworthy to say about the Arab experience in France.
Posted Aug 22, 2025
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With Hasan in Gaza
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Gaza has endured plenty of pain, Aljafari emphasises, but it never lost its humanity, its joy, its resilience. Aljafari captures this world so vividly, so tenderly, so unassumingly in his futile search for a piece of himself forever lost in detention.
Posted Aug 22, 2025
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The President's Cake
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Hadi paints a stark portrait of a dog-eat-dog world with fizzling morality. His political commentary is pronounced, finding no difference between Hussein’s megalomania and the West’s casual ambivalence towards Iraqi civilians.
Posted Aug 16, 2025
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October 8
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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October 8 is built on a series of deliberate omissions and fear mongering, an unscrupulous if familiar tactic that betrays the subjects’ indignation and their weak conviction.
Posted Jun 02, 2025
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The Encampments
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Personal histories of the activists provide ample opportunities for reflections around questions of identity, trauma, and the youthful desire for tangible change. The Encampments is an urgent document of an event that has been tarnished by the media.
Posted Jun 02, 2025
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1001 Frames
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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1001 Frames never transcends its narrow experimental parameters, never managing to build tension due to the rigidity of a static structure that grows tiresome by the halfway mark.
Posted Mar 23, 2025
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No Beast. So Fierce.
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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With no socio-political context provided, the self-congratulatory stylisation of No Beast quickly runs thin as it sluggishly salivates for relevance in its waning moments.
Posted Mar 23, 2025
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Khartoum
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Realised with remarkable sensitivity and shot with distinctive lyricism, Khartoum never solely relies on its urgent politics to lift the picture up; its mature, striking artistry is inseparable from its unsentimental humanism.
Posted Mar 23, 2025
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Yunan
(2025)
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Joseph Fahim
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Yunan is self-involved, stubbornly insular narration, leading to a highly problematic standardisation and flattening of Arab exile – a complex experience shaped by class, politics, and disparate psychological factors.
Posted Mar 23, 2025
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Yalla Parkour
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Zuaiter fails to convey the full essence of Ahmad. Zuaiter’s hagiographic, one-dimensional presentation of her protagonist leaves off his loves, his weaknesses, his relationships, and even his political convictions.
Posted Mar 11, 2025
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The Brutalist
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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The Brutalist is the story of modern America’s derision of art, of any creative endeavour that has no immediate monetary value. America has no place for a man of Laszlo’s ilk, for defiant art that refuses to abide by the rules of the market.
Posted Feb 03, 2025
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To a Land Unknown
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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The biggest feat of Fleifel’s humanistic tour de force is the agency it gives his young men to be whoever they are: hustling junkies, headstrong hoodlums forever thrust in a quixotic quest to find a home they can never attain
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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A Fidai Film
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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A Fidai Film is a dense if playful picture that questions our belief in the veracity of the image while exposing the hazardous role of narration: a simultaneous act of disruption and self-affirmation against time, violent depletion, and fate.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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From Ground Zero
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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The splatter of optimism, of perseverance, fashioned by the Gazan women filmmakers as a form of dignified resistance makes for some of the most powerful moments in any film this year, challenging what cinema is and what it could be.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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East of Noon
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Laced with disparate influences – from the colloquial poetry of Salah Jahin and Egyptian musicals of the 1940s, to the use of political symbolism in the Brazilian Cinema Novo, East of Noon is the year’s most formally inventive Middle Eastern picture.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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Perfumed with Mint
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Hamdy's film flouts the rules of classical storytelling associated with Egyptian cinema, conjuring up a disorienting mist of a film about fear, trauma, and the overbearing stupefaction that has taken over the broken generation of the 2011 Revolution.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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The Bibi Files
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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The Bibi Files is not just an expertly made investigation of Israel's most notorious head of state: it’s a Macbeth-like fable of a man punch-drunk on blind ambition; a penetrating study of a man corrupted and empowered by his violent addiction to power.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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Mond
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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The occasional thrills offered by the genre tropes cannot conceal the predictability of the material at hand. Mond is yet another account of young bright girls oppressed by their controlling family for reasons that never manage to convince.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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Agora
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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The political subtext of the film – Tunisia’s incapacity in dealing with its violent past and the enduring memory of the persecuted victims – is more pronounced than Slim’s previous outings, but a weak third act does ultimately harm the picture.
Posted Dec 28, 2024
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The Brink of Dreams
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Moments of projected vulnerability are calculated if not insincere, and the ambience of the film habitually feels like a campfire around which the girls gather to commemorate their friendship.
Posted May 28, 2024
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Shikun
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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As earnest as Gitai's intentions are, his politics are didactic, bluntly conveyed with heavy-handed symbolism, unbearably theatrical monologues and stilled scene arrangements devoid of artiness.
Posted Mar 17, 2024
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Who Do I Belong To
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Joobeur dexterously coalesces different genres and different narratives in a gorgeously-shot picture, realised in earthy colours, that marry the macabre and the supernatural with the dreaminess of Terrence Malick.
Posted Mar 17, 2024
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My Favourite Cake
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Moghaddam and Sanaeeha's tender tale is both timeless and urgent; universal yet very specific; an irresistibly charming, disarmingly touching meditation on ageing, the cruel passage of time and the irrepressible need for connection.
Posted Mar 17, 2024
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No Other Land
(2024)
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Joseph Fahim
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Never descending into miserabilism, the directors manage to find moments of humanity, particularly in the budding friendship between Basel and Arabic-speaking Yuval. This bond stands in contrast to the otherwise stark reality of Masafer Yatta.
Posted Mar 17, 2024
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In the Blind Spot
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Gripping from start to finish, Polat’s finest film to date serves as an exploration of the violence unleashed by the Erdogan regime on the Kurdish population; a snapshot of a lawless place governed by xenophobia and paranoia.
Posted Dec 25, 2023
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Behind the Mountains
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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At once, Behind the Mountains is a father-son story, a hostage thriller and a supernatural dramedy - different genres lumped together without harmony. It’s a film that wants to be multiple things but ends up being none.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Backstage
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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This is a feast for the senses.Its subtle politics,however,is its strongest asset,exploring female sexuality and self-autonomy; gender fluidity and polyamory;and the schism between the free nature of art and the restrictive reality of Arab societies.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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The Sun Will Rise
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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As the movie progresses, the barrage of testimonies grows increasingly redundant, numbing the initial shock. The execution is too heavy-handed, self-important and attention seeking, so much so that it’s difficult not to question the method's intention.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Dormitory
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Yurt is a snapshot of a country in transition: a country divided between traditional secularism of the founding father of modern Turkey, Ataturk, and the rising power of religion, embodied by Erdogan, whose AK Party would win power a few years later.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Hesitation Wound
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Undeniably engaging, Hesitation Wound nonetheless treads familiar grounds, be it in its rudimentary treatment of class or in its depiction of the moral greyness that defines urban Turkish life.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Tatami
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Ebrahimi overlooks myriad fundamental ethical and philosophical questions, exposing in the process the timidity and one-dimensionality of the film’s exasperatingly limited discourse.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Hollywoodgate
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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More than an incisive investigation of Taliban rule, Hollywoodgate is a contemplative snapshot of the ashes left behind by an America that can no longer claim to be the leader of the free world.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Green Border
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Holland unearths a number of subjects few filmmakers have cared to tackle: the banality of the guards’ idle evil; the emotional vacuum the activists seek to fill with their work; and the moral cost of inaction experienced by the enlightened few.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Barbie
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Barbie is feminism 101, but for the global mainstream audience who have been served nothing but depoliticised superheroes for decades, the directness of Barbie's feminism is an essential step for reclaiming the soul of the Hollywood blockbuster.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Bye Bye Tiberias
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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This is a rich family saga about hope and lost and found; about undying family bonds unchanged by distance and personal ideologies; about the cruelty of borders and the tattered state of the Arab world, and about the resilience of the Palestinian soul.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Golda
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Because Golda cannot be too complex in order to attract a mass audience, the diverse reasons behind the conflict are overlooked as Nattiv roots the dispute in the Arab refusal to recognise Israel and their threats to wipe out the Zionist state.
Posted Mar 07, 2023
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Under the Sky of Damascus
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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The film is essentially a collection of straightforward testimonials grouped in dispiritingly artless fashion and the Syrian capital proves to be its biggest asset.
Posted Mar 07, 2023
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The Burdened
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Gamal mostly frames his characters in wide shots, letting his camera linger on Aden’s cluttered exteriors after a stretch of dialogue ends, giving viewers the space to dwell on an ailing city on the brink.
Posted Mar 07, 2023
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The Teachers' Lounge
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Although the Turkish student is a periphery character, he is the catalyst of a multilayered and immensely tense drama mirroring a society that is befuddled and overly sensitive about its race and class issues.
Posted Mar 07, 2023
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Seven Winters in Tehran
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Intermingling interviews with Jabbari’s family members and former inmates with audio and video footage smuggled out of Iran, Niederzoll delivers a damning indictment of Iran’s patriarchal establishment.
Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Opponent
(2023)
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Joseph Fahim
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Opponent is foremost an astute study of a man who is nowhere near as resourceful as others expect him to be. The gay subtext adds an extra dimension to a gripping narrative that never descends into sensationalism.
Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Queens
(2022)
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Joseph Fahim
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A watchable picture that squanders the electrifying possibilities offered by its genre, Queens ultimately suffers from Benkiran’s reluctance to take chances and instead occupy a middle ground free of invention. This is a movie that never takes off.
Posted Oct 06, 2022
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The Damned Don't Cry
(2022)
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Joseph Fahim
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The Damned Don't Cry is an intrepid exploration of the mystery that is the Arab mother-son bond. Selim and Fatima-Zahra have a co-dependent relationship typified by years of unshakable resentment and disappointment towards one another.
Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Beyond the Wall
(2022)
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Joseph Fahim
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Bafflingly thin on characterisation, the lack of sympathy for these awfully one-dimensional characters is augmented by Mohammadzadeh’s irritatingly one-noted self-important performance and Habibi’s lack of range.
Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Without Her
(2022)
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Joseph Fahim
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When Roya’s eye surgery strikes her with cryptic blackouts, the film swiftly turns into a Brian De Palma-like pulp noir about the slipperiness of identity, suburban ennui and suppressed womanhood.
Posted Oct 06, 2022
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World War III
(2022)
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Joseph Fahim
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World War III is, by turns, a character study, an examination of destructive class disjunction, a highly intense anecdote of scorching love, and a parody of commercial Iranian filmmaking.
Posted Oct 06, 2022
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