Kirlian Frequency (2025) Fantaspoa 2026

Based on a animated web series that ran from 2017 to 2019 and which was on Netflix for a while before disappearing thefilm tells the story of station 96.6 and the dark Kirlian Frequency radio show on it's last night on the air. It was a night that comet appear and made the dark happenings even darker.

The film is a mix of live action and animation this is a distubing film. Over coming it's limited budget by mixing in animation to flesh out the stories being told by the guests on the radio show. There is a sinsiter nature to each of the six stories that leave us feeling disturbed. I saw this film late at night before going to bed and found I needed to look on line for some happy stuff to clear my head... only to find that some of the images bled into my dreams.

This is a film that proves clearly that with a good story and storytellers who care you can scare the shit of your audience with little more than just some words.

One of the best films of Fantaspoa, and possibly 2026.

Highly recommended.

RIVER TRAINS (2026) NDNF 2026

This is the story of a 9-year-old Milo whose life revolves around malambo dance. He is driven by his father, to excell but it isn't his choice. What he really wants to do is take the train and explore Buenos Aires.

This is an okay drama that didn’t really work for me. Sequences of staged action (people are deliberately arranged) mix with long silent sequences where not much happens. I’m sure this means something to someone but there isn’t enough explanation, in any form, for this to add up to much.

Running a brief 75 minutes, it feels longer and by the halfway mark my interest had waned. I stayed to the end, but I never connected.

A miss.

RIver Trains(2026) Berlin 2026

This is the story of a 9-year-old Milo whose life revolves around malambo dance. He is driven by his father, to excell but it isn't his choice. What he really wants to do is take the train and explore Buenos Aires.

This is an okay drama that didn’t really work for me. Sequences of staged action (people are deliberately arranged) mix with long silent sequences where not much happens. I’m sure this means something to someone but there isn’t enough explanation, in any form, for this to add up to much.

Running a brief 75 minutes, it feels longer and by the halfway mark my interest had waned. I stayed to the end, but I never connected.

A miss.

THE LAST PUESTERO (2026) Santa Barbara (2026)

This is the story of Adonai Jara, a gaucho, who work on a remote ranch in Arentina. We watch as he goes through his routine and tries to convince his son to continue the family tradition. 

This is a beautiful film. If you can see this on a big screen do so because you will lose youself in the images.  This film is so good looking that it made me angry that most awards never consider short films, no matter how good they are. This film deserves to win a boatload of statues for its images.

Beyond the images there is Jara. Jara is a great subject. For a man who spends so much time alone, he brings us in and pulls us close. We come to love him and his family, in ways that we don't usually get in shorts.

What I love about this film is that the film nails the pacing. Moving at the slow pace of the life on the ranch, the film never feels draggy. too often films like this feel slow. Too many directors don't understand how to pace quiet and medatative, director Belle Casares does.

You will fall in ,love with this film.

A POET (2025)

Oscar, is unemployed and cranky. The world has not gone his way. He considers himself a poet and he sees that as an excuse for the way he is. He is not particularly well liked. He meets a girl with a great talent and he begins to mentor her, which may bring about a change in his life.

Ubeimar Rios plays Oscar with a low key energy and largely one pained facial expression. How you relate to this tragi-comedy will depend on how you relate to the doomed Oscar. I did not connect to Oscar  at all. While I understood why he felt as he did, and why he did the things he did, at the same time I wanted to shake him and make him realze he had to grow up at some point.

I also wasn't certain why this story was being told. What are we supposed to get out of it? On some level I felt that the film didn't particularly like Oscar since it seems to angle toward the ending from the start. This is very much the sort of tale I dislike which is one where the film has to have a tragedy in order to be meaningful, not because the tragedy is organic to the story.

While the film didn't work for me, it may work for you.

My Neighbor Adolf (2022)

In Argentina, a cranky Holocaust survivor thinks that Adolf Hitler has moved in next door to him.

One of the final films from Udo Keir to hit the US (it was actually on the festival circuit in 2022 and released around the world in 2023), this is a frequently funny, if uneven comedy. 

How you react to the film will be determined by how you react to David Hayman as Mr Polsky, the cranky man who finds his life turned upside down. Polsky is the sort of man you both laugh at and want to hit for being so unpleasant. It would have been better if the film found the balance that allowed him to be both funny or annoying, as it plays now he is one or the other.

Keir is, as always, wonderful.

Uneven or no, I liked this film. I laughed and had a good time, especially since this didn't really go as I expected.

Worth a look.

Belen (2025)

Belen is the true story of a woman who was charged and sent to prison because authorities said she had tried to self abort a child. She said she didn’t know she was pregnant, the police didn’t believe her (and the result is  one of the most jaw dropping sequences in any film this year)

Argentina’s Oscar entry is a stunner. Even if it wasn’t true this film would kick you to the curb. It’s a beautifully acted film that gets under your skin and forces you to react. I was moved.

And the film is very much a film for our time. With the far right trying to control the lives of everyone and everything what happened in Argentina may soon happen here.

This is great filmmaking.

Highly recommended

LANDMARKS (aka NUESTRA TIERRA) (2025) NYFF 2025

 

Lucrecia Martel’s latest is a wildly uneven tale. Nominally the story of a battle over indigenous lands in Argentina that resulted in a murder.

The film tells the story of the Chuchagasta community whose existence was shattered by the death of one of their number almost a decade before when three men, one of who claimed the land, got into a scuffle with them and shots were fired. The film documents the community in the wake of the trial and live in the community.

I would like to say that the reason that the film doesn’t work as well as it does is that it pales in comparison to the numerous films about indigenous land rights that have been coming out of South and Central America, but the truth is the film is badly put together. The film was assembled as if the audience was as knowledgeable about events as the filmmakers, and as a result we are lost early.

The film begins with the trial. While it would have been fine had the film had made some effort to give us a context for what we are seeing, the film does not. The film simply throws us in, and lets us thrash about for a bit as we have to piece together even the basics of the story. The film then intercuts trial footage with life in the community where we get a sense of the person who was killed and what his life was  like.

While the portrait of the community is actually some of the best I have run across in the dozen or so similar films ffrom the last couple of years, the presentation is such that we remain outside the story because nothing is integrated. We don't get a sense of who most of the faces are. While the trial stuff is interesting, there is no effort to put it into context for anyone who isn’t familiar with the case or Argentine criminal proceedings. Much of it, say the confrontation in the courtroom,  seems alien to those of us not from the country.

And as lovely as the images from the drones are, there is simply too much. I know Martel says its there so that we remember the beauty of the land, and it is beautiful, but there is so much of it  and worst of all the film stops dead each time it appears.

While the film isn’t bad, it really should have a different presentation for maximum effect, especially since there are other films out there telling similar films more concisely.

THE CURRENTS (2025) NYFF 2025

I have no clue about THE CURRENTS. The write up says the film concerns a woman who doesn’t seem to fit into her life after plunging into a river. The reality is that this is a bout a cipher who wanders through her life not saying anything and disconnected. However, she is so disconnected that we never connect.

The problem with the film write up is that infers things that just aren’t there. She is disconnected from the start when after get an award she promptly drops it in the garbage and then wanders off before jumping into a cold river. We then get sequences where she wanders through her life not fully connected. How unconnected, there is no sense that we need to know anything so that two sequences where she collapses and is rushed to the hospital  are followed by sequences where she drifts through life. The collapses are never mentioned.  There is a sequence with a therapist which is supposed to clue us in, but it tells us nothing we didn’t know. A late trip to her mother’s house clues us in that Nina’s mental illness maybe hereditary, but it goes nowhere because soon after that the film just stops.

I suspect that the press notes may say something, but the question then becomes why doesn’t the film have any missing information on the screen.

This film is well made but emotionally and narratively a disaster. I may think other films at NYFF are worse films, but the truth is those films have a point of view and passion from a filmmaker who at least could put their feelings on the screen. I have no idea what the makers of THE CURRENTS were going for.

PIN DE FARTIE (2025) NYFF 2025

The better you know Samuel Beckett's play ENDGAME, the more you will get what PIN DE FARTIE is doing. I say that because the film is several riffs on the play... or rather one riff, one rehearsal of it and a son reading it to his blind mother. We also have filmmakers making a film about the various stories and singing songs.

I loved this film.

To me this film makes the case that the Beckett estate has to loosen the tight reigns on the plays, you must perform them exactly as written, because when you allow variations on how the play is performed magic happens. This is the play and something more. It opened my eyes to what the play could be.

There is so much I want to say, but I don't want to spoil all of it. I do want to say that the section of the film where two actors meet once a week to rehearse the play might me one the greatest love stories ever filmed. Certainly the acting is some of the greatest acting I've ever seen in a love story- where there is no actual romance- but where you can see the two characters are gob smacked in love with each other. I want someone to look at me the way that those actors look at each other.

Why this is playing in the Currents section of the NYFF is beyond me because this film is one of the best of the fest and the first film that belongs in the festival that I've seen.

This film is a masterpiece.

Highly recommended.

Dalia and the Red Book (2024)

 

Dalia is a young girl dealing with the death of her father. Her father was a writer working on his first novel when he passed away. Unfortunately for Dalia her father's characters want their story told and they kidnap her and she is forced to finish the tale.

Good looking family film is an enjoyable romp. Yes the film is similar to numerous other tales told over the years, but the film still manages to be entertaining on its own terms. That should not be taken as knock against the film, it's not, rather it's simply pointing out the obvious. It also is an indication that I actually got lost in the film for 90 plus minutes.

If I was to quibble with the film at all it would be to wonder if the original SPanish language voices are better than the ones in the English dub. I ask that because a couple of them seem to be a little flat.

Regardless DALIA AND THE RED BOOK is worth a look, more so if you are looking for good family fare and are tired of  your kids and their 400th rerunning of a Disney film.

Penguin Lessons (2024)

True story of an English teacher who takes a job at a prep school in Argentina around the time of the coup in 1976 and ends up caring for a penguin he rescues because he simply won’t leave.

This is a sweet little film about how a penguin changed the lives of everyone he meets. To be certain the basic thrust of one man changing because of circumstances is a tale we’ve seen before, but the fact that this is true and the time it’s set adds all sort of shading to the material. This is not how Hollywood would have done it had a big studio gotten its hand on it.

That the film works is due in large part to the cast.  Sure, Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce are great, but the rest of the cast is excellent also. I love that the cast of kids who are the students actually make them all stand out. Also excellent is Alfonsina Carrocio who makes such a stirring impression that she brings tears to our eyes in the final moments. She’s also so good that I want to see everything she’s done previously… and whatever comes next.

This is super film and assuming you can fall into its unique rhythms you are going to have a grand time each and every time you see it.

Highly recommended.

The Message (2025) Berlin 2025

A young girl with a gift for communicating with dead animals and her two gaurdians travel across Argentina.

This is a low key black and white road film. It's a film that feels as though it is often transpiring in real time. It is a film of quiet moments  and looks. It's a medatative film that is not going to work for anyone who wants a big loud action film.

I find this a hard film to discuss when the audience hasn't seen it. This is a film about the trip. Its a film where watching the characters on the screen informs the story. My telling you about what happens is not going to really a true sense of what this film is. This is a film where you need to see and experience it in order to fully appreciate what the film is doing.  I know that may sound like I'm trying not to write about the film, but once you see it you'll understand what I mean.  (Some films require a discussion between those who have seen the tri[ and not a lecture. This is one of them)

If you like low key and deliberate film I highly recommend THE MESSAGE

ANIMALIA PARADOXA (2024) Fantasia 2024

If you love weird and off kilter films this is for you. This tale of amphibious humans is like a waking dream. While there is a loose narrative thread this is more a collection of sounds and images that burn themselves into your psyche.

What is is like? Imagine the works of the Quays mashed  with E. ELias Merhige's Begotten, mixed with Bill Morrison and some of the more avant garde Eastern European genre films. The movements are more dance than normal motion. Live action mixes with animation and experimental imaging.

You can't go into the film expecting a typical film, you have to go expecting an experience. You can't fight it, rather you just let it wash over you. There is magic here and you have to be open to it.

I'm not going to lie and say it all works. There are bits that didn't work for me. However at the same time so much of it worked that I am looking to see it again when I can sit in the dark and let the take me some where else.

Highly recommended for the adventurous

Freshly Cut Grass (2024) Tribeca 2024

This is the story of two people who step out on their respective partners and what happens.

When many films play a festival I get sent a lot of material on the film that the filmmakers what us to notice. I try not to look at it until I see the film because I want to see films as a typical audience member does, basically undirected by other hands. With this film I was getting a lot of material that talked about the structure of the film which compared and contrasted the two stories structure. Honestly it’s a mistake because the film doesn’t need to have anything pointed out  about it only that the film is very good.

Nicely acted and beautifully made the film scores most highly in it’s writing. Not taking typical paths through the story, the film instead presents us with real people doing real things and following as they would play out. There is no artificial drama and forced histrionics, there is just adults colliding into each and bleeding all over the screen.

I was enthralled. It’s so rare to see real adults on the screen and not a writers idea of them.

This is one of the hidden gems of Tribeca and should be sought out

SImon of the Mountain (2024) Cannes 2024

Lorenzo Ferro gives a performance for the ages as 21 year old Simon, a disabled young man who desperately trying to navigate his way through the world and finding himself at odds with society.

Beginning and ending with Simon answering the same list of question this film is a portrait of a young man with  mental issues. Simon doesn't understand a great deal, but he is curious. It's his curiosity that gets him into trouble. His inability to fully navigate through the world makes waves for everyone around him, especially his mother.

Ferro is stunning as Simon. I couldn't believe that they found someone like Simon to play the role until I saw that Ferro is an actor and singer and not like Simon. His performance is so good he should be on the short list for every possible acting award. Watching him breath life into Simon Ferro commits body and soul. There isn't a word or look or gesture that isn't fully Simon's. Its a performance that will kick you in the ass.

And let's not forget the rest of the cast who are equally good- they all are...and they too are worthy of every award out there. 

What makes the film work is that the script is far from by rote From the opening attention grabbing sequence in the mountains on to the final fade out this film feels more like life than the vast majority of films ever produced.  Sure it's rough at times, but so is life. The bumps in Simon's life are like those real people would experience.

I was moved.

More importantly when the film was done I wanted to not only go again I wanted to tell everyone.

See this film.

ARA San Juan (2024)

 

Netflix documentary on the sinking of the Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan Allegedly lost at sea during a storm the battle to find the truth was a long and hard.

If you want to see as detailed a presentation of a story as you can possibly be, ARA SAN JUAN THE SUBMARINE THAT DISAPPEARED is for you. A deep dive into the tragedy it spends it’s 8 episodes/4 hours going into every angle of the story, presenting detail reporting from everyone including the panels that were set up to investigate.  At no point do the filmmakers cherry pick the information, and instead lays it all out. The filmmakers allow the officials to fully get themselves into trouble with what they tell the grieving families. It’s everything you want to know and then some.

On the other hand  we are given so much information, and so much footage of the anels that things can seem to be over kill.  I was somewhere around the halfway point when my eyes started to glaze over. I went from mainlining the series to watching it in installments, an episode at a time.

Don’t let my saying I needed to watch the series in episodes deter you, this is a hell of a story. It’s a tale of officials not doing the right things and trying to cover their asses. I was hooked at the start and I had to see how it came out- because it’s not what you think.

Recommended.

REAS (2024) Berlin 2024

This is a one of a kind film that you'll want to see.  

The film is the story of Yoseli who goes to prison and finds some people there with whom she forms a music group.

This is a film that is recreation of the stories of the people who are appearing in the film. Everyone in the film was in prison and helped put the film together as a result it is something truly unique.

When I started REAS I didn't know what to make of it. It didn't seem like anything special. It seemed a bit odd...and then as the film went on and things happened, and we met more people I found myself falling more and more in love with the film. There was something wonderful about all the people that made me lean in. I  wanted to spend more time with them and so I backed up the film and watched it a second time. 

I'm not going to lie and say the film is perfect. It's a bit uneven here and there and I like some of the songs better than others. But the unevenness gives it the sense of life. The film feels like it is what it is a work made with love and care.

This film is a gem. It's the sort of off the beaten path film that Unseen Films was started to highlight.

If you want something off Hollywood this film is for you. 

When Evil Lurks (2023)

Profoundly disturbing horror film concerns two bothers who discover that someone on their land is pregnant with an unborn demon and about to give birth to beast. Instead of dealing with it in the right way, they try to move it off their land and set up an infection that begins to destroy everyone and everything.

This film is a hellish nightmare. Truly a descent into the darkness it is absolute proof the the scariest films are not coming from Hollywood.

I don't want to discuss what happens, all I will say is that pretty much all of it is wrong and will have you talking to the screen. Basically this is an f-ed up film and if you don't want to to know don't go see it.

I loved every minute of the film because it gets you right in the guts from first frame to last.

Highly recommended- this is a must for horror fans.

NOBODY IS CRAZY (2019) is on VOD

 

This is the story of Rafa, a young man with OCD and few friends who meets and becomes intrigued by Nobody, a young man who always wears a black mask and who claims to be a time traveler. Through his interactions with the time traveler, Rafa begins to open up and connect with the world.

This is a low key comedy that at first doesn’t seem like it’s going to do anything special. It seems for a brief time to be a typical drama, and then it slowly turns, the characters begin to grow on us and we end up faling in love with the characters on the screen and want to see where this charming tale is going to take us.

After finishing the small gem NOBODY IS CRAZY I went looking to see what other people thought. I was certain that this small little confection must have a fan base of some sort. Oddly I could only find one review of the film. I am not pointing this out to cast aspersions on the film, but rather the crappy state of film writing. With so many people writing or trying to write on film, very few of us are wading into the  pools and looking to find hidden gems like NOBODY IS CRAZY. Every one wants to cover the new Scorsese or new Nolan, but no one wants to talk about the films  that are made by great filmmakers like Federico J. Arioni. I know part of the problem is that sites want the bigger films because they theoretically get the clicks on opening weekend. The truth though is that after the initial rush people will be looking for other things to watch, they are going to want to know that there are good films out there like NOBODY IS CRAZY that they can see and that they are going to like. For Unseen Films the big films are not what people are looking for, the pieces that attract attention are the smaller films like NOBODY IS CRAZY in part because people know we are going to highlight great off the beaten track films, but also because we are going to be one of the sites where they actually might find word on a gem like this.

NOBODY IS CRAZY is a delight, it’s exactly the sort of film that Unseen Films was set up to highlight, a small gem that isn’t big and splashy, but something warm and fuzzy.

Recently released to the various streaming services in the US NOBODY IS CRAZY is worth a look.