ATTACK ON PARADISE (2026) Fantasia 2026

A man comes home from prison and just wants to be left alone and take care of his mom. Unfortunately the aprtment block has been over run by gangs and the cops are looking to take them out. What is a man who just wants to make sure his mom is okay to do.

Buy a ticket and bring a seatbelt because this film is wild.   A perfect balance of motion and character ATTACK ON PARADISE made my jaw drop open.  Its not so much there are these incredible action sequences, but rather there are these incredible action sequences that are full of great characters that drive the plot.  This is one of the rare action films of recent vintage where we are interested in what is going on just because we like the characters. In a weird way this is a drama with gun shots.

I loved this film.

This is one of the great films at Fantasia and an absolute must see.

Highly recommended.

My Life in Versailles (2025) NYICFF 2026

Feature expansion of the NYICFF winning film from 2020 is a glorious little film that earns every damn emotion it elicits from us.

Te film tells the story of Violet. After her parents are killed in a terrorist attack she is sent to live with her uncle Regis, who stayed away from their family. It seems her family looked down on Regis and his job as a care taker at the Pa;ace of Versailles. While Regis tries to connect, Violet chaffes. Will the pair get along.

Oh, hell yeah, and the result is a glorious film. What makes this film work is that everyone in the film is a person and most of them are broken and damaged. We connect to the pair because they are us. The joy we feel at what happens is because we have felt the pain.

This film is magic- and by the time the ending comes you will be misty and wondering when we can spend time with Violet and Regis again.

See this film.

MALDOROR (2024) hits VOD Friday

This 1990’s set thriller based in part of actual events when the police organizations in Belgium were all competing with each other and trying to catch a psycho who was kidnapping young women. The film focuses on a young cop assigned to a task force who ends up taking things into his own hands because his superiors let things get away from them.

MALDOROR is a frequently tense little thriller. A tale of frustration as the cops desperately try to get their man, the film is going to have you sitting on the edge of your seat during several sequence…including the opening credits which is highly surprising.

Unfortunately the film is going to frustrate you. It’s not that the film takes any bad turns, more that the film is trying to cover a lot of ground. We aren’t just following the cop, but his wife, her family, and other people as well. The result is a film that appears to be juggling a lot of balls and isn’t always focused. Instead of a laser focused film the film feels rambling as there is an effort to give the film a broader  background.

There is so much to love in this film that I wish the film cut tighter and more focused because by the time you get to the end of two and a half hours you feel the wrong sort of beaten up.

My reservations aside, there is enough here both narratively and thematically that the film is worth a look.

Discordia (2025) Fantaspoa 2025

A woodman's family and village was attacked 15 years ago. His wife was killed and his daughter was kidnapped. He gave chased across the globe but never found her. Then one day she returns...

This one of the best and most realistic fantasy films I have ever seen. There is a perfectly constructed world. The magic in this world makes perfect sense. It's not over done or flashy but perfectly integrated into the story and the world. Most importantly the film gives us real people as characters. These aren't the archetypes you find in Dungeon and Dragons films, but variations of people we know.

I was floored.  Watching the film I was watching a film that belonged not just at genre festivals, but at the big festivals like Toronto or New York. This is a film that is about way more than just spells and monsters. This is a film about the human condition.

This is a super film...and it has some cool beasties.... go see this...

Highly recommended. 

MALDOROR (2024) Venice 2024

This 1990’s set thriller based in part of actual events when the police organizations in Belgium were all competing with each other and trying to catch a psycho who was kidnapping young women. The film focuses on a young cop assigned to a task force who ends up taking things into his own hands because his superiors let things get away from them.

MALODOROR is a frequently tense little thriller. A tale of frustration as the cops desperately try to get their man, the film is going to have you sitting on the edge of your seat during several sequence…including the opening credits which is highly surprising.

Unfortunately the film is going to frustrate you. It’s not that the film takes any bad turns, more that the film is trying to cover a lot of ground. We aren’t just following the cop, but his wife, her family, and other people as well. The result is a film that appears to be juggling a lot of balls and isn’t always focused. Instead of a laser focused film the film feels rambling as there is an effort to give the film a broader  background.

There is so much to love in this film that I wish the film cut tighter and more focused because by the time you get to the end of two and a half hours you feel the wrong sort of beaten up.

My reservations aside, there is enough here both narratively and thematically that the film is worth a look.

MAMBAR PIERRETTE (2023) Toronto 2023 NYFF 2023

When I started to watch MAMBAR PIERRETTE I wasn’t certain if the film was a documentary or a narrative. I had just moved from one film on my slate for Toronto to the next. I wasn’t really aware of what I was seeing I was simply going along my list of films for the day, watch X then move on to Y and so on. As a result I some times have to think about what I am seeing. That was the case here. The film looked like a narrative, but it moved and felt like a documentary. While I wrestled with what the film was for a couple of minutes, I eventually got lost in the film itself and by the end I didn’t care.

The film is the story of Pierrette, a seamstress working in a small village. She is working as much as she can to support not only herself but also her son and sick mother. Times are hard. She is managing to survive but it a daily struggle. As she says at one point so long as she remains healthy she will be able to manage. Over the course we watch as she struggles to get by, deals with various crisis and talks to her friends and customers who stop by her shop and keep her connected to life.

This film is magic.

While the film is a narrative it is a film rooted very much in life as it is lived. Director Rosine Mbakam needs to be praised. Using her skills as a documentary filmmaker to their fullest extent she has a crafted a drama that feels more like a life than most documentaries. Ten or so minutes in I was convinced that I was watching a documentary that simply had a few added shots added in. This is one of the great portraits of the human drive to just go on and survive. As the film ended and life was returning to normal I began to get misty.  This wasn’t any contrived  triumph moment of anything or a dramatically constructed exclamation point, it was instead a very quiet sigh as if just to say, “such is life”. It was a moment that would mean nothing out of context but coming after 90 or so minutes after the opening it’s a grand summation.

I loved this film. I loved how it made me feel and think.

Highly recommended.

One of the best films I’ve seen for Toronto  and an early favorite for the New York Film Festival as well.

Logger (2023) Fantaspoa 2023

 

Logger is a cinematic horror tinged tone poem. It’s a film where form over comes substance making it a cinematic work of ghoulish art.

The film follows what happens when a logger finds a dead body in the woods and death shows up to help him sort things out. It’s nowhere near as silly as that sounds.

This is a film best seen in a theater or in a darkened room with no distractions. You need to fully give yourself over to the film and let it work it’s magic. I say this because the construction of the film is very deliberate. It take awhile before anything happens. It’s not that it’s draggy or anything, rather it’s operating on its own time table. It’s doing so not to build scares but create an uneasy uncomfortable mood that is going to haunt you.

Logger is all about that mood. It’s not a film of jump scare but something darker. Logger is one of those small scale films that crawl under your skin and root around with you. There are things I the film that just aren’t right, more so when they are attached to all of the other things rattling around in the film. I wasn’t scared by the film, rather I was bothered by it for the seven or eight hours that passed from when I saw it until I went to bed. I also suspect that some of the images were the reason I didn’t get a good sleep that night.

While Logger leans a bit toward the more artistic end of the horror spectrum, I still recommend the film for any horror fan because I suspect there is something inside it that is going to stick with you.

Incredible But True (2022) Fantasia 2022

Quentin Dupieux returns with more off kilter insanity about a couple that buys a house with a tunnel in the basement that leads to the upstairs in their house and a  twlve hours away. There is more afoot here, including a plot line concerning male enhancement, all of which is going to make you sit up and take notice.

After two films that worked in fits and starts (MANDIBLES and  DEERSKIN) Dupieux returns to form with an obtuse tale that walks on the weirdside. Refusing to give answers he mines  his material for maximum effect opening our eyes with the unexpected turns and make us think with connections we never previously considered.  For me this was the type of film that keeps me going back to Dupieux’s films, a point of view unlike anyone else.

As with all of Dupieux’s films this is not for everyone. It’s skewed sense of reality will not sit well with people who want their stories closer to reality. On the other hand this is probably his most mainstream film so there is a good chance that even if you haven’t like Dupieux’s other films you’ll like this one

Recommended.

MEGALOMANIAC (2022) Fantasia 2022

Using the story of the Butcher on Mons (five people were killed and dismembered and left in clear plastic bags where they could be found before the killer disappeared) as a starting point MEGALOMANIAC ponders what if the the killer sired people who picked up his mantle.

Form over content film is a visually disturbing film that throws everything into the images. This is a film that has images that you will want to hang on your wall, when they are not turning your stomach.  In all seriousness this film has images that will haunt your nightmare and your conversations about the best things that films are doing visually in todays cinema.

The problem with the film is that outside of the visual this film is incredibly dull and soulless. This is a film that is all about the visuals, including the killings and torture at the expense of everything else. Honestly this is the most beautiful torture porn I've ever seen. However there is no point for this film to exist except for the stunning images to exist because there is no reason for us to be told this story.

While I know some will defend this film, the truth of the matter is this is a film that hates women. Yea I know one of the killers is a woman, but let's face it this is a film that truly seems to hate women and wants to see them cut up and destroyed. If you need proof don't just took at how the women are treated- look instead at how the brutalization of the women is shot as opposed to how the killings of the men are shot. The rapes and murders of the women are on screen and in your face. A woman's genitals are bitten off mid-rape and spit out. We watch the women suffer with the camera right in their faces. They are always turned to the camera. Not so much with the men who are allowed to look away or killed with part of the violent act off screen. We don't see the men. Additionally look at how the men all have names as if they are people  and we shouldn't see people killed, while most of the women do not, they are nobodies and nothings simply existing to be savaged. I'm sure the director had his reasons for how he shot the film but the way it came out is hurtful, vile and exactly the sort of thing that is going, or at least used to, create a fire storm.

The trouble is that the ugliness the film creates really has no reason to exist. As I said I know people will defend the film, but to what end? More ugliness in the world? You can't full say it's a reflection of the world  because how many serial killers do you know? Additionally while some could say its a reflection of the far right's attitude toward women, the reality is while they want to control women they aren't out to kill them horribly, yet. 

This is a just a pretty little hate machine and despite some impressive images can't not be recommended.

Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary (2020) Animation First

Remi Chaye's follow up to his classic LONG WAY NORTH is a look at a young Calamity Jane. On the wagon train to the west Jane's  unconventionality rubs everyone the wrong way, When she is accused of being a thief she runs away to prove her innocence.

This is decidedly a Euro-western. It doesn't feel like a film made in the US and we are better for it. And even though it feels like a European take on the American west the the film doesn't feel like a spaghetti western but more the early German westerns about Shatterhand that lead into the spaghettis. The closest American film would have been the wagon train sequence in the Coen Brothers' BUSTER SCRUGGS film.

Though honestly arguing what sort of western this reminds me of is kind of pointless since the western setting is less important than the fact this is simply a tale about a young girl finding her place in the world. Martha, soon to be Jane, simply is going out to right a wrong and prove to the world who she is. Its a solid tale that many young women, and even young men should see.

The visuals are stunning and I love that director Remi Chaye is developing his own path visually and storywise.

This is a definite treat for any animation lover and worth a look when it plays February 5 at Animation First (Its only playing the one night as the Opener)

Mother Schmuckers (2021) Sundance 2021

Two incredibly stupid brothers lose their mother's dog. They are given 24 hours to get him back or else they are out on the street.

This film is review proof. This is a film you either love or loath. While probably being drunk off your ass will help you'll know if you are going to like the film in the first two minutes  when the pair fry up some poo and then... yea well. If you find that sequence funny  then you might find the rest of this low brow stupid comedy.

I am not a fan. The problem for me is this is just a film that just aimed at pushing buttons. The jokes fall flat as directors Harpo and Lenny Guit seem to be fashioning jokes not based on what is funny but what is offensive and stupid. Yes they can produce laughs but more time than not you'll think of something better.

On the other hand I can see this film catching a cult following. I suspect had I seen this with an audience of cranked up, and possibly drunk, film fans I probably would have liked it more.

This wasn't my cup of tea, it might be yours.

Torpedo U-235 (2020) hits VOD May 19th

A crazy band of rogue partisans operating in Belgium are recruited to be trained and take a captured German submarine from Africa to the US. It does not go smoothly.

Enjoyable WW2 drama is nicely unpredictable even if the setting is one we've seen before. The whys and hows of the portion set in Europe promises a great time, even if it isn't entirely believable. It's a kind of modern day sensibility mashed with a typical WW2 action film that allows for some great action and funny lines.

Once the mission is set in motion things largely track as you would expect in a war time sub film with the German's hunting the sub having been tipped off in advance, and the under trained crew having to fight like hell to survive.  While we have been here before the turns within the familiar framework keep us watching since things don't entirely go as planned and we can't really guess ho will live or die.

While I didn't expect the greatest thing since sliced bread I still was surprised by how much I liked the film. Score one for having characters we love and a writer and director who know how to bend a familar story into an edge of your seat thrill ride.

Recommended for a rainy Sunday (or any quarantine day) at home.

Sword of God (2019) aka The Mute

To be honest I don't know how to classify SWORD OF GOD. I was sold it as a thriller by the folks at Film Movement (it is now available as part of their Virtual Cinema) and on many levels it is. I've also read that some people take it as a horror film because some of what happens is more horrifying and scary than most horror films, and that is true. Others consider it a religious drama and that is also true. You could easily classify it in a wide variety of genres and be right, which makes selling this film rather difficult...then again it is a great film which trumps the need for classification.

The basic plot has a group of knights going to a far off island to baptize and convert the inhabitants. Before the film opens pretty much everyone is dead, only two remain. Their plan to covert the locals and build a church high on a hill is in doubt, but they press on and things go...unexpectedly.

This is not really a genre film but instead  a tough and thoughtful exploration of the need to give religious lifts to an indigenous people. Think of it as a Middle Age version of THE MISSION, or SILENCE or the tangentially the recent Tribeca film 499. They really don't want what the knights are selling and the hard sell causes a wicked clash of cultures that doesn't go as expected.

Masterful on so many levels, from the performances to the sense of reality the film sucks us in and drags us along. I really could and wax poetic about it all but I am going to keep this short, you need to see this film more than read what I have to say.

One of the best things that the film does is keep us off balance by having us not understand what the locals are saying.  It is absolutely frustrating not knowing what is being said which makes us in the same boat as the knights. It makes you think what the hordes of god's messengers encountered over the centuries and it also makes you ponder did we really have to convert them at all.

I love this film a great deal.Watching it horrified me, it scared me, it broke my heart. It made me think and feel things not only while it was on but also for sometime after. The fact that it didn't leave me makes it even more special.

Highly recommended. The film can be rented here as part of Film Movement's Virtual Cinema. Half the of the 12 dollar cost goes to Film Movement and half to a theater of your choosing.

Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale (2019) NYICFF 2020

As Fritzi watches her friends dog while they are on a trip to Hungary, the protests that would lead to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany sweep up the young girl.

Good historical drama that will introduce kids to a time not so long ago when Europe was divided and there was real danger if you wanted to cross borders. Moving along at a good clip the film manages to be a neat little thriller as well as a historical time piece.

I really like the film a great deal and was swept along by the events, despite my having a good idea how it was all going to come out.

Recommended for anyone who wants a good tale and for any kids who are okay with an animated film that isn't cut animals and exploding battles

FRITZI plays the next three weekends at NYICFF. For more information and tickets go here.

Young Ahmed (2019) NYFF 2019

The discussions in the days following the press screening of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's YOUNG AHMED centered about how it didn't really work. Some people liked it more than others. Most people had problems with the ending, which is kind of odd.  Other people, myself included, had other issues with it. Regardless of the feelings pro or con it was a film that was still being discussed weeks after it screened, which I think means something even if it isn't liked.

The film is the story of teen aged Ahmed who is under going the process of radicalization. Everyone can see it but no one can stop it. While he is heading toward extremism, life and the things it throws at him, such as girls, are acting as bumps along the way. However it doesn't stop him from planning something murderous.

Moving at a breakneck speed YOUNG AHMED is a film on a mission. Clearly the directors have something to say and they are going to say it as fast as possible so we don't have time to think about what we are seeing. Playing like a very well done polemic the Dardennes want us to consider the people who become radicals, unfortunately they really don't give us enough breathing room or time to really to ponder what we are seeing. Running a brisk 84 minutes YOUNG AHMED remains wholly focused on our protagonist and wholly on the points the pair wants to make and nothing else.

My problem with the film is I don't see things as clear cut on any level as the Dardennes do.There should be more shading. Blame it entirely on my steady diet of documentaries that are regular fodder for Unseen Films. There have been at least four films this year on the subject including the excellent ACCEPT THE CALL about a father's efforts to understand how his son could be radicalized. It's a similar story to YOUNG AHMED and the fact that it has hung with me since I saw it in June (it's one of the best films I saw in 2019) colored how I saw this film particularly in the fact that radicalization is more complex than is shown here.

Personally I don't think YOUNG AHMED works. Its well made and all of that but there is something about script that just doesn't pull it together. ..

...then again I really haven't liked the work of the Dardennes, who have always come up with intriguing ideas that never quite work. YOUNG AHMED is a perfect example of that, except it really isn't intriguing enough to really discuss.

Brief thoughts on Second Time Around (2018) which I need to see again NYFF 2018

Politics, psychoanalysis, performance and art collide in a film by artist Dora Garcia. Recreating events in the 1960's and 70's in Argentina when there was a military coup the film attempts to show the events in a way how they happened and to discuss their ramifications.

I am not sure what I think of this film or how it is. A unique one of a kind piece of cinema it blends together a variety of styles in order to discuss history both past and present. There is a lot to take in and I know that I am going to have to see the film a second (and maybe a third) time in order to begin to piece it together. Complicating matters is the fact that the film is rooted in Argentine history of which I only have a little knowledge. While I could follow the larger picture I was kind of lost in the details.

Should you see the film? If you are adventurous yes. This is a one of a kind blending of styles and is very much the sort of thing that you need to see to have your horizons broadened. What will you make of it I'm not certain, but there is enough food for thought here to give you a a great deal to ponder.

Let The Corpses Tan (2018)

From Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani the directors of The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears and Amer comes Let The Corpse Tan a retro mod euro crime thriller by way of gaillos, spaghetti westerns and the art house. Weirdness happens.

Actually the weirdness is in the telling. The film is based on a 1971 pulp novel about a gang of gold thieves who pull off a daring robbery. They think they have found the perfect hiding place on a remote island. The problem is an artist and her family are staying there and some cops have shown up as well. Mayhem results.

As for the telling its full of arty angles, over saturated colors, and flashy touches that all hearken back to the crazy daze of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when Italian exploitation and westerns dominated the cinematic psyche. Every shot refers back to some earlier film, so much so I fully expect someone to annotate the film with every reference real and imagined. The look of the film is absolutely arresting….

…and completely distracting. While the film nerd in me loved the craft of the film, the emotional film lover checked out fifteen minutes in. My disconnect came not because the story wasn’t compelling rather that I was way too busy looking at the artifice. The artifice is great (it’s at times way cool) but I’m not sure there is any sort of beating heart inside it. It’s like looking at some really cool flashy pop art at a tourist trap shop in the city- the neon velvet paintings delight you in the minute you see it but nothing you’d either want to actually hang on your wall, especially when you realize you are going to have to carry it all day before you go home.

Don’t get me wrong its not a bad film, just nothing anyone needs to see unless they stumble on it or want to study cinema flash.

MANDY (2018) Fantasia 2018

(This review originally ran as part of the Unseen Films coverage of the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018)
Which is deadlier, a drug-running hippie death cult or two lovers who dig their comic books and sf? Tragic history says the dirty smelly hippies, but the only caveat is the fannish logger husband will be played by Nic Cage. He will have a chance for a full freak out when the cult leader abducts his wife in Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, which screens during the 2018 Fantasia Film Festival.

Red and Mandy Miller live happily in a remote cabin nestled in the Shadow Mountains. It is an Eden-like existence, until Mandy attracts the attention of Jeremiah Sand, a hippy cult leader most likely inspired by Manson, right down the failed release of hippy-dippy rock album. With the help of the vaguely supernatural Black Skulls biker gang, Sand and his brotherhood stage one of the most vicious home invasions you could imagine.

Initially, Sand tries to brainwash her with a special cocktail of mind-control drugs, but when Mandy resists their influence, he brutally murders her before Red’s eyes, leaving him for dead. That would be the cult’s only mistake and it might be enough to bring them down. Still, Miller’s crusty old trailer-dwelling crony warns him this vendetta could cost him his life, but Red is in no mood for such talk.

Essentially, Mandy is the male version of I Spit on Your Grave, as re-envisioned by Boris Vallejo, featuring fantastical matte paintings and brief animated cosmic interludes. Cosmatos doubles down on all the hazy neon visuals and synth-heavy proggish 1980s soundtrack music (think Tangerine Dream warmed up in Hell) that made less discerning cult movie fans flip for his first film, Beyond the Black Rainbow. However, this time around, he is also working with a narrative.

So, yes, this film is completely bonkers, but Nic Cage is right there with it, every step of the way. Forget about Leaving Las Vegas. This will be the film he will be remembered for forty years from now. He unleashes the Cage of Wicker Man and Mom and Dad for full effect. He is not quite Isabelle Adjani walking through the subway tunnel in Possession, but he is in the same gated community. Despite their classy pedigrees, Linus Roache and Andrea Riseborough keep in the spirit of the proceedings, as Sand and the title character. Plus, for an extra dose of hardnosed badassery, Bill Duke appears briefly but memorably as Miller’s old Jedi Master.

Just so you know, there is a chainsaw duel in Mandy. At one hundred-twenty-one minutes, it is shamelessly self-indulgent in just about every way possible, but you cannot accuse of getting stingy with the madness. Frankly, it over-delivers on the promised lunacy. Highly recommended for midnight movie regulars who fully understand what they are getting into.

The Elephant and The Butterfly (2018) Tribeca 2018

"Feel good" misfire has a a single mom desperately  leaving her daughter with her ex. He isn't suppose to know the girl is really his daughter, and she doesn't trust him, but she must make the flight... then what was supposed to be a couple of minutes becomes a couple of days.

Cute idea for a film begins off the rails and just goes farther afield as the realities of the plot simply fail to make any real world sense. Lets begin with the baby sitter who never picks up her phone and is a nonentity and lets move on through every plot point not the least of which is Antione takes Elsa from her grandmother secretly and no one bats an eye. You've effectively kidnapped the child and no one calls the police.... really?

Scenes begin and end. Bits drift about... and much of it works as random scenes but as a whole you'd have to be a fool not to wonder about ho exactly its all supposed to fit together. Nothing really connects up with out major leaps of faith.

Add to the mess what maybe the most annoying score (it sounds like it was composed on the stupid musical instrument the little girl plays a few times), a tone that portends a doom that never arrives and a little girl who will frequently look directly into the camera and you have a film that disappoints more than entertains.

Not worth the effort.

For more information go here

The Unknown Girl (2016) opens Friday

THE UNKNOWN GIRL played The New York Film Festival last year. With the film opening Friday I'm reposting Nate Hood's review

With only a little bit of reworking, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s THE UNKNOWN GIRL could have been an old school Hollywood film noir. It’s possibly the closest they have ever, or will ever, get to making a straight genre film. It’s a detective thriller without a detective or thrills; a film which somehow utilizes their trademark naturalistic style to create something both compelling and nerve-wracking.

The heroine is Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel), a doctor who prides herself in her skill and emotional detachment from her patients. But one night after closing she turns away a young black woman banging on the clinic doors. The next morning she’s found dead on the side of the canal across the street. Internal autopsies suggest that she was pushed. Consumed by guilt, Jenny swears to track down the dead girl’s identity so she may be returned to her family. But all of the people she interrogates—patients, suspected bystanders, locals at an internet cafe—seem unusually quick and adamant in their refusals to cooperate. Soon she gets attacked in her car by a couple of thugs. It seems that, much like the severed ear in David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET (1986), the dead woman inadvertently throws our hero into a world of corruption and crime.


But there are no gas-huffing sociopaths in THE UNKNOWN GIRL, just regular-seeming people in over their heads. They all have their reasons for not cooperating. One teenager who may have seen the young woman doesn’t want to implicate himself or his friend in a crime. One older man doesn’t want word getting out that he may have solicited the murdered girl for fellatio. And others simply fear that any investigation might lead cops to their “side businesses.” Yet Jenny stays her course, quietly yet firmly begging for any information, even after local detectives tell her to stop.

For me, the most interesting films in the Dardennes’ filmography are the ones that depict their native Belgium as a country in flux, a macrocosm in which undesirables get cast aside to dwell on the peripheries of society. Their debut—and until THE UNKNOWN GIRL, my favorite of their films—THE PROMISE (1996) focused on a young boy growing a conscience about how his father helps smuggle, house, and exploit illegal immigrants. Their Palme d’Or winning film L’ENFANT (2005) follows a man who literally sells their baby on the black market. Adhering to this trend, THE UNKNOWN GIRL is both one of their most nihilistic and hopeful efforts: it shows a Belgium where nearly everybody has sinister secrets in their private lives; yet it’s also one where good people like Jenny Davin can still seek and find justice.

8/10