Vassilis Katsoupis (My Friend, Larry Gus) makes his directorial debut in fiction with an international production that premiered a few days ago at the Berlin Film Festival. The Greek director is based on his own idea that inspired Ben Hopkins’ script: Nemo, an art thief (Willem Dafoe), breaks into an ultra-modern Manhattan loft to… rid it of its valuable contents. However, something goes wrong and he is trapped in a huge apartment with no way to escape or communicate. As the days turn into weeks, his mental and physical condition is tested.

Katsoupis has the good fortune to make his first major cinematic journey in the company of Willem Dafoe. The American actor is fully occupied here, the camera is watching his every movement, reaction and facial expression. And the story of this peculiar “Broken Man” in Manhattan, while obviously suffering from plausibility, is very interesting, exploring both the limits of human nature and its connection with art. Nimo’s “dialogue” with the works around him and how they gradually turn into utilitarian objects says a lot about modern culture, about the futility of immoderate enrichment and about the dual nature (practical – spiritual) of human needs.

No bears ★★★½
DRAMA (2022)
Directed by: Jafar Panahi
Interpretations: Jafar Panahi, Mina Cavani

Special committee prize at the last Venice Film Festival for the genius of the film’s conception by the director, who paid for his creative courage with prison. The protagonist here is Panahi himself in the role of a director who is trying to shoot a film remotely in Turkey, while he himself is forced to stay in an Iranian village near the border, issuing instructions via the Internet. However, he will soon face the mistrust and backward perception of the locals. Basically, Panahi is making three different films by filming himself, and the third is filming from a distance. Here, of course, this is not a documentary, but a well-aimed fiction, designed to highlight the contemporary problems of Iranian society, both at the level of artistic freedom and at the level of the social base.

The film, which won the Locarno Film Festival 2022 and won awards for director, male and female, was the perfect debut for Costa Rican Valentina Morel. Sixteen-year-old Eva lives with her mother and younger sister, but what she really wants to do is move in with her estranged father. The two will start spending more and more time together, with tender moments but also wild conflicts as the naughty toddler discovers the adult world. The story of growing up and sexual awakening of a young girl becomes even more interesting if you put next to the figure of a father experiencing his own kind of “youth”. Explosive characters, the two make up a tense duo in a film that is at times brutally realistic, but at the same time tender, in the immature, fresh key of the director’s new voice.

The Sophoclesian myth of Antigone is loosely adapted and set in contemporary Canada. Young Antigone, from a gypsy immigrant family, sees her older brother shot by the police and her younger brother arrested. She then decides to act, only to be captured by the authorities and at the same time spark a wave of youth support for her fight for justice. Derasp borrows some elements from the tragedy, combining them with a real-life case of police brutality to create a dynamic ensemble that looks—and pretty much is—pretty sketchy, yet manages to stay true to its timeless message. sample.

The popular horror film series is in its sixth installment. After the Woodsboro massacre, four survivors seek a new life in New York, away from the bloodthirsty Ghostface. As you know, in these cases, security lasts only for a while … The creators of the previous successful part continue to follow the same path of well-shot action, although this time they are less inventive.

Two veteran Hollywood actors meet in a typical crime thriller. A seasoned homicide detective (Cole Hauser) confronts a ruthless serial killer who executes his victims with black magic rituals. To stop him, the detective will seek the help of a university professor (Morgan Freeman) who specializes in African cultures.