REVIEWS
Post-film thoughts.
Diary of a Mad Old Man: Distorted Desire
From a persistent foot fetish that leads to Utsugi getting Susu’s footprints engraved on his gravestone to his cartoonish rejection of anything and anyone that isn’t Susu, you can’t help but watch with a morbid and pitiful fascination as he gets lost in a relationship he’s largely projected onto his daughter-in-law.
Vintage Violence: Doing It for the Views
Seemingly fascinated with the intersection of performance and reality, Vintage Violence is one of the few entries in recent years that feels truly entrenched in online culture. Kotlyarenko approaches the subject not with an intention of warning, but an understanding that the online world is part of our reality just as anything else. Every detail, down to the individual users in Carter’s livestream chat, feel deeply human and all too real.
We Are Aliens: Friendship and the Scars It Leaves
Who hasn’t stared at the ceiling for hours, late at night, replaying an embarrassing memory from middle school over and over again? We Are Aliens (2026) takes this feeling and pushes it to its limit, and, as someone who tends to get stuck in the past, I immediately felt like the film was made for me.
The Violinist: On War and The Sound of Music
Marking the first time that a Singaporean production not only won the award but took part in the Festival, The Violinist won the hearts of the Annecy jury through its blending of intense orchestration and a tense love story across the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of Singapore.