I think to myself, with all this impatience, weariness, and relentless questioning of everything, it wouldn’t be surprising if, one day, even lunar travel, solar system exploration, and humanity’s greatest achievements became utterly meaningless to me. Perhaps it’s the same old feverish refrain of “Let’s not speak ill of the moon if we have a fever.” Except, of course, there is no moon—it’s merely the oppressive synergy of the films’ atmospheres and the bitter realities outside.

This very exhaustion might explain my deep empathy and solidarity with Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. Leigh’s films—no matter their theme or tone—have always been admirable to me, as if he captures something eternally true about life, about people. His newest work, Hard Truths, after years of struggles to secure funding, feels like a deliberate inversion of Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). Where that earlier film gave us a bright, optimistic protagonist—an effervescent young woman whose open-hearted joy seemed to absorb and reflect life’s complexities—here we are confronted with Pansy, a woman who lashes out at everyone and everything. From the opening moments, she is pugnacious and weary, relentlessly externalizing her anger and bitterness. She lashes at family, neighbours, shopkeepers, customers—anyone in her orbit. Clearly, she is carrying an unspoken burden, a suffering she cannot contain.
If the photographer in Secrets & Lies (1996) or the taxi driver in All or Nothing (2002), both portrayed by Timothy Spall, were quiet listeners and observers like Pansy’s husband (David Webber), silently absorbing the weight of others’ sorrows, Pansy is their stark opposite—an open channel of frustration, perpetually venting her dissatisfaction with herself and the world around her. Unlike the driving instructor (Eddie Marsan) in Happy-Go-Lucky (Eddie Marsan), whose sudden outbursts betrayed a deeply repressed inner torment, Pansy’s anger is not sporadic; it is her default state, a relentless undercurrent that shapes her every interaction and defines her existence.
The film’s central contrast—between Pansy’s aggression and her withdrawn, depressive son— also finds echoes in Leigh’s Another Year (2010), where the harmony of the cheerful elderly couple, Tom and Gerry, is offset by their emotionally broken, lonely friends. Here, Pansy’s bitterness stands in stark relief against her carefree, energetic sister and the dynamic lives of her sister’s daughters.
Hard Truths, like all of Leigh’s works, thrives in the small, precise moments of its characters’ lives. His finely wrought dialogue—always sharply observed, designed, and delivered—imbues these real spaces with a kind of painful authenticity. Leigh has an unmatched ability to reflect the British middle class, with all their aspirations, fragility, and disappointments. This is not the overt despair of Ken Loach’s lower-class dramas, On Falling, or Andrea Arnold’s Bird, but a distinct world defined by subtler forms of discontent.
The brilliance of Hard Truths lies in how Marianne Jean-Baptiste embodies Pansy’s duality—her anger as both tragedy and dark comedy. The film is steeped in Leigh’s unmatched ability to observe people: the way they speak, act, and react, with a level of precision and empathy that makes every moment feel lived. Take, for example, the scene where Pansy visits her doctor and later her dentist. It’s crafted with such sharp truthfulness that it feels as though I had personally documented those interactions—uncannily resembling conversations I’ve had with similarly exasperating patients in my own dental practice. It’s a moment where frustration and empathy collide, capturing the uncomfortable yet deeply human realities of these exchanges with startling clarity.
As the story unfolds in Hard Truths, it becomes evident that the fraught, traumatic relationship between the mother and her daughter may be one of the root causes of Pansy’s relentless anger and frustration, emotions that have become inseparable from her daily existence. Yet, in this festival’s recurring theme of parents unintentionally passing their misery onto their children, Pansy’s mother, herself, and her son are far from the only characters affected.

In Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer, we encounter another poignant example. The film centers on the haunting presence of a father’s ghost, which continues to shape and torment the life of his son. Nicolas Cage delivers a gripping performance as a man seeking to buy property in a picturesque area of Australia, near a beautiful beach, driven by a desire to fulfill both his father’s unspoken wishes and his own ambitions. However, this idyllic beach, which initially appears to be a paradise, soon reveals itself as a personal hell.
Through a series of horrifying and surreal events—eerily reminiscent of entrapment narratives like Oliver Stone’s U Turn or the Australian cult classic Wake in Fright, grounding it firmly in its Australian origins—the protagonist loses everything, including his sense of self, in pursuit of a meaningless goal.
As reality and delusion intertwine, the film constructs a dark, oppressive atmosphere infused with hostility, xenophobia, toxic masculinity, and cult-like behaviors. By the story’s grim and grotesque conclusion, the son’s present and the father’s past merge in a disorienting and unsettling way, leaving the fate of all the characters shrouded in ambiguity. The overarching situation can perhaps best be encapsulated by this verse from Rumi:
Die to the self, and break its binding hold,
This “self” a prison, where our souls are sold.
An axe of will, to carve a freeing way,
When prison falls, we rise as kings this day.
The Surfer is a haunting meditation on the cyclical nature of inherited pain and ambition, a grim reminder of how easily paradise can turn into purgatory when one is unable to let go of the past.
Watching these films again reminds me of how delicate parenting truly is—how my mindset, and even the smallest of my actions, could ripple into my daughter’s future. And yet, while I deeply admire Leigh’s ability to portray fragile, unpleasant characters like Pansy with such raw honesty, I can’t help but wish—for her, for Leigh’s other characters, and for the countless souls depicted in this festival’s films—that there could be a moment of happiness. Even a fleeting glimpse of joy.
I find myself thinking that I, too, am becoming like my young daughter. It’s as if the world now expects me to sing and dance for her, to banish all the bitterness with a smile and a song, as in Rumi’s verse:
O shell that enters our vast ocean’s flow, let sadness fade,
Like other shells, with pearly light you shall be arrayed.
And yet, deep down, I fear she already senses the shadows I carry—the bitterness and disillusionment that linger beneath my attempts at levity. I wish someone or something could restore my faith, could heal these wounded hearts we carry. But it seems, for now, comfort remains distant. Instead, we are left with discipline and warnings, the weight of responsibility heavy on our shoulders, as we hope for a brighter tomorrow that feels all too far away.
***

Behind the torrent of anger and frustration in Hard Truths—whether unconsciously a byproduct of the challenges of filmmaking or consciously drawn from Mike Leigh’s acute observation of society—lies a deeper issue that has gripped my thoughts. It’s the destructive, damaging cycle that ensnares multiple generations, passing its weight from parents to children like an inherited curse. This year, it isn’t only Leigh’s characters caught in this relentless loop; traces of this flawed and harmful cycle permeate many of the festival’s films, manifesting in different ways.
Two films that stand out as potent explorations of this theme—though released outside the festival circuit—are Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos) and The Substance (Coralie Fargeat). These films dissect the psychological captivity that arises when individuals become consumed by their own ideas, their pains, or the illusory comfort and pleasure provided by their material and spiritual worlds. Both films suggest a haunting truth: that this captivity, once internalized, demands sacrifices so profound—your life, your loved ones, your possessions, even your homeland—that escape feels impossible. It’s not merely an addiction to comfort but a surrender to a cycle of self-destruction, perpetuated by an inability to break free from entrenched beliefs or systems.
At this year’s festival, this destructive cycle was mirrored in The Assessment (Florencia Colucci), a film whose conceptual boldness and strangeness rival Lanthimos’ work. Set in a dystopian future where childbearing is prohibited and adoption is tightly controlled, the film follows a family undergoing an evaluation to qualify as potential parents. On one level, The Assessment captures the gruelling, nerve-fraying realities of parenting and caregiving, portraying the precarious, chaotic, and often unforeseen challenges that test the patience and resolve of any family. On another level, it chillingly explores the pressure imposed by an external controlling force—be it a system of governance, a dominant ideology, or an overarching societal order—that demands submission in exchange for survival.
The family’s instinctive need to comply with this system underscores the film’s central tragedy: the inevitability of complete submission, even to the point of forfeiting autonomy over their most private moments. Like so many other films at the festival, The Assessment traps its characters in an unbreakable loop where their options narrow to two: dissolve into a virtual world or resort to violent rebellion to escape.
Within these vicious cycles—inescapable and deeply flawed—another recurring motif emerges: the duality of characters who live in two worlds, embodying a split existence that often becomes the crux of the story. This theme is vividly explored in The Substance, where duality takes centre stage. Similarly, in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the judge—a family friend—embodies this dual existence. Initially portrayed as a figure of conscience and morality, he transforms into a menacing force in the film’s final act, his arc encapsulating the moral ambiguity and disintegration that define these cycles.

Even more compelling are the protagonists of Anora and Emilia Pérez, who take this dual existence to new heights. Their struggles, framed within this recurring theme of inescapable cycles and internal conflict, echo the broader tension present in many of this year’s standout films: the fragility of human agency in the face of overwhelming external forces. Ultimately, these films weave a collective portrait of humanity caught in loops of its own making—where resistance feels futile, escape seems impossible, and yet the fight to break free persists, even if only in the smallest of gestures. This theme resonates deeply, leaving us to wonder: are we truly trapped, or is the act of resistance itself the cycle we are doomed to repeat?
Anora seems to pick up where Sean Baker’s previous films, The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), left off. The endings of those films offered fleeting, ephemeral moments of escapism—dreamlike respites from the harsh realities faced by their characters. In Anora, Baker shifts the lens forward, essentially envisioning the young adulthood of one of the little girls from The Florida Project, the one who sought refuge in Disneyland to escape a life of squalor, poverty, and a mother entangled in sex work. Now grown, she works as a sex worker in a glamorous, opulent strip club. At one point, she even references Disney World.
The film unfolds in three distinct acts. The first introduces a world of hedonistic indulgence, ignited by the arrival of a wealthy young Russian man, evoking the fairytale trope of a prince coming to rescue Cinderella. The second act plunges into limbo—a desperate struggle to preserve this fragile, illusory paradise. Finally, the third act snaps back to reality, dismantling the fantasy and resuming the relentless cycle of class constraints and inescapable fates.
Despite its Palme d’Or win, Anora leans closer to mainstream American cinema than Baker’s earlier, more independent works. His previous films captured moments of raw immediacy through impressionistic, rapid cuts, creating a sense of lived-in authenticity. While Anora retains Baker’s characteristic fast-paced editing, its broader accessibility and narrative polish make it feel more conventional in tone.
What truly distinguishes Anora is its nuanced middle section. Here, Baker takes his time to flesh out the foremen of the Russian family, characters who initially exude a stereotypical gangster-like aura. Yet, with minimal use of violence, they reveal themselves to be surprisingly vulnerable—counterpoints to Anora’s desperation. One bodyguard, in particular, is developed into a sympathetic and even desirable figure, adding emotional depth to the narrative. The film also dedicates time to Anora’s navigation of the city in search of the Russian son, a journey that feels both meandering and purposeful. Even the wealthy Russian father, initially a symbol of cold privilege, is given a layer of complexity that elevates the story above mere melodrama.
These elements imbue Anora with a distinct identity, differentiating it from formulaic mainstream fare. Yet, for all its merits, the film’s polish and accessibility may leave some longing for the raw, unvarnished storytelling that defined Baker’s earlier work. Still, Anora succeeds as both a standalone piece and an evocative continuation of Baker’s cinematic exploration of lives caught in cycles of hope and despair.

If I had been on the Cannes jury, I would have advocated for Emilia Pérez as a more deserving recipient of the Palme d’Or. Unlike Anora, Emilia Pérez tackles a boldly unfashionable subject with striking inventiveness and an unconventional approach. Directed by Jacques Audiard, the film revolves around a Mexican drug cartel leader undergoing gender transition to escape his violent past. This transition—a “new order” of sorts—is facilitated by a woman seeking wealth through ill-gotten gains and performed by an Israeli surgeon in Tel Aviv. Beyond its provocative premise, the film raises profound questions about humanity’s ability—or inability—to break free from cycles of violence and dominance.
The core message of Emilia Pérez can be distilled into an allegory: if humanity today is the product and legacy of a patriarchal worldview, then this “new order,” embodied by the protagonist’s transition, is a chance to critique and reject the violence and cruelty of the past. The hope is for a less flawed, more compassionate era. Yet Audiard doesn’t offer optimism without irony. He exposes the inherent flaws of humanity—envy, greed, possessiveness, and the pursuit of power—that persist regardless of gender or identity. The result is that this “paradise,” like the one in Anora, collapses under its own weight, proving unsustainable.
Audiard, like many filmmakers this year, acknowledges the futility of attempting to break these cycles. His only solution, implied yet unachievable, is the elimination of the very factors that created the new order—a task he seems to view as impossible. The film’s ironic twist lies in its ending: from the wreckage of violence, a saint emerges. Much like in Audiard’s A Prophet (2009), this saint is revered for their present-day goodness, while the public remains oblivious to their dark, sordid past. This leads to the film’s lingering, uncomfortable question: is ignorance of history and reliance solely on present-day virtue a viable solution to humanity’s enduring pain?
The musical format of Emilia Pérez adds a unique dimension, positioning the film within the subgenre of dark, tragic musicals like Sweeney Todd or even tragic operas. Its fairytale-like narrative structure, uninterrupted flow, and self-reflective tone create a sense of distance, akin to the symbolic bird character in Andrea Arnold’s Bird. This distance tempers the bitterness and despair of the narrative, making its inevitable conclusion somewhat more bearable.

Interestingly, this same approach is evident in Joshua Oppenheimer’s first fictional feature, The End. Known for his groundbreaking and controversial documentary The Act of Killing (2012), which turned the Indonesian genocide into a chilling cinematic phenomenon, Oppenheimer adopts the musical format for this apocalyptic tale. On the surface, the whimsical structure appears at odds with the film’s dark themes. Yet it complements the story, creating an unsettling juxtaposition.
The End follows a family living in the ruins of a future shaped by environmental collapse. The father, one of the architects of this destruction, writes self-aggrandizing memoirs portraying himself as a hero. The mother, an artist, decorates their shelter with paintings, clinging to beauty amidst decay. Meanwhile, the son, oblivious to his surroundings and the past, spends his days swimming and meticulously constructing a model of a world that no longer exists outside their home.
Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic world echoes the ritualistic survival dynamics of Yorgos Lanthimos, particularly Dogtooth. The fragile balance of the family’s existence is disrupted when a stranger arrives seeking refuge, a disruption that, predictably, exacts a toll on someone from the lower classes. The cycle of destruction repeats: something cursed from the old world clings to the vulnerable, ensuring that no amount of ritual, reinvention, or denial can escape the spectre of the past.
Both Emilia Pérez and The End confront humanity’s most haunting cycles, exploring the persistence of violence, dominance, and moral decay. Whether through Audiard’s provocative critique or Oppenheimer’s dystopian allegory, these films suggest that humanity remains trapped by its own flaws. They leave us with a question that echoes long after the credits roll: are we doomed to endlessly repeat our mistakes, or is there a way to truly break the cycle?

The dichotomy of the saint-today, sinner-yesterday, as seen in Emilia Pérez and the father in The End, resurfaced at this year’s festival in François Ozon’s When Fall Comes. Ozon, a filmmaker who thrives on genre experimentation and rarely fails to evoke strong reactions—whether admiration or disdain—presents a portrait of complexity and contradiction in his latest work. At its heart is Michèle Zegho (played by Hélène Vincent), a seemingly kind-hearted elderly woman whose daughter harbours little affection for her.
Through a subtle and meticulously crafted script, Ozon gradually unveils hidden facets of Michèle’s past, along with those of several other characters. The revelations range from prostitution to lies, anger, and even murder. Yet Ozon’s treatment of these transgressions is striking. Rather than provoking disgust or condemnation, his empathetic lens encourages viewers to understand, accept, and even justify these flaws. The characters’ sins become humanized, their moral failures reframed as survivable—and forgivable—aspects of life’s complexities.

In stark contrast is Three Kilometres to the End of the World by Emanuel Pârvu. Rooted firmly in the gritty tradition of Romanian realism, akin to Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016), Pârvu’s film presents a raw and unvarnished account of wrongdoing. Set in a village rife with corruption and violence, it tells the story of a young man who is brutally attacked by two others for his homosexuality. Rather than supporting his son, the victim’s father condemns him, compounding the injustice.
What unfolds is a harrowing exposé of the village’s deeply ingrained corruption. The priest, the police, and the wealthy father of the perpetrators form a network of complicity, working tirelessly to cover up the atrocity. Unlike Ozon’s nuanced exploration of human flaws, Pârvu’s depiction of these villagers’ actions is raw, unflinching, and deeply distressing. The wrongdoing feels more primal, more unforgivable, as though it emanates from a darker, more primitive place within human nature.
The contrast between these two films raises an intriguing question about cultural and cinematic approaches to moral failure. Ozon’s French lens seems to lean toward justification and reconciliation—a silencing of past sins for the sake of peace and coexistence. In his film, even the darkest actions are presented with a degree of grace, allowing for forgiveness to bloom. In Pârvu’s Romanian realism, by contrast, there is no such reprieve. The characters’ transgressions are raw, painful, and inescapable, dragging the viewer through the muck of their consequences without offering catharsis or redemption.
Yet, in both films, the act of concealing wrongdoing—whether for self-preservation, societal expediency, or survival—is paramount. In Ozon’s world, it becomes a quiet pact to live with the complexities of human frailty. In Pârvu’s village, it is a collective conspiracy to suppress justice and protect power structures. In both cases, the rights of the victims are sacrificed, and the sins are buried—not forgiven, but silenced.

Watching Edward Berger’s Conclave left me with a persistent sense of déjà vu. The ritualistic scenes of the papal election immediately brought to mind the opening sequences of Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes (2019). And in its entirety, Berger’s film could easily evoke the operatic tone of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope, with its aestheticized portrayal of Vatican intrigue. But Conclave, with its focus on the scheming and power struggles behind the succession to Christianity’s largest institution, reminded me most strongly of Tarik Saleh’s Boy from Heaven (2022). That film, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes and screened at the London Film Festival two years ago, also depicted a cutthroat competition for a spiritual leadership position, set against the death of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt.
The key difference lies in their presentations. Saleh’s Boy from Heaven possesses a rawness, a pre-modern, almost unvarnished aesthetic befitting its Middle Eastern setting. In contrast, Berger’s Conclave employs the grandeur of its European setting: the lush vestments, the Sistine Chapel resplendent with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, and the evocative interplay of colour, light, editing, and music. These embellishments cloak the festering corruption and political manoeuvring in a veneer of reverence and beauty. The film’s conclusion, with the election of a moderate and conciliatory Pope over a radical counterpart, offers a glimmer of hope—a vision of harmony for the future. Yet, one can’t help but feel the improbability of such a harmonious future in an institution so deeply entrenched in tradition and conflict.
This sense of the past haunting the present carried through another film at this year’s festival:

, Alexandre O. Philippe’s latest work, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Philippe, known for his cinematic tributes, once again transcends the boundaries of his central subject. Chain Reactions explores the cultural impact of Hooper’s horror classic, delving into the evolving reception of the film and its influence on generations of filmmakers.
One interviewee recalls how different versions of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shaped their experience: the grainy, faded print amplified the film’s oppressive atmosphere, while the restored version revealed the unexpectedly beautiful cinematography Hooper had crafted—visuals that starkly contrasted with the film’s grisly narrative. In a particularly evocative moment, Japanese auteur Takashi Miike recounts how, as a teenager, he went to see Chaplin’s City Lights but accidentally stumbled into a screening of Hooper’s film. The experience fundamentally altered his cinematic language and worldview, blending the dark chaos of horror with the humanity of drama.
Philippe underscores this juxtaposition visually in a striking sequence. At one point, the film frames an image of Chaplin mischievously pulling a thread from another actor’s clothes, unravelling them in comedic chaos, on the right. On the left, a gruesome horror scene depicts a deranged killer viciously disembowelling a victim. The parallel is striking: both are acts of transgression, yet one evokes laughter while the other provokes terror. This interplay of tone and context reflects the versatility of cinema itself—the medium’s ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary, and vice versa.
This thematic parallel connects Conclave, Boy from Heaven, and even Chain Reactions to broader questions about the nature of perception and morality in film. Like François Ozon’s When Fall Comes or Emanuel Pârvu’s Three Kilometres to the End of the World, these films delve into the moral ambiguity of their characters and the often duplicitous roles institutions and individuals play. As one character in the Iranian film Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1992) suggests, cinema possesses the extraordinary power to transform a monkey into a queen—or a queen into a monkey—reframing and reshaping reality itself with its limitless potential for reinvention.
Conclave has two key lines. One, from Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), refers to the late Pope predicting the next eight moves in a chess game, which serves as a self-description of the screenplay’s structure and the Pope’s plan for the eventual election. The more fundamental and important line, however, comes from Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes): “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end……..Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith…Let us pray that God grants us a Pope who doubts…” This statement underpins the film’s ultimate choice of a moderate, conciliatory Pope and serves as a commentary on the dangers of unwavering belief. But its significance extends further, offering a lens through which to view many of this year’s films, which repeatedly explore the consequences of rigid certainty and ideological extremity. Characters across these narratives are undone by their dogmatic adherence to their beliefs, their refusal to entertain doubt or alternative perspectives. Whether in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, , The Substance, Kinds of Kindness, The Assessment, Audrey, or Marco, the Invented Truth, the pattern is strikingly clear: certainty becomes a form of blindness, leading to personal, relational, and even societal ruin.

An unexpected yet fitting example of this theme emerges in Vermiglio (directed by Maura Delpero), a quietly evocative film that recalls the work of the Taviani brothers and Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978). Set in a rural Italian community, Vermiglio unfolds in a series of tableaux, gradually revealing the tragedy that defines the fate of a family bound by war, geography, and entrenched patriarchal values. Its restrained style—uncommon in contemporary Italian cinema except perhaps in the works of Alice Rohrwacher—invites reflection rather than overt dramatization.
At the centre of this family’s story is the teacher father, a man ostensibly devoted to music, knowledge, and progress. Yet his patriarchal authority and insistent, uncompromising belief in his way of raising and educating his children dominate their lives, contributing to their tragedy. His certitude, his unwavering conviction in his role and vision, reflects the very danger Cardinal Lawrence warns of: how certainty can stifle, fragment, and ultimately destroy.
***

In the middle days of the festival, as I searched in vain for an escape from the shadow of off-screen darkness and a glimmer of hope on-screen—someone, anyone, capable of breaking free from their predetermined fate—I found myself captivated by Stranger Eyes and The Tides. Both films offered a welcome diversion, turning my focus to the melancholic duality of their characters’ existences rather than the vicious cycles that often define such narratives.
Stranger Eyes, the latest work by Singaporean filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua, heralds a promising future for a director already celebrated for his Golden Leopard-winning A Land Imagined (2018). While his debut began as a detective story before transitioning into a poignant critique of Singapore’s migrant worker exploitation, Stranger Eyes similarly subverts expectations. It begins with the anguish of a couple reeling from the disappearance of their child—a mystery that initially seems to propel the story. But as the film progresses, it transcends the anxiety of abduction, evolving into a profound exploration of voyeurism, guilt, and connection.
At first, the narrative echoes Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005): the family receives unsettling DVDs suggesting they are being watched. However, the reveal of the voyeur’s identity shifts the perspective, offering a flashback that recounts the story from his point of view. By the third act, we return to the father’s perspective, his curiosity about the voyeur consuming him. The film becomes a meditation on the addictive, almost contagious nature of voyeurism, blurring the boundaries between watcher and watched. Gradually, Stranger Eyes weaves its characters into a tapestry where they appear as reflections or extensions of one another, as if their lives are iterations of the same core truths.
The film’s cinematic lineage—its nods to Hitchcock, Nolan, and Haneke—underscores its themes. It reminded me of moments from Kiarostami’s Certified Copy or The Wind Will Carry Us, where characters look into mirrors and we, in turn, gaze into their reflections. It made me wonder: is cinema, this two-hour act of voyeurism (and a lifelong one for its devotees), ultimately about watching pieces of ourselves? When we peer into the lives of on-screen characters, are we really examining our own mistakes, shortcomings, and behaviours? And if so, can this act of seeing help us break free from cycles of guilt, regret, or neglect?
I found myself wrestling with these questions when, in a pivotal scene, the father in Stranger Eyes sees his negligence toward his family reflected back at him through the voyeur’s camera. Suddenly, I was reminded of my own choices—spending hours in the cinema, immersed in the lives of fictional others, instead of being with my own child. Yet my addiction to cinema had brought me here, to this festival, unable—or unwilling—to stay away.
I used to hold onto the belief that if each person corrected something wrong or inappropriate in their personal lives, it would ripple outward, improving both their circumstances and the world. But as life has worn on, I’ve come to see how naive that belief was. Fundamental changes—those with tangible and lasting results—demand far more than good intentions. They require an immense reservoir of willpower and resources, often beyond what any one individual can muster.
Still, I wonder: in this era of disillusionment, fatigue, and constant complaint, can cinema—a flicker of light on the screen—truly move someone to act, to change? Can one person’s awakening spark a broader transformation? Or does real change require the collective resolve of an entire nation, a steadfast will, and a monumental effort?
In moments like these, the value of filmmakers like Jia Zhangke and Wang Bing becomes undeniable. Their work serves as both a mirror and a needle—a necessary jolt to those who have grown complacent in their achievements, enamoured by their power, and consumed by the relentless tides of change. Sometimes, it takes an outsider, an observer with a camera, to pierce the bubble we inhabit and force us to confront realities we might otherwise ignore.
Jia Zhangke and Wang Bing have dedicated themselves to documenting the transformation of China over the past two decades, preserving a record of a country that has not only reshaped itself but now casts its shadow over the world’s present and future. Their films capture the subtle details—the geography, the culture, the lives of ordinary people—that often go unnoticed in the polished portrayals of China seen in global cinema. These are the vanishing fragments of a country shedding its old skin, details that might be impossible to see without their lens.
Though my understanding of Wang Bing’s documentary work is limited, his commitment to multi-hour projects and his latest endeavour, Youth (Spring), strike me as critical acts of preservation. His films capture the overlooked, the everyday, the unseen moments of life in modern China, rendering them visible and undeniable.
Similarly, Jia Zhangke has spent over two decades weaving these transformations into narratives that reflect both the spirit and the fractures of a changing land. For cinephiles and for China itself, the work of these directors is a gift—a time capsule of humanity amidst seismic shifts, a record of what might otherwise be forgotten.
In times of disillusionment, these films remind us that change, whether personal or collective, starts with observation. They compel us to see—not just the world but ourselves—through “stranger eyes.” And perhaps, in those moments of recognition, we might find the strength to move forward, to confront the challenges we’ve ignored for too long, and to hope that even small actions can eventually ripple into something larger.

Jia Zhangke’s latest film, Caught by the Tides, feels like the culmination of a journey spanning more than two decades—a summation of his career and the themes he has meticulously explored. During the Q&A after the screening, Jia, wearing sunglasses due to photosensitivity caused by long hours spent editing, apologized to the audience. This personal detail mirrors the laborious and deeply personal nature of the film’s creation.
The project began with the advent of digital filmmaking in 2000, allowing Jia to document his surroundings freely and directly, both on set and behind the scenes. Originally titled A Man with a Digital Camera, the film grew organically over nearly twenty years. It was during the pandemic that Jia decided to sift through the footage, shaping it into its final form. The result is a film that bridges the documentary and narrative modes of his career: the observational, vérité style of his early works intertwined with the more structured, character-driven narratives of his later films.
What struck me most about Caught by the Tides is how it encapsulates a duality that runs through all of Jia’s work—a depiction of two spirits inhabiting one land. These two spirits, summoned from within his previous films, offer a profound insight into contemporary China.
At the Q&A, I posed the sole audience question:
“I don’t know if you or your fellow Chinese viewers agree with me, but what I see in Caught by the Tides and your films overall feels like your definition of China as a country with two spirits. One is a gentle, sensitive, observant, and suffering spirit, rooted in human emotions, deeply connected to ordinary people, crumbling buildings, and disappearing places, yearning for love. This spirit, it seems, resides in the women of your films. The other is a harsh, relentless spirit, devoid of compassion or love, ruthlessly pursuing development—a force whose violence veers into gangsterism. This, I feel, is embodied by your male characters. In many ways, today’s China appears to be a product of this duality.”
Jia’s films have often captured this tension between tradition and modernity, emotion and ambition, and Caught by the Tides crystallizes it. The film ends with a striking moment: the voices of the man and woman searching for each other throughout the film are silenced. Instead, their interactions are conveyed through intertitles, culminating in an eerie encounter with a robot in a store. I asked Jia if this represented his vision of the future.
His response, though sincere, did not directly or specifically address my question and comments. He spoke about a future that deeply concerned him, mentioning the robots already being used in stores and malls across China—a reality that reflects not the future, but the present state of the country.
Still, I resist accepting the bleakness of the film’s robotic conclusion. Instead, I place my hope in an earlier moment, where the woman, having separated from the man, runs with a group of people wearing phosphorescent shoes in the night—a fleeting image of movement, vitality, and possibility.
As I left the cinema, pondering when I might interview Jia Zhangke in greater depth, a Chinese viewer approached me to express gratitude for my interpretation. They admitted they hadn’t considered Jia’s films in this way before. This unexpected affirmation filled me with quiet joy, a reminder of the transformative potential of fresh perspectives. In that moment, I murmured to myself: we all desperately need “stranger eyes.”

That night, as I rode the train home, tucked into a quiet corner, counting down the moments until I’d reach my surely sleeping child, I braced myself for my wife’s justified reproach. This wasn’t the plan. My mind replayed the evening’s thoughts, and I kept telling myself: no, “stranger eyes” don’t seem to offer much of an effective solution for many filmmakers of this era. Whether it’s Eric Marco in Marco, the Invented Truth or Aisha in Aisha, these characters—and the worlds they inhabit—remind us how deeply entrenched our cycles of failure, self-delusion, and systemic dysfunction remain.
In Marco, the Invented Truth, directed by Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño, the story revolves around Eric Marco, a charismatic and attention-seeking man who, in a desperate bid for notoriety (or, as we might say today, for likes), presents himself as a survivor of a concentration camp. Based on a true story, the film captures his gradual ascent to national hero status. The tragicomic twist comes when Marco’s deception is revealed: not only has a book been written and a documentary made about his fabricated story, but his notoriety has made him a household name. And yet, even after his lies come to light, Marco clings stubbornly to his invented persona, insisting on its validity until the end of his life—not for financial gain, but out of sheer addiction to the false image he’s created of himself.
The film, bolstered by Eduardo Fernández’s nuanced and captivating performance, avoids reducing Marco to a caricature or a pitiable figure. Instead, it renders him a deeply complex subject—one who inspires torment, anger, and astonishment in equal measure. It’s a sharp exploration of the cult of personality, a reminder of how seductive and destructive self-delusion can become when it spirals out of control.
In contrast to Marco, the Invented Truth, which zeroes in on individual motivations and the peculiarities of its protagonist’s narcissism, Mehdi Barsaoui’s Aisha roots its narrative in broader social criticism. The film opens with the line, “All these events took place after the Tunisian Revolution/Arab Spring,” immediately framing the story of its protagonist, Aisha, within the political and cultural upheavals of Tunisia itself.

Aisha, much like the titular character in Emilia Pérez, reaches a pivotal moment where she decides to abandon her old life and assume a new identity. Initially, her transformation brings her liberation, freedom, and glimpses of joy. But, as the film progresses, she finds herself ensnared once more by the same social problems she tried to escape: exploitation, manipulation, and structural corruption. Her journey becomes a reflection of Tunisia’s post-revolutionary trajectory—a nation that experienced its own euphoric awakening during the Arab Spring but now faces the weight of unfulfilled promises and systemic decay.
Barsaoui deftly uses Aisha’s personal struggles as a microcosm for Tunisia’s broader reality. The revolution may have offered a fresh start, but the scars of the past linger, and the structural problems remain. Through Aisha’s journey, the film critiques the cyclical nature of oppression and the challenges of meaningful transformation, both personal and societal.
I wish my daughter could understand—and perhaps remind myself—that by watching this, when you finally recognize that this pervasive sense of loss and ruin—the state described in the Quran, “Indeed, mankind is in loss”—transcends nationality, whether French, Romanian, Italian, American, or Tunisian, you might begin to grasp the justification for the despondency and dejection that seems to linger within me. It has become increasingly difficult to reflect on the films of this era without tasting their inherent tragedy and bitterness.
Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, his first English-language feature, tells the story of a woman who anticipates her own death. While it is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement in terms of craft, I find myself unmoved by the emotions within Almodóvar’s films these days. They no longer engage or resonate with me as deeply, nor elevate, overwhelm, or satisfy me as they once did in works like Talk to Her.

In contrast, Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour remains etched in my memory, largely due to the director’s characteristic experimentalism. As in his Arabian Nights trilogy (2015), Gomes seamlessly blends the worlds of documentary and narrative, this time within the framework of an unsuccessful love story. The film, like so many this year, explores duality—two perspectives of a fractured experience.
The first part follows a man in the early 20th century as he embarks on a journey—or perhaps an escape—from his lover. His odyssey, reminiscent of Around the World in Eighty Days, takes him across East Asia, moving from one country to the next. The second part shifts the perspective to the woman, who retraces the man’s steps, visiting the same cities as she attempts to follow him. Yet both characters feel like lost, wandering ghosts within these landscapes, their love story fractured and unresolved.
What makes Grand Tour exceptional is Gomes’ experimental approach. Alongside the narrated and staged elements of the couple’s journeys, the film incorporates documentary footage of contemporary life in the cities they traverse. In these documentary segments, seemingly mundane moments unfold—daily routines, unremarkable interactions—yet they exude a strange, almost haunting quality. The juxtaposition of these real, unscripted lives against the ghosts of the protagonists creates a dissonance that feels deeply unsettling. The cities become liminal spaces, neither entirely real nor entirely fictional, inhabited by both the living and the spectral.
Gomes’ film evokes a sense of estrangement that is difficult to shake. The wandering figures of his protagonists, juxtaposed with the documentary realism of ordinary people, suggest that the ache of unfulfilled desire, of disconnection, and of incompleteness is not unique to any era or individual. It is as though the filmmaker is reminding us that while history marches forward, certain aspects of human existence—our struggles, our losses, our wandering spirits—remain constant.
The strange duality of Grand Tour, with its interplay of love and loss, fiction and reality, resonates deeply with the despondency I carry these days. Gomes’ ability to merge these worlds leaves us not with answers, but with a profound sense of melancholy and strangeness, as though the very fabric of life is imbued with an inherent and inescapable tension. Perhaps this is why the bitterness of this year’s films lingers so persistently—because they reflect, in their own distinct ways, the eternal truths of our fractured existence.

If we consider the tragic fates of the man fleeing love and commitment and the devoted woman in Grand Tour as cinematic siblings to the couple in Caught by the Tides—with time as an additional layer of torment in Jia Zhangke’s film—then RaMell Ross’s emerges as their American counterpart, particularly in its narrative structure. Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Nickel Boys examines the bond between two Black boys, Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner, as they endure the brutality of a reform school called Nickel. Set primarily in the 1960s, with a smaller thread in the present, the film vividly portrays the systemic racism, violence, and injustice that define the boys’ lives and friendships.
What makes The Nickel Boys remarkable is its narrative structure, alternating between the perspectives of Elwood and Jack. I haven’t read the novel, but the film feels like a faithful adaptation, particularly in how it visually translates the book’s literary rhythms. The opening scenes, which depict the world from the perspective of a newborn child, progress through fragmented images of his adolescence and the events leading to his wrongful arrest. These sequences effectively convey Elwood’s experiences, even in his absence, by aligning the visual language with his viewpoint. The subsequent shifts to Jack’s perspective and the interplay between the two characters’ narratives deepen the emotional impact.
Ross’s direction achieves a balance between fidelity to Whitehead’s prose and the demands of cinematic storytelling, crafting a film that is both poignant and visually resonant. Its layered narrative and powerful themes make The Nickel Boys a strong contender for an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, particularly for how it captures the heart of Whitehead’s novel while enhancing its emotional power through visuals.

Among this year’s festival films, however, the most poignant and tragic fate comes from Pablo Larraín’s , his latest portrait of a woman consumed by loneliness and public scrutiny. With Maria, Larraín completes what could be seen as a trilogy alongside Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021). Whether this marks the end of this thematic series is unclear—Larraín has previously revisited themes after presumed conclusions, as seen with El Conde (2023), a fantastical return to the Pinochet era after his Chile trilogy seemingly ended with No (2012).
In Maria, Larraín turns his lens to Maria Callas, the legendary opera singer whose life, like those of Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana, was shaped by the collision of personal achievements and public controversy. Yet the comparison highlights differences as much as similarities. While Jackie and Diana were ensnared by suffocating political and institutional forces—the Kennedy assassination and the British monarchy, respectively—Maria’s torment stems less from external pressures and more from her own internal battles. Her tumultuous relationship with Aristotle Onassis may have influenced her personal life, but it did not exert the same oppressive weight on her artistic identity as the structures surrounding Jackie and Diana did on theirs.
What sets Maria apart from her counterparts is the enduring value of her art. While Jackie and Diana are often remembered for their public personas and roles in historical or cultural moments, Maria Callas left behind a rich legacy of artistry. Her voice, her interpretations, and her influence on opera remain unparalleled, offering a lasting testament to her talent beyond the controversies that swirled around her.
Larraín’s portrayal of Maria is imbued with the same melancholy and introspection that defined Jackie and Spencer. Yet it also serves as a meditation on legacy, questioning how we define and remember extraordinary women. Is it their personal struggles, their entanglements with powerful figures, or the work they leave behind that shapes their stories? For Maria, it is all these things, but her art provides a unique and enduring lens through which to view her life.
As I reflect on these films—The Nickel Boys, Maria, and Grand Tour—their shared sense of tragedy and duality resonates deeply. Whether it is the fractured perspectives of Elwood and Jack, the ghostly wanderings of Gomes’s protagonists, or Maria’s struggle to reconcile her public and private selves, these stories remind us of the enduring complexity of human lives. They are marked by loss and suffering, but also by the possibility of beauty and meaning—a reminder, perhaps, that even in the face of ruin, there is something worth holding onto.
In his recent works, Pablo Larraín has chosen to focus on pivotal moments in the lives of iconic figures, specifically honing in on their fragility, pain, and suffocation rather than their glory and success. Through these carefully selected windows of time, he crafts comprehensive and deeply nuanced portraits of his subjects. With Maria, Larraín follows a similar trajectory, centring on the final days of Maria Callas’s life. However, unlike Jackie and Spencer, which remain largely confined to their respective timeframes, Maria ventures beyond its immediate narrative, incorporating flashbacks to Callas’s youth and her tumultuous relationship with Aristotle Onassis. This broader, more conventional biographical approach sets Maria apart from Larraín’s earlier explorations of singular, transformative periods, offering a more expansive, yet still intimate, view of the legendary soprano’s life.
At its heart, Maria is a study of decline—of an artist consumed by her own ideals. Callas’s obsessive pursuit of artistic perfection, paired with her unparalleled talent, becomes both her strength and her undoing. Larraín vividly captures this tension, drawing the viewer into a world where ambition and suffering coexist. The film is undeniably operatic, both visually and emotionally, evoking the grandeur and tragedy that defined Callas’s life and artistry.
Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of Callas is a point of contention. Her formidable screen presence and public persona cast a long shadow over the character, sometimes weighing down the film. While Jolie’s performance is committed, one can’t help but wonder how a lesser-known actress might have shifted the film’s dynamic, allowing Callas herself to shine more fully without the weight of Jolie’s star power.
In comparing Maria to Larraín’s Neruda (2016), the latter emerges as a more inventive and experimental work. Neruda, with its playful narrative defamiliarization and layered storytelling, transcends the conventional biographical film. It embraces complexity, using its fragmented structure to reflect the enigmatic nature of its subject. While Maria resonates with the operatic tragedy of its protagonist, Neruda feels like pure poetry—fluid, evocative, and unconstrained by the traditional boundaries of biography.
That said, it would be unfair to disregard the operatic grandeur of Maria. Its aesthetic and emotional intensity align with Callas’s own artistry, creating a film that feels deeply attuned to its subject. Yet, for me, Neruda represents a pinnacle of Larraín’s creativity, a work that captures not just the life of a man but the essence of poetry itself. Maria, though compelling, remains rooted in the narrative conventions it seeks to transcend, offering a beautiful yet less daring vision of an extraordinary life.
***

By the final day of the festival, I had lost all enthusiasm for watching films—a stark contrast to my usual dedication. For the first time in years, I even skipped the closing film. To be honest, Piece by Piece (Morgan Neville), a documentary about Pharrell Williams, neither piqued my interest nor felt worth the effort, despite my wife’s insistence. It seemed like the fitting conclusion to a festival steeped in gloom. Even the animated Memories of a Snail (Adam Elliot), awarded Best Film of the festival, encapsulated the year’s melancholy. Its story of a person battered by life only deepened the pervasive sense of despair.
When the festival ended, the world outside had spiralled further into chaos. Trump was elected, the Gaza genocide continued unabated, the Lebanese war spilled into Syria, and the Assad regime, once marketed as a bastion of stability by its Western-educated leader, only to be replaced by an extremist leader who was once labeled a terrorist and is now hailed as the supposed liberator of the country. Kianoush Sanjari, the Iranian activist, added to the string of tragedies with his untimely suicide in Iran, marking yet another profound loss. The oppressive Hijab and Chastity Bill became law, and a mass rape in one province shocked the nation. Elsewhere, South Korea declared martial law, and the French government dissolved amidst unprecedented unrest. The turmoil seemed unrelenting, a malevolent spirit migrating from one corner of the globe to another, leaving destruction in its wake.
In the play, Agha Mohammad Khan—the brutal Iranian king and founder of the Qajar dynasty—draws inspiration from Camus’s Caligula to justify the massacre of his own entourage, yet fails to learn from the Roman emperor’s tragic fate. One haunting line from the performance has lingered in my memory ever since: “Even Helicon went to bring the Eastern Moon and did not return.”
This year’s festival—and human life as seen through the eyes of filmmakers—felt like a cinematic rendition of that sentiment, or perhaps a visual translation of Hassan Sadr Salek’s poignant verses:
My sun of life has set,
And my moon has not risen from the horizon.
No dawn has the sky, like twilight, dyed my heart red with blood.
Still, amidst the overwhelming bleakness, a few glimmers of light emerged. Directors like Portugal’s Justin Trömbä, Canada’s Matthew Rankin, and South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo offered moments of solace, their playful humor and lighthearted touch briefly lifting my spirits. In a festival so steeped in heaviness, their films provided a much-needed reprieve, keeping my heart from sinking entirely under the weight of those ten days.
I honestly don’t know what I would have done without them. Perhaps it’s these moments of levity—these small but vital gifts—that sustain us through the darkest of times. Even as the world feels like it’s coming undone, sometimes all it takes is a wry joke or a whimsical scene to remind us that not everything is lost.
Justin Trömbä’s The Other Way Around offers a fresh and unusual perspective on the universal theme of sepration, presenting the story of a couple holding a farewell party to commemorate their breakup—an event that, surprisingly, has become somewhat of a trend in certain circles in Iran. Through his distinct and distancing narrative style, Trömbä transforms this seemingly ordinary premise into a novel cinematic experience, making the act of separation feel both poignant and absurd. His approach draws attention to the performative nature of relationships and rituals, inviting viewers to question how we frame and process emotional milestones.

Matthew Rankin’s The Universal Language ventures even further into the realm of the unconventional, presenting a surreal depiction of life in Winnipeg where everyone inexplicably speaks Farsi. The snowy landscapes, the bizarre setting, and even the appearance of a baked beet vendor’s cart evoke a dreamlike sense of dislocation. For Iranian viewers, though, the film feels like an homage—a cinematic love letter to the works of Iranian auteurs like Kiarostami, Panahi, Makhmalbaf, and Majidi, as well as to the films produced by the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. Throughout The Universal Language, moments of nostalgia flicker like distant memories, resurrecting the innocence and quiet introspection of an era in Iranian cinema that seems almost mythical in hindsight.
Rankin, who first demonstrated his penchant for experimentalism with sound and animation in his short films and later explored a fictionalized history in The Twentieth Century, appears here to be crafting a personal geography rather than rewriting history. The Winnipeg of The Universal Language becomes a sanctuary, a space where the influence of Iranian cinema merges with his distinct artistic vision. It’s a poignant reminder of a bygone era—of a time when Iranian films depicted kind, innocent, and hopeful people. Those days feel distant now, replaced by vulgar comedies and a cinema largely devoid of the gentle, thoughtful narratives that once defined it. One wonders what the new generation of Iranian viewers, steeped in a different cultural and cinematic landscape, will take away from a film like The Universal Language.
Returning home, I’m struck by the contrast between the heaviness of the world and the sanctuary of family. At 45, I feel the weight of the world’s ceaseless changes and its often-unyielding fate. But as I look at Nikoo, our five-month-old child, on the verge of discovering this world, I can’t help but hold onto a sliver of hope. Perhaps she and her generation can do what ours could not—reshape this world, breathe new life into it, and steer it away from the hands of madmen, the hopeless, and the defeated.
As I sit and reflect, Ebrahim Monsefi’s words resonate deeply:
You give new life to the sleeping martyr’s body,
O you who are all good tidings following my anxiety.
Turn my indigo garment into a robe of epic,
Make my night dawn, O you who are all my sun.
For Nikoo, and for all the children of his generation, I wish for a world where hope is rekindled, where art and kindness thrive again, and where each sunrise holds the promise of change.
* In Albert Camus’s play Caligula, “Helicon” goes on a journey to find the meaning of existence and justification for living.