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Festivals
‘Stitch Head’ review: Burtonesque animation is adapted from Guy Bass children’s books
Dir/scr: Steve Hudson. Germany/Luxembourg. 2025. 91mins
Excessive in his mountain lair, the Fort Grotteskew, a mad professor (voiced by Rob Brydon) is obsessive about designing...
‘Arco’ review: Natalie Portman produces appealing French time-travel animation
Dir: Ugo Bienvenu. France. 2025. 82mins
A boy in a rainbow go well with falls from the sky, forsaking him a looping ribbon of color. He...
‘Olivia And The Invisible Earthquake’ review: Empathetic Spanish stop-motion captures life on the poverty line
Dir: Irene Iborra Rizo. Spain/France/Belgium/Chile/Switzerland. 2025. 71mins
Twelve-year-old Olivia (Celia Sol), her struggling actress mom Ingrid (Silvia Vilarrasa) and her seven-year-old brother Tim (Hug Mont) don’t...
’ChaO’ review: Anarchic Japanese anime imagines a fantastical near-future Shanghai
Dir: Yasuhiro Aoki. Japan. 2025. 90mins
A lowly worker at a delivery firm in a fantasy near-future Shanghai finds himself married to a mermaid princess...
‘Endless Cookie’ review: Annecy’s Contrechamp winner is an inventive portrait of Canadian half-brothers
Dirs: Seth Scriver, Peter Scriver. Canada. 2025. 97mins
The riffing, noodling conversations between two Canadian half-brothers – one Indigenous and one white – are the...
‘Saturn’ review’: Transilvania non-fiction winner paints complex portrait of fractured Spanish family
Dir/scr: Daniel Tornero. Spain. 2024. 96mins
A damaged household struggles to heal in Saturn, an intense, deeply private characteristic debut from Spanish director Daniel Tornero....
‘Bright Future’ review: Romanian documentary revisits 1989 Pyongyang Festival of Youth and Students
Dir/scr: Andra MacMasters. Romania/South Korea. 2024. 89mins
The idealistic glow of the previous is seen with the benefit of hindsight in Shiny Future. Andra MacMasters’...
‘The Last Spy’ review: CIA spymaster Peter Sichel shares his eye-opening life story
Dir/scr: Katharina Otto-Bernstein. 2025. Germany/US. 107mins
CIA spymaster Peter Sichel died in February 2025, aged 102. His closing testimony is a considerable interview reflecting on a...
‘Sleepless City’ review: Coming-of-age drama set in Europe’s largest shanty town in Spain
Dir: Guillermo Galoe. Spain/France. 2025. 97mins.
Politics and poetry are fused to memorable impact in Guillermo Galoe’s function debut, the colourful, melancholy and immersive Sleepless Metropolis....
‘The Richest Woman In The World’ review: Isabelle Huppert drama plays on a notorious real life L’Oréal heir
Dir: Thierry Klifa. France. 2025. 121mins
Isabelle Huppert is luxuriously reducing in The Richest Girl In The World. This household drama clearly impressed by L’Oreal...