Life Is A Film Fest

The 30th edition of Fantasia International Film Festival kicks off in Montreal on July 16. There will be coverage of films posted here throughout the festival. The festival will open with Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cannes-premiered HER PRIVATE HELL starring Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, and Diego Calva. The World Premiere of […]

Louise Bagnall’s JULIÁN is the animated film adaptation of Jessica Love’s beloved book Julián Is a Mermaid. The story of the 7-year-old Julián, who spends the summer with his abuela in Brooklyn, is about heritage, family, and both the joys and the challenges that come with self-discovery and growing up.  The 2D hand-drawn storybook-inspired animation […]

In his animated film We Are Aliens, writer-director Kohei Kadowaki tells the story of a brief but close friendship between two children, their subsequent falling out, and its repercussions as they grow into adulthood. It explores whether one seemingly insignificant event from childhood can ruin someone’s life forever. The use of multiple perspectives and fragmented storytelling […]

Fans of the awkward moments in Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office will likely get a kick out of Jean-Paul Guigue and Dimitri Planchon’s adult animated film BLAISE. Carole (Léa Drucker), Jacques (Jacques Gamblin), and their teenage son Blaise (Timéo) are all conformists who don’t want to offend anyone and just want to be liked. […]

It’s hard to make a comedy about death work, but writer-director Rob Burnett manages to pull it off with In Memoriam, his first film since 2016’s The Fundamentals of Caring. Marc Maron stars as Langston Stanfield, a seasoned actor and a self-proclaimed a-hole, who gets obsessed with being included in the Oscars “In Memoriam” montage […]

Miiku Sakanishi reflects on memory, family, and photography in his quiet and tender drama Memorizu. Yuta (Tasuku Emoto) leaves his wife Yuki (Moeka Hoshi) and their young daughter behind in Tokyo and heads to the countryside to help his father-in-law Makoto (Issey Ogata) at his photo studio, while he is recovering from a leg injury. […]

In his documentary Guggi, director Ian Thuillier shines a light on the life and career of Irish painter, sculptor, and musician Derek Rowen, better known by the nickname Guggi, which his close friend Bono gave him.  It combines archival material with present day footage of the artist and his closest friends Sean Scully, Jim Sheridan, […]

I went into Mumford & Sons: The House Band, thinking it would be a regular concert documentary. What I did not realize was that they were touring with a superband that featured Maggie Rogers, Trombone Shorty, Chris Thile, Nathaniel Rateliff, Lucius, Madison Cunningham, Ketch Secor, Celisse Henderson, and Leif Vollebekk. Noah Kahan, Lainey Wilson, and […]

Ben Sottak’s Hallowarrior is essentially Home Alone turned into a violent, drug-infused, post-apocalyptic horror movie. Hereditary’s Milly Shapiro makes a fantastic heroine to root for as the Halloween-obsessed Pumpkin, who still lives at her family’s home by herself, thinking she might be the last girl on Earth. One night, a gang of invaders, lead by […]