Panahandeh crafts a complex portrait of a thirty-year-old woman who became a mother too young and doesn’t quite know how to deal with it. She wants her son to have every opportunity, but her solution is to send him to an expensive private school, which she can’t afford
Remarkable Lamb marks Ethiopia’s Cannes debut
Yared Zeleke’s first film, Lamb, about a young boy forced to leave his hometown with only his pet lamb for comfort, was the first Ethiopian film to screen in the Cannes Un Certain Regard competition.
Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister is heartbreaking
Our Little Sister is a quiet, sweet, and heartbreaking film about three grown, co-habitating sisters, who meet their younger fourteen-year-old sister after their absent father dies, and decide to take her in as one of their own.
Director Shira Piven talks Welcome to Me, Chauncey Gardner, and finding comedic rhythms
Kristen Wiig stars, in Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me, as a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins an 86 million dollar lottery and decides to use her winnings to create her own Oprah-like talk show all about her. The Seventh Row sat down with Piven to discuss her aesthetic approach, the influence of Chauncey Gardner, and finding the […]
Hong Sang-soo’s Hill of Freedom is a melancholic delight
Hong Sang-soo plays with time and memory in Hill of Freedom, his latest melancholic delight.
Female directors tackle motherhood, sexism, and cartoons at SFIFF
This weekend, SFIFF showcased a variety of good films by female directors from around the world, tackling stories as diverse as the inner-workings of The New Yorker cartoon department (Very Semi-Serious), fidelity in romantic relationships (Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey), and the sometimes fraught relationship between mothers and their children (Goodnight Mommy and The Second Mother).