Month: January 2022

National Geographic Documentary Films has won out in a fierce bidding war for the rights to “Fire of Love,” a documentary and love story about two French scientists who died tracking the volcanoes that were their greatest passion. It’s the first big pact of this year’s virtual Sundance, a festival that has been rather slow-going

On a balmy Labor Day weekend, four best friends find a dead body in the woods, the discovery marking an end of innocence as adolescence beckons. If you think you’ve seen this one before, “Summering” makes no apology for the resemblance. Right down to a stolen pistol shoved in a backpack, James Ponsoldt’s unhurried, sun-kissed

Avoiding the heady and idyllic world of adolescent coming-of-age tales ever-familiar to viewers, Spanish writer-director Carlota Pereda presents a brazen look into the psyches of youth; their faults, rage, and insecurity. In this award-winning short-turned-feature, Pereda, known for nudging the boundaries of genre, delivers a roundhouse kick, annihilating them. “Piggy” (“Cerdita”) is set in a serene

There are very few actors with Rebecca Hall’s facility for making difficult, even contradictory characters seem plausible. So it’s quite something to say that even her knack for the dignified and intelligent portrayal of mental and behavioral instability meets its Waterloo with Andrew Semans’ “Resurrection,” a psychological thriller that starts off promisingly before swerving into

Motherhood is scary stuff. From “Rosemary’s Baby” through to “The Babadook” and “Hereditary,” a certain breed of horror film has taught us as much. Equally disturbing, in Hanna Bergholm’s inventive, alarmingly sunny genre outing “Hatching,” is adolescence: lurking under a protective mother’s wings, waiting to crack and come of age in a Finnish suburb’s suffocating,

The villagers refer to her as Old Maid Maria, invoking the witch’s name as a way to make children behave. But the Wolf-Eateress — or Volkojatka, as the superstitious peasants call this shape-shifting witch — is more than just a scary story in “You Won’t Be Alone.” The adults also believe in Old Maid Maria,

For a decade, Lena Dunham has kept more than busy, executive producing TV series like “Camping” and “Generation” and putting out her memoir. Yet she’s been notably selective about her main slate of projects, and “Sharp Stick,” which premiered tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, is her third major act. The first was “Tiny Furniture,”

Dual forces of climate change and cultural genocide overlap to devastating effect in “The Territory,” threatening not just a native community but a wider ecosystem — and cheered on by the actively hostile powers that be. Riveting and despairing in equal measure, freshman director Alex Pritz’s documentary immerses us over the course of three years

Turns out, it is easier to create a human clone than it is to destroy one. Or so goes writer-director Riley Stearns’ morbidly satirical, grimly absurd parallel version of the world as we know it. In “Dual,” for those who have themselves copied, then change their minds for whatever reason, just one course of action

In the opening sequence of Sophie Hyde’s riveting “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a suave young man (Daryl McCormack) steps out of an ice cream parlor, catches a mint candy in his mouth, and swings around a street pole like a hipster Gene Kelly. The Irishman is confidently cool — and not quite himself.

Aisha didn’t move to New York City to raise some other mother’s kids. She moved there with the intention of bringing her young son over from Senegal. In order to pay his way, however, Aisha must do as so many undocumented women have in the Big Apple: She must play mom to a stranger’s child,

Five years after her lauded short “And the Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye” won Sundance’s short film jury award in international fiction, Chile’s Francisca Alegria is bowing her feature debut on Jan. 23 at the Park City, Utah, fest. In “The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future,” Alegria continues to

Maricel Soriano (above, left) will star in Rain Valdez’s upcoming trans-led romantic comedy “Re-Live: A Tale of an American Island Cheerleader,” Variety has learned exclusively. As previously reported, “Re-Live” co-writers Rachel Leyco and Valdez (above, right) star as sisters Rochelle and Rowena, respectively. Soriano will play their mother, Thelma. Jhett Tolentino (“Lingua Franca”) will executive

Black women, along with Native Americans and Alaska natives, are three times more likely to die before, during or after having a baby, and more than half of these deaths are preventable, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee take a deep dive into that statistic in