This complex psychological drama from Scandinavian filmmaker Joachim Trier has emerged as one the most prominent and award-winning films of the year. If you haven’t seen Sentimental Value before hearing all the hype, you may be surprised by its nuanced and unhurried take on very mature topics. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes, swept the European Film Awards, topped critics lists and is now entering the Oscars with nine nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, International Film, Editing and acting nods for all four of its leads. Much of the writing about this film has focused on the family relationships. The story follows depressed theater actress Nora (Renate Reinsve) and sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who have a tense relationship with their estranged father, the well-known, self-absorbed filmmaker Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard). When Gustav returns to Oslo after a long absence and asks Nora to star in his new movie, his first in 15 years, she flatly turns him down. He brings in American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead and creates a second version of the script in English, but it’s clear that the film – based on the real story of Gustav’s mother’s suicide and set in the family home where Nora and Agnes grew up – is a delicate family affair. The rapprochement of father and daughters, and the mutual support the sisters have long offered each other in light of their absentee parents, are certainly at the story’s heart. They, like Gustav, are still dealing with the effects of childhood trauma. Moreover, Gustav’s mother experienced acute physical trauma in her adult life as a tortured political prisoner, a grueling storyline that comes to light slowly but resolutely through the film’s occasional third-person narrator and the historical records and shocking photographs Agnes digs up. But there’s more to the family’s struggles than just events in their lives; Trier is showing us how trauma and genetic predispositions play out across generations, symbolized in the objects, which may or may not have sentimental value, the sisters are left to sort through after their mother’s death. Nora’s inability to feel joy or accept intimacy, despite a resoundingly successful theater career and an attentive (but married) lover, can’t just be chalked up to her difficulties with her father – even though a montage of their and others’ faces dissolving into each other might seem to suggest otherwise. She’s as fragile as her mother’s heirloom vases. Sister Agnes shoulders the stress of worrying about Nora’s moods following a prior suicide attempt, and Nora is on the receiving end of Gustav’s regular drunken phone messages. The artistic personalities in the film – Gustav, Nora, Rachel – seem especially vulnerable, open as they are to exploring emotional states, something the three actors demonstrate skillfully and sometimes humorously. (Here, Trier manages to slip in some winking allusions to film industry shifts, from veterans feeling they’ve aged out of meaningful work to Netflix’s stinginess with theatrical releases.) Trier has tackled mental health themes before, most notably in 2011 literary adaptation August, Oslo 31, a devastating portrayal of a troubled man (played by Anders Danielsen Lie, also in Sentimental Value) on a very personal goodbye tour of his native city. It forms part of what’s known as Trier’s melancholic “Oslo Trilogy,” including Reprise and The Worst Person in the World, all co-written with Eskil Vogt and starring repeat performers like Reinsve and Danielsen Lie. And Oslo makes the perfect setting for these themes, with its harsh white light casting shallow shadows. Much of the action revolves around the family home, which has a symbolic foundation-to-roof crack running through it and has been the site of little joy. The house is an evocative example of what’s known as Norway’s “dragon style” architecture, according to the Norwegian Film Commission, representing the craft tradition of both the Viking era and medieval wooden churches. When the house’s interior is redecorated on a soundstage for Gustav’s film, its newly stark modernity and clean lines suggest a possible clearing out of emotional cobwebs and cracks as well. Trier has a deft hand for leading viewers gently but seriously through challenging, layered stories without simple resolutions, and Sentimental Value is no different. Be prepared for a full 130 minutes of that emotional weight. This review was originally published by The Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Images courtesy of Neon.

Tangier-born writer-actor-director Maryam Touzani says that with her new film Calle Málaga, she wanted to “celebrate the beauty of aging and the freedom that can come with aging.” The story turns on a 70-something woman, played by Spanish veteran Carmen Maura, who insists on remaining in her home in Tangier—against all odds. In doing so, she remakes her life, finds new love and reinforces her connections with her Moroccan roots, the place where she was born and raised as part of a Spanish immigrant community. The subject was personal for Touzani, whose own blended Moroccan-Spanish family gave inspiration to Calle Málaga. I really wanted to pay tribute to the Spanish community that a lot of people don't know about,” she says. “I wanted to explore this theme of attachment, of belonging. What does it really mean to belong? What makes up who we are—the spaces, the people, our houses, our street.” Touzani has directed three feature films, and all three have been selected to represent Morocco at the Oscars—despite dealing with difficult and sometimes even taboo subjects in Moroccan society, like homosexuality (The Blue Caftan) and unwanted pregnancy out of wedlock (Adam). Her first two features premiered at Cannes, while Calle Málaga won the Audience Award at Venice last September. “I've always been attracted by characters that are made invisible, or somehow put aside or erased,” she notes. Her films feature women, like Maura's María Angeles in Calle Málaga, who take control of their own lives and destinies, often outside of society’s accepted boundaries. “The place of women in public… is not necessarily the same power that the women will have in houses,” Touzani admits. She conveys this duality in her frequent use of interior settings and chiaroscuro lighting, contrasting golden-lit interiors off the bright Mediterranean light outside. Now, Calle Málaga is the opening film at the Málaga Film Festival, running in the Spanish Mediterranean city from March 6 to 15. AWFJ sat down with Touzani in Madrid before opening night to talk about the film, her exceptional career and whether movies have the power to change society. Here is that conversation, edited for length and clarity. All of your films have been selected to represent Morocco at the Oscars. Does that surprise you, considering your films deal with difficult subjects? It’s not something that has anything to do with the filmmaker themselves. It’s the trajectory of the film. When you have a film that opens at an important festival and there is something positive happening around it, that makes it easier for the film to get selected to represent its country… It’s an independent committee that watches the films… But once you have a start in an important festival and there is good press around the film, it’s always helpful. You've taken your films to festivals all over the world. Do reactions differ in different countries? What I've noticed and what is very heartwarming is that, for instance talking about Calle Málaga, the audience response was warm in the same manner in countries that were very different and cultures that were very different. And that's heartwarming, especially with a film like this that's even more personal than the rest… Globally, what I felt is that at the end of the day, we are brought together by the same emotions, and reactions generally are quite similar. I think that when there is a human connection with a film, at the end of the day, that brings us together wherever we are from. One of the things that I wrote about this story is that it's a cliche that older women become kind of invisible when they age, and I thought the character of María used that invisibility as an asset. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to be a woman in Moroccan society, and if that invisibility is useful in some ways? I think that being a woman in Moroccan society is not very different from being a woman in any other society, honestly, when you bring it down to the core. I think there's something very common everywhere. But it's true that I've always been attracted by characters that are made invisible, or somehow put aside or erased. And it's true that here I also wanted to show and celebrate these aging bodies. His, and especially hers, because I think that women's bodies in cinema are really cast aside. We're expected to age in a certain manner, and the reality is not that. So, it’s just not shown. And I really wanted to show this woman celebrating her body. She’s the one that invites him into her life, undresses him, undresses herself. And it's really undressing herself physically, but it's also saying: this is who I am. I stand tall. I'm proud of my aging body. I'm proud of all these marks that the years have left on me. And my body is beautiful and I'm beautiful the way I am, and I'm proud to show it. I want him to look at me, but I want to show myself the way I am. To just be proud of that and not have to hide and not have to be what somebody else expects, and just really celebrate the beauty of aging and the freedom that can come with aging as well. because I think that aging can be something very liberating. Whereas in our societies, we put older people into boxes of how we're supposed to act, what we're supposed to be. All these expectations that are thrown upon us and that are just like shackles, right? And I really want María to break all these shackles and break free and say, no, I'm a woman. I'm almost 80. I choose to show my body. I choose to age the way I want to age. I want to have that freedom. Carmen Maura has actually said that in a lot of interviews, that she's ‘free’ now. She said if you had asked her five or 10 years ago to take her clothes off, she wouldn't have. Yeah, and I think that's a beautiful thing as well with aging. It’s the power that can come with it. It's the strength and the beauty that can come with it. I think the beauty in aging, we don't see that in our societies. For me, that was also why I wanted to film these skins up close, to show these wrinkles. Because for me, they're these beautiful marks that life has left upon us, a life that we've had the privilege to live. And not everybody has that privilege of growing old. As I grow older, and as I lose people that have maybe not reached that age, I realize how precious it is. Something that I see across your films, even your short films, is that you shoot a lot of interiors, and it feels like women kind of dominate those spaces. You often have women talking to each other from their balconies in your films. What you're saying is very interesting because it's true that we are, at the end of the day, in a very matriarchal society and women do dominate interiors. There's a lot of respect for mothers, for grandmothers. What a mother has to say in Moroccan society is extremely, extremely important… It’s interesting regarding the place of women in public, which is not necessarily the same power that the women will have in houses. Touzani went on to talk about her Spanish-Moroccan family, growing up in a “double culture” and speaking Spanish at home with her mother and grandmother. Is some of that in the character of María? It definitely is because my grandmother was a very rebellious woman with a lot of personality, a lot of character and quite a lot of humor. And this long white hair as well—she used to put up in a bun, but it was really long. I remember as a child—she passed when I was 12—I was very, very close to her. I had my bedroom, but I would sleep in her bedroom, sometimes even in her bed, cuddled to her. I loved her so much, but I remember I was just fascinated by her. I remember being fascinated by her skin, by her wrinkles… I just loved observing her. And her energy—she passed at 82, but she had so much energy. I never saw her take a nap ever in her life until the last month where she got sick… She had this energy, like María Angeles in the film, and I think that did really inspire me also for the writing of this character. So you were very familiar with the Spanish immigrant community in Tangier? I was very familiar with it because of course my grandmother had a lot of friends from this community… They were all very close. And in Calle Málaga, what was interesting as well… there was this mixture of Jewish, Christians, Muslims and they would exchange recipes, be together on the holidays, at feasts, and there was this kind of living together that was very, very peaceful. It was beautiful, and I always heard about this. That's why the film is called Calle Málaga [though it’s actually filmed on a different street]—I really wanted to pay tribute to the Spanish community that a lot of people don't know about… Some of her [my grandmother’s] friends whose kids had left—they were older, and they decided not to leave and wanted to stay in Tangier. I saw their attachment, this visceral attachment to their city. And as a child, as a young woman, it's something that really hit a chord inside me. I really was very sensitive to what made this attachment so strong. I think that's why I wanted to explore this theme of attachment, of belonging. What does it really mean to belong? What makes up who we are—the spaces, the people, our houses, our street. And it's also because I was so close to the Spanish community and I saw the Spanish community die off little by little—for the majority, because their children left, grandchildren are born abroad, etc.—and then this bond disappears… It was really also a tribute to these people. I think memory is very important… Through the film, I also wanted to keep these people alive somehow, because they are people that were there, that existed, that had feelings that were rooted in this land. Touzani spoke about the film being a way for her to maintain a connection with her mother, who passed away suddenly at the age of 72. “I really needed to feel that she was close to me. It was something soothing about the language and also the things that you see in the film,” like certain cultural aspects, foods María cooks, etc. They “represented home and going back home to Tangier without my mom.” Calle Málaga was her first feature film shot in Tangier and in Spanish. Your other two films were not filmed in Tangier, right? I think that I unconsciously wrote the film in Tangier because I knew it was the only way for me to force myself to go back there and face her [my mother’s] absence and face these beautiful memories, but without her, you know? And try to find peace and try to make sense and continue loving the city. So, it was very hard. Shooting was very hard because every street corner was a memory. It sounds cathartic. Yeah. What I'm living is still part of this whole process. When I go to Málaga in a few days, my Spanish family is going to be there and they're going to discover the film, and that's also part of it. So that’s why it was [filmed] in Spanish. And it was very interesting, very soothing for me to find myself on set surrounded by Spanish, because a big part of my team was Spanish and of course the dialogues were in Spanish. Just to be there and to hear Spanish around me was something that felt comforting. Do you ever face backlash in Morocco for the topics that you have chosen to make movies about? Have I ever? Yes, but from individuals that don't agree or that maybe don’t accept… For instance, in The Blue Caftan, if I did come across these kinds of reactions, which I did, it really made me realize even more how important and essential it was that this film exists in Morocco and that it be screened. It was opened in theaters, and this was the first time ever that a film that talks openly about homosexuality was screened in theaters… I think it means that there is a desire for an opening of dialogue, which is really what I want to do as well with the film. It's just being able to open a conversation, to be able to create a debate, to contribute in some way to making things advance. So, any backlash that I could have received, I never see it in a negative way. I always see it in a positive way because I always think that if there is some kind of backlash, it means that there is a necessity as well. Do you think film has the power to change society? Oh, I definitely think so. Otherwise, I wouldn't be making films. It's true! I think that it has a power to contribute, at least, to a significant change, because I think cinema is something that is accessible to everybody. It’s something that can reach you easily. And it gives you access, through your emotions, to a reality that is not necessarily yours, that you don't necessarily know, that you think maybe you don't agree with, but then you plunge into the life of a character for an hour and a half or two hours or whatever it may be, and you're in a completely different reality and your emotions take over. It's not your intellect. It's not your preconceptions, it's not all these barriers that you've necessarily created, and it can break through, in a manner, and… create a dialogue between your heart and your mind. And that can help change your vision. I've had a lot of people come up to me, for instance, after The Blue Caftan, and tell me things that were extremely touching about their preconceived ideas, about all they thought they never wanted or they were completely closed to, and how they saw things differently now. And for me, these are the biggest rewards… I think that cinema does have a way to contribute to changing things. And if you change just one person's perception, and then just one other person, and then one other person, at the end of the day, it can make a difference. This interview was originally published by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Images courtesy of Strand Releasing and Málaga Film Festival.

“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again.” The Jean Renoir quote captures the way many auteurs, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar included, seem to chip away at the same ideas and themes over and over again. His entertaining new melodrama, Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad), is clearly carved from the same marble as his other globally acclaimed works. Add to this the irony that celebrity can reduce a person’s physical world at the same time it expands their global reputation, as Almodóvar himself has acknowledged in interviews, and you may approach an explanation for why his films feel both increasingly centered around his own individual experience and immediately recognizable to viewers around the world. Bitter Christmas is just such a package. The film is widely expected to premiere internationally at Cannes, but since its March 20 release in Spain it has sparked debate about the role of autobiography in the director's films – and creative works in general. That is entirely the movie’s point. Leonardo Sbaraglia (co-star of the also semi-autobiographical Pain and Glory) stars as Raúl Durán, a version of the auteur – an aging film director in a creative slump yet still peppered with international awards, tributes and lucrative invitations. His assistant, Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijon, who has a riveting monologue in 2021’s Parallel Mothers), quits in an early scene to care for her partner Elena, who has fallen into a deep depression following the death of her son. But we don’t meet Elena or know her story until much later in the film. Instead, we’re introduced to Elsa (a mesmerizing Bárbara Lennie), a filmmaker with two “cult” films to her credit and a career in advertising (“cult,” we’re told in a funny exchange, means just a few people liked it). Elsa is dating the strapping and good-natured fireman-slash-stripper Beau (a genial Patrick Criado), but she’s suffering from migraines and begins experiencing panic attacks on the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death. On doctor’s advice, she takes a restorative trip to the Canary Island of Lanzarote with her friend Patricia (Victoria Luengo, who had a small role in The Room Next Door). Patricia has just discovered that her husband is cheating on her, and Elsa feels strongly that he’s no good for her. Later, Elsa invites her depressed friend Natalia (Milena Smit, co-star of Parallel Mothers) to join her on the volcanic island. It takes a minute before you realize that the movie you’re watching about Elsa and friends is actually the film Raúl is writing. And thus begins a circular tale of filmmakers appropriating from reality to create fiction, which in turn provides a window into real life. More than one scene involves arguments about this creative process, as in a rousing climactic confrontation in which Mónica accuses Raúl of ‘vampirism.’ In response, with a gleam in his eye, Raúl scraps his original script and starts a rewrite – inspired by Mónica. Bitter Christmas could have, and maybe should have, ended right here. Almodóvar has managed to evoke surprising tension out of the writing process in a montage that includes a blinking cursor on a blank screen. There’s also an earlier moment in the film where the words “FIN” (end) appear. Elsa’s story has ended, at least in Raúl’s first draft, but you’re only about two-thirds into the film you’re actually watching. It’s all very meta and diverting, if you’re willing to go along for the ride. The advanced-age audience at the Madrid theater where I saw the film at an early evening screening last Friday seemed to be enjoying the ride, though I was surprised by how little they laughed. This film is lighter than others in Almodóvar’s recent oeuvre and has some comedic moments that I found very funny. His appreciation for the male physique, a welcome flipping of cinema’s traditional male gaze, could make some viewers uncomfortable. Everything is reminiscent – all part of Almodóvar’s “one movie” – the themes, actors, color palette, settings, music, framing, references and more. And some scenes and characters in Bitter Christmas feel directly plucked from earlier films. Compare Lennie’s Elsa in sunglasses and Hollywood waves with Angela Molina at the cemetery in Live Flesh, or her red dress with Marisa Paredes’ iconic look in The Flower of My Secret. When Elsa offers to feed her dying mother, you might flash to Antonio Banderas tenderly assisting his elderly mother in Pain and Glory – or the dead/dying mothers in Volver, All About My Mother and more. Sbaraglia, meanwhile, channels Banderas channeling Almodóvar, who is also in Elsa’s DNA. It's not easy to write originally about Almodóvar’s movies either, compounded by the fact that he curates intricately designed packages around his premieres, from detailed production notes and omnipresent interviews to winking symbolism, easter eggs and self-aware dialogues. Still, in Spain, he enlivens debate. Christmas landed third at the Spanish box office on its opening weekend, with close to 100,000 tickets sold. There’s at least one well-known local critic who pans Almodóvar’s every film, to the point that it’s become part of the premiere experience here. Another price of fame, or maybe prolonged familiarity. At this stage – well into the maestro’s fifth decade of cinema – it’s fair to conclude that you either like Almodóvar's movies (his “one movie”), or you don’t. I do, and I liked this one more than others. This review was originally published by The Alliance of Women Film Journalists Images courtesy of Warner Bros.

In a world engineered for distraction, living with intention isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s resistance. Is your Instagram feed all Bridgerton, all the time? Well, of course it is. The algorithms have made it so. Social media companies profit off their “free” platforms by making us the product. Our attention is their currency. The more we engage with their content—the longer we scroll, the faster we click, the more rabbit holes we dive down—the more they earn. Our tech-necks are proof of a job well done. Our inability to focus is a feather in their caps. When the world is designed to keep us scrolling, the truly radical act is to stop and think for ourselves. In a culture driven by speed, social sameness, and algorithmic provocation, choosing to live artfully, with intention and discernment, isn’t indulgence. It’s resistance. It’s the new turn on, tune in, drop out. Women raised pre-internet have an advantage here—we remember what it is to think for ourselves. But in an age of digital slop, what does it mean to author your life instead of passively consuming it? Our Brains, Ourselves “Brainrot” is real when we’re constantly connected, bombarded with information and irresistibly inspired by likes and follows. To take back our brains, do we have to go offline entirely? Not necessarily. If the culture is engineered for distraction, then self-cultivation must start with self-control. Choosing what to consume, when and how, isn’t opting out. It’s leaning in—to yourself. The online world allows for far more personalization than the mass media monoculture of yore, you just have to approach it with intention. When you bypass “recommended” content, block over-sharers, replace doom-scrolling with the positive-seeking “bloomscrolling,” or commit to consuming long-form content in full, no interruptions, you curate your own online environment. You take back your attention span. Artful living interrupts the cycle. It gently fills in the rabbit holes. Don’t Take the Bait And the digital sphere could use more gentleness. When Oxford chose “rage bait” as their word of the year last year, they knew what they were doing. Want to get people to click more? Lure them in with deliberately outrageous, frustrating, or offensive content. The algorithms dangle the bait by amplifying misinformation and conspiracy theories, Oxford explained, in a practice called “rage farming.” Take one guess who the sheep are on that farm. The paradox is that we’re outraged, but we don’t quite know why. We disagree because our tribes and echo chambers say so. Hang on, let me Google it. Claude will know the answer. “Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything,” Tom Nichols wrote in The Death of Expertise. The antidote? Study. Learn. Gather knowledge. Develop skills. Read fiction. Engage in meandering conversations. Be open to other people’s opinions. And admit when you’re wrong or don’t know the answer. Intelligent conversation is artful living. Believing in facts and trusting the experts? Downright countercultural. Write Like You Mean It The other day I came across a Reddit thread that started: “Serious question. Why do people over the age of 40 use so many periods when writing things online?” Here’s my question: When did good grammar, spelling, and punctuation become so triggering? My index finger still twitches at the memory of early-era texting, back when you had to repeatedly punch each number on the flip phone to get to the right letter. No nostalgia here—I’d much rather text on my sleek iPhone—but artful living means caring about form, not just format. The medium doesn’t have to be the entire message. Living artfully is sending a friend a thoughtfully crafted email, or maybe even a handwritten note. It’s keeping a journal or travelogue for nobody’s eyes but your own. It’s leaving that great Gen Z burden, a voicemail, for a friend you’ve been thinking about. And, yes, it’s showing you cared enough to proofread, even in a text. Resist the Performance On Spain’s Mallorca island, there’s a gorgeous little cove known as Caló des Moro. After influencers started posting pictures from its pristine Mediterranean perch, the cove was inundated with thousands of visitors a day. There they stood, selfie sticks poised, waiting for their turn to catch their “individual” shot. Local authorities had to intervene. It’s time for a self-intervention. The attention economy thrives on our narcissism. Deep down, we know it’s true—even if we don’t want to admit it. The feed rewards performance and self-display. It injects us with emotional spikes. The opposite of narcissism is empathy. It’s generosity. Serving others is an exercise in gratitude and an investment in real-life community. It turns FOMO into JOMO (the joy of missing out) and replaces outrage with “helper’s high.” Living artfully means seeking deeper fulfillment beyond the superficial spikes. It means thinking about people other than yourself. Cultivate Your Garden When Voltaire famously wrote “We must cultivate our garden” in 1759, he wasn’t foretelling FarmVille. But he was onto something—the gratification that comes from nurturing our own corners of the world and those we share them with (what people now delightfully call “neighboring”). Living artfully is cultivating self, and cultivation takes time. It requires stillness and discernment. It means doing things at your own pace, far from the madding crowd. It means taking what you enjoy from social media, then moving on. We can be part of the world without posting every thought. We can shape our own tastes and edit our own rooms, wardrobes, and libraries. We can value our own experiences, realizations, memories, and relationships without the approval of others. No, it’s not easy in an age of connection, passivity, sameness, and self-absorption, at a time when we need tutorials on how to be bored. But it’s worth it. Because right now, the most radical thing a woman can do is care. This article was originally published by PROVOKED magazine.

The memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran has many, many fans, and they should be pleased by this faithful film adaptation. Staying very true to its source material, former English literature professor Azar Nafisi’s 2003 memoir about hosting a secret weekly book club with female students in post-revolutionary Iran, means the film can sometimes feel overly episodic, like chapters in a book rather than visual sequences in a narrative arc. But filmmaker Eran Riklis and team have succeeded in conveying the tale’s still-timely messages and capturing its tone. Nafisi’s memoir offers a nuanced critique not just of post-revolutionary Iran, but of oppression in general and the pervasive fear and dread of living under an authoritarian regime. Playing the author, veteran actress Golshifteh Farahani gives a subtle performance, credible as both intelligent, trusted mentor-professor and increasingly frightened woman-mother-daughter-wife. The film opens on Nafisi lying in bed, eyes wide open, remembering the screams of a person (whose story comes to light later), “They lied to us! They lied to us!” Her inability to sleep due to such memory-fueled nightmares is a recurring theme in the film. It bookends her daytime experiences, which are structured (like the book, though not exactly) into parts named for classic English-language works she’s teaching. The film shifts some scenes around and changes the book’s original order to set the scene first, as Nafisi and her husband return to Iran following the 1979 Revolution. It’s a smart set-up as viewers are provided clues to both the main character (books and an Oklahoma University mug in her suitcase) and the context (her excitement about coming back to teach quickly dampened by the hostile treatment of male customs agents). That tension of people just trying to live their everyday lives in a society becoming increasingly radicalized remains throughout the film. We feel it through the hardline moral stance of some of Nafisi’s male students, the imprisonment and torture (and death) of female students and her risky friendship with a retired male professor. We feel it in the tension with her husband, a loving partner who still can’t fully understand her experience as a woman in contemporary Iran. We feel it in scenes where Nafisi is roughly patted down, and when student Sanaz is intimately inspected and forced to confess to an affair she didn’t have. We feel it in the conversations of her students (an excellent collection of Iranian actresses), who relate to the protagonists of the stories they’re reading (“Are we Lolita?”) but are not allowed to experience some of their rites of passage themselves (falling in love, dancing, basic freedoms). When some of the characters choose to leave Iran, we gather the significance of what they leave behind. A closing scene has Nafisi waking up once again to a nightmare. She goes to her office and sits down at her desk, situated—as in her Tehran apartment—in front of a big window. She looks wistfully out at the framed view of Washington, DC monuments, which has replaced her former Tehran vista of the stunning Alborz mountains towering behind the city. Her gaze turns to two photos on the wall. In one, she and her former female students stand together in black robes and head scarves (“according to the law of the land,” the book notes). In the other, the same group, laughing and colorful in street clothes. Same people, completely different sensation, totally transformed mood. It’s taken from a description of the two photos in the opening pages of the book. It was a clever move to end the film on these photos, characters we now know and presumably now empathize with. The contrasting photos remind us of the complexity of women’s public and personal lives in Iran, yes, but also of the bonds they share, of the beauty and support to be found in female friendship (as in books and imagination). They remind us of all that Nafisi had to leave behind—and, of course, of all that’s still to be found in Tehran. This review originally ran on AWFJ.org. Images courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

When Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, as the accidental outlaws Thelma and Louise, clutched each other’s hands and accelerated off a cliff 35 years ago, female audiences were stunned. We’d never seen such a fierce female friendship on screen. We finally had our Redford and Newman. We’d also never seen such a simmering condemnation of modern male chauvinism in a mainstream movie. It pushed these women over the edge. Thelma & Louise was heralded as a feminist film when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. The protagonists were dubbed “heroines” again this year when Cannes honored their 35th anniversary by splashing them across the event’s official poster. Going Out In a Blaze Even so, when I asked female friends how they felt about the movie back then, they admitted to misgivings. I remember feeling the same unease. I loved the characters and their journey, but their decision to die troubled 20-something me. The culture still romanticizes Thelma and Louise’s iconic middle finger to the man in their decision to go out on their own terms. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid before them, they were immortalized in a no-surrender freeze-frame ending that left them permanently suspended in time—and just moments away from certain death. Now I understand what other midlife women discovered before me—the harder work is figuring out how to resist without dying, how to discover yourself or change your life and your loyalties without disappearing. Would It Be Different Today? In 1991, screenwriter Callie Khouri and director Ridley Scott determined that death was their protagonists’ only or best escape after an attempted rape ends in murder and sends the two women on a crime spree. We like to think we’ve come a long way in 35 years. In the post-#MeToo era—where abuse is more openly acknowledged, abusers more likely to face justice, and trauma increasingly destigmatized—we like to think they would go to the police and be heard. We like to think that women are less invisible, men more considerate, laws more fair and society more egalitarian today. We like to think these hard-earned freedoms and opportunities extend beyond white, middle class women. Then again, a recent survey found that 31% of Gen Z men (and 18% of Gen Z women) say a wife should obey her husband. Women widely complain of an exhausting form of “mankeeping” in their heterosexual relationships. And, oh yeah, there’s a rising movement in the U.S. looking to repeal women’s basic rights and autonomy, restrict our participation in public life, and return men to their rightful thrones. In 1991, we watched the Anita Hill hearings (then elected so many women to office, 1992 was dubbed “The Year of the Woman”) and inhaled two new feminist works—Susan Faludi’s Backlash and Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. In 2026, we’re dealing with the Manosphere, Bimbocore and Masculinism. Radical Friendship Why did Thelma & Louise feel so radical in its day? Some women saw themselves in the archetypes—the housewife itching to let loose from a suffocating existence, and the buttoned-up single waitress just trying to get by and maintain a sense of order in her life. The two transform over the course of their journey from opposites-attract besties into something much deeper: a fiercely reliable mutual support system. Their primary loyalty becomes to each other—not men, career, children, the rule of law, or even their individual lives or desires. Friendship is the only institution that doesn’t fail them. Men, the law, society—they all betray Thelma and Louise. “You get what you settle for,” Louise likes to say, but there don’t appear to be better options. That bond still feels radical today. But in 1991? The culture couldn’t even imagine them surviving outside the lines of a male-managed world. Their alliance had to end in flames. “My Husband Wasn’t Sweet to Me, and Look How I Turned Out” The men in Thelma & Louise also can’t imagine the women surviving without them. Decades before “toxic masculinity” entered the lexicon, this movie’s parade of male figures personifies sexism’s impressive range—from despotic husbands and untrustworthy boyfriends to arrogant abusers and a small but zealous army of agents. They all see themselves as natural wielders of authority over women. Their individual actions leave Thelma and Louise with emotional and physical scars—and, in their view, no real way out. They know they’re doomed as soon as they respond to violence with violence. Nobody will believe their side of the story. Louise, it’s hinted, has prior experience with this. And when Thelma throws off the symbolic shackles of her marriage, there’s no turning back. “Something’s crossed over in me,” Thelma admits. “I can’t go back. I just couldn’t live.” It’s Thelma who ultimately suggests they just keep going forward, straight into the abyss. Feminist Fantasy Time Out The women do savor moments of empowerment before their fiery finale, rousing scenes that earned whoops and laughter in theaters. Thelma beds a hottie and robs a store like a pro, while Louise frees herself of emotional deadweight. They’ve gone from invisible to fully themselves, just as Khouri imagined. In a climactic scene, the pair confront a trucker who’s been making lewd gestures at them for days. “Where do you get off behaving like that?” they taunt him. “How’d you feel if somebody did that to your mother or your sister or your wife?” Then they blow out his tires and explode his truck in a giant fireball. It’s a cathartic feminist fantasy—all the things women might dream of saying and doing to the perverts and the misogynists and the abusers—while looking iconically cool. But Thelma and Louise only have the freedom to fulfill that fantasy because they’ve got nothing to lose, no future to worry about. Their freedom is its own fleeting fantasy, one that disappears entirely over the course of the film as their crimes rack up. Their dream of escaping to Mexico turns into a mirage on the lonely desert highway. Finally, they see nowhere left to go except over the cliff’s edge. 35 Years Later I thought about this as I watched Charlize Theron’s new release Apex, another outwardly feminist film that sees the 50-something Theron outsmart and physically outperform a male predator in the Australian outback. A final scene shows her literally scaling a cliff to escape the sadistic killer. We’ve gone from driving over cliffs to scaling them—but we’re still fleeing male aggression in the Hollywood imagination. In one swift stomp on the accelerator, Thelma and Louise opt out of the system entirely rather than letting it take them down bit by bit. Some celebrated their bravado, others uncomfortably accepted their choice, and still others took offense. But obsessing over the ending misses the message entirely. Even Khouri has said she didn’t intend the cliff to be taken literally; she envisioned a getaway for her characters, not suicide. “How many times these women gonna be f*cked over?” Harvey Keitel, playing the empathetic police agent in Thelma & Louise, explodes at the film’s end. Turns out it’s still a valid question. This article originally ran in PROVOKED magazine. Images courtesy of Cannes Film Festival and MGM.

Renowned restaurant owner and cook Nancy Silverton was recognized this summer with yet another major culinary award—the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. Yet Silverton, co-owner of the Michelin-starred Mozza Restaurant Group, insists she doesn’t see herself as a chef. “That whole image of a chef is still somebody much grander than who I feel like,” she told Eater last year. We know where she gets that image. The culture loves the larger-than-life kitchen personalities—the loud men, micro-managers and hard-living chefs embodied in figures like Guy Fieri, Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain, and glamorized in popular memoirs. Their celebrity and prestige stand in stark contrast to the invisible, unpaid labor of generations of moms, grandmas and female caretakers who handle the cooking inside the home. “Kitchens are notoriously owned, operated, and staffed by men—and that’s to say nothing of the male investors, media personalities, and influencers who comprise the broader ecosystem of the food industry,” Top Chef host Kristen Kish wrote last year. “Simply being in these spaces as a woman is to subvert expectations, but there are added assumptions once we’re in the door: that we’re not as strong physically and mentally, or that we should be more maternal and nurturing, particularly in leadership roles.” It's a familiar recipe. The culinary world lets women feed people while men build empires. Female chefs are channeled into domestic-coded lanes—baking, home cooking, the teacher, the beloved TV personality in your kitchen. The men get to be chefs, auteurs, restaurateurs and empire-builders. The writing is on the kitchen wall: fewer than 25% of chefs and head cooks in the US are female, and only 7% of Michelin recognized restaurants in the US are led by women. How did we get here? “Hyper-Masculine” Kitchen Culture Auguste Escoffier, dubbed the “king of chefs,” is credited for introducing a militaristic “brigade system” of specialization and discipline to professional kitchens in the late 19th century, a hierarchy that traditionally advanced men and steered women into the “pink ghetto” of the pastry line. Long before anyone proposed testosterone testing in the military, professional kitchens were intensely male-dominant spaces where machismo and sexism boiled over. Strides have been made in the post-#MeToo era as women began calling out harassment, but in a recent survey of nearly 200 female chefs in the UK, a whopping 75% say they’ve experienced workplace harassment, and 87% agree that improving the culture would draw more women into commercial kitchens. Oh yeah, and in the US, women chefs and head cooks still earn 81 cents to every dollar earned by men. These are the ingredients we’re working with. Women Nourish, Men Flourish One of the things that made chef Alice Waters such a pioneer in the 1970s and 1980s was her rejection of the “brigade de cuisine” structure and her determination to offer staff at her landmark Chez Panisse restaurant a better work-life balance. That, and her use of seasonal, organic ingredients—a surprisingly novel auteur stamp when she began, but appropriated by countless chefs since then. “We didn’t operate the restaurant the way we were expected to,” she told Time in 2017. Her set menus were like being invited over to someone’s house for dinner. “We were cooking the way that we cooked at home.” And that, ladies, says it all. Waters followed in the footsteps of legend Julia Child to build a genuine movement inspired by home cooking and committed to educating others—including future generations, as in Child’s didactic cookbooks and shows and Waters’ edible schoolyard and farm-to-table initiatives. “Women are very concerned about nourishment, about really taking care of people,” Waters told Time. It’s a tale as old as time: women nourish so everyone can flourish. A Woman’s Place… Child took up enormous space mid-century showing American women how to cook French food, yet she still kept to the permitted lane—the home kitchen (her Cambridge kitchen even served as the set for her iconic show). Another permitted lane? Baking, which sits next to home and motherhood. It’s still easier for the culture to imagine a woman baking or managing a home kitchen than running a restaurant group. Today’s best-known female TV cooks followed Child down that lane—from Ina Garten, who “throws open the doors of her Hamptons home” as the Barefoot Contessa, to Rachel Ray’s practical tips (“Meals in Minutes,” “30 Minute Meals”), Valerie Bertinelli’s “Home Cooking,” Martha Stewart’s home entertainment realm and Ree Drummond’s throwback to purported domestic bliss, “The Pioneer Woman.” These beloved household names—many featured on the Food Network, which launched in 1993—are comforting teachers and entertainers. Their brands revolve around their personalities, lifestyles, shows and books, not brick-and-mortar restaurants. The men who came up through the same platform—Flay, Fieri and the rest—turned identical TV fame into restaurant groups and empires. It’s the cook versus the chef: the women are in your kitchen, but the men own the building. Same fame, same platform, two completely different destinations. The Egg Spoon Wars Once upon a time in the early 2000s, Alice Waters cooked an egg over an open fire in a cast-iron spoon on primetime TV—and took a surprising amount of heat. Bourdain, rapidly growing a cult following as the archetype of macho chefs, allegedly called her “Pol Pot in a muumuu” for her elitist technique. Female chefs still simmer over the gender discrepancy: A man uses a gadget or tool like the egg spoon, and he’s a maverick; a woman does it, and she’s pretentious. The anecdote is telling of Waters’ position in the industry. Despite being a veritable pioneer who arguably revolutionized the way we eat in the US, Waters still hasn’t been seen as an ‘auteur’ the way male chefs so often are. Like Silverton, she’s often given the “home cooking” label. Yet Waters’ mark is felt across the cooking field—Chez Panisse has been called a ‘teaching institution’ for the number of professional chefs it has trained. And beyond the field, she’s considered a forerunner of today’s ‘farm-to-table’ and ‘slow food’ trends. Kitchen Feminism? The egg spoon controversy made headlines again nearly a decade later when Waters’ daughter began selling an impressively expensive version of the hand-forged spoon online. But times had changed in the years between the egg-cooking and the spoon-selling: “This is the post-Harvey Weinstein era, when gender imbalance, assault and harassment in professional kitchens have been laid bare,” The New York Times asserted. “The egg spoon has caught a ride on a new wave of kitchen feminism. Egg-spoon haters now find themselves under attack.” A new wave does appear to be rising—albeit as tentatively as a soufflé. Last year, 70 female chefs penned an open letter in the UK calling for an end to sexism and inequality in the restaurant industry, and sharing their personal experiences with harassment at work. Female chefs have support groups, professional associations, annual conferences and publications dedicated just to them. Ingredients for Long Success The stereotype of the macho chef dominating his kitchen “doesn't just misrepresent the reality of professional kitchens; it actively shapes it,” the UK survey highlighted. “When women don't see themselves reflected in the industry, many are discouraged from pursuing careers in it. And when they aren't present, it signals to others that they don't belong.” That could be changing: Female students now make up almost half of enrolled undergraduates and instructional staff at the Culinary Institute of America. Female chefs aren’t “going anywhere,” as Silverton said about her own career in her acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Now in her seventies, she vowed to return for a Lifetime Achievement Award 2.0. Silverton is one of the exceptions who prove the rule—a woman who started in the most permitted lane of all (pastry and bread, at Spago and La Brea Bakery) and had to escape the baking corner entirely to be seen as an auteur and empire-builder. This article was originally published by PROVOKED magazine

Despite more than 50 books published in 40-plus languages, author Margaret Atwood may always be best known for her novel and hit series The Handmaid’s Tale, and now its sequel The Testaments. Both are set in a dystopian future society where women are forced to live under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship that denies them basic rights and freedoms. “Everything in The Handmaid's Tale has happened somewhere, sometime,” Atwood affirmed at a public appearance on Wednesday. “Somebody wrote on Twitter (now X), ‘Where does Margaret Atwood come up with all this weird shit?’ And I was like, ‘It's the human race that came up with all this weird shit.’ And believe me, there's a lot weirder shit out there that the human race has done.’” Atwood spoke Wednesday with Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take the Lead Women and former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, at Take the Lead’s annual Power Up Conference in Washington, DC timed with Women’s Equality Day. “The TV folks used the same rule,” added Atwood, who served as co-executive and consulting producer on the multiple Emmy-winning show. “So, if they came up with some outlandish thing, they had to justify it.” This was intentional, to underscore the basis in reality of these dystopian scenarios. Gilead and the USA Atwood said inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale, originally published in 1985, was rooted in American history and the Reagan years. A substrate of political persecution “has always been there in the United States. It's come up, it's come down, it's come up, it's come down. It started to come up again in the '80s, so that's when I started writing The Handmaid's Tale. If the United States were to have totalitarianism, was the theoretical question, what kind of totalitarianism would it have?” She determined, based on history, that what would likely take hold in the US is a “religious styled totalitarianism.” So she invented Gilead, the religious-based totalitarian regime that prohibits women from reading, owning property or controlling their own reproduction. But, she noted, “the people in my book ruling Gilead are not Christians. They are people who have refashioned Christianity to suit themselves. Does that sound at all familiar? The Election that Changed the Frame When The Handmaid’s Tale book first came out, reactions differed around the world, said Atwood, who is originally from Canada. Some people in the US seemed to think the ideas were far-fetched, as if events like that “would never happen here,” she added. Then Trump was elected. Atwood recalled how, at the Hollywood launch party for the series in 2017, her agent joked that she was “the only person who has benefitted from the election of Donald Trump.” That’s because, as luck and history—or, as she joked, “bad luck and history”—would have it, Trump’s election made some of the themes of her work feel suddenly more relevant. “It could easily have gone the other way,” she said. “Had Hilary Clinton been elected, then Handmaid's Tale, although it would still be out there, would not have been out there in the same way... Because we were still filming in November, everybody in the show woke up the next morning, and they said, ‘We're in a different show.’” “Nothing had changed. The scripts were all the same, but the frame had changed. The way in which people were going to view this had radically changed. Instead of, ‘Well, at least that didn't happen,’ people were going, ‘Here it comes, and here it comes.’ I don't think you're going to get the outfits, but some of the rest of it has already happened. And if you've read Project 2025, you will know that there are people in this country who think that women shouldn't vote.” But, she added later, “History is not a line that goes only in one direction… Progress is not inevitable, and there isn't any one future. There are multiple possible futures, and we don't know which one we're going to get.” She said she tells her European friends not to count the Americans out just yet. The Tale That Defined a Career Nestled in an armchair, her small frame dressed in black with pops of bright pink poking out at the collar and wrists, Atwood had the mostly female audience at the DC conference laughing and clapping with her sharp comments and humorous asides. Atwood, who turns 87 this fall, is still a vibrant stage presence and maintains a busy calendar of speaking engagements, lately talking about her 624-page autobiographical collection, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, a New York Times bestseller published last year by Doubleday. Asked why she doesn’t write more stories set in utopias, she joked that literary utopias are “boring.” But she also noted that it’s not so easy to create perfect worlds, especially if you want to base the scenarios in reality, as with The Handmaid’s Tale. “I think the mistake always is believing that you can make the world perfect. You cannot, unless you restructure human nature itself. You can make it better. You can make it fairer, but you cannot make it perfect.” This article was originally published by AWFJ.org Images courtesy of Hulu

Her 34-year-old son was inaugurated as New York City’s first Muslim, South Asian, and African-born mayor on New Year’s Day, following an election that shocked the old guard and thrilled a new generation. In mom Mira Nair’s words, Zohran Mamdani “more than won the weekend” with his election. Leave it to a filmmaker to draw the box office analogy. Nair, aka Momdani, may be trending now because of her son, but the India-born filmmaker, 68, has been blazing trails for decades. “I’m going to be the mother of New York City,” she told reporters after her son’s swearing in. Mamdani embodies a lot of firsts, but Nair came first. Her films have long tackled complex social issues and captured universal themes in individual stories from around the globe, earning her dozens of glass-ceiling-breaking accolades, including an Oscar nomination. It’s not hard to divine Nair’s legacy in her progressive son—yet he is just one of her creations. His political messages echo themes seen consistently in her work over the last four decades, not to mention in the tides of her exceptional life, where she has modeled balancing work and motherhood, art and commerce, creativity and public service. Continue reading in PROVOKED magazine Photo credits: Mamdani by Dmitryshein; Nair at the 2008 IIFW Masterclass Directors Meet by Bollywoodhungama.com.

This article was originally published by The Alliance of Women Film Journalists Non-English-language feature films received a record number of nominations to the Oscars this year. The nominations show the Academy is "Becoming a Citizen of the World,” The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed on Jan. 22, citing the #OscarsSoWhite backlash from a decade ago that prompted the Academy to diversity its membership, including now a full 25% of voting members from abroad. But there’s another way to look at this. This year’s international diversification might also reveal that the Academy is cognizant of two simultaneous trends that are likely to shape its future. On the one hand, the Oscars have become increasingly less relevant to US audiences – their viewership is aging and relatively stagnant, which suggests their cultural significance for US audiences is sliding. On the other hand, international audiences and filmmakers still pay very close attention to the Oscars. The Academy seems to finally be waking up to the fact that the future of the Oscars may well depend on the international, not the domestic, market. Oscar Who? The Oscars audience has been flagging for years. Although viewership has been growing slightly each year since hitting an all-time low of 10.4 million viewers in 2021, reports suggest that those 55 and over still make up the largest demographic loyal to the ceremony. Anecdotally, I surveyed a small group of my US college students, all enrolled in at least one film course, about the Oscars. The majority (60%) expressed interest in the awards, and 73% said an Oscar nomination or win would motivate them to watch a movie. But the other 40% said they don’t pay much attention to the Oscars (60% said the same of the International category), and less than half had watched the ceremony in full more than once in the last five years. The Oscars have tried to appeal to younger audiences by moving away from a solely linear-TV model, including a livestream on Hulu last year that was reportedly glitchy and added fewer overall viewers than hoped. This year, the Academy announced the Oscars will move from ABC to YouTube in 2029. The kinds of films nominated have also changed in the last 15 years, shifting from blockbuster films with mass appeal, like 1998 sensation Titanic (a time when the show was watched by almost three times as many people), to artsier, international and more message-driven films, like Best Picture winners The Artist (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2014) and Moonlight (2015). This was all before the Academy introduced new diversity and inclusion requirements for Best Picture nominees in the 2020’s but after an unfavorable 2012 LA Times investigation found the Academy membership of the time was 94% white and 77% male, with a median age of 62. Of course, that only reflected the realities of Hollywood: “the academy's demographics mirror the industry's,” the LA Times wrote. Sluggish ratings today might still have to do with that demographic disconnect (or perception thereof), or perhaps a rising “America First” conservatism in the US less interested in artsy or international films (some suggest this year’s big studio nominees, One Battle After Another and Sinners, are a response to that). The explosion of streaming post-COVID, and more fragmented viewing options in general, has surely contributed as well. “Viewership for the annual Oscars show has long served as a cultural barometer — a way for Hollywood to gauge its relevance amid shifting political winds, fracturing media habits and changing social values,” The New York Times summarized last March. Yet, as the same article pointed out, that viewership could also count “people watching overseas, people catching a recording a few days later,” not just “live viewing in the United States.” The “International” Ghetto The fact that so many international films earned nominations this year is a welcome and long overdue awakening. In its domestic PR role, the Academy has naval gazed year after year, nominating almost exclusively US productions in top categories and ignoring dozens of remarkable and deserving global films for anything beyond the International category, turning this into a kind of ghetto expected to accommodate any and all films made outside the US or not in English. But only one per country, of course. And let’s not get started on the ethnocentrism of the official category’s previous name, “Foreign-Language” from its inception in 1956 until its rebranding as “International” in 2019. Foreign to whom? It’s also noteworthy that Academy voters have long shown a preference for European films, which are far and away the most frequent nominees and winners of the category. There are other issues. Nationality is rarely clear-cut in international co-productions. When the Academy rules changed in 2006 to allow for films in non-national languages, France was shortlisted with films like Turkey-set Mustang (2015) and Iran-set It Was Just An Accident (this year), Iran-shot The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2025) represented Germany, and Germany-set The Zone of Interest won for the UK. Another eligibility restriction – that minimum 50 percent of dialogue be in a language other than English – has also caused issues. In 2019, the Academy refused the entry of Nigerian film "Lionheart" in the International category because it was filmed mostly in English, although English is the official language of Nigeria. Meanwhile, controversies regularly surface over individual countries’ management of their nominations and claims of government interference. In 2023, the Academy tinkered with the International nomination process, requiring each country’s selection committee to have at least 5 members, 50% of whom are “filmmakers, artists and craftspeople,” in order to minimize political interference. Even so, in 2024, dozens of Greek filmmakers protested their country’s selection process, withdrawing their films from consideration and publicizing “serious doubts on the credibility and validity of the procedure.” Some have called on the Academy to create its own International Oscar selection committee. Netflix wants to do away with the minimum 7-day theatrical release requirement. Right now, around 1,000 Academy members volunteer to vote in the International category, agreeing to watch 15 pre-selected films each. The most voted of those make the first shortlist of 15, all of which must be watched by members voting on the final shortlist of the five official nominees. Oscars’ Sway Abroad Despite it all, more than 90 countries faithfully submit films each year for consideration in the International Oscar category, demonstrating the status the awards still have globally. The obvious expectation is that an Oscar, even just a nomination, will have a direct impact on distribution sales, audience interest and box office. Marketers take advantage of a nomination to publicize films that might otherwise elicit little notice, even in their home markets. After South Korea’s Parasite became the first non-English film ever to win the Best Picture Oscar (it also won Best Director, International Film and Original Screenplay) in 2020, it went on to earn more than $262 million at the worldwide box office, including $53.8 million domestically, making it the fifth top-grossing non-English-language film of all time at the domestic market. In fact, most of the films on that top grossers list received at least one Oscar nomination in their day. For a filmmaker from Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and so on, an Oscar nomination can mean the difference between making a next film, or not. It can help ensure interest and a hope for financing in fragile industries around the world. It serves as a calling card to the international industry and Hollywood. Nominees are often positioned back home as representing their entire industry and even country at the Oscars. “There's no doubt that winning an Oscar for a foreign film is a huge, important thing in terms of career potential,” Danish director Susanne Bier, twice nominated and one-time winner of the International Oscar, told me in an interview for AWFJ in 2023. “It opens a door where you can actually meet people, which is the first step, and it’s important. Then your work has to kind of live up to that because there are no guarantees, but it does actually matter.” Oscar nominee Joachim Trier, whose Sentimental Value earned a whopping nine Oscar nominations this year, told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month: “Part of being a filmmaker is what I call paying promo tax. It’s a privilege. It means that you are being seen and people care. I don’t take it lightly. I come from Norway, a tiny country, the suburbs of Europe. We’re very grateful when anything we make travels.” Kleber Mendonca Filho, director of The Secret Agent, the Brazilian film with four nominations this year, explained the importance of the American awards season for the film’s trajectory back home: “The reaction in Brazil is huge. The film is still doing very well in cinemas. It’s gaining more screens now because of the Golden Globes and this week with the [Oscar] nominations, so it’s a great moment,” he told Deadline. In becoming more international in its membership, and in nominating international films in categories beyond the International ‘ghetto,’ the Academy is acknowledging that the Oscars today are arguably more closely followed and hold more significance for audiences abroad than they do back home. If delayed viewers are counted in future ratings, and if the ceremony begins inviting more presenters from abroad (and not just from the handful of films nominated), that international audience may well be the Oscar ceremony’s best bet for the future. Images, from top: This year's International Oscar (among other categories) nominees Sentimental Value (Neon), The Secret Agent (Neon), It Was Just An Accident (Neon), Sirat (Neon), The Voice of Hind Rajab (Willa), and Parasite director Bong Joon-ho in 2020 (Oscars.org).

After 73 editions, SSIFF has quietly become one of the most respected names on the global film fest circuit, and as its longtime director prepares to step down, it has never looked stronger. If you’ve spent time on the film festival circuit, you’re probably aware of the “hidden gem” reputation of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The “gem” part is easy to explain: global cinema, glittery stars, enthusiastic locals, a size that allows for real connections, world-renowned cuisine and the inimitable charm of this bay-set Basque city. It’s the “hidden” part of the equation that raises some eyebrows. After 73 editions, San Sebastián still remains slightly off the radar for some in the industry, shadowed by its bigger European counterparts. Despite its melding of international auteurs and A-list celebrities, SSIFF is sometimes pigeonholed as mostly focused on Spain and Latin America. Timing is also not in its favor: The September fest comes on the heels of Venice and sometimes overlaps with Toronto, meaning it battles titans for world premieres. “I think one of the San Sebastián Film Festival’s strengths is its awareness of its core characteristics and its refusal to try to be anything else,” says SSIFF director José Luis Rebordinos, who will retire after 15 years following this fall’s 74th edition (Sept. 18-26), to be replaced at the helm by current deputy director Maialen Beloki. “We can’t be a major market, but we can have interesting industry activities like the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum or the Investors’ Conference,” Rebordinos continues. “We can’t have the year’s biggest American releases as premieres, but we can showcase some of them with members of their teams in parallel sections.” In other words, the event has found its sweet spot. “We are a festival with a large enough audience to interest both the industry and critics, but small enough to feel human and welcoming,” Rebordinos says. “We work with humility, and our slogan is ‘We are the smallest of the greats.’ ” San Sebastián regulars agree: “Everybody thinks of Cannes and Venice and Berlin, but it’s the smaller festivals like San Sebastián that people will gravitate toward,” says Christine Vachon, co-founder of New York-based Killer Films. “Those are the festivals where you actually get to spend time with filmmakers, local artists and financiers.” Read the full article at The Hollywood Reporter. Cover image of Kursaal courtesy of SSIFF / Photo: Pablo Gómez.

Three Films in Competition, a Thriving Box Office and the Envy of Europe: Spain Is Having Its Moment From Almodóvar to a new generation of auteurs, Spain has arrived at Cannes 2026 in historic fashion — and the industry behind it has never been in better shape: "Spanish cinema is in a very exceptional situation right now." Spaniards may not crowd the streets by the tens of thousands to celebrate their auteurs the way they do their futbolistas, but there has been a palpable sense of exuberance in the industry this spring about a historic moment for Spanish cinema. “I wish we lived it like that!” director Rodrigo Sorogoyen joked on the radio about the football analogy, after the April 9 announcement that his new film, The Beloved (El Ser Querido), would join Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad) and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra in an unprecedented three-film representation of Spain in this year’s Official Competition at Cannes. “There’s a certain movement in Spanish cinema,” Festival Director Thierry Frémaux affirmed at the announcement, pointing also to the French release the previous day of Spanish director Carla Simón’s Romería, a 2025 Cannes competition title. “This country has continued to produce formidable artists.” Spanish productions and co-productions can also be found in Un Certain Regard, Cannes Première, Special Screenings, Critics’ Week and Cannes Selection. The Croisette will be well stocked with the country’s most internationally renowned talents: Javier Bardem stars in The Beloved; Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close appear in La Bola Negra; and rising actress Victoria Luengo co-stars in both Beloved and Bitter Christmas, the latter alongside Barbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and Milena Smit. “It speaks to the great moment Spanish cinema is experiencing,” Almodóvar said following the April announcement — and he should know. He has had a hand in launching many of these talents, and his El Deseo production house co-produced La Bola Negra as well as last year’s Cannes Jury Prize winner and double Oscar nominee Sirāt. “It’s historical,” agrees Guillermo Farré, Head of Original Films & Spanish Cinema at Movistar Plus+, which co-produced Beloved, La Bola Negra and Sirāt and also backed Bitter Christmas. He notes that while Almodóvar has ensured Spanish cinema’s presence at Cannes at least every few years, this year’s three competition titles represent three different generations of filmmakers — proof, he says, that “Spanish cinema is in a very exceptional situation right now.” Spain is “in vogue,” affirms Elisa Carbonell, CEO of Spanish foreign trade institute ICEX, pointing to the country’s heightened presence at international festivals, markets and awards shows. “We are capable of bringing together craftsmanship, which I think is a luxury now, and innovation.” Spain has proved its creativity, its originality and its reliability. “We are so successful because there is an industry and there is talent.” Read the full feature on The Hollywood Reporter. Image courtesy of Cannes Film Festival.