Reviews

The Israeli targeted killing of Fatma Hassona, a photojournalist in Gaza, just one day after the ACID selection of Sepideh Farsi’s documentary about her was announced, has cast a dark shadow over the Cannes Film Festival. The powerful and minimalist film has become an international cause célèbre, and artistically, the documentary is worthy of all the attention. 

It takes a brave, thoughtful - and importantly, compassionate - person to focus their comedy spotlight onto one of the most awful situations of modern times, and that is exactly what Israeli activist-comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi does in her comedy show, which draws on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering up a prescient and unique voice amidst all the horror.

A charmingly meditative and gently illuminating portrait of the remarkable – and resolutely independent - 90-year-old Agatha Bock as she goes through daily life within her ancestral 54-acre farm, where she lives alone and still tends the land (despite ill-health and a broken thumb), cultivating heirloom seeds that have been passed down through generations.

David Bim’s impressive observational documentary debut offers an astonishingly visceral and powerful portrayal of a couple struggling to survive on the margins of Cuban society, all set against the backdrop of a country reeling from the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. The film won both the Special Jury Award and International Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Award at Visions du Réel 2025.

In the Mexican documentary Niñxs (a gender-free spelling of ‘children’ in Spanish), director Kani Lapuerta follows trans girl – and friend – Karla for eight years until she enters high school. Looking back from the present, the pair also provide a commentary track on Kani’s film, criticising, discussing and changing the narrative. It’s clever, and it works – and could work for many other documentaries as well.

While football is very much the driving force of Sarah Imsand’s engaging documentary Kevine and Fortune, at its tender and warm-hearted core is a friendship that is driven by mutual support, faith and determination – as well as a love of the beautiful game.

There is another world behind the wall. This could be one summary of Callisto Mc Nulty’s La Muraille, which reminisces with staff and patients about the Fontilles sanatorium in Alicante (opened in 1909), where lepers were housed, treated, and also locked away. Callisto Mc Nulty creates a quietly haunting reflection on how history – often painful, sometimes joyous, never truly past – echoes through the sanatorium, the surrounding landscapes and its inhabitants.

This intriguing portrait of the chief of the most important Soviet intelligence network during World War II, the one which first informed Moscow about Hitler’s plans for attacking Stalingrad, is as fascinating as it is frustrating – which in turn makes it all the more fascinating. Was Leopold Trepper a Gestapo collaborator or a war hero? Or perhaps both?

Timely, but disappointing, Visions du Réel’s opening film Blame by Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei portrays three scientists who got caught up in the geopolitical and anti-scientific blame game surrounding the 2019 Covid outbreak. But taking just one side – even if it’s the right one – on an issue as fraught as the Covid pandemic merely makes for meagre storytelling.

A pool of love and laughter, 50 Metres is Yomna Khattab's first film, about her father, who inspired her to become a filmmaker. But it is also an emotionally layered contemplation about their relationship, motherhood, growing old and the fear of loneliness. The clever choice of format and her dad’s refusal to act as therapist turn it into a delightful and witty observation of life.