Jonathan Romney
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Film, misc. Writer @FilmComment, @SightSoundMag, @ObsNewReview, @Screendaily.Screenwriter, Fiona Tan's HISTORY'S FUTURE. Now teaching @NFTSFilmTV
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Articles by Jonathan Romney
‘Act 3’ review: Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor muse on the nature of storytelling in rich, moving documentary
The filmmakers’ latest non-fiction work premieres in London Film Festival competition Source: London Film Festival ‘Act 3’ Dirs: Christine Molloy, Joe Lawlor. Ireland/UK. 2026. 83mins You might see the documentary essays of Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor as exercises in thinking aloud, in words and images – though this might suggest that their films are less deliberately structured than they actually are.
‘In The Shadows’ review: Jasmine Jobson packs a punch as British-Somali boxer Ramla Ali in restrained biopic
Anthony Wonke’s feature will be released in the UK on October 30 following its London Film Festival premiere Source: London Film Festival ‘In The Shadows’ Dir. Anthony Wonke. UK. 2026. 117mins A portrait of British-Somali boxer Ramla Ali, Anthony Wonke’s drama In the Shadows may not quite deliver an uppercut to the sports movie template.
Verity film review — this twisty Colleen Hoover adaptation is a convoluted dud
In 1950, Alfred Hitchcock scandalised critics with his film Stage Fright, which contained a flashback to events that never really happened.
Extra Geography film review — droll coming-of-age story captures the pains of girlhood
British comedy Extra Geography is directed by Molly Manners, rather aptly — her name redolent of the bygone girls’ school stories of...
Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe shine in gold-running drama The Weight — film review
The titular burden in Depression-era drama The Weight is a consignment of gold that the characters heave in rucksacks through a forested...
What happens when you film your entire life — tragedy and all?
American director Ross McElwee has been making films for more than 50 years, substantially about his own life.
Una edición muy irregular
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‘Saints’ review: Rising star Victoria Luengo brings spiky energy to uneven Spanish heist thriller
The second feature from Basque filmmaker Mikel Gurrea premieres in San Sebastian Source: San Sebastián International Film Festival ‘Saints’ Dir. Mikel Gurrea. Spain/Italy. 2026.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie: fascinating documentary captures the author’s courage and humour in the wake of a brutal attack
“To be famous for the wrong thing is a terrible fate,” Salman Rushdie told an interviewer in 2002. He was referring to the fatwa calling for his execution, issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, after Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses had inflamed anger in the Muslim world.
Heart of the Beast: a bracingly executed man-and-dog survival story
Brad Pitt stars as a traumatised US soldier stranded in the wilderness with his military security dog in a tense action thriller from David Ayer that’s strongest in its quieter moments. 25 September 2026 Brad Pitt as James Belmont Courtesy of Paramount UK Cynics once used to joke about equestrian-themed films that “The horse has all the best lines.” In Heart of the Beast, Odin the German Shepherd may not actually have the best lines, but he has the best reaction shots.
‘What Remains’ review: A couple head in different directions in meditative, visually striking Turkish road movie
Yesim Ustaoglu’s distinctive feature premieres in San Sebastian, and will be released in Turkey by Mubi Source: San Sebstian International Film Festival ’What Remains; Dir. Yesim Ustaoglu. Turkey/Luxembourg/France/Bulgaria 2026. 126mins In Yesim Ustaoglu’s What Remains, the protagonists go in search of Turkey – and, it goes without saying, of themselves.
‘In My Father’s Room’ review: A woman gets to know her late father in delicate debut from Japanese novelist-turned-filmmaker Maha Harada
Yu Aoi and Issey Ogata star in the film, which premieres in San Sebastian competition Source: San Sebastián International Film Festival ‘In My Father’s Room’ Dir/scr. Maha Harada. Japan 2026. 109mins Novelist-turned-director Maha Harada’s In My Father’s Room is a highly personal film that clearly stems from a sincere commitment to certain spiritual and aesthetic values.
‘Ghost Song’ review: Fatih Akin’s San Sebastián opener is emotionally satisfying supernatural romance
A strong perormance from newcomer Mariam Dawoud anchors Akin’s tender Hamburg-set love story Source: San Sebastián International Film Festival ‘Ghost Song’ Dir. Fatih Akin. Germany 2026. 105mins A tender, intelligent, beautifully-crafted supernatural love story, German-Turkish writer/director Fatih Akin’s San Sebastian opener features a terrific central performance from newcomer Mariam Dawoud as a young woman who finds love after death.
‘Ground Floor’ review: Absurdist Hungarian comedy effectively turns a run-down apartment block into state of the nation satire
Ádám Tompa stars in director Gábor Reisz’s follow-up to 2023 Venice Horizons winner Explanation For Everything Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Ground Floor’ Dir. Gábor Reisz. Hungary/Italy 2026. 108mins Mixing anarchy with control, absurdism with political protest, Gábor Reisz’s satirical comedy Ground Floor builds from deadpan mundanity to knockabout frenzy verging on the apocalyptic, to sustained but overstated effect.
Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger review — the Gallagher brothers are heralded as messiahs in concert doc
The Oasis Live ’25 reunion tour made “dynamic pricing” a household phrase, as Liam Gallagher acknowledged at one concert when he saluted...
‘Until The Day Ends’ review: Vivid if limited portrait of revolutionary youth in modern-day Serbia
Jelena Maksimović’s fiction debut relies heavily on the charisma of lead Jelena Maksimović Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Until The Day Ends’ Dir. Jelena Maksimović. Serbia/Bulgaria/Slovenia/Montenegro/Croatia/Germany 2026. 91mins A vivid if ultimately frustrating depiction of youth revolt in a polarised age, Serbian drama Until the Day Ends has an urgency and intensity that testify to the talent of writer-director Jelena Maksimović and her young, primarily non-professional cast.
Venice 2026: Hot and Cold
Festival Dispatch Standouts like May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown and Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love have emerged from an otherwise weak edition Woman Unknown (May el-Toukhy, 2026) It’s an age-old tradition for writers to start their reports on the Venice Film Festival by noting what a pleasurable, relaxed event it is. Not this year. Punishingly high temperatures—the long tail of a drastically overheated European summer—have given the festival an unusually oppressive feel.
Call My Agent! The Movie — more anticlimactique than chic
For years, the makers of the crisply witty French streaming sensation Call My Agent! have teased the prospect of a feature film.
‘Dau’ review: Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s sprawling new installment in his conceptual project is an affecting study of Soviet tyranny
The Venice competition title follows previous features and a 2019 art installation Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Dau’ Dir. Ilya Khrzhanovsky. Germany/France/Sweden 2026. 195mins Shot over several years on a massive, citadel-like set, Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s sprawling, conceptual Dau project, which is loosely based on the biography of Soviet physicist Lev Landau, attracted early attention thanks to reports of an immersive shoot that was like its own enclosed Soviet-era eco-system.
Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger: Fan-service rockumentary is very much the Gallagher brothers’ show
Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s documentary about the 2025 Oasis comeback tour doesn’t excite when it comes to concert footage, but has a great sardonic pair of commentators in Liam and Noel Gallagher. 9 September 2026 Liam and Noel Gallagher in Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger (2026) Courtesy of Disney UK Reviewed from the 2026 Venice Film Festival “You have to care a lot to not give a fuck,” says Liam Gallagher in a new rockumentary which tracks their 2025 reunion/comeback tour.
‘Company’ review: Casey Affleck directs, co-writes and stars in atmospheric but convoluted slice of American Gothic
Nick Nolte, Scott McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn and Emily Alyn Lind also star in Affleck’s twisting Venice competititon premiere Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Company’ Dir. Casey Affleck. Canada/USA 2026. 92 mins When a film opens with a voice-over that starts, “The Persian mystic wrote…,” the concern is that you may be in for high earnestness.
‘No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman’ review: Tense, blunt-edged Kurdish war thriller follows a female sniper in Iraq Original
Halkawt Mustafa’s female-led action drama brings glossy genre mechanics to a story of Kurdish resistance Source: Venice Film Festival ‘No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman’ Dir. Halkawt Mustafa. Norway/Iraqi. 2026. 110 mins. Genre razzle-dazzle can be an effective way to alert audiences to the realities of the world’s conflict zones.
‘Conversation With The Sea’ review: Kamel El Basha anchors Muayad Alayan’s uneven Palestinian drama
A Jerusalem-set mystery turns one man’s private reckoning into a pointed portrait of Palestinian life in Israel Source: PalCine Prods ‘Conversation With The Sea’ Dir: Muayad Alayan. Palestine/Netherlands/Saudi Arabia/Qatar 2026. 112mins Jerusalem-set Palestinian drama Conversation With The Sea combines political cri de coeur with elements of melodrama and detective story to evoke the challenges of Palestinian life in Israel.
‘Woman Unknown’ review: May el-Toukhy’s Venice competition title is formal yet ferocious post-war Danish drama
Mathilde Arcel puts in a terrific lead performance in the director’s follow-up to Long Story Short and Queen Of Hearts Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Woman Unknown’ Dir. May el-Toukhy. Danish 2026. 126mins This year’s Venice competition features only one film by a sole female director – but Danish selection Woman Unknown at least offers some corrective, being a feminist statement of considerable fury as well as harrowing but soberly managed emotional power.
‘Holy Wood Dust’ review: Victor Kossakovsky’s study of trees lacks the revelatory magic of his best works
The Russian documentarist’s follow-up to Trillion and Architecton premieres out of competition in Venice Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Holy Wood Dust’ Dir. Victor Kossakovsky. Italy/Spain/Germany 2026. 105mins Russian-born documentarist Victor Kossakovsky is nothing if not an audacious experimenter with scale, his recent work dramatically counterpointing the miniature with the monumental.
‘Imperium’ review: Sergei Loznitsa surveys the 1970s Soviet empire in revealing archive epic
Italian archive footage forms the basis of an expansive documentary with clear contemporary resonance Source: Venice Film Festival ‘Imperium’ Dir. Sergei Loznitsa. Germany/Italy/France/Lithuania 2026. 175 mins. In his latest documentary Imperium, tireless Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa allows himself an expansive canvas to portray the vastness of the Soviet Union.
‘House Of The Wind’ review: A tender Cameroonian study of solitude and unexpected kinship
Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu’s debut finds emotional force in an ageing mother’s search for connection Source: Venice Film Festival ‘House Of The Wind’ Dir. Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu. Cameroon/France/Belgium/Benin/Saudi Arabia/Qatar 2026. 103 mins. Artfully combining tenderness with stylistic and narrative sobriety, House Of The Wind is an intensely personal feature by French-Cameroonian director Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu.
Leviticus film review — queer desire meets small-town cruelty in horror with heart
Australian chiller Leviticus is set in a small industrial community, where two teenage boys — nervous, delicate Naim (Joe Bird) and...
Mayday film review — Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh buddy up in 1980s cold war comedy
Remember those crazy 1980s? Buddy action movies? Van Halen’s “Jump”? The Soviet Union?
Why we’re all Wile E Coyote now
With cinemagoers currently enthralled by the feats of legendary Hellenic heroes, let’s consider a classical figure whose travails we can...
‘The State Of Us’ review: A boisterous Bradford night out turns sentimental in dewey-eyed UK debut
Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey’s first feature follows a pair of Northern friends coping with terminal illness Source: Edinburgh International Film Festival ‘The State Of Us’ Dir. Ollie Gardner, Jake Harvey. UK 2026. 90mins Two Northern lads get in a bit of carpe diem while the going is good in The State of Us, a collaborative debut by Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey, experienced producers working in theatre and TV respectively.
Love Me Tender film review — Vicky Krieps is brilliantly restrained as a mother fighting for custody
The acclaimed French writer Constance Debré might be considered an exemplar of radical self-reinvention.
Bouchra film review — a deeply personal meditation on identity, starring a lesbian coyote
The protagonist of Bouchra is a coyote whose best friend is a lizard, whose ex is a cow, and who ends up falling for a seductive bear.
The Summer Book film review — a twinkly turn from Glenn Close in Tove Jansson adaptation
For a long time, Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson was best known for her children’s books and for the Moomins — the melancholy...
A Child of My Own film review — the stranger-than-fiction tale of a faked pregnancy
We’re on slippery ground with A Child of My Own.
“A small masterpiece of cinematic storytelling”: Chicken Run reviewed in 2000
In his review of Nick Park and Peter Lord’s Chicken Run, Kim Newman celebrated Aardman’s feature debut as an ingenious homage to wartime escape films, brought vividly to life through expressive stop-motion animation. 23 July 2026 Chicken Run (2000) The high concept behind Chicken Run is that it is a prisoner-of-war film featuring grimacing plasticine chickens in place of Richard Attenborough, John Mills or any other persistent screen escapee from Colditz or Stalag 17.
On the Sea: Two fishermen explore their desires in Helen Walsh’s sensitive drama
Set in a Welsh fishing community, Walsh’s low-budget queer romance traces a tender, risky affair shaped by illness, family duty and the pressures of tradition. 21 July 2026 Barry Ward as Jack, Lorne MacFadyen as Daniel in On the Sea (2025) Director-author Helen Walsh’s previous works have included tough tales set in working-class communities, sometimes focusing on sexuality and forbidden passion.
Ish: Imran Perretta’s remarkably beautiful film captures the brutal challenges of adolescence
You wonder whether Imran Perretta was thinking of Kes (1969) when he gave a three-letter name to his own film about a painful childhood. Ish might, to a degree, be categorised as British realism in the classic Loachian tradition – not least in its casting of young nonprofessionals. But in his first feature, director Perretta – co-writing here with playwright Enda Walsh – finds his own distinct approach to the contemporary multiracial British everyday. You could call Ish a coming-of-age story.
‘Fruit Gathering’ review: Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe winner is delicate LGBTQ Myanmar drama
Aung Phyoe’s fine-tuned feature debut is powered by an impressive central performance from Nandar Myat Aung Source: Karlovy Vary ‘Fruit Gathering’ Dir/scr: Aung Phyoe. Myanmar/Czech Republic/France 2026. 97mins A fine-tuned combination of emotional insight, cultural detail and hard social realism gives quiet vibrancy to Fruit Gathering, the debut drama by Burmese writer-director Aung Phyoe.
Film Comment Recommends: Mare’s Nest
Film Comment Recommends The latest feature from filmmaker and artist Ben Rivers offers a treasury of strange delights Mare’s Nest (Ben Rivers, 2025) Screen depictions of the postapocalyptic commonly feature societies existing on salvaged remnants of the bygone world. Appropriately, Mare’s Nest, the new film by British filmmaker/artist Ben Rivers, is itself composed of fragments.
Do You Love Me film review — a head-spinning and heartfelt mosaic of Lebanon
Lana Daher’s Do You Love Me starts with a flurry of captions about Lebanon and its recent history.
Nadia Latif on Under the Shadow: ‘It’s a horror show — definitely’
Supernatural manifestations in the movies, it’s worth remembering, do not only happen in cobwebbed English manors or in Californian homes...
‘Vertiginous’ review: Quentin Dupieux’s outre comedy tackles complex issues of identity through crude animation
The French auteur’s latest work closes Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Source: Cannes Film Festival ‘Vertiginous’ Dir. Quentin Dupieux. France 2026. 67mins Vertiginous is one of two Quentin Dupieux films premiering in Cannes this year, following Midnight Screening Full Phil. While that was live action, this is an animation – although who is to say which of the two is more lifelike and which more artificial?
‘Red Rocks’ review: Bruno Dumont assembles a charming young cast for his beguiling childhood fantasy
Dumon’s distinctive, accessible new feature bows in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Source: Luxbox Films ‘Red Rocks’ Dir/scr: Bruno Dumont. Portugal/ France/Italy/Spain/Qatar 2026. 90mins. You never know quite what to expect with French writer-director Bruno Dumont. For years, he explored the severe, even forbidding mode that he established in 1997 debut The Life of Jesus, but showed a talent for gonzo comedy in 2014 TV series Li’l Quinquin.
Our Land — a stunning documentary about the ever more inaccessible English countryside
Orban Wallace’s documentary Our Land features some of the most beautiful English vistas imaginable.
‘The Unknown’ review: Léa Seydoux brings conviction to an ambitious but frustrating body-swap mystery
Niels Schneider also stars in Arthur Harari’s twisting Cannes Competition title Source: Cannes Film Festival ‘The Unknown’ Dir: Arthur Harari. France/Italy. 2026. 140mins In the art-house cinema of enigma, there’s often a thin line between the mysterious and the murky. Arthur Harari’s The Unknown treads this line with varying degrees of daring and discomfort, but ultimately never feels quite confident enough to lead us compellingly through the labyrinth of its bizarre body swap narrative.
‘Another Day’ review: Adèle Exarchopoulos is the beating heart of Jeanne Herry’s naturalistic study of alcoholism
The Cannes Competition title also stars Mathilde Roehrich and Brigitte Sy Source: Cannes Film Festival ‘Another Day’ Dir. Jeanne Herry. France 2026. 120mins Back in 2013, Adèle Exarchopoulos proved that she could more than handle the depiction of intense emotion with her career-making role in Blue is the Warmest Colour, the Cannes winner that saw her jointly awarded the Palme d’Or with director Abdellatif Kechiche and co-star Léa Seydoux.
‘Rehearsals For A Revolution’ review: Four decades of Iranian history informs this timely, moving documentary
Pegah Ahangarani’s deeply personal film hits the sweet spot between intimate diary and political narrative Source: Cannes Film Festival ‘Rehearsals For A Revolution’ Dir. Pegah Ahangarani. Czech Republic/Spain 2026. 95 mins Several decades of modern Iranian history are evoked and interrogated in Rehearsals For A Revolution, a searching documentary that can surely lay claim to being the timeliest film in Cannes this year.
‘John Lennon: The Last Interview’ review: Steven Soderbergh’s poignant doc is undercut by egregious AI visuals
Uneven Cannes Special Screening is structured around Lennon and Yoko Ono’s final interview Source: Cannes Film Festival ‘John Lennon: The Last Interview’ Dir. Steven Soderbergh. US. 2026. 97mins There’s some enlightening substance and much poignancy in the words of John Lennon and Yoko Ono – but also much egregious AI-created visual ugliness – in John Lennon: The Last Interview, which premieres in Cannes’ Special Screenings.
Cannes 2026: Cannes Opener
Festival Dispatch Early festival premieres of Fatherland, In Waves, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasmastand out amongst more safe and familiar fare Fatherland (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2026) Apparently, the world is a less political place than it was. That’s what you might have concluded, given how Cannes kicked off this year.
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