Martin Kudlac
Verified- Freelance Journalist, Independent Scholar, and Film Industry Reporter, Freelance
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Articles by Martin Kudlac
Toronto 2026 Review: THE SMELL OF APPLES, Subtle, Unsettling Coming-of-Age Drama Under Apartheid
After Manodrome, South African filmmaker John Trengove adapts Mark Behr’s 1993 novel The Smell of Apples. The coming-of-age drama, set in 1970s South Africa and looking at apartheid through the eyes of 11-year-old white boy Marnus, seemingly has little in common with the toxic masculinity and repressed queer desire of Manodrome. Yet both motifs emerge here as well, albeit far more coyly, one under particularly unsettling circumstances.
Toronto 2026 Review: TEHRAN, UNDER THE SKIN Reveals the Politics Beneath the Promise of Transformation
Returning to Tehran after 15 years abroad, Iranian filmmaker Afsaneh Salari enters the city’s plastic-surgery clinics to investigate a national fixation in her documentary Tehran, Under the Skin. Unlike documentaries about cosmetic tourism and malpractice, such as Stitched Up? Surgery in the Sun, Hunting the BBL Butchers, or Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection, Salari treats plastic surgery as a political and social lens through which to examine contemporary Iran.
Venice 2026 Review: LOVERS IN THE BLUE NIGHT, Tender Social Drama Caught in Its Own Emotional Web
Anuparna Roy’s second feature Lovers in the Blue Night follows her Venice-awarded Songs of Forgotten Trees, and expands her interest in migrants and working-class lives into a four-part constellation of frustrated intimacies. Set within Mumbai’s nocturnal economy, the film revolves around people whose emotional needs have become entangled with the practical business of survival.
Venice 2026 Review: ARRESTED MEMORY, Screwball Cop Caper Brings Melancholy to the Police-Action Formula
Japanese director Sabu takes the overused narrative device of memory loss for a fresh spin in his action comedy Arrested Memory, some 20 years in the making. Sabu bends the device toward his perennial concerns: The absurdity of circumstance, the comedy of panic and the possibility that catastrophe might shake loose a more authentic human being. Lee (Ethan Juan) is a celebrated Taipei police detective diagnosed with early-onset dementia, just as he is transferred to a rural precinct.
Venice 2026 Review: JUPITER, Claustrophobic Political Thriller for the Current Time
Alexandre Smia’s feature debut Jupiter is a political thriller that goes behind the scenes of the French presidency in a pressure-cooker situation. Set largely inside the presidential command bunker beneath the Élysée Palace, Smia’s dialogue-driven chamber drama gets maximum mileage from its confined setting and from lead actor Denis Ménochet’s performance as an embattled president facing an impossible decision. The result is a viewing experience that puts the audience on the edge of its seat.
Venice 2026 Review: NO PARADISE IF YOU ARE KILLED BY A WOMAN Goes into Stealth Mode to Confront the Scars of War
Norway-based, Iraqi-born filmmaker Halkawt Mustafa goes into stealth mode in his latest work, provocatively titled No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman. The woman in the title is Vyan (Avan Jamal), a Kurdish sniper introduced through an intense series of action sequences: Infiltrating an enemy-held building, taking out terrorists during an air strike, and facing an armour-plated truck loaded with explosives in a nerve-racking stand-off.
Venice 2026 Review: DIANE IN THE LOOP Channels Inherited Generational Rage into a Whimsical Yet Touching Feminist Western
Belgian filmmakers Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni have made a habit of filtering painful subjects through playfully unstable genres. Their third feature Diane in the Loop makes an even more audacious collision, taking an intergenerational rape-revenge conceit and recasting it as a quirky feminist Western. Diane (Ninon Borsei) is hardly submissive in relationships or one-night stands, nor does she shy away from using her fists when convinced she is in the right.
Toronto 2026 Review: DIARY OF A MAD OLD MAN Turns Erotic Obsession Into an Anti-Erotic Meditation
Wayne Wang’s adaptation of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s final completed novel of the same name revolves around Utsugi (Lily Franky), a 69-year-old widower recovering from a stroke. With the left side of his body paralyzed, he remains at home, cared for by his sister-in-law Hana (Yūki Kudō) and daughter-in-law Susu (Fan Bingbing). Wang opens the film with Utsugi sitting at a table in his home office and masturbating, only to fail to reach climax.
Venice 2026: Exclusive UNTIL THE DAY ENDS Poster Premiere
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival’s Orizzonti competition will host the world premiere of Until the Day Ends (Do kraja dana), the fiction-feature debut of Serbian filmmaker Jelena Maksimović. Co-written by Maksimović, Ivan Salatić and Olga Dimitrijević, Until the Day Ends is a coming-of-age drama set against contemporary political unrest in Serbia. The film’s synopsis sets the premise: Belgrade is a city divided.
Locarno 2026: Asia Argento on Failure, Scandal, and Choosing the Road "That Had a Heart"
When Asia Argento received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, the honor arrived at a moment when she had begun to question whether her career still had a future. Presenting two markedly different new films, she spoke with unusual candor about professional exile, childhood stardom, directing as self-preservation and the artistic choices that cost her mainstream success. The award therefore felt like more than a retrospective celebration.
Locarno 2026 Review: THE RIVERBANK Turns Queer Desire Into a Defiant Neo-Noir
Premiering in the Locarno Film Festival’s main competition, The Riverbank (orig. A Margem do Rio) is a queer thriller from Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias, making their feature debut. Izaquiel (Caique Copque) works as a cleaner in Recife. While he spends his days at a dreary job trying to make ends meet, he shares an apartment with a rambunctious chosen family of trans women.
Locarno 2026 Interview: MANHUNT Director Wayne Wapeemukwa on Humanizing Killers, Settler Mythology, and Cinema Without Sermons
Canadian filmmaker and philosopher Wayne Wapeemukwa has built his work around the intersection of poetic realism and political inquiry. His 2017 debut feature Luk’Luk’I won TIFF’s Best Canadian First Feature Film award for its collaborative portrait of marginalized lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. His sophomore feature Manhunt world-premiered in the Concorso Internazionale at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival.
Locarno 2026 Review: DESTROY ALL GIRLS, Freewheeling Skate-Punk Rebellion, With an Expiration Date
Erin Vassilopoulos’ freewheeling second feature Destroy All Girls premiered in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente. The film follows Alex Martínez (Ani Mesa-Perez), who lives in Union City, New Jersey, where she works in a grocery store and helps care for her older brother Gabriel (Gil Perez-Abraham), a former competitive inline skater left severely disabled after an accident. Their relationship is tender but encumbered by circumstances neither sibling chose.
Locarno 2026 Review: ROMA ELASTICA Cannibalizes the Myth of the Movie Star in a Delirious Cinephile Phantasmagoria
The Locarno Film Festival has become a home for Bertrand Mandico’s projects, and his latest, Roma Elastica, which premiered in Cannes’ Midnight Screenings, is no exception. Following Conann and Dragon Dilatation, Roma Elastica is an extravagant metatextual venture, as much a tribute to cinema’s golden age as a parody.
Locarno 2026 Review: BLOODY TENNIS Serves Up a Blood-Soaked Sports-Horror Satire
Locarno’s Fuori Concorso section introduced Nikias Chryssos’ English-language debut Bloody Tennis, which pushes the brutality of sports competition to sadistic extremes. Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) arrives at a supposedly prestigious tennis academy hidden in southern Europe. She is welcomed by the academy’s mysterious director, portrayed by Bertrand Mandico regular Elina Löwensohn.
Locarno 2026 Masterclass: Darren Aronofsky on Risk, Movie Jail, and Knowing When to Let a Film Go
Darren Aronofsky has been celebrated at the 79th edition of Locarno Film Festival with the Pardo d’Onore, recognizing a career willing to risk. Aronofsky gave a talk in Locarno reflecting on his career. His career began because he failed to enter a university sculpture class. His first feature acquired its visual identity because he was broke. Several of his most enduring films were considered commercially disastrous or nearly impossible to finance.
Locarno 2026 Interview: KETTICÈ Filmmakers Luca Guadagnino and Giovanni Tortorici on Adolescent Rebellion and Protecting Cinema's Rare Roses
During a conversation in Locarno, Luca Guadagnino reached for an image that seemed to contain both his pessimism about the film business and his reason for producing Giovanni Tortorici. The Italian industry, Guadagnino argued, has become a desert. Yet even there, a rare flower can push through, a filmmaker with the stamina to form a cinematic vocabulary and the nerve to resist the language already prepared for him. “It’s very important to protect those roses,” he said.
Locarno 2026 Interview: DONKEY PRINCESS Filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña Say "Jan Švankmajer Is Our Father"
Chilean filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, the acclaimed duo behind The Wolf House and The Hyperboreans, have spent two decades dissolving the boundaries between animation, live action, puppetry and performance. Their latest feature, Donkey Princess (orig. Princesa Burro), premiered in the main competition of the Locarno Film Festival.
FRANZ Review: Embracing an Incomplete Life
The enigmatic author Franz Kafka has long resisted cinematic representation, his fragmented writings and evasive persona defying the conventions of biographical storytelling. Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland confronts this resistance directly in Franz (co-written by Charlatan's scriptwriter Marek Epstein), not by attempting to reconstruct the author’s life in linear form, but by embracing its incompleteness.
Locarno 2026 Interview: NOBODY'S VIOLENCE Filmmaker Denis Côté Talks Mortality and Making Cinema That "Floats"
Twenty years after his debut feature Drifting States won the Golden Leopard at Locarno, prolific Québécois auteur and former film critic Denis Côté returns to the festival’s international competition with his 17th feature, Nobody’s Violence.
Locarno 2026 Industry: Growth, Risk, and the Search for a More Resilient Independent Film Business
Locarno Pro closed its largest edition to date, passing 2,000 accreditations for the first time and reinforcing its position as an increasingly consequential meeting point for independent cinema. The 2026 edition registered 2,140 industry delegates, up 10% from 1,940 in 2025, including 1,949 professionals on site and 191 participating online. Nearly 100 countries were represented, while Match Me!, Alliance 4 Development and Open Doors generated 1,463 pre-scheduled meetings.
Locarno 2026 Interview: SIXTEEN MOMENTS OF MY LIFE Filmmaker Albert Serra Discusses Five Cameras, Six Years of Creation, and AI's Limits
Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra premiered in Locarno his latest project, a concert film with Ingrid Caven, Sixteen Moments of My Life. The film records a concert performing 16 autobiographical songs in French and German with the electronic Catalan group Molforts at Paris’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. Yet Serra rejects the idea that he simply arrived to film a concert.
Locarno 2026 Interview: OBJET A Filmmaker Ann Oren on Touch and the Ecstasy of Losing Control
Berlin-based filmmaker and visual artist Ann Oren joins actors Aenne Schwarz and Louis Hofmann to discuss her second fiction feature, Objet a. Visionary hand surgeons Ingeborg and Adam inhabit a tightly controlled relationship until an accident brings the enigmatic Gaia (Simone Bucio) into their lives and unsettles its balance.
Locarno 2026 Interview: O JACARÉ Filmmaker Basil da Cunha on Gangster Heroes
For almost two decades, Swiss-Portuguese filmmaker Basil da Cunha has made films with the residents of Reboleira, a predominantly Cape Verdean neighborhood on Lisbon’s outskirts. His Locarno competition title O Jacaré turns the mysterious disappearance of stolen money into a bright, fast-moving ensemble caper in which rumor, suspicion and desire upset the community’s fragile balance.
Locarno 2026 Interview: THE DAYS OFF Filmmaker Lucila Mariani Discusses Internet Nostalgia
Argentine filmmaker Lucila Mariani makes her feature debut with The Days Off, awarded a Special Mention in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente. Set during an endless summer in the near future, the film follows 12-year-old Bego as an approaching solar eclipse, a mysterious online friendship, and the practice of “shifting” draw her towards alternative realities.
Locarno 2026 Industry: Marco Perego on Killing the Producer's Ego
Producer Marco Perego came to Locarno's industry strand with the sort of recent record that normally invites a victory lap. At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, he was a producer on three Competition titles: Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur and James Gray’s Paper Tiger, as well as Kantemir Balagov’s Directors’ Fortnight opener Butterfly Jam. Fjord won the Palme d’Or and Minotaur the Grand Prix, making Perego the first producer associated with both top prizes in the same edition.
Locarno 2026: Olivia Wilde on Why Streamers "Bribe" Films Away From Theaters
By the time Olivia Wilde sat down with the press at Locarno, her latest film The Invite had already supplied the answer to one of the questions hanging over its release. The marital chamber comedy premiered at Sundance, opened in American theaters through A24 in June, and arrived in Switzerland for an 8,000-seat Piazza Grande screening. For a film built from four people, one apartment, and an increasingly volatile dinner, the scale of that final room was almost comically disproportionate.
Locarno 2026: James Gray on Why Every Director "Steals Like Crazy"
The 79th edition of Locarno Film Festival welcomed James Gray and honored him with the Pardo alla Carriera. He presented his latest feature, Paper Tiger, in one of the largest open air cinemas in the world, Piazza Grande. A career award might invite a filmmaker to impose order on three decades of work. Gray did almost the opposite.
Locarno 2026: Zoe Saldaña on Making Gatekeepers Answer for Exclusion
Zoe Saldaña arrived at the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival carrying the kind of résumé that can flatten a public conversation into celebration: An Academy Award for Emilia Pérez, three major science-fiction franchises, and a body of work whose scale is almost without contemporary parallel. Locarno gave her a Special Pardo. Saldaña used the occasion less as a victory lap than as an argument against the boxes that decide what an actor is allowed to want.
Locarno 2026: Virginie Efira on Her Crooked Path From TV, a 20-Minute Japanese Take in Heels, and Why Acting Begins With Listening
The morning after Virginie Efira accepted the Leopard Club Award in the Piazza Grande, the 79th Locarno Film Festival offered a less ceremonial measure of her career. In a public conversation moderated by Cahiers du cinéma critic Thierry Méranger, the Belgian-born actor moved from television and romantic comedy to Paul Verhoeven, Justine Triet and Ryūsuke Hamaguchi without presenting any of it as a tidy ascent.
Locarno 2026 Industry: Three African Projects Share Open Doors' Grant
Locarno Open Doors has announced its 2026 award winners, dividing its main CHF 50,000 production grant among three projects from Uganda, Somalia, Djibouti and Ghana. The awards mark the second year of Open Doors’ four-edition cycle focusing on filmmakers, projects and producers from 42 African countries.
Locarno 2026 Industry: THE SURUBÍ, SPRING STORY and YAZZ Lead Locarno Pro Awards
The prizes handed out by Locarno Pro are largely practical affairs: color grading, sound mixing, equipment, studio time, marketing and international consultancy, intended to move projects towards production, completion and the marketplace. This year’s winners were drawn from three of the Locarno Film Festival’s flagship industry initiatives: the First Look works-in-progress showcase, Alliance 4 Development and the Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest.
Sarajevo 2026 Exclusive: THE BALKAN COWBOY Poster Premiere
Dragana Jurišić’s documentary feature debut The Balkan Cowboy is set to receive its world premiere in the Documentary Film Competition at the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival, which runs August 14–21. Ahead of the premiere, Dublin’s Invisible Thread Films and Zagreb’s Restart have unveiled the film’s hand-drawn poster, created by artist David Rooney in collaboration with designer Niall McCormack.
Locarno 2026 Preview: Hong Sangsoo, Denis Côté, Albert Serra, Ann Oren, Beatrice Gibson, Edgar Pêra Lead Lineup
The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival (August 5–15) selected 233 films from 69 countries, including 103 world premieres, for its lineup, from a record 7,759 submissions. The celebrity wattage will be also considerable with Isabella Rossellini, Darren Aronofsky, Virginie Efira, James Gray, Asia Argento, effects legend Rick Baker and producer Sigurjón “Joni” Sighvatsson in attendance and receiving festival honors while also joining public conversations.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Review: 3 WEEKS AFTER Turns High-School Cruelty Into Social Horror
Serbian filmmaker Miroslav Terzić has examined social taboos in his previous works, and 3 Weeks After continues in that vein. In this case, however, he does so with hypnotic formal flair.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: Sharon Horgan on BAD SISTERS, Global TV and the Lure of Cinema
Sharon Horgan understands the demand for television that travels. Through Merman, the production company she co-founded with Clelia Mountford, the Irish writer, actor and producer operates between British, Irish and American markets, where cultural specificity must increasingly coexist with international financing and global distribution. Her current slate illustrates that position.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: THE STORY OF DOCUMENTARY FILM - 1980s Director Mark Cousins on Cinema Canons, Generative AI, Docs in the Post-truth Age
The documentarist Mark Cousins accompanied his latest work The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s, a part of his expansive new history of non-fiction cinema, at the 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. For Cousins, film history is never only about preserving the past. It is also an argument about what cinema is for, whose work enters the canon, and what kinds of images society needs at a particular political moment.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: INCINERATOR Filmmaker Shuntaro Uchida on Childhood, Memory and the Luxury of Slow Time
Japanese filmmaker Shuntaro Uchida’s Incinerator is a poetic coming-of-age drama, centered on ten-year-old Kozue, an isolated schoolgirl who secretly feeds objects into her school’s incinerator until an encounter with university student Jinta and a shadow-play performance unsettles her carefully contained world.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: THE FRIEND'S HOUSE IS HERE Directors Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz
Made clandestinely on the streets of Tehran, The Friend’s House Is Here follows Pari, a curator and independent theatre director, and Hanna, a dancer determined to leave Iran, as political pressure complicates their lives but strengthens their friendship. Directed by Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz just days after the June war, the film captures a generation increasingly unwilling to submit to imposed rules or surrender its right to artistic freedom.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Review: THE GUEST Serves Nordic Cringe as Family Dramedy
Danish newcomer Mads Mengel unveiled his feature debut, The Guest, in the Crystal Globe Competition at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film brings typically Nordic dark humor into a family drama following Karl (Simon Bennebjerg) and Emilie (Mette Klakstein), who are preparing for the christening of their newborn son.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: A HAPPY FAMILY Director Jan-Eric Mack and Star Anna Schinz on Poverty, Motherhood, Breaking the Rules of Social Drama
Swiss director and co-writer Jan-Eric Mack and lead actress and co-writer Anna Schinz presented A Happy Family in the Crystal Globe Competition at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The family thriller follows a mother who loses temporary custody of her children and sets out to find them after they are placed in foster care. Anna Schinz received the Best Actress Award for her performance at the festival.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: THE GUEST Director Mads Mengel on Family Trauma and Finding Humor in Pain
Danish filmmaker Mads Mengel made his feature debut with The Guest, which premiered in the main competition of the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The Nordic family dramedy won both the Best Director Award and the Special Jury Prize. The film follows siblings Karl and Rikke as they gather with Karl’s wife’s family and friends to celebrate the christening of his newborn child.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: THE GUEST Star Trine Dyrholm on Playing Beyond Diagnosis and Embracing Creative Risk
The acclaimed Danish actress Trine Dyrholm stars as an estranged mother whose arrival at a family celebration unsettles an already fragile emotional balance in Mads Mengel's feature debut The Guest, which won the Best Director Award for debut filmmaker Mads Mengel, as well as the Special Jury Prize.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: RAIN CATCHER Filmmaker Michele Fiascaris on Voyeurism and Building a Neo-Noir on a Limited Budget
Michele Fiascaris’s feature debut, the mystery thriller Rain Catcher, enjoyed its world premiere at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Dudley O’Shaughnessy stars as the enigmatic title character, a London photographer who covertly captures strangers and publishes the resulting urban portraits online under the moniker Rain Catcher, cultivating a Banksy-like reputation.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Interview: MY FRIEND THE PORN STAR Filmmaker Rosa Friedrich on Deepfake and Intimacy
Austrian filmmaker Rosa Friedrich premiered her feature-length debut, My Friend the Porn Star, a playful hybrid documentary, at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Friedrich appears on screen alongside her friend Timo, whose face is altered with deepfake technology throughout the film, as she follows his attempt to fulfill a long-held dream of acting in an actual porn film.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Exclusive: RAIN CATCHER Poster Premiere
The Proxima Competition at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 3–11), will host the world premiere of Michele Fiascaris’ psychological thriller Rain Catcher. Fiascaris’ feature directorial debut expands on his acclaimed short film of the same name, which premiered at Sitges, won the Méliès d’Argent, and was later distributed across Europe by Disney+ and HBO.
Italian Global Series 2026 Preview: STAR TREK, Big Anniversaries and a Growing Italian Showcase
The European roster of series festivals, which includes Series Mania in France, Seriencamp in Germany, Serial Killer in the Czech Republic and the Monte-Carlo Television Festival in Monaco, was joined last year by a new Italian event focused on small-screen storytelling, Italian Global Series.
Karlovy Vary 2026 Exclusive: MY FRIEND THE PORN STAR Poster Premiere
The Proxima Competition at the largest Czech film gathering, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 3–11), will host the world premiere of Rosa Friedrich’s hybrid documentary debut My Friend the Porn Star. Friedrich studied at the Film Academy Vienna under the tutelage of Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner, exploring a more playful approach to film language. Friedrich’s friend Timo dreams of making an artistic sex film with himself as the star. Rosa doesn’t usually watch porn.
Cannes 2026 Review: SPECIES (SANGUINE) Is THE SUBSTANCE for the Burnout Generation
New French Extremity is being supplied with new blood as emerging talent Marion Le Corroller showcases her first feature film, the body horror Species. Coming on the heels of Julia Ducournau (Titane) and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, Le Corroller joins the female gang of extremists with a statement to make. Species, co-written by the director and Thomas Pujol, opens with a bizarre prologue set in a burger joint.
BLACK RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT Review: Hypnotic Meta-Mystery Bends Time, Space and Genres in Quantum Storytelling
Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri has transformed the Möbius strip into a cinematic form of its own, extending beyond the familiar framework of time loop narratives. Following his 2020 feature Careless Crime, Mokri returns with another intricately constructed film, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit.
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