Global Comment

The year is flying by, and we are already halfway through 2026. For fans of Korean productions, these first six months have been a wild ride filled with brutal battles, nostalgic laughs, palace romance, and supernatural trials. With so many options flooding streaming platforms, we know it’s easy to get lost. That’s why we decided to take a step back, look at the the numbers, listen to the general feedback, and put together our own selection of the best of the best so far.

The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance by botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer is a passionate and beautifully written call, not so much to action, but to a shift in the ways we interact with each other and the world around us. Using the shadbush – the berry she knows as the serviceberry – as an example, Kimmerer shows us a different way to go about our lives and participate in our communities.

Miniature Malekpour, University of Sydney For women in Iran, life changed dramatically after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The new Islamic Republic of Iran enforced compulsory veiling, legalised polygamy, severely restricted women’s rights to divorce and child custody, lowered the minimum marriage age for girls, and gave husbands legal authority over their wives’ movements and sexual autonomy.

Every Monday on Global Comment, we share Something Special you don’t want to miss. To fit with the six core pillars of the magazine, these will alternate between the themes of watch / listen / read / see / taste / place. It will be something different every week, but it will always be about something worth seeing, hearing or watching, or a place worth visiting or a food worth tasting.

After immersing myself in the quiet austerity of Italian Neorealism last month, returning to full Technicolor felt almost indecent. Last month’s films were rooted in the grimmer end of reality – stories shaped by scarcity, location shooting, and a commitment to showing life as it was, not as it might be imagined. They were deliberately unglamorous, often emotionally restrained, and grounded in a kind of cinematic honesty that left little room for artifice.

Intriguingly Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons adapting his original liminal space web series into his debut feature for A24, shares the DNA with the unlikeliest of sources. The endless corridors, infernal and mundane stretch and weave through our cinematic subconscious, The Shining, Brazil, Twin Peaks, Being John Malcovich, Us, Severance, the recent Exit 8 are familiar touchstones, as is Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves. But Alan Clarke’s experimental short film Elephant?

As previously mentioned, I think Matthew Rhys is terrific when he’s playing evil people – but then again, everyone thinks that Matthew Rhys is terrific when he’s playing evil people. But a chance to play a hero? A kind-hearted and bumbling sort of hero? It’s a change of pace for Rhys for sure, and it’s one of the many reasons why Widow’s Bay on Apple+ works as a show.

The summer movie lineup is on fire with a wave of new releases where action, science fiction, and animation come together in a shared spirit of adventure. June promises to keep us on the edge of our seats with stories designed to challenge the imagination. Epic adventure returns to the big screen with Masters of the Universe, an ambitious live-action film that brings back Mattel’s hero to defend Eternia.

Every Monday on Global Comment, we share Something Special you don’t want to miss. To fit with the six core pillars of the magazine, these will alternate between the themes of watch / listen / read / see / taste / place. It will be something different every week, but it will always be about something worth seeing, hearing or watching, or a place worth visiting or a food worth tasting.

Far from being merely ornamental, literature has long served as a space of resistance — of uncomfortable questions and identities that refuse to fit into prescribed molds. This month’s reading selection traces a path between protest and visibility, between memory and celebration. While some months invite introspection, May and June call for a more direct gaze.