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’ChaO’ review: Anarchic Japanese anime imagines a fantastical near-future Shanghai

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 1d

Animation fans at LFF: check out the gloriously batshit ChaO www.screendaily.com/reviews/chao...

Animator Yasuhiro Aoki makes his debut with this energetic tale of human-merpeople relationships

‘Divine Comedy’ review: Ali Asgari skewers Iranian cultural restrictions in witty satire

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

Another Venice review: Ali Asgari’s cine-literate satire Divine Comedy.

www.screendaily.com/reviews/divi...

Charming performances carry Asgari's fifth feature about a fictional director attempting to screen his latest film in Tehran

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

It's broader in comic tone than his previous films, but it works. Hugely enjoyable, achingly stylish

‘The Tale Of Silyan’ review: Tamara Kotevska follows ‘Honeyland’ with portrait of Macedonian farmer

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

Honeyland director Tamara Kotevska returns with the lovely, lyrical Tale of Silyan www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...

Lyrical hybrid documentary charts the highs and lows of rural life in modern Macedonia

‘Hijra’ review: Family bonds are tested when a teenage girl vanishes in accomplished Saudi drama

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

Me on the Saudi drama Hijra www.screendaily.com/reviews/hijr...

Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen's story centres on a grandmother and granddaughter in search of their missing relative

‘No Other Choice’ review: Park Chan-wook’s economic satire is a darkly comic treat

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

My pick of the Venice Competion so far: Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice www.screendaily.com/reviews/no-o...

The director's Venice Competition title stars Lee Byung-hun as a family man who turns to desperate measures

‘Broken English’ review: Marianne Faithfull’s life explored in inventive documentary with starry cast

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

Me on Broken English www.screendaily.com/reviews/brok...

Directors Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth have assembled collaborators including Tilda Swinton and George MacKay

‘Motor City’ review: Seventies Detroit revenge thriller proves more style than substance

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

Motor City. Yikes www.screendaily.com/reviews/moto...

Shailene Woodley stars in Potsy Ponciroli's schlocky, dialogue-light Venice Spotlight title

‘The Testament Of Ann Lee’ review: Amanda Seyfried is 18th-century preacher in audacious musical

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

Me on The Testament Of Ann Lee www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...

Mona Fastvold and co-writer Brady Corbet's uneven biopic of the eponymous Shaker founder bows in Venice Competition

‘Late Fame’ review: Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe shine in pleasing New York Story

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Sep 2

A few of my Screendaily Venice reviews: loved Kent Jones' Late Fame www.screendaily.com/reviews/late...

The second feature from Kent Jones bows in Venice Horizons

Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Friendship, Four Letters...

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jul 20

Also out this week - me on Friendship, Smurfs, Gold Songs and Four Letters of Love
observer.co.uk/culture/film...

A new comedy starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd is a grotesquely deformed mutation of the bromance genre

Harvest is an atmospheric, hallucinogenic story of displa...

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jul 20

Not for everyone, certainly, but I am a fan of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Harvest, a heady, muddy story of the end of a community

observer.co.uk/culture/film...

This brooding adaptation of Jim Crace’s Booker-shortlisted novel about a village imperilled by outsiders is uncomfortably topical

František Klišík from ‘Better Go Mad in the Wild’ dies just after film’s Karlovy Vary win

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jul 13

Gutted to read this. www.screendaily.com/news/frantie...

Klišík drowned in a pond just hours after the film won the Karlovy Vary Grand Prix, according to Czech media reports.

‘Out Of Love’ review: Camille Cottin stars as a French woman flung into motherhood

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jul 7

Camille Cottin and top tier child actors are the main reason to watch Out of Love www.screendaily.com/reviews/out-...

Nathan Ambrosioni's intimate drama premieres in Karlovy Vary

‘Dragonfly’ review: Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn headline potent Paul Andrew Williams drama

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jul 7

A few Karlovy Vary reviews: Paul Andrew Williams is back with Dragonfly, which takes a huge tonal swerve in the final act. Riseborough and Blethyn superb. I liked quite a bit. www.screendaily.com/reviews/drag...

Williams returns to the big screen with unnerving study of a community in crisis

F1: the Movie is one long midlife crisis | The Observer

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jul 4

So delighted to be back in Karlovy Vary this year, for one of my favourites on the festival circuit, for its buzzy atmosphere, great programming and enthusiastic embrace of street drinking,

Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jun 29

Me on the turbo-charged midlife crisis that is F1: The Movie in The Observer
observer.co.uk/culture/film...

Cliches and product placement plague a film so corporate it comes with its own registered trademark symbol

Film review: Attenborough’s deep dive reveals the pearls ...

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jun 10

Me on Ocean With David Attenborough: Late to this, but what an important, impassioned film. Essential viewing observer.co.uk/culture/film...

Dazzling photography and a compelling argument from our favourite guide show a thrilling ecosystem at risk

Film review: ‘Ballerina’ is on pointe blank | The Observer

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jun 9

Me on the rather joyless Ballerina for oberver.co.uk

observer.co.uk/culture/film...

Len Wiseman’s blood-and-guts John Wick spin-off features Ana de Armas as a ballet dancer turned assassin, fleeting glimpses of Keanu Reeves – and no sens...

Read articles, investigations, analysis and comment from The Observer’s independent journalists

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jun 8

Travelling via Geneva today I walked past a shop selling a chair made of stuff toy flamingos for something like 10 grand, and I feel like humanity may have crossed a significant taste rubicon.

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · Jun 1

Hi there, I’m the observer critic, so my reviews are in the Observer newspaper each Sunday and online (some of them at least) at observer.co.uk

Read | The Observer

Film of the week: A balm for battered souls | The Observer

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · May 31

Hard recommendation for the gorgeous The Ballad of Wallis Island, a lovely, bittersweet cardigan-clad treasure of a film. observer.co.uk/culture/film...

Carey Mulligan at her most magnetic plays one half of an estranged folk duo booked by lonely superfan Tim Key in what deserves to be this summer’s breakout hit

Cruise keeps us hanging on for the Mission: Impossible franchise climax | The Observer

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · May 25

Me on Mission: Impossible - Final Reckoning and the libido-shrivelling anti-frisson between Tom Cruise and his female co-stars. In The Observer

observer.co.uk/culture/film...

Can breathtaking action sequences save the day as Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt strives to protect the world from malevolent AI in Mission: Impossible’s franchise climax?

‘It Was Just An Accident’ review: Jafar Panahi confronts the Iranian injustice system head-on

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · May 20

If Jafar Panahi's unflinching and brave attack on the Iranian regime doesn't win at least something, I will eat my shoes. www.screendaily.com/reviews/it-w...

Cannes Competition title sees a traffic accident spark a series of devastating events