A Week at the Movies
October 29, 2026
Elephants in the Fog (तिनीहरू) 🤍
Thriller, drama
Nepal, Germany, Brazil, France, Norway
Pirati is a matriarch within the Kinnar community in rural Nepal, where villagers conduct nightly patrols to ward off rampaging elephants. When one of Pirati's adoptive daughters suddenly disappears, she does everything in her limited power to find her. As the investigation wears on, the cisgender villagers grow increasingly hostile to their Kinnar neighbors.Surprise screening What a movie to introduce me to this year's festival! I didn't know what I would be watching until I arrived at the theater, and I left the screening feeling pretty overwhelmed. Incredible opening and closing scenes, amplified by some really haunting audio work. The villagers' gradual shift from tolerance to open transmisogyny is unsurprising and stomach-churning all the same. This isn't all despairing, however—there's a lot of warmth within the community and the note it ends on is a righteous, cathartic fury. Stellar debut performance by Pushpa Thing Lama.
No Rest for the Wicked
Romance, drama, fantasy, horror
Denmark, Faroe Islands, Iceland
Baldur lives with his mother on the Faroe Islands, and their quiet days of routine are disrupted by the arrival of a Danish whaler. Desire drives Baldur to the newcomer, and his longing unleashes supernatural forces upon his pious village.Surprise screening Unbury your gays! It was cool to learn that this was based on a short story from 1884, especially since it feels very contemporary Tumblr vis-à-vis the nautical-gay-vampire-christian-guilt-yearning of it all. And the nipple play, of course. While the main plot beats are expected, this is a unique take on vampirism and undeath. The perspective shift halfway through was also a welcome surprise. Banger funeral hymn, too.
Castration Movie Chapter iii.ii Junior Ghosts—Premorphic Drift; a fragmentary passage
Drama, comedy
Canada
A crisis hotline worker flings herself down the TERF rabbit hole, sparked by her partner's decision to transition.Surprise screening I would have never seen this if it hadn't been a surprise screening, since I'd have liked to have seen Chapters I and II first, and considering the runtimes of both of those movies it simply wouldn't have ever happened lol. But this works perfectly as a standalone picture, and even when I still don't really know how to feel about it I'm glad I was able to experience all its discomforts on a big screen. A harrowing watch for obvious reasons, but there's also a lot of ridiculousness and even at my tiny screening there were plenty of gasps of did that really just happen? I don't plan on watching any of the existing or upcoming Castration Movies, but that last scene will stick with me for a while. Whew!
Mouse 🤍
Drama, comedy
USA
Minnie and Callie's friendship is suddenly upended before their senior year of high school. Feeling lost, Minnie begins to spend her days with Callie's mother.+ Q&A with the directors and actors I'm usually lukewarm on coming-of-age stories about American high schoolers, so this was a pleasant breath of fresh air. Movies of this variety often rely too much on relatability, but this captures a pretty specific moment in Minnie's life. Grief can make people seek out replacements for what they've lost, reaching out at random and latching on to the first thing they touch. Lots of laughs and sniffles in the theater.
Head to Head (سر به سر)
Drama, comedy
Iran, Germany
An internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker embarks on her newest project: filming men wearing headscarves. The actors she hires find this much harder than they expected.USA premiere Of the movies I saw, this was the first and only time I left the screening feeling truly disappointed, which is unfortunate! I can sense the simmering rage behind this—against misogyny, against the film industry, against the state—but it never quite explores these topics beyond a surface level. I wish I got more insight into the fictional filmmaker, Bahar. Love the film-within-a-film-within-a-film framing, though. Maybe my biggest problem is that I wanted to see that fictional film instead.
Tangles 🤍
Animation, drama, comedy
USA, Canada
When her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Sarah attempts to juggle the obligations to her family, her partner, and her illustration job as she travels back and forth between vibrant San Francisco and her quiet hometown.Really enjoyed this simple art style that was malleable and became much more impressionistic whenever characters were feeling overwhelmed. There's a particular sequence where Sarah is spiraling over what could be wrong with her mother, and the visual metaphor shown is gambling—yes! Overthinking all the worst possibilities feels like that! There's so much lovely and real stuff in here about caring for aging parents, the balancing act between familial and personal needs, and feeling like you're the only person who takes anything seriously (even when that's demonstrably untrue). It's also funny! Lots of queer in-jokes that the audience at my screening were very receptive to. Animation forever :)
Tender Loving Care
Drama, comedy
UK, USA, Singapore
Amy moves back in with her best friend Rosie after a breakup. The two spend their days at their demanding social work jobs, commiserating over glasses of wine, and having tea with Amy's aging parents.A gentle end to this year's festival. This touches on many similar themes as the films above: moms, moms and their daughters, dramedies, grief, nonbiological family. I love how Mike Leigh movies drop us into a person's day-to-day, and we get to know them and the people around them for one brief period of their lives, then the credits roll and it's all over, but it's so easy to imagine them continuing along their ordinary days. There's a conversation that Amy has with her parents about the current state of the UK that feels like so many I've had about the US; about defunded social services, increasing houselessness, how inaccessible higher education has become. We are, truly, all in this together.
Postscript
Some more general festival-related thoughts:- Every time I showed up to volunteer, there would always be at least one person who brought up You Can See Everything (a movie not part of the festival lol)
- Relatedly: I'm sure I have a warped perspective considering how much time I've been spending at the movies, but it's been a great month for theaters, right? You Can See Everything, The Devils restoration—and there's been a lot of buzz about Digger and Primetime, even Wildwood and Wicker to a smaller extent. Big year for theaters!
- I didn't see any of the documentaries that were part of this year's festival, but I've heard that at least three of them used AI, which is disappointing on a filmmaking level but also, like…AI in historical documentaries? Really? Do these documentarians really think so low of their audience that they assume we can't handle a few old photographs? fuuck what if the nerds choosing to watch a bicycle documentary get bored of archival bicycle footage, we gotta use AI to enhance them fuuuck we have no other choice fuuuuuck Give me a break. Ken Burns is gonna kick your ass.
- It's been interesting reading the Letterboxd reviews for all these movies, since they often have a distinct ~film fest air~ to them that reviews for more widely released movies don't have. For Elephants in the Fog in particular, I read a few reviews that criticized it for catering to European festival crowds (which I'm sure is a conversation that's been happening with nonwestern movies forever!). Of course the movies that appeal to white western audiences are going to get the funding, and get praised and awarded and widely distributed—but this kind of criticism also places way more scrutiny on these films and feels like dismissing cinema from the global south because they don't feel arbitrarily "authentic" enough. On the other hand the context in which a movie is made and viewed can be crucial to one's own experience with it. Much to consider.
- Before every screening they played a promotional clip for the festival that ended with Helen Mirren saying this year's tagline, "you're watching cinemaah in real life", and the clip was corny in that Cinema Is Crucial Now More Than Ever way, but by the end of the fest I was like yeah you're right…I am watching cinema in real life. Thank you Helen Mirren.
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