There’s a stilted, soap opera quality to Hany Khalifa’s “Flight 404,” Egypt’s submission to the Academy Awards. It never quite transcends these visual and narrative trappings, but its tale of a woman escaping her past, en route to her Mecca pilgrimage, is led by a deeply layered performance from Mona Zaki. While the actress brings […]

There’s a haunting quality to Ecuadorian Oscar submission “Behind the Mist,” Sebastián Cordero’s intimate documentary on scaling Mount Everest. On one hand, Cordero’s twinning of mountaineering and filmmaking reveals spiritual similarities to both endeavors. On the other hand, his visual texture reveals hidden layers through its lo-fi aesthetic — one that emerges by necessity, given […]

A filmmaker burns his clapperboard for warmth. A schoolteacher scavenges to feed his students. A stand-up comedian arrives at a gig to find the venue bombed. In “From Ground Zero,” Palestine’s entry for the Oscars’ international feature film category, 22 directors present cinematic diaries from Gaza, shot in between (and sometimes, during) IDF bombing raids […]

In Bangladesh, the sport of boli khela — or the wrestler game — is a meticulous, methodical affair, a tone Iqbal H. Chowdhury re-creates for his debut feature, “The Wrestler.” Straddling a line between observational and oblique, the film seems designed to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure, gesturing toward masculine boundaries in a rural, […]