Aberrance
directed by Baatar Batsukh
Mongolia, 2023, 76′, Horror, OVS
Erkhme and Selenge decide to change their lives by moving from the city to a small mountain village in the cold outskirts of Mongolia. The couple’s strange behaviour immediately attracts the attention of their neighbour, who makes a lot of efforts to understand the inner logic of the two newcomers’ relationship. Baatar Batsukh’s debut feeds on the physical and psychological isolation of the characters, prisoners in a mountain hut surrounded by snow, to develop a story with mysterious traits, in which there is no lack of twists and turns and moments of great tension. The technical mastery of angles and colours (Batsukh started out as a director of photography) allows the debutant director to give Mongolian cinema an original example of magnetic aesthetics with surreal overtones.
directed by John Pata
USA, 2023, 90′, Horror, OVS
The brilliant scientist Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula) has created an elixir that promises eternity, called Divinity. His son Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff), driven by a desire for power, wants to take control of its production and, thus, of the entire world. In this desolate land where infertility has reached 95%, two brothers (Moises Arias and Jason Genao), with the help of a mysterious woman (Karrueche Tran), plan to kidnap Jaxxon, embarking on a journey that will challenge the very meaning of immortality.
An acid trip rather than a film. Divinity reunites the brilliant mind of Steven Soderbergh, here as producer, and game designer Eddie Alcazar, here returning behind the camera after his last work The Vandal (2021). A surreal movie, captured by evocative black-and-white photography which highlights all the dystopian drifts that may be much less far than we perceive.
Chasing a Shooting Star
directed by Haitao Guo
China, 2024, 99′, Comedy, OVS
A meteorite suddenly rips through the Chinese night sky, heading for an unknown landing site. After witnessing this anomalous scene, Mr.Liu, a farmer, and Lyiang Ying, a filmmaker who is helping him become famous on social media, venture out in search of the mysterious celestial body. Aided by other characters moved by different purposes, they will try to locate the object that could change their lives forever. Haitao Guo, without contaminating his clean filmmaking with stylistic frills, turns the “disaster movie” genre on its head, conceptually: how would people behave if the fall of a star to earth was a luck-bringing event?
directed by Eddie Alcazar
USA, 2023, 87′, Sci-Fi, OVS
The brilliant scientist Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula) has created an elixir that promises eternity, called Divinity. His son Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff), driven by a desire for power, wants to take control of its production and, thus, of the entire world. In this desolate land where infertility has reached 95%, two brothers (Moises Arias and Jason Genao), with the help of a mysterious woman (Karrueche Tran), plan to kidnap Jaxxon, embarking on a journey that will challenge the very meaning of immortality.
An acid trip rather than a film, Divinity reunites the brilliant mind of Steven Soderbergh, here as producer, and game designer Eddie Alcazar, returning behind the camera after his last work The Vandal (2021). A surreal movie, captured by an evocative black-and-white photography which highlights all the dystopian drifts that may be much less far than we perceive.
directed by Andy Nguyen
Vietnam, 2023, 108′, Thriller, OVS
Although a Vietnamese production, Fanti’s title word is borrowed from a Korean K-Drama term. Andy Nguyen directs his debut film in an extremely meta-filmic story written together with Luigi Campi, telling the story of a young influencer who desperately wants to become an actress, following in her mother’s footsteps. The girl, partly for this reason, receives a death threat by unknown followers, is confronted with the hostility of the crew and, above the rest, is crushed by the confrontation with her mother. Beyond a few genre gimmicks, Fanti is a hyper-realistic pop film, borrowing much of its aesthetic from video games and social media. It can be interpreted as an atypical coming-of-age movie, focusing on the particularly strong pressure adolescents receive from friends, relatives and acquaintances in some countries of the Far East, to the point of generating most of the times a spiral of tensions, expectations and anxieties that end up crushing the individual.
Flaming Cloud
directed by Liu Siyi
China, 2023, 107′, Fantasy, OVS
Director Liu Siyi’s debut film is an admirable homage to Disney films and the Chinese folklore her generation grew up with. Made with genuine cinephile passion, this modern, live-action reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale paradigm is embellished with a purely fantasy component.
The story begins with an otherworldly bet, and a boy cursed to cause anyone he kisses to fall into sleep. Ostracised as a freak by his villagers and separated from his childhood sweetheart, Sangui embarks on a phantasmagorical journey to find her and to cure himself of his curse. Tackling big themes such as social stigma and the power of true love, Flaming Cloud presents a darker flavour for an adult tale of magic and romance.
directed by Kelly O’Sullivan & Alex Thompson
USA, 2024, 115′, Drama, OVS
Dan is a roadworker in a small US town who has been struggling with the shock of the suicide of his son, Brian, one year earlier. During an ordinary working day, the man, overwhelmed by the weight of the trauma, suddenly explodes in a fit of rage against a driver passing by his construction site, jeopardising his employment. However, this scene is witnessed by Rita, a theatre actress and member of a company that is preparing a Romeo and Juliet play on the other side of the road. Our protagonist will soon find himself involved in the realisation of the tragedy that will direct him towards a new existential awareness, between reality and interpretation. Presented at this year’s Sundance, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson present a family drama with a pronounced emotional sensitivity, capable of exploiting the immortal Shakespearian motifs to lay bare the bitter nuances of a contemporary story, and of emphasising – if still necessary- the unifying power of theatre, through which different people find a common place to merge their life experiences.
directed by Adam O’Brien
USA, 2024, 95′, Horror, OVS
Meredith, a new mother in distress, is abandoned by her family and partner following a terrible event that affects her personally. Getting progressively isolated, she begins to be haunted by a sinister entity determined to make her relive her most terrifying moments, never leaving her in peace.
Mom is a psychological horror film that wears down and anguishes the audience from the first to the last minute of watching. A disturbing psychological study on post-natal depression, director Adam O’Brien’s latest work is a real punch in the gut, in which spectators experience the inner torments of the protagonist, played with great intensity by the star of the TV series Schitt’s Creek, Emily Hampshire.