Every SIFF review on Silver Screen Riot.
When orphaned Māori woman Mary (Ariāna Osborne) travels to Victorian England in the 1800s to uncover the identities of the parents she never knew, she instead unearths heinous secrets with far-reaching implications for her family tree. Mārama, the New Zealand gothic horror film from director Taratoa Stappard, folds cultural appropriation and colonial violence into a...
The Ascent, directed by Francis Cronin, Edward Drake, and Scott Veltri, is a climbing documentary–true crime hybrid following bilateral amputee Mandy Horvath’s attempt to quite literally crawl up Mt. Kilimanjaro using only her hands and a whole lot of gumption. It’s a captivating stranger-than-fiction account that resists easy categorization, the film ably exploring Mandy’s difficult...
The Friend’s House is Here, written, directed, and produced by Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei, is a slice-of-life Iranian drama following two close friends navigating Tehran’s underground art world, where they risk staging performances featuring women without hijabs or dancing ever-so-slightly provocatively on social media, in defiance of state censorship. The film is an intimate,...
Rich in both place and emotion, shot in evocative black and white, and scored with delicate precision, Color Book is a heartbreaking tale of grief and perseverance. William Catlett gives a tremendous, pathos-drenched performance as Lucky, a father navigating sudden tragedy, alongside his son Mason (Jeremiah Alexander Daniels), who has Down syndrome, after the loss...
A perfectly pleasant — if ultimately forgettable — Irish dramedy about gay author Edvard (James McArdle), who juggles the stress of an impending U.S. book tour while caring for his stroke-recovering mother (Fionnula Flanagan) and looking after the elderly mothers his friends abandoned to attend an overseas Pride Fest. Writer-director Darren Thornton delivers a quietly...
Based on the true story of the Sing Sing prison’s “Rehabilitation Through the Arts” program, Greg Kwedar’s sensitively-told American drama is a profound act of cinematic grace. Colman Domingo, in yet another towering performance, stars as Divine G, a wrongfully jailed playwright who works with the prison population to put on theatrical productions and find...
When Lily’s (Barbie Ferreira) narcissistic father, Bob Trevino (French Stewart, unrecognizable in the role), cuts off contact with his lonely well-meaning daughter, she finds a “surrogate dad” online (John Leguizamo) who shares the same name. Their relationship blossoms into something profound and poignant, with each struggling with their own personal demons but overcoming them through...
You’ve probably heard by now that the convention-shucking horror experiment In a Violent Nature is Friday the 13th from the POV of its hulking killer. The 93-minute indie slasher is as campy—and largely uninvolving—as that premise promises. The third-person killer cam shtick wears off quickly, especially since writer-director Chris Nash’s camerawork has two modes: lurking...
Damian McCarthy’s SXSW audience award winnerOddity sees a blind medium (Carolyn Bracken) strike out for revenge after her twin sister is brutally murdered. A twisty midnight movie from Ireland that effectively balances jump scares and tension within its unique premise of otherworldly vengeance and recompense, Oddity dolls out its narrative breadcrumbs at a healthy pace,...
Director Pamela Adlon and writer-star Ilana Glazer bring their comedic prowess to Babes, a crowd-pleasing pregnancy comedy that reworks the familiar “oops-I’m-pregnant” trope with a fresh, feminist twist. Despite its predictable plot, the film shines with Glazer’s brassy humor and a heartfelt celebration of female friendship, positioning itself as a millennial answer to Juno. The...