The French New Wave is one of the greatest turning points in the history of cinema. With Nouvelle Vague (2025), Richard Linklater transports us to the exact moment when one of the most important works of this movement was born. He invites us to reimagine Belmondo, Seberg, and Godard during the days they were shooting À bout de souffle (1960).
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For Nicholas Ray, dismantling the famous “American Dream” was almost a mission. Throughout his work, the American director explored, from multiple angles, the idealized yet unrealistic conception of that utopian society. In Bigger Than Life (1956), he launches a frontal attack on the model family and on a society that suffocates the male figure, reducing him to the role of breadwinner, forced into success regardless of the consequences.
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The longstanding romance between westerns and samurai films has yielded some of cinema’s most iconic hybrids from The Magnificent Seven to A Fistful of Dollars. Tornado (2025), the second feature from Scottish director John Maclean, joins this lineage with quiet confidence and striking visual precision. Known for Slow West (2015), Maclean once again proves his deep understanding of the western form, only this time, with the philosophical touch of the Japanese jidaigeki.
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Few films achieve the narrative force that Francesco Rosi accomplishes in Hands Over the City (1963). In Venice, it would win the Golden Lion, and in Italian cinema, it would mark a turning point within the Neorealism movement. The film maintains the essence of Neorealism with its settings in real locations and its commitment to social reality, but it opens a new avenue with a more political, analytical discourse, committed to denouncing power structures. This would become Rosi’s trademark.
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The opening sequence of The Kingdom (2024) by Julien Colonna has a magical aura. Mystery surrounds the ceremony that introduces us to Lesia (Ghjuvanna Benedetti). There is an unusual beauty in the cadence with which the director portrays the ritual, contrasting Lesia’s innocence with the ferocity of the men butchering a freshly hunted animal. It’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come and the beginning of a circle that will inevitably have to close.
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