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“I Wanted the Film to Have the Vignetted Existence of a Fable”: Sarmad Sultan Khoosat on his Genre-bending Berlinale Premiere Lali
Lali
A bullet grazes the shin of matriarch Sohni Ammi (Farazeh Syed) at her beloved son’s wedding. It was a celebratory bullet; shooting guns into the air replaces fireworks in this part of provincial Pakistan. Even though Sohni Ammi just needed stitches, the groom’s family blamed the freak mishap on the ongoing curse of Zeba, the bride (Mamya Shajaffar), whose previous two marriages never materialized because the grooms-to-be died under mysterious circumstances. Her last fiancé was stung by a scorpion when the couple was making out on a dune, Zeba would later admit to her new husband, Sajawal (Channan Hanif), who seethes under his own shame in Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s feature Lali, Pakistan’s first all-local production to premiere at the Berlinale. An… Read more
How a Controversial BAFTA Broadcast Scrambled the Oscar Race
Sammie Moore, Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan in Sinners
The Academy Awards are still three weeks away, but this is a vital week for the contenders. We’re approaching the end of campaigning, with the final Oscar voting opening on Feb. 26 and closing March 5. In between those dates are two key precursors: the Producer’s Guild Awards on Feb. 28 and the Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards) on March 1. Both events have strong—though not infallible—track records of foretelling the eventual Oscar winners. If Sunday’s BAFTAs ceremony proved anything, it’s that surprises and upsets can still happen. I’m not talking about the controversy that overshadowed the ceremony when John Davidson, the subject of the narrative film I Swear—which picked up best actor for Robert Aramayo, besting Oscar nominees in… Read more
Scandalous Forms, Political Candor: Highlights from Berlinale’s 2026 Forum Documentaries
If Pigeons Turned to Gold
Before the Berlinale announced its official selection, it presented a remarkable retrospective entitled Lost in the 90s. Spanning wide geographies, with particular emphasis on narratives surrounding the Soviet collapse and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it brought together an eclectic cohort of documentaries and fiction—from Farocki and Godard to an underscreened Belarusian doc Orange Vests and the first fiction feature on the Chornobyl catastrophe Collapse. Such a politically charged program of films by formally daring directors with an activist spirit could serve as an inspiring point of departure for the festival to adopt an openly political rhetoric. More precisely, to articulate clear support for Palestine, a point of contention among its audience since the 2024 edition, when calls to condemn… Read more
The Passion of Amir Naderi
Credit: Amir Naderi
Amir Naderi is on the move. I connected with the Iranian filmmaker over WhatsApp on a chilly February morning, or at least morning where I am. He’s calling me from Rome, which is the second stop on his tour through Europe teaching classes on filmmaking. In every country he visits, he tells me, he shapes the curriculum around that nation’s cinema history. It’s a pedagogical approach that aptly reflects the cosmopolitanism of a filmmaker who has shot films in the United States, Japan, and Italy, and who hopes to potentially make a film in Australia. “If I can do it,” he tells me. “If not, I keep going anyway.” That dogged determination has defined Amir Naderi’s life, beginning with his films… Read more
Review: The New Nikon ZR Shoots RED RAW Footage on a Budget
The Nikon ZR in action
One year after camera giants Nikon and RED Digital Cinema merged, their first collaboration comes with the release of the Nikon ZR full-frame digital cinema camera. The ZR differentiates itself from its mirrorless competitors—whether Panasonic’s LUMIX line, Sony’s FX line or Blackmagic cinema cameras—with its unique ability to record 12-bit REDCODE RAW (R3D NE), internally at up to 6K and 60 frames per second. And it’s available at the enviable price point of only $2,199. (By comparison, Sony’s full-frame FX3 costs nearly twice as much.) Surveying the camera body, its large 4-inch screen immediately stands out. The addition of an external monitor—typically a must when shooting on smaller cinema cameras—becomes less essential with the Nikon ZR. This screen brightness reaches 1,000… Read more
“I Really Wanted to Create a Chekhovian World”: Kornél Mundruczó on the Amy Adams-starring Berlinale Competition Film At the Sea
At the Sea
Drumroll: Amy Adams stares at you. It’s intense—not haunting, but certainly not inviting. The camera pulls away, and it’s her character Laura who’s playing the drums. It’s daytime, there’s unremarkable company around. Music, no dance. Soon, she will leave the facility. Soon, she will return to her Cape Cod home, to her devoted yet frustrated husband Martin (Murray Bartlett), to her barely tolerant teenage daughter Josie (Chloe East), to her young son Felix (Redding Munsell) who scurries away from her embrace, to her dance company that made her famous but which she now wants to quit, and to the forbidden alcohol she’s stashed away in hidden places. How will she survive this aftermath of rehab? How will she not be… Read more
