Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
The key to great character dramas
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Hello Reader, A great character drama isn't just interested in its characters as individuals but as people responding to the world around them (other people, the culture, systemic structures, etc.). So many movies make the mistake of becoming star vehicles without realizing the star can only shine as bright as the world they're responding to. But there's a new movie out this week that exemplifies this definition of a great character drama: a film as interested in the characters at its centre as the world around them which defines them. That film is... The Girl with the NeedleIt's Denmark's Oscar submission for Best International Film and one of the year's best films. Set around WWI in Copenhagen, The Girl with the Needle sits at the edge between social realism and horror, a black-and-white film about a young woman in crisis in a society that's indifferent at best and actively cruel at worst. But her choices (and the choices of a woman she meets and starts to work for) can only be fully understood through discovering the world they're living in. Today on the podcast...I discuss what good world-building looks like and why it's so important, using The Girl with the Needle as the exemplar. Then, I talk to the film's director, Magnus von Horn, about how he conceived the world of the film (shooting in black and white, working with miniatures, and beyond!) and what that taught him about the characters' choices. Happy watching/listening! Alex P.S. The December Globetrotting Newsletter, which offers streaming recommendations for under-the-radar films, goes out on Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Sign up now so you don't miss it!
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Seventh Row
Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Bill Hader, the SNL star-turned-writer-director, on the Team Deakins podcast. He was talking about rewatching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, hitting a moment that felt like an emotional gut punch — and literally pausing the film to ask:“Why did that hit me?!” That kind of moment — where something lands harder than you expect —and you feel something strongly before you know why… You’ve probably had that, too. Even Hader — who thinks about directing...
The best film I saw at this year’s Berlinale was a 19th-century period drama that felt like Portrait of a Lady on Fire meets Belle meets An Education. Much like in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the only men in the film are servants or employees. Which means the story can laser-focus on the racial, class, and sexual hierarchies the women are still subject to, even when men aren’t around. Like Portrait, it is about lesbians. And like Belle, one of the main characters is a racialized aristocrat....
I'm technically writing to you from Toronto, where the snow is starting to melt, and the skies are still stubbornly grey. Even though I'm not at the Berlinale in person, my disembodied voice was there this morning at a panel on how we're discussing, talking about, and thinking about film in 2026. (Which means my talk was something I recorded, and you can listen to it! Even if, like me, you're on a different continent right now.) Most of the wonderful panellists were discussing their work to...