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...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Last week, Joachim Trier took home his first Oscar for Sentimental Value — after 9 nominations. (The only films with more nominations were in English and had movie stars in them.) Before that, Sentimental Value had already earned Barack Obama’s seal of approval and most of the European Film Awards. There’s never been a better time to dig into what makes Joachim Trier's films so good. Sentimental Value is a masterpiece, but it's not Trier's first. That was Oslo, August 31st. And Sentimental...
5 days ago • 1 min read
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....
11 days ago • 1 min read
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...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to your January edition of The Globetrotting Watchlist. Whether you’re a longtime Globetrotting Watchlist subscriber or Film Adventurer/Cinephile Member, or just finding your way here, thank you. Your support helps to keep Seventh Row nonprofit, ad-free, and fiercely independent. What's Inside the Globetrotting Newsletter This month, I'm recommending the best documentaries of 2025: A Spanish film about bullfighting (no interest in bullfighting required) A German movie...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Near the end of Sound of Falling (the film I discuss on this week's Seventh Row Podcast), Angelika (the blurry figure in the photograph below) poses uncomfortably for a family photo in the 1980s before disappearing. How we read this photo — and what it means that she's blurry in it — is something we can only construct from the film's form: How this image evokes ones we've seen before in the film's 1914, 1940s, and present-day timelines. And how the scenes leading up to this — not just plot...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Every year since I started voting in critics’ awards, I’ve engaged in the time-honoured tradition of effectively spoiling my ballot. In other words, I vote for my favourite picks, even if they have zero chance of being nominated by anyone else. For an insight into my proclivities, in 2023, this was my Best Actor lineup: Alessandro Borghi, The Eight Mountains (Italy/Belgium)Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers (UK)Benoît Magimel, Pacifiction (France/Spain)Luca Marinelli, The Eight Mountains...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value just swept the European Film Awards (The Oscars of Europe) on Saturday, winning Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, Actress, and Score. (They don’t have a category for Supporting Actress, or it would probably have won that, too.) It is, in my opinion, the best film of 2025 by a wide margin, so this is richly deserved. But one of the most important creatives behind the film wasn’t even nominated: the film's editor Olivier Bugge Coutté. And yet multiple...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome to your Winter Wonderland edition of The Globetrotting Watchlist. Whether you’re a longtime Globetrotting Watchlist subscriber or Film Adventurer/Cinephile Member, or just finding your way here, thank you. Your support helps to keep Seventh Row nonprofit, ad-free, and fiercely independent. What's Inside the Globetrotting Newsletter Toronto has been covered in snow for the past week, so this month's edition is full of wintery, snow-covered films. Atanarjuat: The Fast...
3 months ago • 3 min read