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...
14 days 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...
19 days 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...
20 days 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...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
“I love you just the way you are.” It’s what Mark Darcy (almost) famously says to Bridget Jones, his paramour, near the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary — a film I love to absolute bits despite its (many) flaws. But while I’ve spent more than one Christmas watching and rewatching Bridget — and even talking over it to complain... I’ve noticed that, lately, I’ve been trading in this straight romantic fantasy for its queer version. Because the fantasy in queer films is a parent (or parental figure)...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Chloé Zhao's Hamnet is a top contender for the Oscars. But while many found themselves weeping for large chunks of the film, I left dry-eyed. So did my guest on today’s podcast, Angelo Muredda. (And we’re easy criers. So we tried to figure out why this film didn’t work for us.) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel — which imagines a part of Shakespeare’s life we know little about, including the courtship with his wife, the death of their son Hamnet, and the possible autobiographical links to...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
I recently learned about the term “Second Screen.” It describes a kind of TV made to be watched while you’re also on your phone.(Think: easy-to-follow dialogue, minimal visual complexity, no real consequences for tuning out.) And I’ve noticed I’m getting trained by it. I’ll start a show like Matlock or Industry with the intention of paying attention. By the final episodes, I’m just listening to it on my phone while I make dinner. My phone is in my pocket. And honestly, it seems like nobody...
2 months ago • 1 min read
I have a theory that when you see a film that changes you — that makes you feel seen in a whole new way or reorganizes how you think — you remember where you were when it happened. You remember the cinema you saw it in (or the couch you were sitting on). You remember who you were with. When a film feels like a discovery, you remember the exact conditions that made it possible for you to even see that movie. Maybe most crucially, you remember where you were in life at that moment that made you...
3 months ago • 2 min read
On Tuesday, I’m offering The Short Take — a free, one-time-only live workshop I’ve run once before — but I’m not sure I’ll ever run it again. We’ll be watching a 22-minute fiction-documentary hybrid short from 2017— the year Britain marked the 50th anniversary of decriminalizing homosexuality. The BFI commissioned this film, along with several others, to look back on that history. The film is thought-provoking and layered — and invites you to really look at how queer history is told, and who...
4 months ago • 2 min read