ODYSSEAN OVERVIEW—Filmic Adaptations of Homer’s The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026) has grossed approximately $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office. Its domestic gross (US and Canada) has been $460 million; $123.5 million on its opening weekend. It is now Christopher Nolan's highest-grossing movie ever, passing 2012's The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion). It has also seized the honors of being the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time and the highest-grossing IMAX release in history, earning more than $289 million in IMAX theaters alone. 

But it was not the first filmic adaptation of Homer’s epic poem and—though an evident box office success—not necessarily the best. Mileage over the wine dark sea varies.

  

Somewhere in the back of my mind is a boyhood memory of having watched Mario Camerini’s Ulysses (1954) starring Kirk Douglas as Ulysses, Silvana Mangano in a dual role as Penelope and Circe, and Anthony Quinn as Antinous. Homer’s Odyssey inspired Dino De Laurentiis to produce filmic adaptations twice, first with Carlo Ponti for Camerini’s international co-production and then, again, for a 1968 television mini-series. I’m presuming I watched Ulysses dubbed on the boob tube as a boy—I’m not sure where else I would have seen it—but recently elected to watch it on Amazon Prime in its Italian version with English subtitles. 

As summarized at Rotten Tomatoes: “Ulysses condenses Homer's epic into a visually sumptuous, but uneven adventure that can't overcome its muddled storytelling, stilted dialogue, and lack of truly heroic sweep.” Regardless of those demerits, Ulysses is just this side of entertaining, with my favorite sequence being the encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus that—interestingly enough—was directed by Mario Bava (though uncredited). Bava was hired to assist with the film's special effects but wound up serving as a camera operator and uncredited co-cinematographer for the film's entire shoot. 

Adapting Homer’s sprawling epic poem into a two-hour format was bound to be fraught with strange conflations and glaring omissions. Several segments of Ulysses’ adventures are absent, most notably Ulysses’ seven-year tryst with Calypso. Not only did Mangano portray both Penelope and Circe (tears for Penelope; oozing sensuality for Circe), but the characterization of Circe was a blend with Calypso so, in essence, you could say Mangano played three roles. Quite enough of her! 

The gods, though referenced by toppled statues, are decidedly absent in Ulysses, and what I found intriguing was the enhanced role of Eurycleia performed by French actress Louise Pauline Mainguené (known as Sylvie). In The Odyssey Eurycleia is the wet-nurse for both Ulysses and Telemachus and the palace overseer. In Ulysses she makes a point of distinguishing the women of the court who offer themselves to the suitors, collaborating in their attempted usurpation, from the women who remain loyal to Penelope.

  

In 1968, Dino De Laurentiis produced a second adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, this time directed by Franco Rossi for an eight-episode Italian miniseries. It’s offered in four two-hour French-dubbed sections (with English close captioning) on YouTube and well-worth the watch. For starters, it stars a delicious Bekim Fehmiu as Odysseus and features the incandescent Irene Papas as Penelope. With eight hours to visualize Homer’s poem it articulates major themes such as the ancient Greek practice of xenia (i.e., hospitality), which recurs in several scenarios throughout the epic, not only where it is being violated (by the suitors in the palace of Ithaca, let alone the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus) but as a key component of Telemachus’s visits to the courts of Menelaus and Nestor, and Odysseus’s stays at the homes of Circe, Calypso and the Phaeacians. In fact, so many of the stories that Odysseus recounts of his adventures are told within the context of a guest entertaining his host with news from the outside world. Before the internet and streaming services, there was oration. 

Exteriors were shot in the former Yugoslavia simulating Ancient Greece and special effects were designed by Mario Bava who once again was commissioned to direct the cyclops sequence (naturally, my favorite). Though camera work consists primarily of pan and scans and zoom-in close-ups, the series has a consistent style that serves the narrative. There were some touches that I particularly liked, especially the sequence of Athena’s disguises, here and there an old man, a young shepherd, a baby; sometimes the shadowed silhouette of herself in armor cast upon a wall; and when in dialogue with her father Zeus an exchange between statues. In a choral capacity her voice is spread among groupings of women in the story’s revenge sequence. 

Eurycleia’s role in determining which women in Penelope’s court have remained loyal to her is underscored by their punishment of having to clean up the bloody mess of the slain suitors, a segment that’s ordinarily lopped off scripturally to leave the revenge against the suitors as denouement. One indelible image of Rossi’s adaptation was Irene Papas as Penelope in profile with a spiraling curl of her raven black hair (bostrychoi in ancient Greek) lit in such a way that it casts a perfectly parallel shadow against her neck. It’s such touches that embolden me to say that Rossi’s mini-series is my favorite of the Odyssean adaptations.

  

 

 

 

 

In 1997 a second mini-series based on Homer’s Odyssey was developed for television and I remember anticipating it with much excitement, only to be majorly disappointed when it aired. I’m sorry to say that a second viewing of Andrei Konchalovsky’s adaptation (available in two two-hour segments on YouTube) remains a checkered experience. Though the mini-series won Emmys for direction and special effects, it was a production deeply flawed by a star-studded cast recklessly miscast. Assante as Odysseus left me cold. And several of the other actors like Michael Pollard, Bernadette Peters and Vanessa Williams seemed to be capitalizing on their own notoriety more than losing themselves in their characters. It was, in fact, a clear case of characters purposely hidden behind celebrity. 

The segment with the cyclops Polyphemus, ordinarily my favorite, seemed truncated, uninspired and buffoonish (think the Keystone Cops meet the Cyclops). And once again the segments on the Cicones and the Land of the Lotus Eaters were relegated to the cutting room floor (though lotuses were incorporated into the Circe sequence, as they were in Christopher Nolan’s Calypso sequence). I’ll concede that the Emmy for special effects was warranted, even if by today’s standards they seem a bit clunky. Some visuals especially stood out: Aeolus (Michael J. Pollard) gathering the winds of the world into a bag and their subsequent release; the sojourn into Hades; the appearances of a sprightly Hermes (Frederick Stuart) flittering mid-air. Though a brief appearance, I accepted Christopher Lee’s dark-toned Tiresias. 

Greta Schacci’s portrayal of Penelope seemed frequently breathless and her masturbating with the lapping waves at seaside was a bit much. It must have been difficult for her to play the role in the company of Irene Papas who mastered the role in Rossi’s 1968 production, providing the depth and weight that Schacci eschewed. Papas returned to the narrative as Odysseus’s grieving mother Anticleia and, again, commanded the script in her few scenes. But I mention all this to profile the character of Eurycleia, portrayed sensitively by Geraldine Chaplin. I had the great honor of interviewing Chaplin years later at the Panama International Film Festival and wish I had explored her thoughts on participating with the 1997 miniseries. 

Eurycleia in Homer’s poem is Odysseus’s wet-nurse. As a girl, Eurycleia was bought by Laertes, Odysseus' father and brought into the court at Ithaca. Laertes treated Eurycleia as his wife, but she was never his consummated lover so as not to dishonor his real wife, Anticleia. She later nursed Telemachus, Odysseus' son. Eurycleia is introduced at the tail end of the second chapter of Homer’s Odyssey. While Athena-Mentor is rounding up a ship and crew for Telemachus to sail to Pylos and Sparta, Telemachus petitions Eurycleia for provisions. She has been entrusted to guard his father’s storeroom checking its contents night and day, “guarding it all with great intelligence.” She takes an oath not to tell Penelope that Telemachus has left Ithaca until twelve days have passed, so as not to worry her any more than necessary. Athena then places a sleeping spell on the Ithaca court, putting Penelope and all the suitors to sleep, while Telemachus boards his well-provisioned ship with his strong crew, Athena-Mentor at his side, ready to meet the kings of Pylos and Sparta to seek news of his father.

  

 

An extremely loose and strategically satiric adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is arguably a much more pleasurable primer of that wandering tale than Nolan’s IMAX maudlin slog. I had forgotten the film’s Odyssean associations but was pulled smack dab into the riff with its preface:  

“O Muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the story 

Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending, 

A wanderer, harried for years on end….” 

“Oh yeah!” I remembered. The film is redolent with Homeric hints. George Clooney, aptly named Ulysses Everett McGill (though through most of the film he goes by “Everett”), is the dapper, silver-tongued and escaped convict who wants nothing more than to get back to his wife Penny (think Penelope) portrayed by Holly Hunter. He’s misled his fellow inmates bad-tempered Pete (John Turturro) and sweet, dim-witted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) into believing they’re busting out to recover hidden treasure, much like Odysseus repeatedly misled his crew. The three are assisted by a blind man (Lee Weaver) driving a handcar on a railroad, who prophetically tells them they will find a different fortune than the one they seek, much as the blind seer Teresias advised Odysseus in the Underworld. They find refuge in Pete’s cousin’s farmstead who breaks off their shackles, feeds them, and allows them to sleep in his barn. It all seems like southern hospitality (what the Greeks would term xenia) until they wake up to find Pete’s cousin has turned them in to the sheriff doggedly pursuing them. Bad manners for a host. 

Adventures ensue. They fall in with Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco) who has a thing for killing cows (think the bulls of Helios), which complicates things for them and then they’re seduced and sedated (with corn liquor and not lotus blossoms) by three beautiful sirens singing by the river while washing clothes (my favorite scene in the film). The way the three women shape the facial expressions on the men reminded me of Samantha Morton’s sculpting in Nolan’s film (my favorite scene in Nolan’s adaptation). When Everett and Delmar awaken all that’s left of Pete are his clothes and a hornytoad, which Delmar—to his comic horror—believes is Pete transformed. Seductive sirens, Circe and her transformations, lotus eaters and corn liquor all get tangled up in the Coen Brothers’ heady brew as the narrative traction bolts and lurches towards resolution.

  

But not without first dealing with a one-eyed Bible salesman Big Dan (John Goodman) who invites them for a picnic lunch, mugs them and kills the toad. Along comes political candidate “Homer” Stokes running against incumbent “Menelaus" O'Daniel, the grumpy governor of Mississippi. The nomenclature is skillfully woven into a story that likewise tips its hat to Preston Sturges and offers a Poseidon-like flood to beat all floods. “Sometimes you have to lose your way to get back home,” the Coens suggest. And sometimes you have to laugh to better understand and appreciate Homer. 

Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), is loosely based on The Iliad more than The Odyssey, but I watched it nonetheless to see how Petersen characterized Odysseus, portrayed by Sean Bean. The narrative focus of Troy rests more on its protagonist Achilles (Brad Pitt) than Odysseus, though it is their friendship that proves influential in convincing Achilles to participate in the Trojan War, fighting alongside Agamemnon (Brian Cox) whom Achilles loathes. 

 The deep and destructive enmity that exists between Achilles and Agamemnon drives the entire plot of Homer’s Iliad. During their opening argument in Book 1, Agamemnon tells Achilles he hates him more than any other king, and Achilles threatens to sail home rather than submit to Agamemnon's greed. Thus, were it not for Odysseus’s influence and his wooing Achilles with the promise that his name would be draped in glory for generations to come, the Trojan War might have turned out quite differently. It was prophesized, after all, that the Greeks could not win the Trojan War without Achilles. 

Odysseus is profiled once more in Troy during the sequence of the Trojan horse. Although Homer mentions the wooden horse only briefly in The Odyssey (and not at all in The Iliad), his audience was expected to already know the well-known myth, which credited the inspiration for the stratagem to divine intervention from the goddess Athena guiding Odysseus and his carpenter Epeius. However, as in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the gods are nowhere to be seen in Troy. If it is indeed Athena who inspires Odysseus to devise the Trojan Horse, it is done through his witnessing a fellow soldier whittle a toy horse for his child back home. The inspiration is, thus, talismanic, as it also is in a beginning sequence of Nolan’s adaptation where Odysseus is telling Penelope he must go to Troy and she should remarry. His son Telemachus is depicted as a toddler playing in the background. On the white blanket on his bed, is the silhouette of a small wooden toy horse. Here Athena is even less a presence than a narrative presumption.

  

A mere two years ago Uberto Pasolini directed The Return (2024), with much less fanfare than Christopher Nolan is receiving for his visual reclamation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. The Return cast Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus, Juliette Binoche as his wife Penelope, and Charlie Plummer as his son Telemachus. Its focus lies less on the adventurous wanderings of Odysseus and more on the poem’s final chapters when Odysseus finally washes up on the shores of Ithaca after 20 years away and the events that follow suit. The story of his return, or homecoming, is what the ancient Greeks called nostos (νόστος), an ancient Greek literary theme that describes a hero's epic homecoming or return by sea. Considered a pinnacle of heroism, the journey is typically long, arduous, and full of trials. Nostos is, as well, the root of the modern term nostalgia, which combines nostos (homecoming) with algos (pain) to describe the bittersweet longing for the past. But as the adage popularized by Thomas Wolfe asserts: “you can’t go home again.” You can physically return to the places you once lived, but the relentless passage of time, coupled with personal growth and societal change, means the past is irrecoverably gone. Pondering the weight of this universal truth, Odysseus struggles with returning home because he knows he is not the man who left. 

As Phil Cousineau synopsizes so beautifully in The Wisdom of the Odyssey: Twenty-Four Life Lessons From Homer’s Epic (2026:22-23): “Consider the marvel. Homer’s Odyssey is much more than an adventure story; less than a historical account of Mediterranean warfare during the Bronze Age. Instead, it is a spiraling, nonlinear story, a spiritual quest about the agony of returning and restoring home. A three-thousand-year-old tale about a traumatized warrior who loses his soul in battle and strives to regain it by overcoming his worst fears and by believing enough in the love of his wife and son to be pulled back home again.” 

We call it post-traumatic stress disorder these days. Odysseus returns from the Trojan War to discover just how destructive his absence has been. His palace has been plundered by boorish suitors pressuring Penelope to believe him dead and remarry. His son has no masculine footing and resents his mother. His people are suffering from the violence let loose upon them. He left to the Trojan War with all of Ithaca’s strongest warriors, most who have died over the years, and he knows that by returning alone he will be hated by their widows and ashamed by his failure to return them home safely. He’s uncertain whether he should let anyone know he has returned or whether he should run away and escape detection. The Return is ponderous and even a bit heavy-handed with these themes. 

What’s most notable is Pasolini’s decision to eschew divine intervention. As characters, the gods are once again missing in action in Pasolini’s script, particularly Athena. There is a sequence where a young woman is staring judgmentally at the unruly suitors and then mysteriously vanishes. Was she Athena in human form? Or was the scene solely to demonstrate that the suitors wanted to rape her? I’d wager the latter. 

Removing the gods from the story relinquishes the levity of fantasy and distraction from otherwise bleak human affairs. Yet at the same time enforces the ancient Greek belief that the gods help those who help themselves, which is to say that the gods are less external agents influencing outcome and more internal presences that inspire and enthuse action. Humans must find inspiration within, find the gods within, to act appropriate to their circumstantial challenges. This leans into the modern appropriation of the Greek pantheon for Jungian archetypology, interpreting the gods as psychic influences that promote individuation. 

Thus, Telemachus doesn’t receive guidance from Athena in any of her disguises and takes it upon himself to leave Ithaca to seek word about his father. He comes to this mindfulness on his own. Odysseus is not disguised as an old beggar by Athena, he has simply been away so long and been ravaged by time such that no one recognizes him at first. 

There’s a lot of frustration and anger in The Return, despite the fact that Odysseus has come back to his wife, his son, and his kingdom. His absence has traumatized all of them and there are potent rebukes from both Penelope and Telemachus, and a suffering response from Odysseus knowing what he has done, even if it cannot be undone. He wrestles with the dark truth that for some men war becomes home. The need to remember followed by the equal force of needing to forget permeates the tentative reconciliation of Odysseus with both wife and son. That they will remember and forget together becomes the film’s resolution. 

 

TIMELESS SPIRAL—FRANCES FAYE

“Is it true that when you're pretty it doesn't matter how you wear your hair? Do you think brandy is fattening?”—Frances Faye. 

Known for his bisexual chic just before the AIDS pandemic broke up the party, cabaret singer and recording artist Peter Allen managed to record duets with some of the most popular lesbians of his time: Dusty Springfield backed him up on “Back Doors Crying”, Lesley Gore on “She Loves to Hear the Music”, and Frances Faye on “Just A Gigolo.” Though I was familiar with Dusty and Lesley, Frances Faye came as a revelation. Her sassy, upbeat, comic delivery scored this side of sophisticated. Recently, I was watching Bruce Weber’s Chop Suey (2001) and was pleased to see his tribute to Frances Faye, if not startled to discover she played the madam in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby (1978). 

As Bob Downe writes at YouTube: “Frances Faye (1912-1991) was one of the world's most loved and enduring nightclub entertainers, with a career spanning the late 1920s to 1980. She hit her stride on New York's 52nd Street in the '30s, becoming known as the ‘Zazou-zaz’ gal as she thumped the piano and belted out her funny, racy blues and jazz songs.” 

Faye composed “Well All Right!”, which became a hit for the Andrew Sisters.  

YouTube offers two early Frances Faye “soundies” from 1942, which were used in a Panoram coin-operated jukebox. “Soundies” were the historic precursors to the modern music video. The first is Faye’s cover of “I Ain’t Got No Body” and the second is “Shut Your Mouth For Uncle Sam.”

  

 

In this clip Frances Faye, Martha Raye, and Bing Crosby perform "After You," the scat-challenge number from the finale of the 1937 Paramount film Double or Nothing, with Harry Barris as the bandleader. The film also starred William Frawley and Andy Devine.

  

Television appearances were rare for Faye but she was billed twice on “The Ed Sullivan Show”, first on June 9, 1957 and then on May 22, 1960. Both times she belted out her signature song “Darktown Strutters Ball”, adding "Oif’n Pripotchik & Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral" for her first appearance and “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” for her second. Faye was riding high in 1960. She had shattered Peggy Lee's record at New York's Basin Street East and had released perhaps the greatest Live album ever made: “Caught In the Act”, recorded at the Thunderbird in Las Vegas. 

  

 

 

 

Also in 1960, she appeared on Hugh Hefner’s "Playboy’s Penthouse", singing "The Man I Love", "Just In Time", "Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." This performance is a perfect example of Faye's famous double entendres and references to homosexuality and lesbianism. An admitted bisexual herself, involved with lifelong partner Teri Shepherd, Faye frequently hinted at this frequently in her act. On national television, she would often playfully alter pronouns in love songs or weave her girlfriend's name into the lyrics of song. For instance, in this performance she's inserted "it's a Teri, Teri day" into "The Man I Love" and in her Ed Sullivan performance she sang "why do all the boys treat Teri so right" in "Shimmy Like My Sister Kate." Visual quality is poor on the Hefner clip but the sound is fine, featuring great percussion from Jack Costanza and truly funny adlibs from Faye, so it’s worth at least a listen if not a watch.

  

In 1977 she made a rare television appearance where she was interviewed by Hugh Downs and sang "A Taste of Honey" and the John Lennon-Paul McCartney hit "Yesterday". 

  

Frances Faye adored Sydney, Australia and Sydney adored her. The legendary nightclub entertainer made around 14 visits Down Under between 1961 and 1979, packing out legendary clubs like Chequers and the Silver Spade. In 1979 she appeared on the Mike Walsh Show. This was her last Australian visit. She had suffered a heart attack in 1978 and was visibly ready for retirement, which came in 1980. 

 

LED / ALEXA ROSE FOUNDATION—ARTIST HAVEN AT THE DIXON WITH DANIEL OJEDA (08/01/26)

In January of this year, LED—in partnership with the Alexa Rose Foundation—launched a unique new residency called Artist Haven, designed for performing artists with momentum and a record of excellence who are poised to benefit from working on a solo project or collaboration in an inspired space. Hosted at The Dixon, the program offers time, space, mentorship from LED's artistic and creative director, as well as a cash honorarium and additional resources for artists to deeply engage in their practice. It culminates in sharing their progress with a live performance or presentation. Artist Haven is an exciting new platform that inspires risk-taking, bold experimentation, and sustained creative exploration among artists in our community or those meaningfully tied to it. 

Alex Davis, Director of the Alexa Rose Foundation, answered a few of my basic questions about the foundation’s mission and their collaboration with LED. Davis is a forward-looking leader who has invested in our region's arts and culture for twenty years. She brings inspiration and deep belief, working for a world where artists are embraced as leaders and must never apologize for their creativity.

  

A published author, Davis served as Board President of The Cabin literary center, ensuring generational diversification of audiences and a sustained legacy of exceptional board leadership. Originally from the south, Davis started her career with PBS and NPR stations in Atlanta, Georgia. With a commitment to the arts, stewardship of culturally significant sites—modern and historic—as well as joie de vivre in education, Davis helped build the foundation and clear the way for an historic Hyde Park cathedral's restoration and completion, now home to a youth arts institute with imaginative programming that breaks all the rules. 

Inspired by the creative genius and collaboration on display in our region every day, Davis is a strategic thinking partner and steadfast champion for artists, arts leaders and people who envision stronger, more vibrant communities everywhere. 

Daniel Ojeda & Lauren Edson.  Photo: © Michael Guillén.

One of the first three recipients of the Artist Haven residency is Daniel Ojeda, who in 2024 likewise received the Alexa Rose Foundation’s Light of Day Grant. Daniel is a freelance choreographer and artist based in New York City and former Ballet Idaho Soloist. He has choreographed over 15 original works during his time at Ballet Idaho. His work has been featured all over the US including New York, Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Detroit, and Dallas. And it makes me happy to say that I “knew him when”, which is to say that I have been aware of and engaged with his creativity since at least 2011 when I first relocated to Boise, Idaho from San Francisco, California. 

At that time, I fell in with a group of young dancers, designers, musicians, and filmmakers, all of whom were familiar with each other’s work, often in collaboration, and Daniel was among them. It felt good to be included in such a community of talent and it has been fascinating to watch his maturation as an artist. To witness such creativity fills me with an audience member’s spiritual sense of gratitude. What struck me right off was the brilliance of his range. There was one day in particular that I remember watching his participation in a piece of public street theater mid-afternoon, only to see him that evening spotlighted at a Ballet Idaho performance on a professional stage. I remember thinking, “Ah, he’s crossing worlds like me.” 

Daniel Ojeda.  Photo: © Christina Birkinbine.

I attended Daniel’s choreographed piece for Project Flux during last year’s edition of the Treefort Music Festival, but have not had an opportunity to watch him dance since LED’s 2019 Red-HARE event at The Modern, so I was anticipating the chance to see him perform, though shortly before the doors opened he cautioned me to manage expectations as he wasn’t really going to be dancing much and that what he would be sharing was more of a multi-media spoken word piece that he had developed with Annika Barlow. 

The premise was a simple (yet thoughtful) equation that childhood experiences that feel traumatic often lead to drama. When the trauma is recognized as misperceived, the drama, the acting out, becomes embarrassment. These embarrassments can then be processed into creative output. By extrapolating on process, Daniel and Annika revealed the process by which they developed the piece shared with their LED audience. Expressed through a textured mixture of memoir, stand-up comedy, audio-visual overlay, and a little bit of slapstick, my favorite moment in Daniel’s shared piece was when he and Annika sat in chairs and repeated the same choreographed movements to two different pieces of music. I found that fascinating. 

Though he seemed reluctant to do so (though I’m not sure if this was staged), Daniel did finally dance a bit. Mention was made that he had not actually danced in two years and I asked him if that was true? He admitted that he has mainly been choreographing though he did a turn last year in The Nutcracker and has had his fill of that scene. A photograph of himself in white tights in company with a young seventeen-year-old sealed the deal for him once and for all. 

At 72, that amused me but did remind me that dance is a circumscribed art form. The average career expectancy for a professional dancer spans roughly 10 to 20 years, with most performers retiring from the stage between their early 30s and mid-40s. Peak performance typically occurs in a dancer's 20s to early 30s, after which high physical wear leads to retirement, or a shift from performance to choreography. If it’s true that—despite modern techniques often allowing for more organic movement and greater anatomical flexibility—a heavy toll is exerted on joints and bones, I remain grateful to have witnessed Daniel in his prime as a performer, and anticipate his matured creativity as a choreographer. 

Via LED: “Throughout his residency, Daniel has embraced this process with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to explore the unknown. Watching him follow his ideas, investigate new possibilities, and shape his work in real time has been a beautiful reminder of the power of artistic discovery and the importance of creating space for imagination.”

FANTASIA 30 (2026)—NIGHTBORN (2026): REVIEW

I swear, Kuura—the baby in Finnish filmmaker Hanna Bergholm’s sophomore feature Nightborn (2026)—makes Rosemary’s baby look downright angelic. With a hairy back that only a mother could love, Saga (Seidi Haarla) gives birth to a frighteningly ill-behaved infant intent on getting its own way, biting her nipples while breastfeeding until they’re swollen and bleeding. That’s enough right there to get motherhood off to a bad start, but baby’s growling for more! It will only stop shrieking if fed raw meat and animal’s blood (not your usual Gerber’s fare). Her British husband Jon (Rupert Grint, known for playing Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter franchise) doesn’t seem to appreciate the agony of childbirth let alone the trauma of child raising suffered by Saga who is anxiously trying to love her baby’s hairy back while suspecting that this child can’t really be her’s, can it? There’s something wrong with it, isn’t there? Note to Jon: “Don’t forget to pick up the raw meat and animal blood when you’re at the grocery store!” 

Meanwhile, all that is chthonic in the Finnish woods surrounding their isolated country home speaks to the need for a paternity test. All this pain and blood and shrieking and paranoic fear resolves into one of the most unexpected smiles by film’s end. 

After having its world premiere earlier this year in the main competition of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival (where it was nominated for the Golden Bear), Nightborn arrives at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival for its North American premiere festooned with favorable reviews from Variety (“an effective blend of Finnish mythology and Cronenbergian horror”), The Hollywood Reporter (“darkly funny and unabashedly gory”), and Slant (“pleasingly unpretentious”) and walks away from Fantasia with the festival’s coveted top honor: the Cheval Noir Trophy for Best Film, as well as the Cheval Noir for lead actress Seidi Haarla. 

As stated by the Cheval Noir jury: “ ‘It sucks my body, it destroys my career.’ When the anticipated birth and the child who should be loved become the most threatening presence to a mother, she fails to accept the child into her world. To her, the child is not a ‘him,’ but an ‘it.’ This psychological thriller explores the destruction of a woman's daily life—where everything around her could be reality, or merely an illusion. Ultimately, when she gives up everything and steps into the ‘child's’ world, we finally discover the ‘most adorable’ child in the world. The suspense keeps you glued to the screen every single second, and the emotion in the ending is bittersweet—making you smile yet feel profoundly sad. This film will stay with us for a long time.”

 

I WANT YOUR SEX (2026)—REVIEW

Hilarity is seldom this erotic. Every prurient bone in your body is going to tremble with lust and laughter over Greg Araki’s latest provocation I Want Your Sex (2026). No prospects nebbish and nerdish Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is hired by Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a ball-busting artist who gets everything she wants when she wants it how she wants it and what she wants from Elliot is for him to be a humiliated submissive. Infatuated with his unexpected dominatrix, Elliot trains well, and falls into a BDSM trance. When Erika ends up missing and potentially murdered, he’s pulled into a police procedural answering hard questions set to him by two detectives. He’s even got a few hard questions for himself. 

Dark habits get lit up by bright colors and the fun is in the details, whether the duo are drinking Spindrifts, or cum is glistening all over Elliot’s t-shirt after jacking himself off, or—speaking of t-shirts—he’s wearing Sonic Youth’s “Washingmachine”. I Want Your Sex is a briskly paced and naughty romp, and a spanking critique of sex, art, and intergenerational attitudes towards both. Plus it’s full of snappy rejoinders. Elliot’s roommate Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) describes Elliot’s glacial girlfriend as “what AI would generate if you said total bitch” and Erika pontificates that “fucking people gives a sense of identity and control.” 

Hoffman delivers a nuanced performance as a naïve 23-year-old coming to terms with his own frustrations, desires and satisfaction. His masochism is tinged with sheer sweetness and genuine charm. Wilde goes over-the-top with such deliberate aggression that her vulnerability and insecurity peek through, courting pathos and some empathy for her batshit crazy behavior. Costuming is sexy. Art direction pops. Product placement perfect. The underlying moral? You are what you eat, so to speak.

 

AMERICAN PACHUCO: THE LEGEND OF LUIS VALDEZ (2026)—REVIEW

When I first heard about it, I was incredibly excited about plans to open the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino. It seemed a long overdue acknowledgment and celebration of what Latinos have contributed to the American democratic experiment. 

And then along came Trump who—as detailed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus—has been targeting the Smithsonian Institution and its projects for U.S. Latino history by zeroing out federal construction funding for the development and construction of the planned National Museum of the American Latino, threatening its physical establishment on the National Mall, and attempting to replace a standalone museum with decentralized programming, which would scatter artifacts and programs across other existing museums rather than house them in a standalone facility.

  

The “resilience” that Senator Alex Padilla opines is characteristic of Latino culture is on full display in an energizing documentary American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez (2026) directed by David Alvarado and set to open theatrically later this week. In the face of the Trump administration’s diminishments, American Pachuco ameliorates those setbacks by emphasizing that Latino history is not going anywhere, no matter the current administration’s efforts to rewrite history. 

The film’s celebratory optimism arrives as a grito of celebration and perseverance. Festival audiences have agreed. When American Pachuco premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (under the aegis of PBS American Masters) it won both the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary and the Festival Favorite Award. 

The archival footage alone is remarkable. The production worked closely with UC Santa Barbara to rescue, digitize, and 4K-scan over 80,000 feet of deteriorating, unseen 1960s and 1970s film covering El Teatro Campesino and early political skits (actos). This recovered footage contains rare, intimate footage of Cesar Chavez, street performances, unionization movements, and behind-the-scenes material from Valdez's theatrical and film productions. Negotiated through the life and career of Luis Valdez, American Pachuco chronicles his journey from a childhood in California labor camps and migrant farming fields to the creation of guerrilla theater for the United Farm Workers strike, Broadway (Zoot Suit), and Hollywood (La Bamba). Weaving both archival and contemporary interviews with Valdez and his creative associates (Daniel Valdez, Dolores Huerta, Taylor Hackford, Linda Ronstadt, Cheech Marin, Lou Diamond Phillips), combined with split-screen visuals and narration by Edward James Olmos reprising his role as Zoot Suit’s El Pachuco, American Pachuco demonstrates how writer / playwright / director Valdez illuminated the Mexican American experience on stage and screen and transformed the American cultural landscape. Trump can try but he’s not going to succeed in stifling that seminal transformation. It’s just too powerful and—as stated by Senator Padilla—resilient. 

In fact, the 1981 filmic adaptation of his play Zoot Suit and 1987’s blockbuster La Bamba seared into my cultural sensibility as a firm building block of my identity as a Chicano having been brought up working in the fields of Idaho and Southern California as a boy and participating in the La Raza Movement of the San Francisco Bay Area. After Zoot Suit premiered in Los Angeles, it rolled out to San Francisco in October 1981. I seem to recall it playing the Castro Theater and it timed with my sister Barbara visiting San Francisco. Earlier in the day I had taken her out to Fort Mason where we happened to catch a performance of an Aztec Dance Group from Mexico City. It was the first time I had seen these dancers all decked out with their feather headdresses and their ankle rattles (ayoyote) made from seed pods. From Fort Mason we went to the Castro Theater to catch Zoot Suit. I was stunned by the sequence depicting the racial violence of the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots where servicemen attack El Pachuco and tear off his zoot suit, stripping him down to near nudity. When he rises he is shown in a loincloth receding into darkness with the sound of the ayoyote around his ankles. Barbara and I looked at each other in amazement. What were the chances of such a coincidence? We both instantly understood this powerful moment of symbolic transformation and cultural survival. By the servicemen tearing off the zoot suit—a badge of pride for Chicano youth of that era—they were attempting to strip him of his humanity and humiliate him; but, instead of being defeated, El Pachuco emerges from the attack in an almost mythical way, reborn with an ancient, regal majesty, evoking the image of his indigenous Aztec ancestors. That indelible cinematic moment connected the modern, urban struggles of 1940s Mexican American pachucos back to a deep, unbroken history of indigenous resistance in Mexico. Zoot Suit still works to that effect and American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez further serves to connect our current American moment to the resistance of the Chicano Labor Movement of the 1960s and the 1970s. It’s a vital reminder of how strong we are as a culture and no racist autocrat is going to take that away.

 

FANTASIA 30 (2026)—HOME BODIES (2026) / INSECTASY (2026) / SOUR MINNOWS (2026): REVIEWS

The World Premiere of Canadian filmmaker Casey Walker’s strange and engaging Home Bodies (2026) starts you scratching your head straight off when you’re introduced to infant twins—Red (Emma Ho) and Blue (Ian Ho)—who live routine, circumscribed lives at home each day, every day. Ready-to-go Blue always wakes up sleepyhead Red in the morning, they share breakfast in an automated kitchen that gives them everything they need to eat, they watch videotapes of a show called “Barn” cast with farm animals, and occasionally break the monotony of their quotidian existence by celebrating a Christmas-like holiday where they’re bestowed with gifts from “Papa”, a disembodied voice resounding from the other side of a locked door who makes sure that Red and Blue abide house rules, or else. 

So what is this house? What is this home? Why so many locked doors to forbidden rooms? Why no windows? Why so many rules? What does it mean that Red and Blue are true “home bodies” who never get to leave their habitat and never seem to want to? Blue, especially, seems content with their ritual repetitions, whereas Red seems to have a gnawing dissatisfaction that something’s not right. Because they are finally “old enough”, Papa sends them the most unusual of holiday gifts: an androgynous humanoid named Pal (eerily played by Ess Hödlmoser) who can’t talk, has to moreorless be led around and positioned, and seems to have been primarily provided to keep Red company, to feed her curiosity, and to initiate her into some of the darker secrets of life. Red, who has shown signs of becoming bored with her roommate Blue, takes a shine to Pal who she assigns a feminine gender, and designates besties. Blue gets jealous and pushes back, causing a disastrous upset of all the twins have ever known or expected to be normal in their home. 

The Ho Twins are perfectly cast as Red and Blue and exemplify what Carolyn Mauricette has identified in her Fantasia program capsule as a surreal take on the nature vs. nurture argument. Blue is a creature fashioned from control and eager to conform whereas Red has an agency that thinks outside the box, definitely outside the homefront, which leads her to the film’s “what-the-fuck?” ending where she literally finds herself outside the box. 

Unabashedly prurient and just this side of perverse, the World Premiere of Angus Silver’s psychosexual drama Insectasy (2026) starts right off with Sadie (in a fearless turn by Tirion Healy) masturbating and climaxing because of the feel of insect legs on her skin. Tickle tickle spurt. Naturally, the viewer is bound to feel that Sadie’s proclivities are unnatural and yet—by comparison to the boasted sexploits of her social circle—she seems to be the only one who is genuine and authentic about her desires. All her friends sound like their ideas of relationship come half-baked out of made-for-television movie stereotypes. What does it matter if Sadie’s preferences are different than others? At least they’re undeniably her own. 

Remember that exchange in David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly (1986) where Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) says to his girlfriend Veronica (Geena Davis): “Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects don't have politics. They're very brutal. No compassion, no compromise.” Silver’s Insectasy explores the same theme of brutal nature by pivoting the theme on the fulcrum of pleasure. Is pleasure the act of doing something because it feels good? Or is it an act that—by not doing it—will make you feel bad? Or—if one is being brutally honest (since brutality is the point)—does sexual behavior really have anything to do with either pleasure or pain? Or is it a smaller function in a larger collective design or functional dream? 

Sadie’s sexual interactions with others on both sides of the fence—nebbish chainsmoker Theo (Emmett Roiko) and sapphically aggressive Honey (Lyndall Huber)—edge her closer to understanding what is truly erotic for her and is underscored even further when she meets fellow entomophile Julius (Jan Roeth) whose “are you into bugs?” come-on is undeniably sexy and offers Sadie a chance to make her fantasies come true. The money shot in Insecstasy is worth the price of admission.

  

Naturalistic dialogue and performances insure that the Fantasia World Premiere of Harrison Atkins’s Sour Minnows (2026) takes viewers on a narrative trajectory both desultory and dread-inducing. Ricky (David Brown) and his roommate Tepper (Chase Williamson) are walking home from grocery shopping, bags in hand, opining on movies they’ve seen, when they turn a corner and encounter a group of men down on the ground licking the asphalt. 

Next thing they know they’re back in their apartment trying to put together what they just witnessed but, oddly, their recollections are uneven and don’t quite align. Ricky doesn’t even remember dropping the groceries and running. In the days that follow so much doesn’t quite fit together to make sense. Have they just sat down to watch a film or have they already watched it and was it shorter than they expected or was it four hours long? As Vincenzo Nappi describes it in his Fantasia program capsule: “time stretches and bends … memories morph into lies, reality becomes malleable, and Ricky finds himself at the mercy of ‘The Yellow Thing,’ an entity that wears people like costumes.” 

Nappi further characterizes Sour Minnows as an “experimental reworking of the hangout film”, whose relateability is exactly what makes this movie so satisfying. This isn’t just mumblecore naturalism because, first of all, the sound design is crystal clear so that the viewer catches each halting nuance of conversation—the way words overlap each other eliciting genuine bewilderment, confusion, and doubt—and these aren’t just slacker performances killing time on screen. The performances by the entire ensemble are flawlessly delivered, each pause pregnant with mystery, and understated to maximum effect. Their doubletakes peer into uncertain futures. 

I’m ordinarily not fond of irresolute endings but Sour Minnows has me just fine with unanswered questions, implausible perspectives, and the wonderful chaotic possibility that wandering through hallways at a cineplex might lead me to peek out my bedroom closet door in doppelganger excess. I fully accept that watching life from impossible angles might mean the angles are watching back. So far, one of my top five from this year’s Fantasia!

FANTASIA 30 (2026)—WHEN YOU OPEN THE DOOR (2026): REVIEW

Remember back in 1992 when American psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés published Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype that spent 145 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list for over a three-year span? Well lope forward 34 years to the Fantasia World Premiere of Eriko Katagiri’s When You Open the Door (2026), a debut feature that could easily be entitled Women Who Do Interpretive Dance With the Wolves. 

Miki (Motola Serena) is a 27-year old woman working for an architectural firm who believes she has been bitten by a wolf during her lunch hour. Wolves, of course, have been extinct in Japan for over 120 years and she has no visible bite marks so her work mates remain appropriately skeptical, even as Miki begins to experience a series of dream memories that transform her self-image and cause her to question reality. 

For her Fantasia program capsule Justine Smith writes: “The film has a languid numbness; a strange rhythm that’s both uncomfortable and infectious. Viewers who allow themselves to be carried into Miki’s mind will soon find themselves pulled into one of the most unique werewolf stories ever put to the big screen.” But there you have it. Viewers who allow themselves to be languidly numbed by When You Open the Door have to also be willing to suspend their disbelief and that’s a heavy lift for this anemic fare. 

That is, if you really want this to be a werewolf movie. Then again, belief or disbelief might not have anything to do with it. Maybe this film should simply be accepted as werewolf-lite, a unique interpretation of the genre that borrows some of the tropes—hairy transformation, blackouts, howling at the moon—and imagines them differently than expected? Filtering them through a lens of feminine isolation? And resulting in as kitty-like a werewolf as Dee Wallace’s transformation at the end of The Howling (1981), cute and fuzzy, eating lit-up heart-shaped hearts. Believability ends up not really being the focus after all as the film’s final lip-licking wink conclusively asserts. Less for gore fans, this film is dedicated to all the furries out there with struggling identity issues. 

The film’s most interesting thread revolves around Japan’s deep history of female shamans, seers, and spirit mediums known as itako or orgamisama in northern folk traditions. To become mediums women are trained in caves, essentially animal graveyards, where they undergo fasting, sleep deprivation, and are beaten with reeds to achieve trance states. Once trained, they are initiated in a god-possession ritual where the old women surround the novice and chant. Though these traditions aren’t directly associated with wolves, there is a canine connection that Katagiri incorporates into her narrative: that of a secret box called a gehōbako which contains magical items.

FANTASIA 30 (2026)—THE SEOUL GUARDIANS (2026): REVIEW

At Fantasia there is no shortage of dystopian visions of the future, often the near-future, tracking the dark consequences of socio-political forces currently at play—autocracies that repress individual freedoms, technologies that slander humanity—and among these imaginative and cautionary narratives, it’s heartening to see included what might be considered the most frightening genre of all: the cinema vérité documentary. 

Fear and hope co-mingle in The Seoul Guardians (2026) [official website], the collective project of Jong-Woo Kim, Shin-Wan Kim, and Chul-Young Cho that documents six tense hours in and out of the National Assembly in Seoul, after the sudden declaration of martial law by the South Korean President on December 3, 2024. With a logline of “Everyone speaks of democracy, but is it truly an attainable dream?”, The Seoul Guardians chronicles the dream being put to the test; a dream that could conceivably be put to the test right here in the United States in the very near future with the midterms mere months away. 

Cross-cutting footage of the December 2024 events with archival footage of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising 45 years earlier—one of the deepest traumas in South Korea’s history—a question is raised regarding the famous aphorism coined by philosopher George Santayana in his 1905 book The Life of Reason: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Emphasizing that ignoring past mistakes will inevitably lead to their being made again, one can’t help but ask: can the past save the present and, by extension, can the present save the future? It’s a question that Americans have to ask as we witness the intense national polarization, deep fights over racial and social equality, and the widespread use of political fear and demonization that once characterized both the Reconstruction Era and the McCarthy Era of American politics. The contemporary parallels are chilling. It’s to be expected, I guess, that human nature will again and again arrive to these existential crises, these all-too-familiar moral conflicts, but the hope is that knowing our history will help us identify and negotiate swifter outcomes; that we will resolve our conflicts through the evidence of history. Then again, filmmakers Kim, Kim and Cho question the democratic viability of the word “we.” 

From its opening sequences, the two “tribes” of thought—those wishing to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol and those who are anti-impeachment—are shown in strident opposition to each other, with valid critiques flying both ways. Resisting the assault on the National Assembly by soldiers ordered by the President to "drag the legislators out of the building" so they can’t vote on ending martial law seems like a no-brainer in terms of defending democracy, and the subsequent impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol and his replacement by President Lee Jae Myung was hailed by global media as a victory for democracy. But South Korea’s political polarization has only deepened, and hatred between the opposing camps continues to grow. The filmmakers raise an attendant question: In a world where political polarization and animosity toward the other side have become routine—"where society remains suspended between relief and anxiety”—can the past truly save the present? And what kind of present must be remembered by the future? 

Fortunately, other than the social anxiety and property damage of the December 2024 conflict, the death toll of the Gwangju Uprising (estimated by some as high as the thousands) was avoided, partly because of the relatively passive efforts of the military to follow their orders, arguably because they knew how the military was judged for the violence visited upon civilians in the Gwangju Uprising, they didn’t wish the same for themselves. If only ICE could share that shame and concern. 

Having already garnered several awards on its robust festival run, Fantasia offers The Seoul Guardians as a Quebec premiere, allowing Montreal audiences to be immersed in the power of political agitation.

 

FANTASIA 30 (2026)—ATTACK ON PARADISE (2026) / ZSAZSA ZATURNNAH (2026) / ANCESTRAL BEASTS (2026): REVIEWS

Fantasia never fails to offer up exciting action flicks knowing this is what their audiences crave. The World Premiere of Bob Colaers’s Attack On Paradise (2026) more than whets the appetite. Lead actor and co-writer Saïd Boumazoughe teams up as recently-released convict Suleyman with rookie cop Yasmine (Clara Cleymans) to maneuver bullet ballets and kinetically choreographed one-on-one combats floor by floor as they aim to take down drug lord Prince Hamza (Achmed Akkabi) who, of course, is sheltered high up in the penthouse. 

Taking care of an elderly parent is hard enough but Suleyman doesn’t realize just how hard until he returns home to visit his mother after being locked away for several years. His committed mother-love makes vulnerable and humanizes his invincible rough guy reputation, such that you’re rooting for him to hug mama even though a multi-story apartment building full of criminal types keep getting in his way. What can he do but bring them down? 

It’s a sentimental plot nested in a kick-ass narrative, successfully rendered, and just plain fun to watch. Fully identifying with Suleyman’s undeniably likeable character meant by film’s end I could barely walk! Ouch! The bruises!! The muscle aches!!

  

Real-life action flicks face off with animated ones in the North American premiere of Avid Liongoren’s ZsaZsa Zaturnnah [vs the Amazonistas of Planet X] (2026). Offsetting Attack On Paradise’s testosterone-fueled mayhem with cosmic estrogen power, ZsaZsa Zaturnnah charges forward with a fearless LGBTQ+ powerhouse punch. Adapted from Filipino graphic designer and illustrator Carlo Vergara’s Zsazsa “komiks”, and having been previously adapted as a stage musical and a live-action film in 2006, Vergara’s high-camp parodies of iconic Filipina superheroine Darna have earned prestigious awards and enormous popularity among the queer community of the Philippines. 

I’ll crib the synopsis from Rupert Bottenberg’s Fantasia program capsule because I couldn’t possibly do it any better: “Ada is a shy, gay hairdresser living in a small village, running a salon with the help of his boisterous assistant Didi. A history of heartbreak and harsh judgement has left Ada resigned to a life without love—despite a powerful crush on Dodong, the handsome storekeeper across the street. Everything changes for Ada when a pink meteorite punches a hole in his roof one night. At Didi’s insistence, Ada consumes the space rock and utters the mystical word inscribed on it—Zaturnnah! Didi’s ludicrous conviction that Ada will be transformed into a superhero proves to be correct. Ada now has incredible strength, speed, resilience—and a spectacular, Olympian woman’s body! These new powers prove immediately necessary, as the village is beset by giant mutant animals, wretched zombies from the local graveyard, and anything else that can be thrown at her by the militantly misandrist extraterrestrial invader Queen Feminah Suarestellar Baroux and the Amazonistas from Planet X. Can Zsazsa win against these fearsome foes? And, can Ada win Dodong’s heart?” 

How’s that for a plot device? As outlandishly colorful and vibrant as ZsaZsa Zaturnnah is on its surface, I detect subtle undercurrents. Despite Ada being a stereotyped effeminate outcast hairdresser infatuated with the hunky bodybuilder across the street, he has no real interest in being a woman. He’s gay but he wants to be a guy. That swallowing a pink meteorite turns him into an Amazonian woman generates its own clutch of issues. Will he be loved for being the woman he’s actually not and never accepted as the gay man he is? A tinge of the political dynamite of transgender women in sports hovers over a provocative narrative that eschews heavy-handedness to deliver a sentimental tale where—despite who others think he is—Ada is ultimately loved for being exactly who he wants to be.

  

So while Saga is trying to cope with her newborn, Elyse (Morgan Holstrom)—the protagonist of Tim Riedel’s debut feature Ancestral Beasts (2026)—is trying to cope with ancestors long gone living underneath the floorboards of the family home. “The curses we inherit are not our fault,” the film’s poster attests, “what they become is our responsibility.” Which, of course, is easier said than done when it comes to family where so much past damage is coursing through the bloodlines and where, as Fantasia points out, grief arrives as an unwanted houseguest. 

As Carolyn Mauricette writes in her Fantasia program capsule, Ancestral Beasts is “a haunted-house narrative mixed with character-driven commentary on how intergenerational trauma can reach beyond the grave and hold our hearts in its cold hands.” Configuring that trauma as a centipede-like creature (think The Tingler) is truly novel, intriguing, and creepy; but, by film’s end I was worn out with all the family dysfunction—sisters unloading on each other—and the heavy-handed treatment of mental illness in indigenous communities (not to say that isn’t extremely important). The World Premiere of Ancestral Beasts is a noteworthy if uneven first endeavor and I look forward to watching Riedel and his indigenous cast and crew develop their chops in future films.