ARAB FILM FESTIVAL 30—EL SETT (2025): REVIEW

Marwan Hamed’s Egyptian biopic El Sett (2025) chronicling the life of legendary Egyptian contralto singer Umm Kulthum opened the landmark 30th edition of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Arab Film Festival, the flagship event of the Arab Film and Media Institute (AFMI), the longest running independent festival of its kind in North America. El Sett’s producer Mohammed Hefzy was fêted on opening night with AFMI's inaugural Luminary Award for Cultural Impact. 

As famous and beloved as Umm Kulthum remains in the history of Egyptian and Arabian music, I would be hard pressed to know many Americans who know much if anything about her, let alone being familiar or even favoring her music whose regional distinction lies outside most Western tastes, but one could argue she is to the Mideast what Aretha Franklin has been to American soul music, or what Bob Dylan has been to lyrical phrasing. She was the undisputed master of Tarab, the Arab musical genre which roughly translates to ecstasy. Maria Callas called Umm Kulthum the “Incomparable Voice”, and Charles DeGaulle called her “the Lady”, the Egyptian definition of her nickname “Elsett” which is an ancient reference to “(She) of the throne”, an epithet for the goddess Isis. When Kulthum would hit a high note at the end of a song, her fans would cry out, “This is greatness upon greatness, Lady Aset!” That greatness was emphasized when her funeral procession became a national event where four million Egyptians swarmed to catch a glimpse of her cortège; the largest human gathering in Egypt's history, and one of the largest funerals in history. 

Athough there have been decades of documentaries and television series about Uum Kulthum, El Sett is the first major cinematic production to offer a narrative account of her extraordinary life. With Mona Zaki portraying Umm Kulthum, El Sett debuted at the Marrakech International Film Festival to a 10-minute standing ovation and enjoyed warm notices on the European festival circuit. Thereafter in theatrical release the film suffered a polarized response from domestic audiences. As analyzed by Middle East Eye, critical and public reception in Egypt was heavily colored by off-screen politics. The film's co-financing by Saudi Arabia's Big Time Studio sparked widespread resentment over foreign influence in Egyptian heritage. That generated in-built cultural and political resistance to the film, causing it to lose its investment at the box office where it was subsequently classified as a flop. 

It’s to be presumed that if four million people attended her funeral, there might be at least that many perspectives on how Uum Kulthum’s life should be portrayed. That’s a hard number to please. Though there was admiration that such an untouchable icon could be humanized and her “aura of sacredness” overcome, in contrast to what until then had primarily been traditional, state-produced “hagiographies”, it did seem to this reviewer that El Sett overly tracked with the now-established melodramatic trope that it doesn’t pay to be rich and famous because you’ll just be miserable and lonely at the top. Such a foreseen conclusion takes energy away from the rise, which is dutifully played out, beginning with her childhood in rural Egypt where religious stricture demanded she perform disguised as a boy. 

In perhaps my favorite scene of the film, set against the backdrop of Egypt’s feminist movement linking women’s rights with national identity, Uum Kulthum is invited to perform at the Shams El Din Pasha’s mansion where she is encouraged by the Pasha’s daughter Ferial (Amina Khalil) to finally discard her Bedouin head cover and cloak to sing as a woman. Though the Shams El Din Pasha’s mansion is mentioned in historical records as an early venue where Umm Kulthum first performed her romantic songs, the film takes license in also claiming it was at this event that she surprised poet Ahmed Rami (Muhammad Farrag) by singing his poem, "The Lover's Eyes Betray Him" (Al-Sabb Tafdahuhu 'Uyunuhu), which she had already added to her repertoire. This 1924 meeting sparked one of the most famous creative partnerships in Arabic music history, with Rami eventually writing over 130 songs for her. Their first eye-to-eye encounter is movingly rendered in the film. 

As is the sequence where Uum Kulthum meets and falls in love with Sherif Sabry Basha (Karim Abdel Aziz), an uncle of King Farouk of Egypt who—stricken by the beauty of her voice—awards her with the Order of Virtues, an honor ordinarily only bestowed upon royalty. In 1946, he proposed marriage (or a relationship) to Umm Kulthum, which was ultimately rejected or blocked because the royal family considered her background not elite enough, a moment that deeply affected her. 

There’s no discounting that the Hollywood-like big-budget production values of lush visuals and fantastic sets captured by cinematographer Abdelsalam Moussa and the melodramatic flourishes of composer Hesham Nazih gave the film sheen, allure and a driving momentum, but—as one of those Americans who has some familiarity with Kulthum’s oeuvre—I was surprised that her musical performances in the film lacked emotional depth, often due to her most famous songs being abbreviated. Jonathan Romney at Screen Daily complains: “What’s missing above all is a sense of the voice that Callas called ‘incomparable’. We hear only fragmentary performances, sometimes slathered in orchestral accompaniment; Hamed seriously misses a trick in letting that voice soar uncumbered, in the intimacy it deserves.” Or as Joseph Fahim criticizes at Middle East Eye: “The subtle innovations she brought to traditional Arab music, her break with tradition that defied maqam conventions, her daringly ingenious vocal ornamentations, and, most of all, her technical genius that put her peers in the shade—none of this is mentioned, let alone explored. The magnificence of Umm Kulthum’s art is boorishly reduced to the strength of her voice.” 

Ali Benzekri at the International Cinephile Society and Farah Samir at Egyptian Streets give affirmative nods to the non-linearity of Ahmed Mourad’s script, commending its bold, memory-driven pacing. By framing Kulthum’s life around a historic 1967 concert at L’Olympia in Paris where she was attacked on stage by an ardent fan, El Sett resists a conventional cradle-to-grave timeline, giving emotional weight to her mythic stature as a performer. That performance, incidentally, was her sole performance outside the Arab world for which she was reportedly paid twice the salary of Maria Callas. 

The complex history of Mideast politics seems to always remain beyond the grasp of my comprehension and, therefore, I’m ill-equipped to factor the viability of complaints that El Sett sanitized Kulthum’s political legacy. But I remain grateful to the Arab Film Festival for the opportunity to view this flawed yet equally compelling film. I have come to my understandings of the Mideast more through films offered at the festival than through any other medium and applaud AFMI’s efforts to platform diverse voices from the region. 

 

RUNA SIMI (2025)—REVIEW

I have long held the belief that one must dream in detail, then proceed from the dream outward. As much as I have applied this to my own life, nowhere have I seen it applied more faithfully than in the quest of Fernando Valencia—a 29-year-old radio host and voice actor from Cusco, Peru—who takes it upon himself to save his native language Quechua, the ancestral language of the Incas known as Runa Simi, “the language of the people”, from which this documentary claims its title. How does he aim to do so? By dubbing Disney’s 1994 classic The Lion King in Quechua. 

Having already launched Quechua Clips—a project that reimagined iconic animated scenes in Quechua—Valencia confirmed that millions of Quechua speakers were hungry for stories in their own language. The groundswell of support he received from Quechua Clips going viral enthused him to pursue dubbing The Lion King with the spirited assistance of his devoted 8-year-old son Dylan voicing Prince Simba. What follows is a charming and inspiring narrative of a father sharing his dream with his son, a dream as wide as the vistas afforded by the Peruvian Andes (from whom Valencia solicits spiritual support). 

Naturally, though many people agree Valencia’s idea is a great one, he can’t receive institutional or financial support until he secures the necessary licenses from Disney, which—as starkly laid out for him by an attorney—is near to impossible because Disney will never agree to The Lion King being dubbed in an indigenous language. Valencia falters with tears in his eyes, but his dream will not be undone and armed with a homemade studio and a crew of amateur voice actors all similarly enthused towards language justice, Valencia charges forward without permission to pursue his dream project and to create an evening screening where the local Quechua community can finally experience a movie in their own language; some watching a movie for the first time. As moving as the interaction between Valencia and his son Dylan is throughout this documentary, the father-son dynamic amplifies generationally when Valencia’s own father weeps after the one-off screening, proud beyond belief, embracing Valencia as if never to let him go. What could any father wish more than to pass on cultural heritage? Equally compelling is Valencia’s valiant mother who—along with literally building the first school house in her rural community—likewise recognized the importance of sending Valencia to a private school in the city so that his dreams could springboard from her own. 

At Democracy Now, Amy Goodman notes that experts estimate that a language is lost every two weeks—and that half of the world’s 7,000 spoken languages could be lost by the end of the century. Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, with approximately 7 to 10 million speakers living primarily in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. But like so many indigenous languages, Qechua is vulnerable due to cultural pressures and discrimination. Thus, Valencia’s dream project leans into indigenous activism and cultural reclamation. Because Quechua is not a written language and is learned orally, laminating the language onto the medium of film has proven to be an excellent means of preservation.

  

Goodman interviews the film’s director Augusto Zegarra who worked on the making of this film for nearly nine years. Though Peruvian, born in Cusco, Zegarra is not an indigenous Quechua speaker though he felt it important to highlight Valencia’s project because of the discrimination against Quechua speakers who—treated as second-class citizens—are fighting for their basic human rights.  

Runa Simi had its world premiere at Tribeca where Zegarra took home the Albert Maysles Award for documentary director followed by a dozen prizes from other festivals including the Palm Springs International and the Miami Film Festival. After a successful one week run of sold-out screenings in New York and ahead of a one-week run in Los Angeles, Runa Simi is making a special stop in San Francisco for two screenings. 

Monday, Nov 2, 7:30pm, 4-Star Theater 2200 Clement St • San Francisco 

Wednesday, Nov 4, 6pm, Roxie Theater 3125 16th St • San Francisco 

Director Augusto Zegarra, Fernando Valencia (subject of film), and producer Paloma Iturriaga will be present at both screenings. This will be an excellent opportunity to hear how Quechua is the language through which Valencia listens and speaks to his heart and his soul; the language by which he gives voice to his dream, which now proceeds into the world.

 

THE WEIRD KIDZ (2022)—REVIEW

When Ted Geogeghan forwarded a streaming link of The Weird Kidz (2022), he noted: “While it's easy (and kinda accurate) to refer to it as South Park-meets-Stranger Things, filmmaker Zach Passero has been singlehandedly animating this feature for so long, he actually began work on it before Stranger Things ever began production!” That’s to say that The Weird Kidz was eight years (plus some) in the making; a creative process laid out in the Without Your Head Podcast interview with Passero that preceded the film’s World Premiere at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Continuing on the genre festival circuit, The Weird Kidz boasted its European premiere at London’s FrightFest, played the Annecy International Animation Festival in their Midnight Specials sidebar, and was a Sitges Family Official Selection, as well as being featured in several other film festivals throughout 2023. Fast forward three years and The Weird Kidz is finally available on VOD through Antenna Releasing—just in time for Halloween! An urban tale told around a camp fire becomes an enjoyable tale to watch on television, our digital campfire. 

It’s of note that Passero and his wife Hannah (who painted the backgrounds for the film) were having their firstborn when the project started and their boy is now 12 years old, the very age of Dug (Tess Passero), Mel (Glenn Bolton), and Fatt (Brian Ceely), the titular weird kids coming of age in a desert suburb during the mid-’80s. 

Dug’s slacker older brother Wyatt (Ellar Coltrane, of Richard Linklater’s Boy, now grown up of course) takes the tween trio on a camping trip to a canyon with his new, awesome girlfriend, Mary (Sydney Wharton). Mary has to redirect Mel and Fatt’s attention away from her breasts to her eyes (the two are in the grip of puberty and all its compulsive stares), whereas late bloomer Dug is more into video games and smores. At a pit stop where the boys have been tasked with stealing beer, the gas station attendant Duana (Angela Bettis) warns Dug about “The Night Child”, an ancient creature that feeds on tourists. At first Dug thinks this is just a ghost story to tell around the campfire but finds out they are, indeed, in danger, which is when the film effectively shifts from an awkward coming of age comedy to an encounter with a bloodthirsty insect-like creature. Add on to that threat a local community that propitiates the creature with ritual sacrifice and the campers become potential victims from both sides. 

As Passero notes in the aforementioned interview, it takes the first fifteen minutes to accept the line-drawn aesthetics of the animation, at which point the narrative gains traction and becomes oddly believable, largely through the charm of its naturalistic dialogue and a palpable innocence that informs the characters and speaks to a nostalgic vision of the time. By film’s end not only have the boys grown up but the relationship between Wyatt and Mary matures, and compassion is afforded the creature as well. 

Lucky McKee, a classmate of Passero’s in film school and the director of May (2002) scores a production credit with The Weird Kidz, and the family’s kept tight with Angela Bettis (who played May) voicing the role of Duana, and Passero’s sister Tess voicing Dug.  

The Weird Kidz succeeds because it’s sincere in its love for the movies we grew up with. The characters expand past their stereotypes, complicated by compassion and self-insight. Between the popcorn farts and the blood sacrifice, the hijinks and the horrors, viewers are rewarded with a heady dose of inspired, devoted and singularly unique animation.

LED—GRACE (2026)

Photo: © Michelle Bliss

After an exciting and electrifying inaugural season, LED returns to the Dixon with a provocative program to kick off their 2026-2027 run. Grace (2026)—created, written and directed by Lauren Edson and Andrew Stensaas (Boise’s dance and music powerhouse couple)—leans into a polarized midterm election cycle coming to a head mere days away to frame an exploration of the nature of internal and interactional conflict. 

“This particular moment in our world is marked by so much conflict and unrest,” Edson and Stensaas write. “It can feel almost impossible to turn on the radio, the television, or read the news without encountering something catastrophic. We started wondering: what would happen if we distilled all of that conflict down to just two people? What if it starts with just two people? Two bodies. Two opposing ideas. Two people trying to figure out where they stand.” 

And, thus, the pas de deux becomes intriguingly politicized and harnessed to a bifurcated narrative structure: the wrestling mat and a 1940s dinner party. 

Grace begins with the wrestling mat. Bobby Lawrence and Jen Wieber, grapplers from The Garage, square off in gendered conflict. Of importance is to note that the conflict is embedded within the affirmative principle of competition. Even in the Biblical narrative of Cain and Abel where the two brothers compete to gain God’s favor, God does not punish Cain for killing his brother Abel but instead marks him. That mark is, surprisingly, one of protection so that anyone seeking to harm Cain will have damage come back at them sevenfold. I interpret that to mean that the intrinsic nature of conflict requires some system of confinement so that it doesn’t cascade unchecked, and competition grants conflict that instructive and restrictive structure. In order to engage athleticism there has to be respect for “the combination of rules, power, trust, control, and the very human desire to win” that Edson and Stensaas further note. “There is a structure everyone agrees to, and then there is everything happening underneath it. What is spoken. What is unspoken. What we show each other. What we hide.” 

Shift to the concealments and revelations (i.e., decorum) of the LED ensemble stylishly costumed by Chante Hamann to simulate a 1940s cocktail party, scored to music of the WWII period. Grace, embodied by the ever-elegant Cassidy Fulmer, has her own internal dialogue going on about how she presents herself as a woman, how she has been taught, and what is expected of her by others but, more importantly, by herself. Enter Joan (Colleen Loverde)—another strong and beautiful woman in her own right—who resists Grace’s feminine sovereignty and the sapphic tension of a conflictive pas de deux is on! Girl fight!! 

  

In past performances, LED has experimented with choreographing to the spoken word rather than music, but it veers on gestural and comic brilliance in Grace where the syncopation between speech and movement is thrillingly melded, achieved through an equally innovative use of voiceover shifting between male and female voices and levels of volume engineered by Daniel Congdon Focal Audio. 

After the intermission, the LED ensemble returns to the stage in wrestling singlets (not Piglets!) and so the theme of channeled conflict is readdressed. But the themes deepen. The conflict of individuality with uniformity is staged by each stating to the other wearing similar singlets that they “wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that”. Michael Baltzell’s scenic design of two huge squares on coasters moreorless becomes another member of the ensemble, creatively weaving in and out of the choreography and providing chalkboard surfaces for the ensemble to scribble commentary such as “More is None!” 

Photo: © Michelle Bliss

Standouts in Grace’s second act include Nick LaMaina’s tapdance sequence in frustrated competition with persistent and interruptive door knocking. Also, Annika Barlow’s hostile takeover of a microphone to instruct the audience on the parasite commonly found in crickets known as the horsehair worm (or hairworm) that famously has the ability to "mind-control" their hosts, turning ordinary crickets into submissive "zombies" to complete their bizarre lifecycle. The horsehair worm cannot complete its life cycle on land, it must return to water, but its final host—the cricket—is a terrestrial insect that normally avoids bodies of water at all costs. The worm hijacks the cricket's central nervous altering its response to light and gravity and ultimately forces the cricket to wander mindlessly until it finds open water and commits a “kamikaze dive.” It’s only then that the repeated chirping of crickets throughout the program gains an eerie poignance. 

So what is Grace saying about the conflict between informed choice and programmed behavior? How much say do we really have as individuals when it comes to our human propensity for conflict? How much are we steered by media and our political moments? In her studies of the chimpanzees of Tanzania, East Africa, Jane Goodall identified the in-group out-group tensions recognizable in the human species. Can we really resist the impulse to define ourselves as against the other? Of making fun of the singlet that we ourselves are wearing? Are we predisposed to being taken over at times by conflict such that we can barely recognize ourselves or our choices? 

Which brings me back to the zombie cricket who, after throwing himself into the water, experiences the hairworm bursting out of its abdomen or rear. The hairworm uncoils into the water, looking like an animated strand of dark spaghetti or a long horse hair. Multiple worms will often emerge from a single host and immediately twist together into a tight cluster—known as a "Gordian knot"—to mate and lay eggs, restarting the entire cycle. Surprisingly, if the cricket doesn't drown or get eaten by a fish immediately after impact, it will often survive the ordeal, crawl out of the water, and go back to its normal life on land. 

I guess you could call that conflict resolution. 

One final but essential praise for Grace. There are so many layers to this production. Edson’s signature imaginative choreography, the impressive talent and strength of the ensemble, the period costuming of Chante Hamann, the evocative spotlighting of lighting designer Chaz Gentry, the flexibility of Michael Baltzell’s scenic design, but Andrew Stensaas’s dexterity and mastery as a musician—piano, ukelele, drums—and the beauty of his soulful voice renders his original compositions and stylish covers exquisitely nuanced to the choreography at hand. The teamwork between Edson and Stensaas is seamless and impeccable.

 

SCREAMFEST 26—VALLEY VIEW MOTEL (2026): REVIEW

The mood is set with the slightly-blurred grindhouse opening credits of Valley View Motel (2026), written and directed by Kevin Ignatius and Nick Psinakis. Valley View Motel then proceeds to weave compelling atmospherics with an oddball ensemble of characters: bungling burglars Cliff (Ignatius, again) and Reg (Soulo Smith), ruthless hitman Hal (Psinakis, again), organ-harvesting motel proprietor Lester (Tom Mesmer) and his seductive sister LouAnne (McKenzie Such), and in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time mother and daughter team Young Ja-Kang (Judy J. Lee) and Sunny Kang (Laura Im). 

The narrative structure emulates Tarantino as it profiles the origin stories of its eccentric team, with ingenious commentary on bad parenting. Along with wearing hats for director / writer / composer and producer, Ignatius—who has a combined Tom Pelphrey and Adam Driver vibe that he attractively makes all his own—delivers a sympathetic portrait of Cliff who is basically trying not to be a bad parent and hoping to help his daughter apply to a good college. This accounts for some poor choices on Cliff’s part, like being talked into stealing a bag of diamonds from an unforgiving boss who sends his somewhat psychotic hitman Hal to retrieve same. 

Also wearing a pile of hats (directing, writing, editing and producing) Psinakis convincingly embodies the crisp and cold-blooded hitman Hal who enjoys his Necco wafers while exacting retribution on anyone obstructing his assignment. Hal’s learned how to be a detached and efficient killer from his mom (Janie Sharon) who’s passed on her profession to her son. 

Also inheriting some bad habits from their parents are Lester and LouAnne who prey upon random visitors to their Valley View Motel just the way Mom and Dad taught them to do. And finally, Young Ja-Kang is such a hectoring mother that it’s easy to sympathize with her daughter Sunny’s fantasies of running away first chance she gets. Laura Im, who plays Sunny, is outstanding as the browbeaten daughter who amps up the whole notion of final girl. She was rewarded for her perfectly-pitched performance with a Best Actress nod at the North American premiere of Valley View Motel at the 26th edition of Screamfest in Los Angeles (after the film’s world premiere at London’s Frightfest). 

A testament to Kevin Ignatius and Nick Psinakis’s remarkable and completely embodied teamwork, Valley View Motel is thorough stylistically-realized entertainment that balances its seedy narrative with conclusive heart and humor.

MVFF49—JOSEPHINE (2026) / AVEDON (2026) / ODYSSEY (2026) / THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH (2026): REVIEWS

Josephine (2026); Dir. Beth de Araújo—Channing Tatum delivers one of the most nuanced performances of his career as Damien, a young father who has overcome the abuse of his own childhood by projecting his survival onto his daughter Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves). Without seeming to know it, he is trying to make a man of her, even though she is only eight years old, and in the process unwittingly places her in harm’s way. During an early-morning jog with her father and momentarily separated from him, Josephine witnesses a rape. Her efforts to make sense of what she has seen and her father’s insistence that she be a witness in the court trial of the rapist creates tension with his wife Claire (Gemma Chan) whose idea of how to be a protective parent are in gendered conflict with Damien. She sees that Josephine is haunted by the presence of the rapist in her everyday life; one of the most unnerving visuals in San Francisco native de Araújo’s second feature. Tatum’s portrayal of how his character comes to an awareness of his culpability is quite moving and Mason Reeves delivers the most astounding child performance in recent memory. Josephine is one of MVFF’s Big Night screenings with a Spotlight Award on de Araújo as recipient of the MVFF Bay Area Rising Star Award and Elton Creation Special Jury Prize. Mason Reeves will join her for an after-screening conversation.

   

Avedon (2026); Dir. Ron Howard—This portrait of the master of portraits situates Richard Avedon within the pulsing currents of his time, from early fashion, through the counterculture, to the controversial themes of his later years that bucked anticipation. By documenting the historical moment, Avedon himself becomes history. Through his iconic images of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin, his artistic process in itself achieves iconicity. I was moved by the difficulty of his childhood years and how his suffering enforced in him a sense of responsibility to the sufferings of others.  

Odyssey (2026); Dir. Avi Belkin—I was nine years old when, in the fifth grade, I wrote my first poem “I Want to Be A Spaceman” for our mimeographed grade school “newspaper.” I was 16 when I stood beside my stepfather Moises Reyes who had wandered away from television coverage of the moon landing to stare up at the moon. With the sweetest incredulity in his voice that I will remember to my dying day, Moises asked me: “Hijo, is that the moon they’re landing on?” 

Tom Hanks, who portrayed astronaut and commander Jim Lovell in the 1995 film Apollo 13, serves as Executive Producer for Avi Belkin’s riveting reconstruction of the rise and fall of the Apollo space program—seen largely through Jim Lovell’s perspective and focusing notably on the compromised Apollo 13 mission. Relying solely on 2500 hours of archival footage, though augmented by the contemporary grinding score of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans to sci-fi effect, Belkin masterfully edits together a remarkably thrilling documentary that captures the tension of events as they occurred while an entire planet watched with halted breath as the crew of the jeopardized Apollo 13 mission struggled to return home to Earth. I’m 73 now and at odds with how our dreams of space have been co-opted by billionaires for their own spurious ends. 

The Last Place On Earth (2026); Dir. David Booth Gardner—I hardly know how to write about a documentary with an all-too-familiar if vivid theme of how our habits of consumption here at home are wreaking environmental havoc elsewhere in the world, namely the Leuser Ecosystem in the Aceh Province of Sumatra, whose 10,039 square miles—as the film’s title attests—is the last place on earth where orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and elephants still roam freely in the wild. It is also under threat of being decimated by illegal deforestation, wildlife poaching and trafficking, and an unregulated palm oil industry that generates a myriad of products consumers here at home take for granted. Regardless, I have to give credit to director Gardner for his well-mounted effort to raise awareness. This dire emergency is presented through the woven perspectives of wildlife activists, including Panut Hadisiswoyo of the Natural Resource Conservation Unit who rescues an orangutan, nicknamed Irmelin, chained by the neck to a wall in a cramped crawlspace and eventually released back into the wild. Panut’s commitment to Irmelin serves as the heart to this documentary and, along with director Gardner, Panut is expected to attend MVFF.

NYFF64—L’INCONNUE / THE UNKNOWN (2026): REVIEW

So what exactly do we know after viewing Arthur Harari’s L’Inconnue / The Unknown (2026)? 

First, we learn that the heady concept of “metempsychosis” (i.e., the passing of the soul after death into a new physical body, whether human or animal) is not as infrequent a cinematic subject as one might presume. Since the term “metempsychosis” sounds like a mess I’ve made in the kitchen, I’ll adopt the usage of “the transmigration of souls” which has a directionality to it that strikes me as eminently more serviceable. 

Apparently, there are hundreds of films that have tackled the theme of the transmigration of souls albeit through broad interpretations necessarily associated with specific genres. The Unknown fits comfortably into the supernatural or metaphysical thriller subgenre; but, we need to consider that this is the transmigration of one soul; a particularly malevolent entity that has found it can project itself into a new body through orgasmic sex. After all, the Greek roots of “metempsychosis” derive from "change" (meta) and "to put a soul into" (empsychoun). I can’t think of a better euphemism for ejaculation at the moment. Notwithstanding, this swapping of souls through seeding leans not only into the horror genre but actually provides L’Inconnue with some of its most laugh outloud, even if uncomfortably so, moments. 

Secondly, we learn that this malevolent entity—which remains unknown throughout the film and drifts away after we focus on a few of its victims—is still out there switching bodies through sex, but for what reason other than malevolence, again, is unknown. It’s not always switching to a younger body or a prettier body or a more athletic body, none of that. It simply insists upon switching with all the rationale of a virus or any STD that any of us might be, unfortunately, familiar with. So L’Inconnue is arguably a cautionary tale to all those polyamorous, philanderous or simply promiscuous players out there. You could be next and God knows where you might end up or in who you might end up after you’ve ended up being in them. 

Let me back up to provide a little narrative context, cribbing from the NYFF program capsule: “One night, in a deserted backroom of a costume party, Parisian photographer David (Niels Schneider) impulsively hooks up with a stranger named Eva (Léa Seydoux); after their intense sexual encounter, David wakes up alone to find that he has somehow swapped bodies with the woman. This wild metaphysical gambit is treated with the utmost sincerity and unsettling realism…. [The Unknown] takes the viewer on a series of leaps and turns as narratively absorbing as the scenario is metaphorically rich. Refusing to be read in any single or simple way, The Unknown pushes a pulpy supernatural premise into the realm of the genuinely uncanny, its tricky play with subjectivity and identification reinforced by the brilliantly embodied performances of its two leads.” 

It’s those embodied performances that director Harari expanded upon in the Q&A session after the film. After deciding that Léa Seydoux should play Eva / David, Seydoux’s pregnancy stalled the project until a few months after delivery. Yet retaining a hefty physicality from her pregnancy worked with masculinizing her movements. By contrast, Niels Schneider’s bony thinness emphasized a frailty one could interpret as feminine because—as this twisting, if twisted plot reveals—by the time Eva / David understands what has happened to him, his original body has been switched with that of a younger woman, thus increasing the chances that no one is ever going to really catch up to themselves. 

So, thirdly, let’s talk about what I found brilliant about the film, if not difficult to discuss, and that is the political hot potato of gender dysphoria, the psychological distress a person feels when their internal gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth; though, in this instance, at rebirth. Notions of birth and death are upended in this film. The transmigration of souls is often a result of death, though in this instance it’s more the little death ("la petit mort") that counts. As skinny David discovers he is trapped within a voluptuous woman’s body, and as young Malia (Lilith Grasburg) discovers she is trapped in David’s skinny body, their horror and discomfort is palpable and disorienting, trending towards self-harm. I have no idea if Harari intended to create one of the most sympathetic portrayals of the transgender experience or not, but it certainly comes across as one of the most visceral representations this viewer has seen on screen in some time. Then again, I’ve suffered from identity issues and gender confusion for most of my life so I’m not sure whether my insights into this film are symptomatic or experiential. 

Suffice it to say that the head scratching engendered by The Unknown is satisfying for being so unexpected and, admittedly, complicated to track. By film’s end, a break in the chain of transmigration induces some of the film’s most challenging questions about the nature of identity. Most transmigration tales involve reincarnation, but I’ve always thought that reincarnation was a silly and vain idea: as if the ego—the identity yoked to the soul—would actually carry over from body to body. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Any good Tibetan worth his salt will profess that the ego shards apart at death. There’s no evidence that it would group back together into a new soul in a new body. The Unknown suggests the possibility of a soul transferred into another body disconnected from its original ego. That is true food for thought, if ultimately unknowable. 

 For those who haven’t been put off by this subject, the New York Film Festival offers one of the Q&A sessions with director Arthur Harari and lead actor Niels Schneider. At The Daily, David Hudson rounds up the reviews.