SCREAMFEST 2025: INTERNATIONAL—THE DOLLMAKER (ENCANTADOR, 2025)

In its North American premiere at Screamfest 2025, Argentine director José María Cicala’s Encantador (The Dollmaker) has everything anyone could possibly crave from a horror film. As a collagist, I was delighted with its inventive and suggestive opening credits created from cut pieces of paper (including a collaged globe spinning on its axis). Bienvenidos (welcome) to the tranquil little town of Palacios donde nade malo puede suceder (where nothing bad can happen). That immediately had me salivating for everything bad that I knew was going to happen, kicking off with the abduction of three young women near a cornfield. 

First off, let me digress momentarily to ponder cornfields in genre narratives, which I ordinarily associate with American horror films, but obviously shows up in Argentine horror as well. Under the subheading of rural horror, cornfields tap into themes of isolation, and a place where innocence can be corrupted or "harvested" by a malevolent force, which is clearly the case with these abductions. Palacios, with its hard-working citizens, suddenly seems sinister and dangerous for being so far-removed from civilization. 

Enter Tomás (charmingly and convincingly played by Rodrigo Noya), the titular dollmaker who wears nerdy Coke bottle glasses, works at a video store where he and his co-worker Arturo (Eduardo Calvo) dress up as Boy Scouts, and likewise helps out at the Clinica Filantropica making “resuscitation” dolls for emotionally disturbed patients and assisting the resident doctor during group therapy sessions. It’s during one of those sessions where Tomás meets Argentina, nicknamed Tina (Griselda Sánchez), a waitress at Trixies, the local diner run by a clutch of drag queens where sailors and policemen go to dance after hours. You know, the kind of diner you find in small, isolated Argentine towns where nothing bad ever happens. Sánchez, incidentally, plays double-duty in The Dollmaker, co-writing the film’s clever and intelligent script as well as portraying Tina. 

Tina is participating in group therapy because she is having morbid visions of dead people, including her father, as well as Death itself who, she confides, came to sit beside her when she was just a little girl. Tomás becomes instantly infatuated because he, too, has morbid visions of his ailing mother (Alejandra Baldoni) who he sees suffering gruesome scenarios. Needless to say, Tomás has mother issues, major mother issues, issues that would make Norman Bates blush. 

Tomás’s mother issues are deeply disturbing and disorienting as he shifts in and out of his morbid fantasies of her; fantasies that burn up like nitrate film. She keeps “letting loose” and tormenting him with a video of his fifth-year birthday, let alone making incestuous advances, which upsets and angers him. Did I mention that Tomás also has anger issues, major anger issues? Is it any wonder that he becomes the prime suspect in the disappearances of the young women? 

Inspector Porter (Alejo García Pintos) arrives in Palacios to investigate the disappearances and is irritated by the cavalier attitude of the police chief Comisario Sánchez (Mario Alarcón) and his bumbling deputy Marcos (Santiago Domínquez) who—in his bright yellow uniform and odd habits—consistently provides much of the film’s comic relief, which is necessary because horrific things are being done to the young women being held hostage. Held equally hostage by a family code that keeps them tight-lipped about a terrible secret from the past are the town’s triplet brothers who serve as cura (priest), doctor, and encargado (video store proprieter), all three versatilely portrayed by Arturo Puig. 

So against this backdrop of criminal inquiry, deeply-guarded secrets, and psychological maladies, Tomás pursues a courtship of Tina, but becomes agitated by her close friendship with a gay co-worker Robert (Guillermo Zapata) and the revelation that Tina is a single mother with an infant daughter Helenita. Because of his issues, Tomás keeps seeing Helenita as a doll, which seems credible because Tina has such a difficult time distinguishing what’s real from what she’s imagining, so it’s uncertain whether she’s carrying around a doll and pretending its her daughter. 

It's an unholy, but truly entertaining, satisfying, and perverse mess, with Nahuel Maeso’s grinding and buzzing score ratcheting up the uncertainty, and Martín E. Nico’s stylish cinematography unmooring the visuals so you never quite know what’s real and what’s not, all of which leads to the most beautiful and surreal ending of a film that I’ve seen in some time. 

And here I have to go out on a little bit of a political limb. Remember that I mentioned in the film’s opening credits that there’s a collaged globe spinning on its axis? This visual notion of a world that is made up of cut pieces of paper becomes unnerving when by film’s end we discover that Tomás’s childhood fantasy is to become the President of Argentina, as if to say the President of Argentina and the country he governs is all a constructed fantasy made up of cut pieces of newspaper where, yet again, knowing what’s real and what’s not is challenging. The Dollmaker works on so many levels, including this wry socio-political critique rendered in a brilliantly surreal flourish. 

I can’t recommend this film highly enough. It’s perfect genre. For a teaser trailer, visit the Jinga Films website.  

SPOILER ALERT: I have to give mention to the film’s wickedly inserted cinematic citations and can only do so by undermining the film’s reveal, so don’t read any further if you don’t want to know things. First, homage is paid to David Lynch through Tomás’s mailbox on which is hand-painted La Familia Lynch. The mailbox becomes one of those objects in the film that questions what’s real and what’s not real because when Tomás checks it, it is empty, but when another character checks, it is overflowing with faded mail. As for Tomás’s mother issues and the ready comparisons to Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), not only do we eventually discover that Tomás is speaking both voices when he is arguing with his mother, but we see his mother’s leg drop over the edge of the bed in exactly the same way that Tomás’s leg drops over the edge of the bed, and almost incidentally Tomás bats an overhanging lamp with its single bulb much like Vera Miles does in Hitchcock’s film. I can’t help it. I love these kind of masterful—and, yes, affectionate—tips of the hat! Well-done!

ORWELL: 2+2=5 (2025)—REVIEW

“When you are on a sinking ship, your thoughts will be about sinking ships,” wrote George Orwell about totalitarianism in the 1940s; a statement that has regained relevance in our current moment, as righteously highlighted by filmmaker Raoul Peck in his latest documentary essay Orwell: 2+2=5 (2025), opening this month in select theaters—particularly art-house cinemas and larger metropolitan areas. Orwell: 2+2=5 opened last week in the Bay Area at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco (with Peck in attendance conversing with Jon Else), is now playing at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, Berkeley, and will roll out to the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael on Monday, October 13, and the Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol on October 17. Meanwhile, here in Boise, our “arthouse” theater The Flicks is chirping crickets on the matter, electing instead to fill their Fall calendar with films to drink wine to or films readily available at the Edwards multiplex. So disappointing. 

I complain because Orwell: 2+2=5 is one of the most important films of the season, essential for its instructional perspective on the autocratic shift towards a totalitarian government being engineered by Trump and his syncophantic administration. Peck, no stranger to totalitarian regimes, fled Duvalier’s Haitiaan dictatorship with his family as a child and—much like Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell)—crafts films that expose lies and draw attention to facts that deserve a hearing. “My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship; a sense of injustice,” wrote Orwell and I can easily imagine Peck saying the same. 

Peck utilizes Orwell’s biography as a means to explore authoritarian power both in the past and in the present by densely assembling diverse footage with what Manohla Dargis terms “a visceral urgency.” And what could be more urgent than to learn about and determine the forces that make dictatorships rise and fall? Peck succeeds at this by aligning events of the past with contemporary events so that their similarities are evident, and alarming. 

“A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell observed, “that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Peck then shows that—to be corrupted by totalitarianism—one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. One needs only to follow the playbook. He parades General Min Aung Hlaing, Prime Minister of Myanmar and Acting President (2021-present); General Augusto Pinochet, “Supreme Head of the Nation” (1974-1990); Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines (1965-1986); General Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda (1986-present); Vladimir Putin, President of Russia (2000-2008; 2012-present); Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary (1998-2002, 2010-present), and then-President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell’s determined vilification of Iraq; comparable to Big Brother’s vilification of Eurasia in 1984. A more recent analogy? Putin’s justification to invade Ukraine as the propagandistic practice of “War Is Peace”. As for Trump? He’s targeting the American people as “the enemy within”!! He is labeling any criticism of his policies as terrorist activity!! 

Orwell understood: “This kind of thing happens everywhere, but it is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not—as is sometimes claimed—a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” 

Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists on his first day of his second term of office presaged an alteration of the past, much as he is now conducting a campaign of retribution against anyone who does not agree with his election denial. He is reaching into our cultural institutions to recontextualize history to suit his racist agenda. 

“From the totalitarian point of view,” Orwell continues, “history is something to be created rather than learned.” Further: “A totalitarian state is, in fact, a theocracy and its ruling class in order to keep its position has to be thought of as infallible. Since in practice no one is infallible it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific text book but would see nothing wrong in falsifying a historical fact.” Ignorance Is Strength, after all. “The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that—since absolute truth is not obtainable—a big lie is no worse than a little lie.” 

Orwell died from tuberculosis four months after he completed 1984 and so never got to see the tremendous influence he has had on future generations and the important cautions he has gifted us. Peck’s documentary pays tribute to that gift and applies it thoughtfully and forcefully as a lesson we need to get through these unprecedented times.

 

SCREAMFEST 2025: AFFECTION (2025): REVIEW

The World Premiere of BT Meza’s debut feature Affection (2025) served as the opening night film for this year’s edition of Screamfest, covering several bases of the horror genre. It begins as an unsettling psychological study of family trauma, loss, and grief, adds elements of body horror, and gradually morphs into a sci-fi narrative that proposes large ideas that I’m sure had at least a few people scratching their heads as they tried to wrap their mind around what those ideas implied. What better way to launch the largest and longest running horror festival in the United States? 

Timeloop narratives have become dirigeur in genre circles, but Affection expands that narrative device into what I can only call a replication loop and it does so with admirable economy, using only three actors to make its rounds. Ellie (Jessica Rothe) wakes up in bed beside a man she does not recognize, wanders through a home that is unfamiliar, and discovers that the man Bruce (Joseph Cross) professes to be her husband and that they have a daughter Alice (Julianna Layne), even though she angrily insists otherwise; that she has a different husband and a son, not a daughter. Bruce attributes her disorientation to an accident that has affected her memory and which causes epileptic seizures. He explains to her that cryptomnesiatic references are shaping false memories in her brain and causing her confusion. 

But why can’t she remember any of that? Or, more importantly, why doesn’t she believe him? 

It’s difficult to write about Affection without undermining its reveals, which I don’t want to do, so I will limit my write-up to what I believe is the moral and philosophical spine of this challenging sci-fi narrative. At 72 years of age, I have lost more than 30 friends, family and significant others, such that over the years I feel that wherever I go I am accompanied by a host of ghosts and—though equally over the years I have learned how sacred the altar of memory is to keeping my loved ones “alive”—there are nights shredded by dread when I ache for the affectionate touch of those I have lost, which reveals—as I have often said—that memory is an unreliable narrator who tells me a story I want to hear, a story that is often more beautiful than true, a story that in its own way tries to keep me in touch with those who have gone to that place where in some way they still exist, but which is undeniably a place where they are not physically present. Memory, therefore, is a narrative construction to guard the heart from despair and to compensate for irreparable absence. To what extent would I go to have back the physical affection of my mother’s caress, the hugs of friends, or the erotic touch of lovers? How far would I search for that physical affection? What available technologies would I use to recover it? 

In his press notes for Affection, BT Meza concurs that—although the past remains unalterable, and as much as he would wish to restore a past identity and, thereby, bridge the psychic disjuncture of physical loss—memory and/or creativity are the only tools at hand to suffice. Affection has given him the opportunity to create a story that fuses his emotions and childhood memories into a sci-fi horror narrative, where imagined technologies can create desired results, which is to say that genre at its best, and ideas at their largest, communicate essentially at their human core.

SCREAMFEST 2025: INTERNATIONAL—A FISHERMAN’S TALE (UN CUENTO DE PESCADORES, 2024): REVIEW

For its U.S. premiere at Screamfest, Edgar Nito’s A Fisherman’s Tale (Un Cuento de Pescadores, 2024) offers a slow burn narrative introducing audiences to the Mexican legend of La Miringua. Comparable to the perhaps better-known La Llorona, and similar to Mayan legends of the Xtabay in Guatemala and the Yucatan, La Miringua is a legend from Purépecha culture, also known as the Tarascan culture, an indigenous culture of Mexico, primarily located in the state of Michoacán, known for its pre-Columbian empire that rivaled the Aztec empire in size. La Miringua is an evil spirit who lives in, presumably, Lake Pátzcuaro, and lures fishermen to their deaths by appearing as a beautiful woman in the water. This mirrors pre-Columbian reverence and fear of the lake, which was central to Purépecha life. The lake was considered a sacred place, a gateway to the afterlife, and was personified by the goddess Cuerauáperi. The legend says that La Miringua, whose name means "forgetfulness," causes people to lose their sense of time and space, ultimately leading them into the lake where their sins are punished. It punishes sinners by drowning them, particularly men who are drunk or driven by greed, though in Nito’s filmic version La Miringua punishes women as well (equal opportunity retribution!!). In some versions of the Miringua story, the spirit can also cause a state of madness, where a person wanders great distances unconsciously. This aspect of the folklore likely connects to older shamanistic beliefs in which spirits could inhabit or influence a person's consciousness. Nito incorporates both aspects of the legend into his film. 

Watching A Fisherman’s Tale reminded me of comments made by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien at a December 2002 seminar and published in Rouge magazine. His concern was about finding new directions and new genres for Taiwan's film industry and he approached that issue from various angles. One such angle was the effect of J-horror on Asian cinema. He stated: "We can now approach the issue from another direction after the success of the Japanese film Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1988), which was the ignition point that brought about an explosion of ghost movies. Just like Shiri was the ignition point of Korean cinema, Ring started the Asian frenzy for making ghost movies. The crucial element of their success lies in the use of local elements. The films are firmly rooted in local culture." 

I read that to say that ghost stories particularly benefit from the use of local elements, which is to say local superstitions and fears, and A Fisherman’s Tale comports with that benefit. Nito’s film falls within a realm of ethnographic horror (for all effects, elevated genre), less compelled to jump-scare its viewers (though there are one or two startles) and oriented more to a sense of brooding dread and consequential sufferance. Situating his tale in a small fishing village on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro, Nito weaves four associated stories of villagers whose “sins” lead to their falling prey to La Miringua. Awarded a Special Mention for Best Ensemble Performance when the film had its National Premiere at the Morelia International Film Festival, roughly a dozen actors play out four doomed narratives. 

 Federico (“Fede”), portrayed by Jorge A. Jimenez, is a lonely fisherman who becomes entranced by Aurora (Renata Vaca), a beautiful young woman who appears in his fishing boat. Her taunting seduction mocks him into unhinged madness, especially as it gradually dawns on him that Aurora is a ghost, presumably drowned by La Miringua in the late 1800s. Regardless, he can’t reconcile his reason to the facts before him and continues to be lured by his hallucinations. Alejandra Herrera portrays Berenice, a young woman whose ambivalent sexuality attracts both a lesbian Alicia (Daniela Momo) and Carlos (Hoze Meléndez); an erotic triangle that dooms all three. Alex (Augustin Cornejo) lives with his grandmother and sister Karen (Bibiana Godínez) and is in the conflicted position of being attracted to Estefi (Anna Díaz), the sister of Karen’s despised rival Estela (Myriam Bravo). Admittedly, it was a bit difficult to track who was who at first as the ensemble all fall relatively within the same age group, but this served as a purposeful indication that La Miringua was cursing the entire village, something observed early on by Jesús (Andrés Delgado) who tries to warn his fellow fishermen that the lake is cursed and the fish rotten. Rather than believe him, they suspect he is trying to disrupt their livelihood so Artemio (Nóe Hernandez) takes it upon himself to eliminate the threat to their business, and ends up being eliminated in turn. 

In other words, as confusing as all these intersecting plot lines might sound, what’s being said is that a village that once thrived in harmony with the lake falls from grace as villagers blinded by their dark desires bring fear, hate, and eventual death into their community. A viewer could make a game, I suppose, out of guessing whose sins are whose—is Alicia’s lesbianism more of a sin, let’s say, than Berenice’s impressionable ambivalence? Is Fede’s unbridled, if unhinged, passion more of a sin than Jesús’s fear and paranoia, or Artemio’s greed? Their sins—either directly or indirectly—create a collective curse, whose retribution is administered by La Miringua, chillingly enacted by Ruby Vizcarra, as a pale white amphibious creature with scaled skin and sharp teeth lurking in the water weeds; a testament to the film’s tagline “Ya nada se puede hacer ... solo esperar la Muerte” (“there’s nothing anyone can do … except wait for Death”).

 

SCREAMFEST 2025: INTERNATIONAL—DEAD BY DAWN (2025)

Dead By Dawn (Martwi przed świtem, 2025)—Hailing from Poland, Dawid Torrone’s Dead By Dawn had its world premiere at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, where the question was posed: “Who’d have thought the true heir to the Italian giallo maestri Argento, Bava, Martino and Lenzi would hail from … Poland?” Such praise is misguidedly premature since it takes more than being the first giallo filmed in Poland (wryly referred to by the film’s creators as a giallo pollo) to deserve such presumptuous praise. Better to take the film on its own merits without saddling it with more than it’s achieved (it’s easier to enjoy it that way). After subsequent screenings at SxSW London, and Poland’s own Octopus Festival, Dead By Dawn has landed stateside for its North American premiere at Screamfest. 

For what appears to be his first full-length feature (IMDb only lists three episodes of a Polish television anthology series Let Me Tell You About the Crime under his belt), Torrone has had fun with his budget, draping his set with Christmas lights to hint at a holiday atmosphere, and to rhyme with Michal Pukowiec’s luridly-lit cinematography, oversaturated with deep reds and blues (a recognizable reference to Argento). You know how sometimes you turn off all the lights in a room just to watch a colorfully-lit Christmas tree? That contrast between darkness and primary color seems to be Pukowiec’s optical strategy here, and it’s effectively destablizing. 

So, after setting up the film with an execution performed on the stage of a baroque—and now-established—cursed theater owned by the Heissenhoff family (reputedly associated with occult practices), the story shifts to a stormy Christmas Eve when a troupe of young actors and actresses have been summoned by the renowned but reclusive playwright Heissenhoff to his family’s theater to rehearse his next play, which—unbeknownst to them—is intent upon turning the beloved nativity scene on its head. Not only have they been personally selected for their sacrilegious views and/or bad habits, but the script itself is laced with black magic incantations (let alone hallucinogens), and their rehearsals provide the ritual space for necessary sacrifices to effect the playwright’s satanic ends. Structuring his film in chapters provides sequentiality to the rituals, one building upon the other, blood upon blood, towards the film’s unholy climax. 

Pukowiec’s frenetic hand-held camera work not only observes all this ritual activity but—now and again, true to giallo conventions—takes on the point of the view of the murderer who stalks and kills the members of the acting troupe one by one. Like the film’s truly seductive theatrical poster (five stars!!), the murderer wears a fiercely memorable head mask composed of staring eyeballs. I’m presuming credit should go to production designer Agata Lepacka for this iconic costuming flourish, which links in well with the film’s best kill: the eyeball trauma of the “nail” sacrifice. My attitude towards independent genre films has always been that if they get even one scream or one major ICK out of me, they deserve a tip of the hat and the “nail” sacrifice deserves a resounding yelp for set-up, execution and prolongation. I was squirming in my seat!  

Though I have to agree with previous reviewers that Dead By Dawn lacks a desired restraint that would have communicated its narrative better—there’s a whole lot of overly-enthusiastic running and screaming and scantily-clad women and barechested boys and throbbling lights and indeterminate musical choices and everything but the kitchen sink—still, I can’t deny Torrone’s evident potential to envision such mayhem in truly artistic ways, primarily through the film’s choreography, most notably Monika Frajczyk’s hypnotic, erotic, and drug-fueled dance sequence filmed in reverse that elicits impending dread and supernatural compulsion. On the basis of his experiments with Dead By Dawn, I look forward to seeing what Torrone accomplishes next.

MVFF48: ANIMATION—ARCO (2025) / HOLA FRIDA (2025): REVIEWS

Lots of adults think that fairy tales are just for children, despite the fact that when the Grimms Brothers were collecting stories as an academic pursuit, their primary goal was to create an anthology of German folklore and cultural heritage for scholars and adults, not for bedtime stories. They saw their work as a scholarly pursuit to preserve stories that were being lost, and the collection was initially aimed at an educated audience, with later versions being adapted for child readers. 

Lots of adults also think that animated films are just for children and won’t bother to include them in their film festival calendars, but I find them important reminders of how the perspectives of adults and children are inextricably interwoven, and cross-influential. In their 48th edition, the Mill Valley Film Festival (“MVFF”) maintains a filmic balance between the young and the old, admittedly with more curatorial options for adults, though I have to hand it to the MVFF team for organizing HOOPLA! where parity is achieved with pony rides, a petting zoo, balloon sculptures, face painting, and treats from Shake Shack—all included with a kid’s (and their parents’) movie ticket!  

Arco (2025)—K.D. Davis writes: “In the year 2932, young Arco lives in an idyllic Garden of Eden in the clouds above Earth. He speaks the languages of the birds and can’t wait to soar through time and space like his parents and sister, but he’s too young to fly. Sneaking out of the house one day, he dons a flight suit and leaps into space, leaving rainbow trails in his wake. Transported back in time to 2075, Arco encounters a world of food shortages and wildfires. There, he meets Iris, a lonely girl living with her baby brother and gentle 'Nannybot' caregiver, Mikki. The two children share a deep bond, discovering universal secrets—and love. Produced by actor Natalie Portman, director Ugo Bienvenu’s visionary film, suitable for ages 8-118, evokes the best of Studio Ghibli and features Arnaud Toulon’s gorgeous orchestral score. Following its Cannes premiere, Arco won the top prize at Annecy. Magically unforgettable!” 

For its West Coast premiere, Arco’s multi-layered narrative has much to offer both children and adults. Speaking to the threats of climate change and the absence of parenting in a technologically governed world, it is likewise an interesting timeloop narrative where the future offers inspiration and guidance to the past. There is also a nod to Greek mythology. Iris, like her brother Hermes, was a renowned and swift messenger for the gods, serving as a crucial link between the heavens and earth, delivering divine messages and performing other important tasks. As the Greek goddess of the rainbow, her flight along the rainbow bridge symbolized hope and the connection between the divine and mortal realms. 

French actor Louis Garrell was among the voice actors for the original French version of Arco, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this past May, but a high-profile English-language dub of the film was later created for its North American release by the distributor Neon, featuring Natalie Portman, Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Flea, Mark Ruffalo and Andy Samberg.

   

Hola Frida (2025)—K.D. Davis writes: “Frida is a free-spirited girl whose exuberant presence makes the sun shine a bit brighter wherever she goes in her native Coyoacán, Mexico—from the market stalls to the classroom to the streets where she cavorts with her canine companion, a goofy and good-natured street pup named Chiquita. Frida dreams of becoming a doctor. But when a polio diagnosis forces her out of school, she faces a long, lonely recovery at home. With loving guidance from her mother and unconditional support from her father, Frida finds solace in her imagination. Creativity flows from her fingers onto everything she touches. Surrounding herself with fabrics, flowers, and paints, she emerges from illness into her new life as an artist. Produced under the auspices of the Frida Kahlo Museum, this beautifully animated portrait of the artist in her youth is a testament to the powers of imagination and resilience.” 

As an adult viewer, I had to let go of a lot of prejudicial presumptions in order to eventually enjoy Hola Frida and to accept and appreciate it on its own merits. In my early involvement with Chicano politics, the phrase “the commodification of Frida Kahlo” ran rampant in discussions of her appropriation in American culture. Though it’s difficult to pinpoint who exactly came up with the phrase, over the decades it spoke to the commercialization of her image, which has been widely marketed on merchandise ranging from t-shirts to handbags. Cristina Kahlo, the artist's grandniece, has directly addressed the issue. In June 2024, she was quoted saying, "They have turned Frida into a brand". Journalists, such as Jenny Valentish in a 2018 Guardian article titled "The commodification of Frida Kahlo: are we losing the artist under the kitsch?" drew attention to the trend, as did an op ed at Afterellen. But these are academic critiques focused on the increasing use of Kahlo's likeness for commercial, rather than artistic or revolutionary, purposes. 

A separate trajectory of critical concern can be pursued with Hola Frida, which regards modes of international adaptation (since the film was based on a Quebecois children’s book Frida, c'est moi) and issues of wider audience appeal. Hola Frida skillfully negotiates and succeeds on both fronts. To be accessible to a broader audience, especially young children in the U.S. and internationally (the film was independently produced by companies in Canada and France for international distribution), the filmmakers chose a bilingual approach. Using Spanglish avoids relying on subtitles, which can be a barrier for younger viewers. Much like Dora the Explorer, the film uses occasional Spanish words in the English version to offer a gentle, context-based introduction to the language for children. This approach is meant to be educational and authentic without alienating non-bilingual viewers. For Spanish-speaking audiences, however, a separate Spanish-language version of the film was made available. This was screened during its initial festival run, offering a more authentic experience for Spanish-speaking viewers. 

So once I got over my adult self, I could appreciate the film’s vibrant exploration of indigenous influences, color, and the redemptive power of art over pain, an inspiring lesson for adults as well as children.

 

MVFF48—MIDDLE EASTERN CINEMA: IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (2025) / THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE (2025) / PROMISED SKY (2025)—REVIEWS

Lessons in geography are one of main benefits derived from viewing the rich slate of foreign films offered at the 48th edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival (“MVFF”). Representing the Mideast, Iraq and Iran are consistently situated, whereas Tunisia's inclusion is common, especially in the broader Middle East and North Africa (“MENA”) context. The exact definition of the Middle East varies, but Iraq is a core Middle Eastern country, and Iran is also frequently included. Tunisia, located in North Africa, is often considered part of the wider MENA region due to its shared cultural and historical ties with the Middle East. Muslim-majority populations link all three countries, though while sharing this foundation, significant distinctions exist between these nations, including their specific religious affiliations, ethnic composition, and geopolitical locations. Further, Iraq and Tunisia have Arabic as an official language and a significant portion of their population speaks Arabic, whereas Iran's official language is Persian (Farsi), not Arabic. The narrative goals of cinema unite them all. 

It Was Just An Accident (2025)—Tim Grierson synopsizes in his MVFF program capsule: “One of the world’s great filmmakers, writer-director Jafar Panahi has twice been imprisoned by the Iranian government. He has also been the Golden Lion winner at Venice (The Circle) and the Golden Bear winner at Berlin (Taxi). He now adds Cannes’ Palme d’Or to his honors for this revenge thriller infused with moral complexity, dark humor, and unmistakable rage that begins with a mechanic kidnapping a visitor to his shop. Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) is convinced that Eghbal (Ebrahim Aziz) is the security officer who tortured him years earlier after authorities blindfolded and detained him. When Eghbal insists Vahid has the wrong man, Vahid invites several friends victimized by the same man to verify his identity. Panahi, informed by his own experience, melds the personal with the political to craft a gripping and powerful genre piece that is both deeply critical of Iran’s repressive regime and bitingly funny.” 

“He who seeks revenge digs two graves.” So goes the Confucian fortune cookie, which cautions that vengefulness is destructive and ultimately harms the person seeking it as much as—if not more than—the intended target. The implication is that the pursuit of revenge can be all-consuming, leading the person seeking it to take self-destructive risks and suffer mental and emotional consequences, let alone initiate a cycle of destruction that harms both revenger and the target. Rather than suffer a fruitless endeavor, forgiveness and letting go provide peace of mind. At least, that’s the ideal. 

 But being tortured is not something easily forgiven, let alone forgotten. The impulse to push back is deeply entrenched. But if you torture others as they have tortured you, have you not abdicated your humanity by becoming the evil that has victimized you? Vahid finds himself in that position when he captures Eghbal and, literally, wants to bury him alive. Eghbal, however, introduces reasonable doubt and so Vahid seeks out others who have been victimized by Eghbal to confirm identification. But it has been so many years. None can completely and confidently identify him. One can remember his voice. One can remember the squeak of his prosthetic leg. They all argue about what’s to be done; argument augmented by mordant humor. But it’s the film’s final scene, the sound of the squeaking prosthetic, that says all there is to say about whether or not the horrors of the past can be buried once and for all.

   

The President’s Cake (2025)—Regarding the U.S. premiere of Iraqi director Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake, Dennis Harvey writes: “Iraqi President Saddam Hussein liked to celebrate his birthday, even demanding that school children nationwide bake him cakes—despite daunting food shortages in the waning years of his regime. Nine-year-old Lamia, who lives with her grandmother in a remote marshland, has the dubious luck to be ‘picked’ as the student to produce the cake for the Supreme Leader’s fête. This near-impossible task forces them (plus Lamia’s pet rooster Hindi) to travel to the city for scarce basic ingredients. There, Lamia ditches Granny and joins her best friend Saeed in search of the elusive supplies, the day evolving into a sometimes-fraught adventure. Writer-director Hasan Hadi uses his own youth as the springboard for his first feature, a remarkable story of friendship, discovery, and understanding, as well as perseverance and loss, as seen through a child’s eyes. The first Iraqi feature to play at Cannes, this big-hearted drama won the festival’s Camera D’Or.” 

Negotiating, cajoling, begging, at times even stealing, Lamia, her pet rooster Hindi, and her friend Saeed range a day in the city, offering finely-drawn glimpses of Baghdad in the early aughts (with murals of Saddam Hussein painted on nearly every wall), contrasted against the impoverished but tranquil marshes where Lamia lives with an infirm grandmother. She and Saeed frequently play a game where they try to outstare each other; a practice in perseverance and focus, essential to surviving the rain of American bombs as Hussein’s dictatorial regime nears the end of its 24-year run.

 

Promised Sky (Promis le Ciel, 2025)—"A rich and potent examination of immigration issues within Africa, Erige Sehiri’s moving drama portrays three female Ivorians trying to make a life for themselves in Tunisia,” Rod Armstrong describes. “Roommates in the capital metropolis of Tunis, the women have also recently taken in an infant rescued from one of the many boats trying to reach Europe. With the country cracking down on residents who aren’t Tunisian citizens, and providing shelter to a child that isn’t theirs, staying one step ahead of local authorities is an omnipresent challenge for the trio. Jolie, the youngest, is a student and the only one with papers, Naney makes ends meet via various schemes, and Marie runs a clandestine Christian fellowship. Director Sehiri, whose documentary background serves her observational style well, poignantly distinguishes each of her characters’ respective challenges while also presenting their support of one another in a country that rarely makes them feel at home.” 

The welcome North American premiere of Erige’s Promised Sky offers a feminist slant on the tangled distinctions of status between immigrants and refugees; a contradistinction born from the geopolitical pressures tormenting humankind on our planet in our current moment (let alone our immediate nation). The key difference is that a refugee is someone fleeing persecution, war, or violence who cannot return to their home country, requiring international protection. In contrast, an immigrant is a person who moves to another country voluntarily, not under threat, often for reasons like economic opportunities, education, or to join family. Whereas the dream of a refugee is to become a legal immigrant, the fear of an immigrant is that their status can capsize, much like the boats that carry the desperate to foreign shores, or the targeted communities of the United States. 

The three Ivorian women in Promised Sky, and their child charge, pursue various strategies to negotiate their relocation to Tunisia, but share frustration and fear when those strategies fail. If the core meaning of a promise is the insurance of a future outcome, a binding expectation, or an offered pledge signifying a future reality, what do these women see when they stare into a sky of broken promises? It hardly takes a stretch of the imagination to conjoin their suffering to those of the Mexican and Latin American refugees / immigrants hunted down by Trump’s ICE regime.

 

MVFF48: !VIVA EL CINE!—THE SECRET AGENT (2025) / SIRÂT (2025) / MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO (2025) / YANUNI (2025)—REVIEWS

Sponsored by the Instituto Guimarães, Canal Alliance, The Consulate General of Brazil in San Francisco, and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Marin, the Mill Valley Film Festival (“MVFF”) continues its initiative to celebrate the richness of cinema in Spanish and Portuguese from around the world. In their 48th edition, MVFF’s !Viva El Cine! sidebar includes 14 feature films and 8 shorts curated to deeply resonate with these communities, showcasing the best international and independent works. MVFF believes that—through cinema—we build a space where history, culture, and identity come alive, creatively and bravely countering current attempts to undermine DEI perspectives. Here are four such representations.  

The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto, 2025)—Cribbing from João Federici’s program capsule: “Few directors tell stories with as much atmosphere, precision, and purpose as Kleber Mendonça Filho. In Recife in 1977, Marcelo—played with quiet magnetism by Wagner Moura—returns to the city in the middle of the chaos of Carnaval to reunite with his son and plot a dangerous escape under the watchful eyes of Brazil’s repressive military regime. Mendonça Filho’s deep love for cinema pulses through every frame of this film that blends political drama, slow-burn suspense, deadpan humor, and surreal flourishes into something uniquely his own. The visual texture is rich and evocative, and the film’s quiet tension lingers long after it ends. Honored at Cannes with Best Director, Best Actor, FIPRESCI, and the AFCAE Award, it confirms Mendonça Filho as one of the most daring and original voices in world cinema today. The Secret Agent is unforgettable, a film we’ll be talking about for a long time to come.” 

Brazil’s official submission to the Academy Awards®, The Secret Agent is equal parts family drama, political thriller and, yes, even a tip of the hat (tip of the toe?) to the horror genre. It spoke to me above and beyond its skillful merits, providing relevance to our current moment in the United States. It needs to be remembered that Brazil’s military regime came to power through a U.S.-backed coup in 1964 and governed with repressive tactics for 21 years. This stresses a troublesome accent on Trump’s “friendship” with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who was sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison on September 11, 2025, for plotting a coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss. The U.S., through Trump, once again has attempted to influence the democratic process in Brazil by denouncing Bolsonaro’s incarceration, placing sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Justice and levying a 50% tariff on Brazilian exports. 

In a recent dispatch by MSNBC correspondent Ali Velshi, he laid out the contrast between Brazil enforcing its democracy by effecting the incarceration of Bolsonaro, whereas here in the U.S. efforts to hold Trump accountable for his autocratic ambitions have failed. Why? Velshi suggests that—because the United States has not suffered a dictatorship—it has no reference to measure what we are losing if our democracy collapses. Brazil, by contrast, remembers its dictatorship all too painfully and wants nothing to do with it again. Will the U.S. need to go through a dictatorship under the Trump administration in order to focus on what it has lost? I’m not alone in these concerns. Wagner Moura has been quoted as bluntly stating, “Brazilians know what dictatorship is. Americans don’t. That’s why we were efficient in defending democracy when our institutions were attacked. Here in the U.S., people sometimes take democracy for granted. That scares me.”

  

The narrative bracket to The Secret Agent is how the events of 1977 are being researched by a present-day history student. The remove from the atrocities of 1977 to the subsequent reaction in 2025 speaks to the failures of memory and the anesthetizations of history. What will Americans choose to remember and research 50 years from now?

   

Sirāt (2025)—As Tim Grierson writes in his MVFF program capsule: “In Islamic tradition, Sirāt is a mystical bridge that separates Heaven and Hell. Similarly, Oliver Laxe’s stunning fourth feature sends its characters on a mythical journey across southern Morocco, where both the transcendent and the nightmarish await them. Sergi López plays Luis, a concerned father searching for his daughter, who never returned from a desert rave. Accompanied by his young son Esteban (Brúno Nuñezas), this desperate hunt soon evolves into an existential quest as the characters grapple with life and death through a surreal, unforgiving landscape. Laxe (Fire Will Come) deservedly took home the Jury Prize from this year’s Cannes Film Festival: Few recent films are as hypnotic, the movie’s transporting electronic music highlighting the story’s wonder and terror. Shot in the gorgeous Sahara Desert, Sirāt demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible as it invites the viewer to get as lost as these luckless souls on their path toward the inexplicable.” 

The West Coast premiere of Sirāt (Spain’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars®) hypnotically captures the existential reality of every refugee suffering in transit in the world today, regardless of national origin or political necessity, most notably in its final sequence where the survivors of the film’s harrowing and continually unexpected sojourn find themselves thrown together with fellow refugees crammed onto the top of a coursing train. Sergi López (who I remember as the cruel fascist captain in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth) is here broken down to a father desperate to find his daughter only to experience one of the most torturous moments of grief committed to the screen.  

Variety’s Jamie Lang conducted a revealing interview with director Laxe when the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Laxe admitted to the film’s multi-layered mythic beat expressed through a sonorous ambient score, stressing the need young audiences have for “stories that speak to transcendence.”

   

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (La mirada misteriosa del flamenco, 2025)—João Federici compassionately articulates in his program capsule for MVFF: “A Western and desert fable unlike any other, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo takes us to a small, isolated mining town in 1982 Chile, where a mysterious illness is said to spread through the looks exchanged between lovers at the town’s defiantly queer cabaret bar. As fear and superstition take hold, Lidia—a curious pre-teen growing up among trans women and the bar’s beloved regulars—sets out in search of the truth. Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes, Diego Céspedes’s luminous debut blends melodrama, magical realism, and coming-of-age tenderness with striking humor, heartfelt performances, and the stunning beauty of the desert landscape. Through silence, gesture, and deep affection, it captures both the fragility and fierce strength of chosen family under threat. Flamingo is bold, deeply moving, and wildly original—a tribute to love, memory, and the courage to face the future with resilience and without fear.” 

Several years ago in conversation with Spanish filmmaker Agustí Villaronga, he reintroduced me to the Iberian concept that evil is contagious and enters through the eye. We were speaking about how horrific events witnessed by children introduce them to the practice of human evil, thereby defeating their innocence. I can’t help but think of this each and every time I see a news report on how the current Trump administration is traumatizing immigrant children in their cruel ICE raids. 

The idea that evil enters through the eye is ancient and appears in various texts, notably as Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6:22-23 where he states, "The eye is the lamp of the body ... if your eyes are evil, your whole body will be full of darkness". This concept also has roots in ancient Sumerian texts, such as the Instructions of Šuruppag, which warns, "Do not do evil with your eye". Additionally, various cultures, including Hinduism, Islam, and Jewish traditions, have beliefs and texts discussing the "evil eye". 

 In his debut feature, a thinly-veiled AIDS allegory, boasting its U.S. premiere at MVFF (and Chile’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards®), Diego Céspedes inflects this ancient theme in a startling, provocative way. If images are indeed indelible, such that one cannot remove them from the mind once they have been seen, Céspedes reins magical realism to communicate the transfer of presumed evil from one individual to another. It is incandescent, erotic and political all at once: a master stroke from a promising new visionary.

   

Yanuni (2025)—In his program capsule for MVFF, Brendan Peterson graphs out: “Produced by Leonardo Di Caprio, this tense, captivating documentary dives deep into the dangerous politics of the Amazon rainforest. Indigenous chief and climate justice leader Juma Xipaia has survived six assassination attempts. Now, she and her husband, Brazilian environmental protection agency official Hugo Loss, are expecting a child. Together this power couple devote their lives to defending the people and rainforests of their homeland, while raising a family. Their opposition is powerful—and dangerous: cash-fueled government drilling crews, operating out of illegal mining camps as they search for gold and other riches deep underground. Filmmaker Richard Ladkani masterfully weaves a complicated story crafting breathtaking shots of stunning landscapes with intense handheld footage of the life-and-death struggles facing a small, mighty resistance. Combining electrifying jungle action with intense personal drama, the film follows this passionate, committed couple as they battle gold miners and big business to create a healthy, hopeful future for their children, and for all of us.” 

In its West Coast premiere, Yanuni serves not only as an ecological treatise, and a plea for the human rights of indigenous people, but also as a thrilling action-packed documentary that rivals narrative features for its knuckle-biting drama and it’s rather sexy relationship between political activists Juma Xipaia and Hugo Loss, each on their own turf. It lands firmly in the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, and culminates in Ladkani’s proud filmic capture of the initiation of Juma and Hugo’s baby in an early morning ritual, during sunrise, when her tiny feet first touch the warm waters of the Iriri river, deep inside the indigenous territory of the Xipaia. The infant’s name, given as well to the documentary, is Yanuni and presages that a new leader has been born. It’s a name, Ladkani has written, that means “victory.”

 

THE ICE TOWER (2025)—REVIEW

Winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at its 2025 Berlinale World Premiere, with subsequent wins at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (the Narcisse Award for Best Feature Film; and the Imaging the Future Award for Julia Irribarria’s production design), as well as the San Sebastián International Film Festival (Best Film in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Competition), Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s dark enchantment La Tour de Glace (The Ice Tower) channels Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved fairy tale “The Snow Queen”, which explores the themes of love versus reason, innocence versus cynicism, and the triumph of good over evil. 

Jeanne (in a breakout turn by newcomer Clara Pacini) is a 15-year-old girl who has been living in a foster home for years since the death of her mother. She has become something of an older sister for Rose, one of the youngest orphans in the home. She’s conflicted in feeling responsible for Rose, even as she longs to leave the foster home to find an independent life. Rose is anxious about Jeanne’s departure and—so to soothe Rose—Jeanne removes a bead from her bracelet and offers it to the little girl for safekeeping. This is the first of a series of transitional objects in the film. Transitional objects are psychologically important because they offer comfort and security, help children move from dependence to independence, provide a sense of continuity during unfamiliar situations, and act as a tool for emotional regulation, allowing children to bridge the gap between their internal world and the external environment. These familiar items soothe anxiety, build confidence, and can be a healthy, normal part of development for many children. Eventually, we learn that Jeanne acquired these beads from her mother’s corpse. They are all she has left of her mother and—by giving one of them to Rose—Jeanne is leaving a little bit of her mother to take care of the little girl. 

So we have, at heart, the story of children orphaned by an absent parent—specifically in this story, a mother—and a child’s traumatized longing to find a mother in a world shaped by absence. Jeanne runs away from the foster home, nearly feral in her longing, inspired by a postcard sent to her by another orphan girl who has already made her escape. This postcard is another transitional object, praising the beauty of an ice skating rink that Jeanne uses as destination, since truly she has nowhere to go. 

At the rink, her eyes wide with desire and fantasy, Jeanne admires a young woman elegantly skating. She approaches her with a compliment hoping that she might go with her to have a place to sleep, but this young woman, Bianca, says she cannot help her. Jeanne is forced then to find some place to lay her head, which she does by sneaking through a window into—unbeknownst to her—a film set where the story of the Snow Queen is being filmed, with Marion Cotillard playing Cristina, the actress portraying the Snow Queen. And here is where Hadzihalilovic begins her enchantment, layering a fairy tale on top of the making of a film about a fairy tale, blending with Jeanne’s dreams and her love for the story of the Snow Queen. Is it mere coincidence that she has stumbled onto a film set that replicates the beautiful domain of the Snow Queen? Or that the actress portraying the Snow Queen is as beautiful and aloof as Jeanne has imagined her? Or as demanding as the fairytale requires? Or that she has the name Bianca to claim as a pseudonym? Fantasy and reality have become inextricably conjoined.

In the costume department, Jeanne finds the Snow Queen’s glittering costume and steals one of its crystal ornaments. This is a new transitional object, the new way that Jeanne has come to understand the shape her mother’s absence has taken. Charmed by Jeanne’s vulnerability, the cynical Christina takes her under wing, secures her a role in the film, and finds her a place to stay, and Jeanne—infatuated with this beautiful actress portraying the Snow Queen—falls under her spell. It’s as if all she has wished for has come true. But as Stephen Sondheim has lyricized in his ode to fairy tales—"Into the Woods”—wishes come true, not free. The safety that Jeanne feels she has found transforms into danger and the touch of a mother that she longs for arrives as cold as her true mother’s corpse. 

A Jungian analyst could have a hey day interpreting the symbolism of this film and I, in fact, have attended Jungian seminars exploring the themes of both Hans Christian Andersen and Alfred Hitchcock and so can see the tip of the hat to Hitchcock’s own mother issues and how he preferred to place his icy blondes in harmful scenarios. A crow on the set of the Snow Queen film pecks at a young actress in much the same way that birds drew blood from Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963). So along with the movie about a fairy tale, and about the making of a movie about a fairy tale, Hadzihalilovic makes a movie that pays homage to other movies; not only The Birds (1963), but another Hans Christian Andersen adaptation, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948), referenced by a theatrical poster on a wall. 

But most beautiful, most disturbing, most resonant is Jeanne’s dream—or is it a dream? The ambiguity is delicious—where dressed as a Snow Princess, Jeanne bites the crow that threatens her, its blood smeared on her mouth. The Snow Queen advances to kiss her and her kiss removes the blood from Jeanne’s mouth. Redolent with significance, I can’t truthfully interpret what that means, but I accept it as a brilliant oneiric and filmic moment. 

By film’s end, Jeanne has discovered that it is the fantasy built upon her mother’s absence that is, perhaps, what introduces the most harm in her life and that—to avoid that harm—she must let go the dream of being able to fill that absence so that she can get on with life. As a girl, she wanted to be the Snow Queen, but as a young woman she wants to be so much more.  

The Ice Tower, a Yellow Veil Pictures release, opens today in limited distribution, and reaches San Francisco on October 10, 2025 at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission.