International Critics Line

"Bigger than Ben-Hur." Never again will I bandy around this expression to describe mere weddings, parties or anything else. S.S. Rajamouli's epic RRR (Rise! Roar! Revolt!), which tells the story of friends who discover they are on opposite sides of India's struggle for independence, is so massively bigger than Ben-Hur…

"Save your over-acting for the movies," Ganga's boyfriend Ramnik (Varun Kapoor) advises her, as she gasps with exaggerated joy at the train ticket to Mumbai — home of Bollywood, the world's biggest film industry — he holds up to her in Gangubai Kathiawadi. It's a knowingly self-aware joke. Popular as they are…

A trip to the hairdresser's turns sour in Huda's Salon, a gripping thriller written and directed by Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now). Inspired by chilling real events in Palestine, it sees young mother Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi) drugged by Huda (Manal Awad), who strips her naked and takes compromising pictures of her with a…

Belgium's Oscar-shortlisted International Feature is an intimate child's-eye view of bullying from debut writer-director Laura Wandel. Playground is known as Un Monde in its native French language, and this is set in a world of its own: the school that two siblings must navigate to get through the day. We meet…

Panama makes its debut on the International Feature Oscar shortlist with the character-driven thriller Plaza Catedral. This contender from Abner Benaim (Ruben Blades Is Not My Name) is a taut two-hander between a grieving mother and a young street hustler, with a sobering message about corruption and violence. Samuel…

As 2021 draws to a close, the film aficionados who make up Deadline's International Critics Line crew have each chosen their top three titles of the year to hail from abroad. Some were world premieres at Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice or Toronto, though not all are on the Oscar International Feature shortlist, nor…

The eponymous edifice of Cambodia's International Feature Oscar entry, White Building, is barely white at all by the time we encounter it. A low-rise apartment block in Phnom Penh — the sort of teeming anthill of humanity familiar to anyone who has spent time in a South East Asian city — it is stained with tropical…

Flash, flicker, flash, cut to black. We're watching grainy film of men walking in and out of the stalls in a West German public toilet, casting glances at each other, maybe a fumbling feel; a reverse angle shows us the camera behind the mirror. The men can't see it, but some of them must surely guess it's there and…

There are moments in Drunken Birds, Serbian Canadian director Ivan Grbovic's long-awaited second feature, that evoke strong sense memories of Days Of Heaven, Terrence Malick's definitive film about the beauty and hardship of the rural laboring life. Days Of Heaven was set in 1916; Drunken Birds takes place today on a…

In 1999, 240 people disappeared when Serbian forces descended on the village of Krusha e Madhe in Kosovo, shot or captured the men and burned the residents out. According to the end-titles in Blerta Basholli's triple Sundance-award winning Hive, there are still 64 missing. Hive, the International Feature Oscar…

Few stock scenes in the cinema stir a surge of emotion as reliably as the sight of an underdog winning a race. There is the victor's ribcage breaking through the ribbon at the finishing line, the runner's exhausted smile, the arms raised in victory, the quiver rising to a swell of violins and finally, in the viewer…

The Icelandic mountains loom, the mists swirl between the peaks to where horses suddenly skitter in the snow. The only sound is stertorous breathing as the camera, clearly asserting something's point of view, approaches the herd. Away they run. Then a barn emerges from the white fog. The sheep within become restless…