★★★★½

- NZ LISTENER - 

A Son is the first feature by Tunisian film-maker Mehdi Barsaoui, whose cinematic eye and knack with narrative pacing make this both an admirable debut and an intense family…

★★★★

- NZ HERALD - 

The idylls of a family holiday are transformed into a screaming nightmare in Tunisian writer/director Mehdi Barsaoui's debut feature. His delicately crafted but intensely…

★★★★★

- STUFF - 

I saw A Son at a preview back in March. It was scheduled to start its season a week or two later, but Covid and the world intervened.

Nine months later, without having had the…

★★★★

- NZ LISTENER - 

The Mystery of Henri Pick is both an exceptional French film and exceptionally French.

Its hero, such as he is, is a famed literary critic. Its mystery is whether some…

★★★★

- STUFF - 

In present day France, on the wild and outrageously beautiful Breton coast, there is a village book shop.

And in that book shop, in an annex to the main building, there is a very…

★★★★½

- STUFF - 

Any hopes St Denis’ College des Francs/Moisins’ new deputy principal Samia Zibra (Zita Hanrot) had of the academic year getting off to a quiet start are dashed by lunchtime.

A…

- ROLLING STONE - 

This French-Arabic comedy-drama, originally titled La Vie Scolaire, earns solid marks for a keep-it-real approach to the subject of classrooms on the fringes. The setting is a…

★★★★

- THE GUARDIAN - 

There’s enormous tenderness in this drama of disillusion from Colombian director Franco Lolli – but also an overwhelmingly unsentimental sense of life’s seriousness and…

★★★★

- THE AUSTRALIAN - 

A Son, written and directed by Mehdi Barsaoui, in his feature debut, opens with a family heading off to a picnic with friends. The father, Fares (Sami Bouajila), is driving,…

★★★★

- FILMUFORIA - 

Anat is a young woman who will let nothing get in her way, least of all accidents of nature, in this tightly-scripted and quietly chilling first feature from Israeli director…

★★★★★

- STUFF - 

A young family in modern-day Dublin are between houses.

They had lived in their last rental for seven good years, making and raising their four terrific kids. But now the owner has…

★★★★

- THE GUARDIAN - 

Roddy Doyle has written a very moving and insightful film about homelessness. Paddy Breathnach directs and it is powerfully acted, especially by Sarah Greene in the leading…