“Fungi Dictated the Structure of the Movie”: Otilia Portillo Padua on Daughters of the Forest
For generations, Indigenous women in Mexico have understood the vast power of mushrooms—medicinal, culinary, spiritual, toxic. Their knowledge has been calibrated and passed down matrilineal channels, not unlike the mycelial network that connects individual mushrooms to one another underneath rich soil. In Daughters of the Forest, Mexican filmmaker Otilia Portillo Padua documents two specific women, Lis and Juli, who reside with their families in these verdant enclaves. While they both possess a wealth of ancestral knowledge about mushrooms, Lis and Juli hope to distinguish themselves within academia. But there is no tension between homeopathy and science here. Instead, the women […]
Rachel Mason’s gripping true crime doc My Brother’s Killer is, first and foremost, a love letter. My Brother’s Killer emerged, in part, from Rachel Mason’s previous documentary Circus of Books, named after her parents’ West Hollywood gay porn bookstore, where she grew up enamored by the men who frequented it. Her latest film is also an ode to West Hollywood’s famed yet notorious stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard of the 1990s. Moreover, it is a love letter to a VHS era; a magazine era; a video awards era (ushered in by the likes of Chi Chi LaRue); a cyberpunk era […]
Filmmaker is heading to the 40th edition of SXSW, where myself and several talented contributors will be on the ground filing interviews and dispatches from various corners of Austin’s city limits. This year’s lineup is massive—with 119 feature films alone—and we happily assume the daunting role of covering buzzy world premieres and hidden gems alike. Speaking of world premieres, there’s an expected emphasis on genre fare among this year’s crop. Irish low-budget maverick Damian McCarthy scales up with Hokum, a folk-tinged rental house horror that provokes chills through its trailer alone. This releases via Neon just two and a half […]
In the opening beats of The Bride!, the second feature written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the ghost of Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) mutters to herself from some dark corner of the subconscious ether. She rasps about the sequel to her most iconic work, Frankenstein, that she never got to write before she died in 1851. What would this hypothetical book be, she wonders: “Is it a horror story, a ghost story, or, most frightening of all, a love story?” What follows is a cat-and-mouse road movie, a jewel-toned Jazz Age thriller, a romantic caper following Frankenstein’s monster—who goes by […]
The Columbia, Missouri-based True/False Film Festival kicks off its 23rd edition, one that boasts a particularly exciting lineup of non-fiction films, musical performances, and coinciding art installations. Running from March 5–8, the theme for the 2026 program is “You Are Here,” chosen by visiting artistic director Yance Ford. The director of acclaimed docs Strong Island (2017) and Power (2024) is intimately familiar with the politics of place: Nominated for an Academy Award, Strong Island documents the racially-motivated killing of Ford’s brother in Long Island; more broadly, Power charts the creation of modern American policing. Both films have screened at previous […]
“I found a way to look into the universe,” says non-fiction Australian filmmaker Josef Gatti in his feature debut Phenomena. Paradoxically, it turns out that the wonders of the universe are perceptible right here on Earth—so long as one has a laissez-faire approach to homemade (and often dangerous) science experiments and access to high-tech camera equipment capable of capturing molecular reactions in real-time. These reactions, subatomic as they may be, possess a staggering beauty. Guided in part by his father, a physics professor, Gatti trains his cinematic eye on the hypnotic (and yes, most would say downright “trippy”) visual effects […]
Thursday, March 5 marks the voting deadline for Oscar voters. For The Secret Agent, it’s the end of a long road. The Brazilian Oscar contender is a contender in four major categories, including Best Picture, a stunning outcome for the unique period drama set in the days of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Meanwhile, another voting deadline looms around the corner in the movie’s home country. In October, Brazilians will vote in the first round of presidential elections for the first time since their previous president, the far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro, lost to the Workers’ Party candidate Luis Inácio Lula da Silva […]
As we come to the end of a long awards season—the Oscars are, miraculously, less than two weeks away, and final voting closes this Thursday—it’s remarkable that the race feels as up-in-the-air as it did many months ago, before the contenders began screening for pundits and voters. The sure-things have now become the maybes; there’s only one performer whose acting trophy is a sure thing. I take pride in my ability to predict the winners at the Academy Awards. It’s a dubious skill I’ve been honing ever since I won my local video store’s Oscar pool back in high school. […]
“The Napa Boys—you’ve always known them, and they’re back.” It’s the kind of premise you could imagine only a very tired person nodding along with, but the way The Napa Boys—the new comedy from comedians Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman, the former directing and both serving as co-writers—went from this vague concept to a wide release with Magnolia Pictures somewhat beggars belief. “I don’t know if [Magnolia] lost a bet…” Weitzman laughs in our interview. The most concise description of The Napa Boys might run something like “Sideways 4: Beta House,” with all the various and contradictory associations—Fox Searchlight dramedies, […]
Stellan Skarsgård is a celebrated Swedish actor whose career spans more than five decades across European and Hollywood cinema. He first gained attention in Scandinavia before becoming an international screen presence in films such as Breaking the Waves and Good Will Hunting. He went on to deliver acclaimed performances in movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Dune, Dune Part 2, and television series like Andor and Chernobyl. In his latest, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Skarsgård gifts us with perhaps his most robust and richest work in the form of Gustav, a once-prominent filmmaker struggling to mend fractured ties with his daughters. On this episode, he details the environment […]