Souleymane is an asylum seeker from Guinea, Africa, who delivers food by bike in Paris. He’s two days away from an important interview to gain legal residency, but his day-to-day life as a refugee and delivery worker is precarious, like walking a tightrope. He’s always running out of time and money. Since he has to work as a delivery driver using someone else’s permit, he has to rush to check the app’s identity verification alarms, hurry to catch the last bus to the homeless shelter and run to gather money to pay the refugee broker. On the day of his interview to determine his eligibility for refugee status, Souleymane tells a “fake” story that he has memorized, as advised by his broker. The highlight of the film, which creates an overwhelming sense of immersion and tension, is this interview scene. After listening to Souleymane’s story, which includes political imprisonment and torture, the interviewer demands that he tell his “real” story. This film won the Jury Prize and Best Actor Award in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. (LEE Juhyun)

Eighteen-year-old rural boy Totone lost his father in a traffic accident. Now, the boy must take care of his seven-year-old sister on his own and find a way to support them. One day, he hears about a cheese-making competition offering a prize of €30,000 and decides to enter the contest on a whim. The protagonist of Holy Cow, Totone, evokes the image of a young cowboy who has become an orphaned rancher. The vibrant energy and charm of amateur actor Clément Paabo draw viewers to root for Totone throughout. Director Louise Courvoisier returns to her hometown of Jura, which she left at fifteen, to make her debut feature. While confronting the reality of a French dairy industry struggling with a lack of youth employment, Courvoisier brings warmth and affection to her characters, turning Totone’s adventure in Holy Cow into a lively and heartwarming comedy. (SEO Seunghee)

The latest work from comedy writer duo the Boukherma brothers, is a poignant drama. After writing their own screenplays, the duo has adapted a coming-of-age film from the novel by Nicolas Mathieu, who won the Goncourt Prize. Despite this change in source material, they still focus on marginalized characters, setting the story in an economically depressed town in northeastern France. The film unfolds as a summer tale set in 1992 and revisited every two years, revolving around 15-year-old Anthony, his first love Steph, and the lives of their family and friends, all of which leave a deep emotional impact. We wonder what will happen to the boy who dreams of going to Texas and the girl who hopes to settle in Paris. The constraints imposed by class and environment are no different in advanced societies. Like the chapters of the original novel, titled after songs, the film features an impressive soundtrack. While the kids are obsessed with Red Hot Chili Peppers, the sunlit beach doesn’t quite suit them. What they really needed is Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive.’ (LEE Yong Cheol)

Misericordia is a philosophical film noir by Alain Guiraudie that stands comparison with the works of Claude Chabrol and Robert Bresson. The movie is a prime example of the eccentric and imaginative world of director Alain Guiraudie. Jérémie returns to his village to attend the funeral of his former boss, a baker. Back in his old environment, he encounters old friends and feels the resurgence of desires and violence he harbored during his youth. In Misericordia, the dark and damp autumn forest becomes an astonishing stage. People there pick peculiar mushrooms, engage in fights, and bury corpses. In this primordial setting, moral questions are raised: “To what extent can ‘forgiveness’ be possible in the face of society and justice?” For Alain Guiraudie, mercy is not merely a dimension of forgiveness. It is a concept that transcends all morals, embodying understanding and empathy towards others. (SEO Seunghee)

Director Mohammad Rasoulof was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Iranian government just before completing The Seed of the Sacred Fig and chose to seek asylum during the Cannes Film Festival. While this incident surrounding the director garnered significant attention, the film itself also made a profound impact upon its screening at Cannes. It is not merely a social critique but delves deeply into various angles of complex issues. Set against the backdrop of intense anti-government protests against compulsory hijab, the story follows a father who investigates crimes against religious teachings. As the protests escalate and his two daughters join the movement, the father becomes increasingly oppressive. The mother, who initially supported her husband, grows increasingly concerned with her daughters and gradually sides with them. The family’s conflict reaches a boiling point when the father’s gun goes missing. The film, which exposes the realities of Iranian society, goes beyond criticizing the Iranian government and explores the patriarchal order at the root of tragedy, showing such issues are not unique to Iran but are present in any country, whether in the West or East. (NAM Dong-chul)

In the dead of night, Nadira escapes from a brothel in Delhi after fatally stabbing a police superintendent. With the law hot on her heels, she takes temporary shelter in a Northern Indian community of sex workers, assuming the Hindu name Renuka. There, she crosses paths with Devika, a young girl bound by a religious tradition condemning her to a life of prostitution. As their bond deepens into a forbidden romance, Devika defies her tyrannical mother and the oppressive age-old system, joining Renuka on a perilous journey through a treacherous maze of violence and brutality, all in the hope of outrunning the law and attaining their freedom. The Shameless is directed and written by Konstantin Bojanov. It was invited to the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section, and Anasuya Sengupta who plays Renuka won the Best Performance Award.

In the populous city of Mumbai, Prabha, a nurse, is tied to her marriage with a husband who stopped contacting her after moving to Germany, while her roommate Anu is in love with a Muslim man. These young lovers, whose love is not accepted by social norms, wander the streets of Mumbai at night, searching for a space of their own. The film, which delicately unfolds the story of these two women, opens with scenes of people who flock to Mumbai with dreams, collecting garbage, loading goods, and leaning against trains. As they glance at the camera, a voice-over narrates their experiences in Mumbai, the ‘city of dreams.’ Blending documentary style with magical realism, this unique film takes the audience into Prabha’s story, while also telling a universal tale shared by the many residents of Mumbai. (HONG Soin)

In Zambia and everywhere else in the world, the distress of the weak is often disregarded for the sake of the community. On a dark highway, Shula stumbles across a corpse that turns out to be her mother’s brother. In preparations for the funeral, Shula and her cousins must cook for the elderly male relatives, pursue another cousin who is clearly unwell because of the dead uncle, and turn a blind eye to family members accusing the poor widow. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl may seem like a familiar coming home story, but it is Rungano Nyoni’s unapologetic and rigorous direction that makes it stand out. As repeated lies become the truth, ugly family secrets resurface and Shula’s nightmares bubble with anger. Like guinea fowls crying to warn against predators, the young women unify to protect one another. (Karen PARK)

Sa-rang (Jang Sun) is deeply in love with Cheol-su (Lee Yoojun), who visits the pharmacy where she works every day. Unfortunately, Cheol-su’s heart is completely taken by Jong-hui (Han Haein), the pharmacist and Sa-rang’s cousin. With misaligned and unreachable hearts and gazes, I Am Love is a poignant and desperate love story about unreciprocated affection and the fever of unrequited love, a melancholic elegy of love. Despite the anguish, it is also a love hymn dedicated to those captivated by love who vow to love even more, never knowing how to give up. Struggling to express her feelings verbally, Sa-rang instead uses the love poetry of W.H. Auden as a guide for her life, becoming absorbed in the tragic circumstances of a woman named ‘Love’ who fell into a tragic incident because of her affection. Sa-rang is overwhelmed by love. How far can this love go? In the end, will Sarang find the serene comfort, akin to a state of vacuum, she has long sought? (JEONG Jihye)

Ignored, resentful and sad, the ‘middle-aged woman’ can also redeem herself as the heroine of her life. Combining the genres of fantasy and horror with a comic drama as its base, Vietnamese film Don’t Cry, Butterfly is a quirky film that puts women who have been denigrated as ‘middle-aged women’ to the forefront. Tam is an ordinary middle-aged woman. She witnesses her husband’s infidelity and turns to voodoo to try and win back her cheating husband’s heart. Tam’s house, which is haunted by the ‘spirit of the house’, soon becomes a place for social experimentation and a space for the genre to unfold. Unlike her mother’s generation, who cope with their real-life struggles by reconciling them with a fantasy world, Tam’s daughter Ha takes a different path. For Ha, home is no longer a place to be adapted through feng shui and witchcraft, but a place to either leave or change. It is ultimately the contrast between the two women, mother and daughter, that adds taut tension to the film. (LEE Hwajung)

Kirill Serebrennikov, director of Leto (2018) and Petrov’s Flu (2021), adapts Emmanuel Carrère’s biographical novel to portray Eduard Limonov, the Russian writer born in 1943 who caused a stir in Russian literature and politics. The film vividly follows Limonov’s turbulent life: from his impoverished existence in Russia during the late 1960s, to his time in New York during the 1970s, to his emergence as a famous writer in Paris in the 1980s, and finally, his return to Moscow where he formed an extremist political party. Serebrennikov recreates New York streets and Siberian prisons in the studio and delves into the writer’s chaotic inner world, evoking the style of Federico Fellini. Through the character of Limonov, brilliantly portrayed by Ben Whishaw, the director reflects on the painful history of Russia, spanning from the communist dictatorship to Putin’s nationalism. (SEO Seunghee)

This documentary follows the five-year legal battle of Ito Shiori, a journalist who has become a symbol of Japan’s #MeToo movement, credited with forever changing the lives of Japanese women. In 2015, Ito was sexually assaulted by Yamaguchi Noriyuki, a prominent journalist who wrote the biography of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Despite reporting the incident to the police immediately after, the investigation stalled for nearly two years. In 2017, she became the first Japanese woman to publicly come forward as a sexual assault survivor and initiated a full-scale legal battle. Director Ito Shiori meticulously weaves together the beginning of her legal fight, the subsequent process, and the harrowing internal struggles she faced as she was pushed to her limits, while also exposing the flaws in Japan’s judicial system. Her courageous record of events will serve as a beacon of hope for other women who may face similar ordeals in the future. (JO Ji-hoon)