my first watch of the competition for me. what starts as a romance drama about Mexican immigrants in the US and the hopes and, well, dreams they have of their new life quickly and brutally shatter in a bitter final act that made me wish for a content warning in advance anywhere (the festival website has content notes for some films, but not this one). left me shaking and crying and disturbed and as i write this waiting for the next movie to start i'm still in shock of what i saw and i'm not sure if i mean that in a good way.

6/10

one of the most anticipated films of the year and rightfully so, this has been an absolute blast to go through. a Starship Troopers for the modern day, a great parody of the modern right and their obsession with the colonization of space with standout performances by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette as the fascist power couple leading a space expedition to reign supreme over a new planet. smart, but above all, fun.

9/10

a tv crew from the USA making a living out of travelling abroad and exploiting the people living there to make reports about local internet phenomena get their asses handed to them when they show up at the wrong place. instead of accepting defeat and leaving, they decide to fabricate a whole story, exploiting the village, including chronically sick teens and children, in Argentina they ended up in even more than they already intended. an absurdist comedy about tv networks struggling to capture young audiences in the middle of controversies among the crew while the filming goes wrong at every corner, especially when a shoot at a local field suddenly gets interrupted by a plane dropping glyphosate on them. colonialism coming in the form of incompetent idiots with a film camera not knowing what to do.

8/10

the beauty of Fuerteventura provides a gorgeous backdrop to this thriller in which tennis coach at a local resort Tom gets just a little too close to a british family staying at the resort right when the husband suddenly goes missing leaving Tom to take care of the family's child as the question hangs in the air: is the father dead? has he been killed? is he even his son's biological father? is Tom happy living a single bachelor's life at this tourist destination? a film about the lingering sadness of those living in what might seem a paradise to short-term visitors.

8/10