Beth Accomando – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

HEAD TO HEAD (TIFF 2026) – Review by Beth Accomando

September 18, 2026September 20, 2026 Beth Accomando Ebrahim Azizi, Ghasideh Golmakani, Head to Head, iranian films, Mehrnoosh Satari, Saeed Naderi, TIFF 2026

Filmmaker Ghasideh Golmakani was born in Tehran but moved to Paris where she completed her PhD with a dissertation entitled The Struggle of Iranian Women Filmmakers Before and After the Revolution. She did not want to examine that struggle from afar, so she returned to Iran where she made shorts, documentaries and behind the scenes films for other directors. Her short fiction films focus often focus on violence experienced by women in Iran. Head to Head marks her narrative feature debut although it feels very much like a documentary in how it addresses women’s issues. Head to Head marks her narrative feature debut although it feels very much like a documentary in how it addresses women’s issues.

Festivals Reviews

CHILDREN UNTOLD (TIFF 2026) – Review by Beth Accomando

September 18, 2026September 20, 2026 Beth Accomando Ami Koyae, Children Untold, japanese films, Miwa Nishikawa, post world war II, TIFF 2026, us firebombing 1945, war orphans

In Children Untold, filmmaker Miwa Nishikawa focuses her attention on postwar Japan and a 12-year-old orphan Kotoko who’s trying to survive after the devastating March, 1945, US firebombing of Tokyo. The film relentlessly depicts horrific conditions. Kotoko faces tragedy, hardship and bad luck at every turn. The only relief from grief and loss comes from brief interludes of music and the friendship she forms with orphan boys. Children Untold is deeply compassionate and urges us to look at Kotoko’s story not as something from the past but rather as a reminder of how war and its aftermath continues to impact innocent victims like children today.

Reviews

BLACK ZOMBIE – Review by Beth Accomando

September 6, 2026September 7, 2026 Beth Accomando Black Zombie, canadian films., documentary, George A. Romero, Haitian independence debt, Haitian Vodou, horror films, Maya Annik Bedward, slavery, Tananarive Due, zombie mythology

Black Zombie is a fascinating and enlightening documentary that looks to the roots of zombie mythology in Haitian Vodou. When zombies invaded our pop consciousness, they grabbed hold with ferocious tenacity. Vampire, mummies, and werewolves have long engaged the imagination throughliterature and film but their popularity seems to ebb and low. Zombies, on the other hand, keep rising from the dead to entrench themselves deeper and deeper in our collective consciousness.

Reviews

CAMP – Review by Beth Accomando

June 29, 2026July 1, 2026 Beth Accomando Avalon Fast, Camp, Zola Grimmer

Avalon Fast’s Camp opens with a grainy, black and white sequence of a woman driving in a wooded area as credits roll. Then the film cuts to a saturated image of a woman with angel wings that dissolves into a TV monitor and the film’s title comes up on the small screen as a woman turns and looks at us. Then we find ourselves in a living room with a group of young people about to play a game of Truth or Dare. There is no obvious connective tissue between the shots. Just a dreamy and deliberate sense of ambiguity that will come to define the film. Camp, like Fast’s debut feature Honeycomb, is an ultra low budget Canadian film that focuses on an insular group of young women. Thematically she is concerned here with grief, guilt and trauma, and Emily’s ability to process all three. In that respect it has a common bond with recent horror films such as Midsommar, Talk to Me, and Bring Her Back.

Reviews

BROKEN BIRD – Review by Beth Accomando

April 16, 2026April 19, 2026 Beth Accomando broken bird, Dominic Brunt, funeral home, Joanne Mitchell, Rebecca Calder, Sacharissa Claxton

Director Joanne Mitchell quickly lets us see that Sibyl frequently escapes into flights of fancy, with the line between fantasy and reality severely blurred for her. At a poetry reading she imagines wild applause from the audience. She also sees her dead father offering words of encouragement. Later, a chance encounter with a man who works at a Roman funerary museum immediately blossoms into romance in her mind. The fact that he has a fiancée is a frustrating annoyance. Grief and loss have been key in forming Sybil’s personality and career choices. She does not seem to have any friends but does seem to have concocted a full imaginary life complete with a perfect family and friends.

Reviews

THINESTRA – Review by Beth Accomando

April 7, 2026April 10, 2026 Beth Accomando Avra Fox-Lerner, body horror, Melissa Macedo, Michelle Macedo, Nathan Hertz, Thinestra

The Substance did not invent female body horror but it took it to such extravagant, delicious extremes that it has inspired a new wave of genre films in which a desire for physical perfection leads to some terrifying consequences. A new entry in this field is Thinestra, which doesn’t have the The Substance‘s budget for effects but director Nathan Hertz comes up with clever, low budget ways to sell the body horror and make people squirm.

Reviews

THE DREADFUL – Review by Beth Accomando

February 14, 2026February 15, 2026 Beth Accomando Kit Harington, lionsgate films, Marcia Gay Hardin, Natasha Kermani, Sophie Turner, The Dreadful

The new film The Dreadful reunites Kit Harington and Sophie Turner who spent a decade together working on HBO’s Game of Thronesrg. But instead of playing against the fantastical realm of Westeros, they have the more historically grounded Medieval world of the War of the Roses as their backdrop. But a fantastical element does play a role. The film opens with a Lord of the Rings-like voiceover narration setting up the backstory for a supernatural entity “born from war and raised in ruin. It walks along a dark path. It feeds on envy and acts without mercy. It does not rest, it does not tire. It whispers and waits for you.” Perhaps it is the dreadful of the title and I would have preferred a horror story focused on it. But this entity is more of a framing device with its presence not put to effective use.

Reviews

BIGHT – Review by Beth Accomando

February 12, 2026February 15, 2026 Beth Accomando Bight, Cameron Cowperthwaite, erotic thriller, Maiara Walsh, Mark Hapka, Maya Stojan, Shibari, Yori X

Women directors are allowed a lot more leeway than men in creating erotic thrillers in which women are treated in ways that could be labeled misogynistic if the director is casting a male gaze. In Bight, director/co-writer/star Maiara Walsh explores an intersection of kink, power, erotica, art and just a hint of horror. A sexy cocktail for a cinematic endeavor. Bight opens with blood. It is ambiguous as to whose blood. A couple is in a shower and blood runs down a woman’s leg. Is it menstrual blood like in Carrie? A miscarriage? Is it her blood, his blood or someone else’s? The music implies it’s not something good. This is the tease that opens the film, which then segues to an absolutely gorgeous title montage by Yori X depicting women – no men – being bound in ropes for a photography session by an artist.

Reviews

DIVA FUTURA – Review by Beth Accomando

November 7, 2025November 12, 2025 Beth Accomando Barbara Ronchi, Debora Attanasio, Denise Capezza, Diva Futura, Eva Henger, Giulia Louise Steigerwalt, Ilona Staller Cicciolina, Lidija Kordic, Moana Pozzi, Riccardo Schicchi, Tesa Litvan

Writer-director Giulia Louise Steigerwalt was born just one year before Riccardo Schicchi opened Diva Futura, a famous or maybe infamous model agency and erotica film studio. Steigerwalt credits Schicchi with introducing porn to Italy and she became fascinated with his story. Diva Futura serves up a fascinating and often charming portrait of a man and an industry at a particular moment in time and place. Steigerwalt casts her film with actors who look like their real life counterparts and who breathe credible life into them. Diva Futura is Steigerwalt’s second feature but it reveals Steigerwalt as a director with a promising sense of story and character.

Festivals Reviews

APOCALYPSE BESTIES (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Beth Accomando

June 16, 2025June 14, 2026 Beth Accomando Apocalypse Besties, Kristen Buckels Cantrell, Short films, Tribeca 2025

Although the feature films get the bulk of the buzz and attention at Tribeca, there is also a rich slate of short films. I confess that the title alone of Apocalypse Besties was immediately appealing to me. It conjured up an absurd collision of dystopian horror and BFF comedy. And it manages to deliver on both.

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