ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Festivals

Festivals Reviews 

WHATCHA WANT (TIFF 2026) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , ,

Moving from Hong Kong to Vancouver on the arm of a rich husband, Yin thought she’d landed the fairy tale. But when her husband’s not home for almost six months and her company is mostly a chauffeur and a similarly abandoned trophy wife, this former dancer discovers how to forge a new path in Whatcha Want. Director Mina Shum (Murdoch Mysteries), Whatcha Want layers in character beats about Yin, who danced as a child and now can’t help but move with her earbuds, even walking on the sidewalk. She soon discovers a hip-hop dance troupe near her apartment, where Penny (choreographer Helen Dang), the supportive leader, encourages her to pursue resuming her studies in dance.

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Festivals Reviews 

IDDA (TIFF 2026) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , ,

There’s nothing like traveling together to highlight the fractures in a relationship. The Italian drama Idda, set against the backdrop of a hike to the summit of Sicily’s Mount Etna, brings together two young women whose friendship of years past doesn’t quite translate to where they are now in life. The two had planned to climb the active volcano, locally called Idda, after Adele’s mother died two years prior, but Sofia didn’t follow through at the time. That resentment sits between them, along with a secret that Sofia’s not ready to share, ignoring phone calls and messages.

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Festivals 

San Sebastian Interntional Film Festival 2026 (SSIFF 2026) Overview – Jennifer Green reports

Jennifer Green , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

San Sebastián International Film Festival kicks off in Spain (Sept 18-26), inaugurating its 74th annual edition in the northern Spanish city, with 263 films from 47 countries screening across its line-up. The Official Selection features 17 films making their world premieres outside their production territories and competing for the fest’s top Golden Shell prize, including new works from directors Jesse Eisenberg, Mike Leigh, Fatih Akin, Nicole Garcia, Pablo Larrain and more.

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Festivals 

San Sebastian Interntional Film Festival 2026 (SSIFF 2026) Gender Report – Jennifer Green reports

Jennifer Green , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Former festival deputy director Maialen Beloki was selected last spring as the San Sebastian International Festival’s new director starting with next year’s 75th edition, replacing the long-serving José Luis Rebordinos. She will be the festival’s first female director and is set to lead an executive team currently made up of mostly women. The festival also announced this year that it will honor a female producer of one of the eight films screening in three key competitive sections with its RTVE-Otra Mirada Award. The prize, which has traditionally focused on films about women, will now recognize “the key role of female producers as the essential cog of audiovisual creation.”

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Festivals 

SAN SEBASTIAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026 (SSIFF 2026) Official Line Up – Jennifer Green reports

Jennifer Green , , , , , , , ,

Inaugurating its 74th annual edition in the northern Spanish city, San Sebastián International Film Festival presents a fully diverse program (Sept 18-26) with 263 films from 47 countries screening across its line-up. The Official Selection features 17 films making their world premieres outside their production territories and competing for the fest’s top Golden Shell prize, including new works from directors Jesse Eisenberg, Mike Leigh, Fatih Akin, Nicole Garcia, Pablo Larrain and more. Here’s the lisst

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Festivals Reviews 

AT NIGHT (TIFF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , , , ,

TIFF release At Night, the first feature film release from artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson, was six years in the making. Loosely based on the writings of poet Alice Notley but developed through the collaboration of the non-actors performing onscreen, the movie comes together as a melancholy meditation. It follows six women as they experience and interact with strangers and each other in the streets, metros, and cafes of Paris after dark. This isn’t a film you’d normally see funded and presented in theaters, and it’s the better for it. It’s a collaborative work of feminist art. Its point is not to have a story arc, it’s to include us in the authentic thoughts and experiences of a small group of women.

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Festivals Reviews 

FUTURE TENSE (TIFF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , ,

In a world where wealthy tourists are using time travel to escape what has become a dystopian environmental disaster, South African Lwando (Maleka) wins a short holiday, and invites Tara (Kristen Raath) to come along, and she jumps at the chance. They land in 1647, just days before the wreck of a Dutch trading vessel leads to the European colonization of what becomes South Africa. It’s not by accident. Lwando has plans, plans he hopes will alter history. Tara, meanwhile, is hoping to share she’s pregnant with their child. When Lwando escapes their very tightly controlled parameter, and ventures out into the pre-South African wilderness, things don’t go well. As a little indie giving consideration to race relations through a genre lens, albeit from the perspective of a White female filmmaker, it offers an interesting perspective.

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Festivals Reviews 

THE FORTUNATE ISLES (TIFF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , ,

Longtime filmmaking partners Samuel M. Delgado and Helena Girón write and direct the story of the face-branded and trapped Fátima (Luisa Ahl Laabiad, in her screen debut), who lives on a small island waiting day and night on The Marquis (Lou Castel, who came out of retirement for this performance). When it becomes clear she and her village might die of thirst, she chooses drastic measures to protect her child, and save her community. What works here is Ahl Laabiad’s performance, with dogged determination, release into hopelessness, and seething fury seeming to war inside her for purchase moment to moment.

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Festivals Reviews 

THE HUMMINGBIRD PAINTS FRAGRANT SONGS (TIFF 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , , ,

I LOVED The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs. Sara Flores, and her fascinating blend of a calm presence and the sort of artistic genius rarely recognized in the art world would be enough to captivate me for the span of writer/directors Èlia Gaskell Balada and Matteo Norzi’s film. Add, though, the cinematography by Johan Carrasco, which balances the natural world that inspires Flores, with the plastic, glam world of capitalism and winner-take-all attitude ruled by brands like Dior. Those two perspectives really bring home the weight of Flores’s inspired artistry, which, in the span of the documentary, becomes more about activism and standing for her community that about art for its own sake.

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