ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

eric roth

Festivals Reviews 

THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE (Cannes FF 2025) – Review by Diane Carson

Diane Carson , , , , , , ,

The President’s Cake cleverly reveals the intricate, unnerving details of Iraqi life in the 1980s. On the occasion of Saddam Hussein’s upcoming April 28 birthday, special preparations must be made by everyone, no matter their status. This extends to nine-year-old Lamia’s school where a lottery drawing designates a ‘special’ boy and a girl to bring an assigned tribute. So says the belligerent, cantankerous children’s teacher. And thus it falls to Lamia’s classmate friend Saeed to bring fruit for juice and, more problematically, for Lamia to bring a cake. The President’s Cake won the Directors’ Fortnight top prize, the sole Cannes Film Festival award voted for by attending audience members

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Reviews 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON – Review by Susan Granger

Susan Granger , , , , , , , , , ,

Master storyteller Martin Scorsese’s harrowing epic Killers of the Flower Moon relates an American true-crime drama, set in the 1920s. Adapted from David Grann’s nonfiction 2017 best seller, the ambitious, solidly structured screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese focuses on the ruthless murders of members of the Osage Nation whom the U.S. government forced out of Kansas to relocate on 2,300 acres if barren land in what is now Oklahoma.

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Reviews 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , , , , ,

To the Osage, the flower moon occurs when tiny flowers sprout over the hills in waves of color. Then taller plants pop up among them, stealing their water and sunshine, eventually killing them—the forces that doom them lying among them all along. The film Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t hammer home the metaphor that author David Grann introduced in his best-selling 2017 book of the same name. But this intricate crime drama about the real-life slayings on the Osage Nation over the inheritance of oil rights gives director Martin Scorsese other allegories. The evil of White supremacy. The poison of greed. The betrayal of native people overall.

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