international oscars – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Maryam Touzani talks CALLE MALAGA, Aging with Spirit and Personal Storytelling – Jennifer Green interviews

March 3, 2026March 6, 2026 Jennifer Green Ahmed Boulane, calle malaga, Carmen Maura, international oscars, María Alfonsa Rosso, Marta Etura, Maryam Touzani, Moroccan films, Nabil Ayouch

Tangier-born writer-actor-director Maryam Touzani says that with her new film Calle Malaga, she wanted to “celebrate the beauty of aging and the freedom that can come with aging.” The story turns on a 70-something woman, played by Spanish veteran Carmen Maura, who insists on remaining in her home in Tangier—against all odds. In doing so, she remakes her life, finds new love and reinforces her connections with her Moroccan roots, the place where she was born and raised as part of a Spanish immigrant community. The subject was personal for Touzani, whose own blended Moroccan-Spanish family gave inspiration for Calle Málaga.

Reviews

CALLE MALAGA – Review by Jennifer Green

February 19, 2026February 20, 2026 Jennifer Green Ahmed Boulane, calle malaga, Carmen Maura, international oscars, María Alfonsa Rosso, Marta Etura, Maryam Touzani, Moroccan films, Nabil Ayouch

Calle Málaga is a warm and surprising tale about aging, family and sense of place. Veteran Carmen Maura stars as an elderly Spanish woman, raised as part of an immigrant community in Tangier, Morocco, who steadfastly refuses to spend her sunset years doing anything other than living the life she desires. She is a quiet yet determined 70-something heroine. Tangier-born director Maryam Touzani, who co-wrote the script with regular collaborator Nabil Ayouch, has constructed a nuanced and sensitive film that infuses its story, star and setting with layers of meaning.

Commentaries

OSCARS UPDATE: Expanding the International Market – Jennifer Green reports

January 28, 2026February 1, 2026 Jennifer Green Academy Awards, foreign language films, international film market, international oscars, oscars 2026

Non-English-language feature films received a record number of nominations to the Oscars this year. The nominations show the Academy is “Becoming a Citizen of the World,” The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed on Jan. 22, citing the #OscarsSoWhite backlash from a decade ago that prompted the Academy to diversity its membership, including now a full 25% of voting members from abroad. But there’s another way to look at this. This year’s international diversification might also reveal that the Academy is cognizant of two simultaneous trends that are likely to shape its future.

Reviews

I’M STILL HERE – Review by Diane Carson

February 5, 2025February 8, 2025 Diane Carson brazilian films, fernanda torres, i'm still here, international oscars, Rubens Paiva, Selton Mello, sony pictures classics, truth-based, Walter Salles

Perhaps counterintuitively, at times we better grasp and more profoundly feel the depth of a massive tragedy through the horrific experiences of one specific individual or family than through a mountain of statistics. Thus, while the 1964 to 1985 Brazilian military dictatorship’s appalling torture and murder of over 20,000 people over 21 years is a staggering statistic, the impact on citizens becomes most intensely, palpably real in director Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, focused on one family’s experiences.

Essays Guest Posts Reviews

DAHOMEY – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

January 24, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post art restitution, benin, dahomey, documentary, guest pst, international oscars, Malkenzy Orcel, mati diop, mubi, Wally Badarou, Yael Friedman

Dahomey, the new beautiful documentary from director Mati Diop, addresses the forces that wrested history from its original owners, and interrogates what it means to try and recompense for the past. The film plays witness to an unprecedented moment – the return by France of 26 objects (26 out of many thousands) to Benin – the once Kingdom of Dahomey (1600-1904). It is the first such return of the cultural heritage colonial powers plucked from their African vassal states. The Europeans carved up a continent and removed its sacred objects (among other sins), sending them across the Atlantic to sit in sterile vitrines in grand galleries, tourists strolling by once-mighty gods.

Reviews

I’M STILL HERE – Review by Liz Braun

January 10, 2025January 10, 2025 Liz Braun brazilian films, fernanda torres, i'm still here, international oscars, Rubens Paiva, Selton Mello, sony pictures classics, truth-based, Walter Salles

Walter Salles’ new film, I’m Still Here, is centered on one family during the military dictatorship of the 1970s in Brazil. The film is based on the true story of the disappearance of former congressman Rubens Paiva and the fate of his family thereafter; it is an unbelievably moving and timely picture, considering the current global shift to the right and the endless sabre-rattling from president-elect Donald Trump and his main henchboy. Salles captures the fate of his country during 20 years of military dictatorship (and its aftermath) in this tale of one family. And it’s a family he happened to have known as an adolescent. The filmmaker has talked about the absolute joy of spending time at the Paiva’s house when he was a boy of 13, and how the house was full of music and conversation and life.

Reviews

DAHOMEY – Review by Jennifer Green

December 18, 2024December 19, 2024 Jennifer Green art restitution, benin, dahomey, documentary, international oscars, Malkenzy Orcel, mati diop, mubi, Wally Badarou

French-Senegalese director Mati Diop (Atlantics) has created a thoughtful and symbolic one-hour documentary about the 2021 return to present-day Benin of a small portion of the royal treasures plundered by invading French troops in 1892 from the then-Kingdom of Dahomey. They represent gods and thrones, kings and kingdoms, memorials to the dead. Even so, in the film’s most meaningful and stimulating sequences, a town hall of college students debates the meaning of their repatriation and the legacy of colonialism in their own lives. Diop places a camera inside a wooden box transporting one of the artifacts “home” from France, and we are sent on the journey with it. But what does “home” even mean to one who doesn’t remember their place of origin? That’s a question asked by the statue inside the box, originally referred to only as “number 26.”

Reviews

SATURN RETURN – Review by Nadine Whitney

December 2, 2024December 8, 2024 Nadine Whitney Grenada, international oscars, Isaki Lacuesta, Los Planetas, Pol Rodríguez, Saturn Return, shoegaze band, Spanish films, Stéphanie Magnin, Takuro Takeuchi

Spain’s entry to the Academy Awards Saturn Return by Isaki Lacuesta is an imagined ‘biography’ of famed Grenadian indie and shoegaze band Los Planetas. The director is clear in his intention of fiction – using the lyrics of the band to construct the mood and feelings they might have experienced as they were recording their third album in the late 1990s. Few of the characters are given names. They are simply ‘The singer’ (Daniel Ibáñez) or ‘The guitarist’ (Cristalino) or ‘The drummer’ (Mafo): and although they stand in as obvious avatars for their real-life models, the director is crafting a concept film, not a factual one.