In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives.
There is no such thing as watching too many movies. Since we're still quarantined, I wanted to recommend another 19 movies for people to check out across Netflix, HBO Max, and more.
Dashing in December follows the tried and true outline of a traditional holiday romance, with a less traditional middle-aged gay couple as the film's romantic focus.
Shadow & Bone excels in natural story representation with powerful centering of culture. Jessie Mei Li stars as Alina Starkov, the feisty cartographer with kindness, innocence, and integrity, who comes to be revealed as the legendary summoner of light.
Diana’s spirit has taken off, ‘No right, no wrong, no rules for me.’ And in that moment, as she runs on the screen, she gets it, her ‘Let It Go’ moment.
A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.
What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.
