SIFF 2025 Snippets

By Design [2024]

By Design

Wildly unique and dripping with camp, Amanda Kramer’s By Design turns the objectification of women into a metaphor as Camille (Juliette Lewis) swaps bodies with a chair. Equal parts performance art and surrealism, the film is both abstract and glaringly on-the-nose. Kramer’s striking visual palette keeps it compelling, but unfortunately, the script recycles the same ideas so much that it becomes more exhausting than enlightening.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass [2024]

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

If I watched the Quay Brothers latest stop motion film 100 times, I bet I’d have 100 completely different experiences. Their unique style and stop motion mastery shine throughout, but the melancholic enigma of this Bruno Schulz adaptation is difficult to comprehend. A mix of gothic texture and avant-garde filmmaking turns this interpretation into an opaque and overly surreal film that pushes experience over plot. Understanding of the source material may be needed to fully appreciate its adaptation.

Meeting with Pol Pot [2024]

Meeting with Pol Pot

After seven documentaries on the Khmer Rouge regime, Rithy Panh returns with the horror-adjacent Meeting with Pol Pot. His depth of knowledge, and personal lens make the narrative fascinating while the performances from Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin, Cyril Gueï as French journalists meeting the reclusive dictator, are terrific. Although the tone and flow are slightly disrupted with Panh’s almost mixed-media style, the film’s story and its horror-esque unfolding make it impossible to look away.

40 Acres [2024]

40 Acres

Danielle Deadwyler delivers another powerhouse performance as a tenacious, no-bullshit mother trying to protect her farm and family in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of animals in 40 Acres. After a gripping opening, R.T. Thorne’s survival drama falters with tepid pacing and predictability, but more than makes up for it with a thrilling third act that had me white-knuckling my seat. It’s not without flaws, but the film hits all the essential beats of sci-fi survival, blending emotional stakes with visceral thrills.