- Telluride 2026: Alpha Gang, The Liberation, The Idiots (September 8, 2026)
I have left the mountainous confines of Telluride and am currently winding down mountainous roads to Grand Junction. But I am also unspooling much of what I saw at a festival that included far more laughs than I anticipated. Some of those zingers are in two of these films, though one is decidedly not (you’ll know when you get there).
Verdant brushland, inviting ponds, and rolling fields of horses color my view, populating a road away from the one fest where, before every screening, the ringmaster warns attendees to be careful of roaming bears. I’d like to think this dispatch carries the same caveat of splendor and worry, though with less actual doom.
It’ll come as a shock to no one that David and Nathan Zellner’s raucous, medieval, sci-fi biker lark, “Alpha Gang,” isn’t exactly subtle. A group of aliens posing as humans, dressed in 1950s black leather studded jackets, arrives at a castle in a war-torn, vaguely European country to conquer humanity with shiny silver machine guns.
Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Lily-Rose Depp, Doona Bae, and Riley Keough make up the gang whose codenames are numerical versions of Alpha (e.g., Alpha 1, 2, etc.). They spend their days listening to music by The Crystals, Ricky Nelson, and more on their jukebox, and hiding their emotions (the latter they consider a contagious disease) from one another. They’re curious about ants, plants, and hard candy, and possess chrome armor and eat orange grull.
The Zellners don’t do conventional world-building here. We never quite discover what country the film is set in (the inhabitants range from rural to fascist to sometimes Soviet) or what planet the Alpha Gang hails from. We don’t even know their species. So when they unleash bloody violence on humanity, we only know that they’re out to kill those they consider to be evolutionarily lesser. Instability is added to their broad mission when a stoic Chris Pine, whose dress recalls Elvis from “Jailhouse Rock,” arrives, alerting them to a rival Beta Gang led by Cate Blanchett sporting a studded eye patch and a slurred Cockney accent.
In a sense, “Alpha Gang” is a trippy, hyperviolent explosion of cool style and cooky jokes. It’s also a reminder that Bautista is one of our great deadpan comedians and Harrison Jr. can do just about anything, even seemingly falling in love with a hawk named Periwinkle as he does here. But most of all, this potpourri of aesthetic and influence, similar to “Sasquatch Sunset,” uses absurdity to critique the ways humans other, destroy, and shut down empathy. And while you’ll probably find that you have to wade through the wackiness to get to those grander themes, they’re hidden grace notes worth finding in a film that’s incredibly funny.
Guy Nattiv’s “The Liberation” is a slow-simmer mystery looking for a center. That search isn’t totally shocking. Its frail protagonist Rita Cooper (Carrie Coon), similarly scans the horizon of her milquetoast life—which involves being an assistant bank manager, raising her two daughters Ella (Bella Ramsey) and Jo (Odessa Young), and being a devoted wife to her husband Reuben (Tracy Letts) and caretaker to her father—for a kind of fulfillment and healing she can’t quite locate in her suburban New Jersey community. Her unconscious quest ends when the persuasive self-help feminist guru Ricki (Lily James) walks into her bank to deposit a huge chunk of change. Rita doesn’t stop to ask where that money came from or what it’s for. She’s already invested in a woman she believes sees her for who she is.
Maybe it’s because “The Liberation” is partly based on Nattiv’s grandmother’s involvement in a cult; the film at least understands that a cult can be interesting not because of its charismatic leader but because of the psychology of its followers. Why would someone join an organization that’s so obviously controlling and manipulative?
Nattiv, a deeply Jewish filmmaker whose past works include the Oscar-winning short “Skin,” partly places the reason for his protagonist’s actions in her status as a Holocaust survivor. And for a while, one wonders if he’ll connect how the loss of family and one’s country could lead someone to buy into the cult of contemporary Zionism (to be clear, he never gestures close enough to the subject for one to wholly make that leap).
The overlong film is also somewhat betrayed by its ping-pong structure. It switches between showing how Rita became twisted in Ricki’s sticky web in 1982 and her daughters visiting Ricki’s secluded woodland compound in 1984 to find their mother. The latter has an undercover element that pays homage to contemporary true-crime stories but never commits enough to the intrigue to fully sustain the genre’s tension and ambiguity. The structure also undermines Coon’s unquestionably captivating performance, making it far more melodramatic than Coon probably intended.
The narrative’s ping-pong movement could spring from several wells: It might be mirroring Rita’s spiritual split or psychological destabilization via Ricki, who demands that Rita stop using her psychiatric drugs, and it could arise from Nattiv physically trying to piece together his grandmother’s perspective. While at Telluride, Nattiv alluded to his mother and aunt also being associated with the cult, even bringing him to meetings when he was younger, which all sounds like an equally fascinating story the director could’ve told about himself. Instead, he’s wading through memories that aren’t necessarily his, causing the film to feel as though we’re looking at Rita through a mirror of a mirror.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t commendable components to “The Liberation.” Nattiv smartly portrays every level of Ricki’s grooming with straightforwardness (the scenes with the cult are always brightly lit, while those with Rita’s family look grim). His lens also trusts Coon’s physical countenance, charting the character’s spiral by showing her stilted exterior melt into powerful frivolity before reverting back into painful frigidity. But “The Liberation” is too caught within the fog to maximize what is working. Instead, it feels trapped in its fractured telling of a personal history that never quite feels personal.
Some movies just never come together despite the talent attached and the genius of the premise. Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s absurdist biopic “The Idiot(s)” is such a case. It’s based on Andrew D. Kaufman’s The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky, and it concerns Fyodor (Johnny Flynn) and Anna Dostoyevsky (Aimee Lou Wood), who have just arrived in Baden from Russia in debt and in search of inspiration. Their story is told with a kind of flippancy, blending the comedic sensibilities of “Amadeus” and Lina Wertmüller to dismantle the great-man mythology surrounding the author and elevate his far more responsible wife.
Fyodor, as Flynn plays him, is a man of many vices. Though he loves his wife, particularly being flogged by her during sex, he possesses an unfocused eye. Upon arriving in Braden, he first pursues the mysterious Natasha F (Vicky Krieps), a reference to the heroine of The Idiot, Nastasya Filippovna, who almost never speaks but whose enchanting gaze spellbinds the author nonetheless. When those efforts threaten to crack open his marriage, he turns to gambling away the pittance of money he and Anna have.
Worse yet, the only prospect of him being paid is if Fyodor sends pages of the novel he’s attempting to write, The Idiot, to his editor. That wouldn’t normally be a problem, except writer’s block has hit him, leaving Anna to make a deal with his rival, the Russian expat Ivan Turgenev (Christian Friedel), to pawn off their possessions and even write some pages by hand under his name.
While all of this sounds pretty bleak, Szumowska and Englert are knowingly crass in their approach—in one scene Fyodor defecates in front of his landlady’s door—and abrasive in their resolve. They push the boundaries of the period costumes, make jokes about Fyodor’s seizures, and do anachronistic covers of a-ha’s “Take On Me.”
Flynn and Wood are equally committed to this extreme rendering, earnestly espousing desperation, love, jealousy, regret, and humiliation with an openness that, for a time, papers over the picture’s repetitiveness. Unfortunately, even they can’t forestall the inevitable. “The Idiot(s)” runs out of steam quickly once it repeats the same punchline a dozen times.
The film wears you down rather than excites you, partly because Anna is never quite as strong of a character as a modern viewer would hope. While it’s true in real life that Anna separated Fyodor’s vices from the actual man she loved, the “stand by your man” theme running underneath their relationship feels less like love and more like a personal torture—causing anyone who decides to stick around to finish the film to also feel as though they’ve been hollowed out as well. Which may be the point, even if it’s inarticulately told.
- Irony, Contradiction, and Perspective: Na Hong-jin and Hoyeon on “Hope” (September 8, 2026)
“Hope,” from director Na Hong-jin, is weirder and wilder than any simple plot description could ever hope to convey. So the best thing to share is that it’s thrilling to see such an unvarnished vision executed with the highest level of technical prowess and sincere love.
The Korean cinema that has often broken through has more often than not been its seedy revenge tales, but with the pronouncement of “Hope,” filling the contours of its frame with gregarious and uniquely Korean archetypes and stuffed with the most exciting camera angles you’ll see in a blockbuster, it feels like an invitation to taste the riches of the country’s most unhinged visions.
It is methodical and controlled in the unveiling of its central mystery, so gleeful when it lets its feet [sic] flag fly, you can’t help being swept–more like dragged–along with it. Thankfully, Na has a murderer’s row of performers, who are on his boisterous wavelength. Hwang Jung-min plays Bum-seok, a village police chief, who drives to Hope Harbor once reports come in about a strange creature that murders livestock and people alike. He’s joined by his second cousin, Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), and rookie deputy, Im Sung-ae (Hoyeon), who find that the threat they face may not be of this world.
Director Na Hong-jin. (NEON)
For Na, while he delivers spectacle befitting the IMAX screens “Hope” will play on, he also wants people to consider who the real victims and perpetrators are in the film, and how, depending on whose perspective we’re seeing, that can disrupt our enjoyment. “I hope [the film] also makes you question the catharsis of the on-screen violence,” he shared.
For Hoyeon, playing Sung-ae was as gratifying as it was challenging; she enjoyed how the stunt work pushed her body to the limits while also giving her the chance to address contemporary intergenerational dynamics in Korea. “The reality is that in Korea, in many of the rural towns and smaller villages, there are very few, if any, young people who choose to stay there. What does it mean for someone like Sung-ae to stay?” she said.
As “Hope” arrives in theaters this week, director Na and Hoyeon, whose words were eloquently translated by Jiwon Lee and Haley Jung, respectively, spoke with RogerEbert.com over Zoom; this piece combines their interviews into one fluid conversation. They discussed the enduring influence of Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop,” the lineage of female Korean action heroes wielding big guns, and how the film speaks to the duo’s past work across projects like “The Yellow Sea” and “Squid Game.”
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. It contains mild spoilers.
Director Na, “The Wailing” opens with a Bible verse from the Gospel of Luke, while “Hope” ends with a modified verse from Hebrews: “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” What excites you as a filmmaker about exploring questions of belief and faith through the language of cinema?
Na Hong-jin: I’m a believer in that religion, so I’ve long found my work in cinema as an extension of that belief. With“The Wailing,” the idea of the film started with that Luke passage. I thought the passage–where the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples on the Emmaus road–was a striking cinematic moment. The disciples had to ask: was this figure they were seeing Jesus, or was he something else?
“The Wailing” came from me trying to expand on that moment, that rattling of faith. Conversely, for “Hope,” after making the film, I tried to reflect on the true meaning of the title, how the movie should feel, how the conclusion should feel for the audience, and what the message should really be. After considering that, I thought it best to include a direct mention of Hebrews. I can’t help but keep coming back to these Biblical passages to bookend my films.
That is why, after considering that, I tried to include the passage from Hebrews, as you mentioned, because I thought it was most adequate for that particular purpose of the film.
I’m intrigued by how your films show normal people grappling with these questions of faith. It leads me to ask about the Korean curse word, “shibal,” which your characters say a lot in the film. The English subtitles translate it differently every time, so I’m wondering how you were thinking through the significance of this word to the characters.
NH: It’s interesting, because when I was writing the script, there weren’t that many “shibals” in the script, so I did try to change it to other words. I couldn’t come up with anything because, in Korean, people don’t use many exclamations in daily life. So realistically speaking, “shibal” might be the only expression of exclamation that we use in the language, but as you mentioned–because the word itself is a cuss word–that made it a challenge in terms of how much I should include it.
What’s funny, though, is that while we were shooting, the actors, while they were performing in the scenes, couldn’t help but shout “shibal” even for lines in my script where their characters didn’t say it. As we were editing, I did realize that we did have way too many uses of the word, so I did try to take out as much as I could, but then thought that maybe it was justified to keep them in there because I see the use of the word as an expression of exclamation and surprise by characters who have to deal with a cosmically absurd situation. Despite my self-editing, I still think I ended up with too many “shibals.”
I remember from the press conference that actor Zo In-sung, who had his knee operated on before a stunt-heavy scene in the forest, said he probably wouldn’t be able to run that much, to which you replied, “no problem.” I’m sure he threw in a couple extra “shibals” during the chase sequences you had him do.
NH: (Laughs) What’s he talking about? He didn’t have to run that much.
Hope (NEON)
True. His hanging-off-of-horseback-while-being-chased-by-Michael-Fassbender experience outweighs how much he has to actually run. A lot of your past films, such as “The Yellow Sea,” featured little to no gunplay, with that film thriving on vicious, close-quarters knife combat. There’s nary a character without a firearm in the film, so tell me about their incorporation, and the new opportunities they provided you when it came to expanding your horizons as an action director.
NH: You’re correct in pointing this out, and truthfully, for this film, I wanted to try my hand at using firearms for fight scenes because we used knives so extensively in “The Yellow Sea.” My desire to incorporate more action sequences with guns was also part of the impetus for setting the film in this particular time period, because I found it not only more believable that people would be using firearms in this era, but also because of the paranoia of the times, they’d be far too trigger-happy.
It made me recontextualize the film’s opening scenes, because I was struck by the way Hwang Jung-min’s Bum-seok would grip the gun; the way he held it made it feel like the gun was its own living organism he was trying to control. Did you talk with him about how he should grip it?
He’s an actor who has been allowed to shoot guns in lots of the movies he’s been in. We’ve all had to serve in the military for our mandatory service, so between us, at least, there weren’t specific conversations about how he should hold it. What is worth noting, though, is that there are scenes where actors believe they’ve made a mistake and thought those scenes wouldn’t be included in the movie, but I saw those “errors” as a way to flesh out the characters more.
For example, there’s that scene where, as Bum-seok is racing through the town, he drops his bullets in his pursuit. I’m sure he considered it a mistake and didn’t think it would make the cut, but I thought it was perfect. It was the perfect portrayal of the character because I wanted this character to be someone who is holding a gun and using it, but is actually very scared of doing so.
It made me reflect on the ways you visually frame our “hero” characters’ shifts throughout the film; they are presented to the audience very heroically at the start, but by the film’s end, they seem smaller, more terrified, in contrast to the enormity and strength of the threat they face.
So when these humans race across the bridge, we get this final dialogue from them that is supposed to represent their situation. These human characters talk about progress and how far they’ve come, but seeing the aliens arrive also makes them reflect inward and look back. They now feel strange about what they’ve done in the past and are unsure how to behave and live in light of the revelation. I thought that dialogue was enough to represent the human perspective. They are the aggressors in the story, so I thought that conversation showed them trying to justify what they’ve done.
But the aliens are the victims, and their conversation is inverted. They talk about how, no matter what has happened to us so far, we have to move forward, not lose hope, and keep believing in the future. The film concludes by intercutting between these conflicting powers, and I thought that was the most ideal ending.
Hope (NEON)
Hoyeon, at both screenings of the film at Cannes, people cheered at your first scene when you got out of the car quite literally guns blazing. I know that director Na had you do about twenty takes. Tell me more about how your approach changed over time.
Hoyeon: From the moment I stepped out of the car to the very last U-turn sequence, he was shooting it in a long master shot. Not all the takes were at the same angles; sometimes it was wider, lower, etc. Our cinematographer, Hong Kyung-pyo, and director Na put so much effort into getting that shot right, and what I didn’t know before filming was how finely you have to adjust your eye line depending on exactly where the camera is. Even if you’re looking in the same direction, your eyeline has to adjust depending on where the camera is and what it’s covering. So that’s more of a micro-level thing I had to keep in mind. It gets more complicated when you’re holding a gun, because you also have to adjust where you point it.
I’m sure by take eighteen, though, your energy level is different from take three. Did you ever feel like you were channeling your own real-time exhaustion into Sung-ae?
I was joking during dinner after I finished shooting that scene. At first, I was very focused and looked straight ahead at the intended target, exactly the way director Na wanted. After five to ten takes, I kept the same focus but also was thinking, “Okay, do you have what you need already?” Then by take eighteen, I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know what I was looking at anymore. I would just step out of the car, aim the gun wherever, rinse and repeat.
You’d have to ask director Na which take he ended up using in the final film, but he joked that he would use the second-to-last take I did, when I was at my peak fatigue.
You mentioned incorporating the gun into your choreography, and I wanted to follow up on that. I know that it’s easy to draw comparisons to characters in Western media like Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley, but I’m wondering if you were consciously thinking about the lineage of female Korean action stars wielding big guns that you’re stepping into?
H: I think Korean cinema has been graced with many female action heroes. I think of Jun Ji-hyun in “Assassination”–she’s primarily a sniper, not the kind of gun I was using, but I digress–then you have Kim Tae-ri in “Mr. Sunshine.” I wasn’t approaching my work as “This is a completely new side of a female action hero you haven’t seen before,” but rather, I wanted to appear really focused, adept, and skilled at using the gun the same way that these women have done.
Because this was such a high-action, intense film and I’m the only female in the cast, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the first one to get exhausted. I increased my muscle mass and stamina; I practiced shooting a lot, and I did hardcore physical training for six months before beginning shooting. I knew I’d be surrounded by people who embodied discipline, and I wanted to make sure I was up to par with that.
Hope (NEON)
Director Na, I know you’ve described Paul Verhoeven’s “Robocop” as having a lasting influence on you as a creative and filmmaker. Given that the protagonists of this film are cops, I’m wondering if you found yourself drawing on that influence when it came to crafting the story here.
NH: At the time the movie was released theatrically in Korea, some of the really violent and graphic scenes had been edited out, such as the sequence where Murphy is executed. When I found out the version I was watching had those scenes removed, I knew I had to watch the film in its fullness. I learned you could watch those edited-out scenes through a laser disc version of the movie in Japan. So I found the laser disc, then found a friend who owned the player, and we watched it together.
I distinctly remember being so shocked when our hero was attacked and killed. In that process, we see body parts flying everywhere, and I remember being both shocked and impressed by Paul Verhoeven’s direction. When I watched this, I was an elementary school kid, so that shock stayed with me for a while. I probably couldn’t articulate it as well back then, but now, when I think about those brutal sequences and how RoboCop acts on his vengeance throughout the story, I realize how central catharsis is.
It’s not just catharsis, though, because as a whole, it’s a story that’s heartbreaking and saddening even if there’s triumph. There are so many complex emotions within that catharsis, and I think that complexity and how the film arrives there has served as an influence not just in this film, “Hope”–which I hope also makes you question the catharsis of the on-screen violence–but my other works as well.
When I look at “Hope” in conversation with “The Wailing,” so many of your characters have a preoccupation with bodies: how to dispose of them properly, how to care for the dead after they’ve passed. Can you speak about this throughline, particularly how you frame the improper care of the deceased as a kind of karmic act that will come back to haunt?
NH: From the aliens’ perspective in this story, just like the movie’s title, their only goal is to save this child, to find it, and to bring it to life. I thought it was interesting: what kind of person would find this important child, who represents a kind of salvation for the aliens? How would this child be introduced to the audience on the screen, and what is this child supposed to look like? I was drawn to explore the juxtaposition of royalty and commonality. Tying back to your opening question, there’s something almost nativity-esque in where we see the alien prince: in the muck and mire of the carpenter Yang-bae’s freezer.
Hope (NEON)
Hoyeon, in “Squid Game,” you play Kang Sae-byeok, a North Korean defector who crosses the South Korean border, while in“Hope,” you’re a police officer, enforcing the law. Throughout “Hope,” there’s this idea that’s pervasive about how we need to be wary of trespassers. Tell me more about playing characters on opposite sides, so to speak. I’m wondering if one informs the other and vice versa?
H: That is such an interesting point, I think, and honestly, preparing for this role, I wasn’t thinking about how Sung-ae and Kang Sae-byeok were inverted necessarily, but it’s something I’m going to be thinking more about, particularly in relation to the film’s themes about how we demonize “the other” to our peril.
With Sung-ae, she really tries to protect, maintain, and keep the line. Director Na has shared with me what’s at the core of my character: goodness or human goodwill. I thought it was interesting that she’s capable and someone who does so many things for the town … but what happens when a strong, clear, and simple sense of goodwill meets the reality of the real world, or at least a world of aliens? How does her conception of strength change?
I was fascinated to explore the contradictions and irony that could stem from her kindness meeting the situation she is in, because from the aliens’ perspective, she’s a destructive power. They don’t see goodwill. So I went into this film thinking Director Na really wanted to explore the themes of irony and contradiction that stem from differences in perspective.
What you’re saying is making me think about what Director Na shared with you to help you give insight into your character: “Isn’t Seong-ae the kind of person who knows how many spoons are in the village?” How did you internalize that line when it came to better understanding your character?
H: Obviously, Sung-ae is someone who does all kinds of chores and odd jobs all around the town. The reality is that in Korea, in many rural towns and smaller villages, very few, if any, young people choose to stay. There’s a large aging population but not many young people. What does it mean for someone like her to stay?
That’s the kind of character I interpreted her as. She’s someone who chose to stay there, and she’s simplistic–not in a reductive sense–in her desire for her community. I think that simplicity, or maybe purity is a better word, was important, and I think with the human characters you see in the film, director Na wanted to show how all of them as a collective, when put together, are not just a community unto themselves, but represent humanity writ large.
On one side, you have extraterrestrial aliens, and on the other, you have humans. So rather than director Na wanting to put or place multi-layered complexities to each human character, he almost gives them very simple and light characteristics so that way when all of them put together, you almost see one complex human being, one community as a whole.
Hope (NEON)
Your scene with Mr. Hae-sul–played by Im Hyun-sik–where he’s recounting his story about pooping in the woods is one of the film’s funniest scenes, and it only really works if Sung-ae takes him seriously. I’d love to hear more about filming that sequence, particularly because it acts as a microcosm of what director Na does so well: grounding humor in a foreboding ambiance.
H: (Laughs) It’s not any more secret because Director Na keeps saying this to everybody, but Im Hyun-sik is a legendary actor. He’s in his eighties, and so I was both nervous and excited to meet him. He’s a cute, adorable, and nice person, but the only thing is that he cannot memorize any lines. So we had a big monitor next to me, and we filmed that scene for two days.
It reminded me, in some ways, of your work as Jisoo in “Disclaimer*” because she has to take on a kind of confessional role.
H: You’re right; what you’re saying is making me think of my scene with Kevin Kline, because Jisoo, in that moment, is listening to a story from an elderly figure. I think the difference between Sung-ae and Jisoo is that Jisoo has duplicitous intent when listening to Stephen. She has her own ambition, ego, and sense of justice that affect her ability to be fully present and listen.
I think Sung-ae is more pure of hurt. When she’s hearing Hae-sul share the story, all of a sudden, she doesn’t even care about the monster anymore. She was so fully in it and radiated empathy.
I really love that scene in the hospital because we see the character more, even more so than when she first gets out of the car. You can see how she treats the elders in her town, which shows how, in her everyday life, she’s made being present for them a cornerstone. She’s been living her life “keeping track of the spoons in each household,” so you understand how severe her reaction is when she sees it threatened.
It’s a small moment, but in that scene where she’s tending to Hae-sul, Sung-ae doesn’t even look into his eyes until he brings up aliens. It’s one of the notes director Na gave: Sung-ae is so absorbed in trying to clean up his leg that she’s so focused on caring that she initially doesn’t even meet his gaze.
“Hope” is in theaters via NEON.
- Sixth Season of “Slow Horses” Stands Out in Crowded TV Season (September 8, 2026)
One of Apple TV’s best shows, “Slow Horses,” bounces back after a relatively down fifth season to deliver to fans what might be its best outing to date. More than anything, this adaptation of two Mick Herron books (Joe Country and Slough House) counters the current epidemic of streaming television wherein so many limited series feel like they should have just been a movie. How many times lately have you seen two hours of plot in an 8-episode box? It’s driving TV critics like yours truly slowly insane.
So seeing a 6-part series that zips by like a 90-minute action movie feels almost invigorating. There’s no 6-episode anything on television this year that hums like the sixth season of “Slow Horses,” an outing that’s entertaining, suspenseful, and honestly moving. After season five, I was a little concerned “Horses” was losing its cadence; now, I’m ready to watch it for another decade.
Of course, as is often the case with a season of “Slow Horses,” much of the joy is in how the complex plotting unfolds, so this review will be vague. It’s one of those shows in which it feels like the writers are always just a step ahead of the viewer, but it makes you sit forward to catch up instead of the common reaction to streaming originals of scrolling on your phone until something happens.
Since it’s really the inciting incident, it’s not a spoiler to say that the sixth season opens just after the death of David Cartwright, River’s (Jack Lowden) grandfather. As River deals with his grief, two potentially intertwined events upset the day he has to bury David. First, a pair of Russian assassins seem to be eliminating members of Slough House, and the fact that they’ve also been removed from the MI5 payroll speaks to a potentially high-ranking reason to do so. Second, the vicious Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) pops up, leading to a confrontation between him and River that also pushes through a season that wonderfully contains itself over a limited amount of time. In almost every episode, River has to explain he’s in a suit because he was at a funeral that day.
The previews have spoiled it, but the return of a thought-deceased former member of Slough House also defines the sixth season. Since it’s such a shock to the characters within the show, we’ll keep it secret, but suffice it to say that the subplot really gives the year emotional depth, not just in how it brings out a different side of Lowden but in its themes. The agents of Slough House were sent there because the powers that be saw them as disposable, but what happens when people who were kicked out of the house break back in? So much of “Slow Horses” has been about that idea: That sometimes all it takes to make a great spy is to evict them from the system that holds them back.
Much of this is reflected in Lowden’s work this year, the best of his career. While the show understandably has been pitched as a “Gary Oldman Vehicle,” and while the annual Emmy nominee is truly excellent, this season reminds viewers that it’s at least equally Lowden’s show. The potential next James Bond is put through the wringer physically and emotionally this year, almost to such a degree that one starts to consider if the entire arc of “Slow Horses” won’t be how a River Cartwright becomes a Jackson Lamb through constant betrayals, slain compatriots, and bad diets.
The writing on “Slow Horses” remains some of the strongest on TV, and it’s not just because of the thrilling plotting. As well as any spy fiction of this era can, the writers embed character in plot, using the former to drive the latter instead of pausing for awkwardly inserted backstory. One can feel history and a mix of both regret and pride in these people. There’s a scene between Weaving and Oldman at a Shake Shack, of all places, that’s a mini-masterpiece, one of the best of this year on any series. And kudos to Kristin Scott Thomas for once again taking a complex role and making it real. She has fully closed the deal on the idea that her Diana Taverner is the smartest person in most rooms, but maybe not always the most ethical.
As September and October turn up the dial on streaming originals with shows like “Crystal Lake” and “American Hostage” that are so anticipated that people are paying film festival prices to see them at TIFF (where “Slow Horses” is also dropping its first two episodes, for the record), “Slow Horses” stands out as the likely best of the crowded bunch.
Whole season screened for review. Premieres on Apple TV on September 16, 2026.
- Enslaved Spirits: Maya Annik Bedward on “Black Zombie” (September 7, 2026)
Maya Annik Bedward’s incisive documentary “Black Zombie” isn’t merely a look back at the cinematic origins of the supernatural re-animated monster. It’s a powerful parsing of how the historical distortion of Vodou and the Black diasporic people of Haiti was engineered by exploitative white colonialists, showmen, and hacks to create a being whose obvious racist undertones have altered the perception of an entire religious community.
Premiering at this year’s SXSW, the deeply researched yet wonderfully engaging text traces the origins of the zombie from its chattel slavery and African spiritual roots to today’s apocalyptic residue. Bedward remixes archival footage of sugarcane workers with bold black-and-white recreations and graphic-novel-inspired animation to give a visual arc to the complex series of re-imaginations that have overwhelmed the true history and beauty of Vodou.
She reinforces this point by assembling captivating images of Raras and other ceremonial celebrations, giving her thought-provoking thesis a lived-in vitality. “Black Zombie” is a forceful film, featuring a wide range of talking heads—from Slash to Tananarive Due—who, when balanced with the film’s imperative lessons and pop sensibilities, make for one of the best documentaries of the year.
Bedward spoke with RogerEbert.com about the many obstacles necessary to set the record straight about Haiti, Vodou, and zombies.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I often find watching racist caricatures of Black people in older Hollywood films to be so overwhelming. You had to do a lot of it with this film. What was that experience like for you?
It was a journey. Some of it was done with a sense of humor because some of it is just so ridiculous. The more you see, the more you’re just like: Are you crazy? This is nuts? So, I just decided to laugh at a lot of the stupidity. But when you actually see the ramifications of what this misrepresentation has done to a culture and its people, that’s where you get a lot of anger, and it’s quite upsetting. Some people might argue that it’s just a film; it’s not a big deal, but I think that’s why I made this film. I wanted to show that films are super powerful mediums that can shape our entire perspective on society, cultures, people, and who we are. It’s something we need to be very critical of and thoughtful of as filmmakers when we’re making stuff. When I look at more of the politics of things or the history of things, particularly Black representation in media, that’s where I get more upset.
In your film, many of the Haitian subjects talk about the impact of seeing these very racist Western-skewed depictions of themselves in media where they’re depicted as evil Vodou practitioners and lament it.
Film is also the reason a lot of people from the Black diaspora are hesitant to learn more about African traditional religions because we’ve been taught, especially through media, that this stuff is dark magic, that it’s nefarious, that we should stay away from it. But for those of us who have family who do actually practice, whether it’s Santeria, Obeah, or Vodou, we might not talk about it, or we might remove ourselves from our proximity to that—it all comes from these horrible representations. This shame has been brought onto us. Undoing that shame was a huge motivation for making this film.
I’m always interested in the hunting down of archival footage. You have some black-and-white film here that appears to be from the 1920s of Haitians working in sugarcane fields. Where did you find that?
We didn’t want the film to just feel like a history book. I really wanted this film to resonate with audiences. So with the black-and-white archival video footage, I wanted to make the film feel as alive as possible. In telling this history, we wanted to find a way for photographs or illustrations to grip you. So we used a lot of animation to add another dimension and pull people in. And then we also found archival footage that, obviously, is not from that era because there weren’t films back then, but it kind of represented the conditions under which these people worked and could complement the film within the film—the footage [of men walking through sugarcane fields with torches] that I recreated as well. I wanted to grab people.
There’s a lot of educational content in the film, but I really wanted people to stay with me as we dug deeper and deeper and deeper into the history of the zombie and where it really comes from, and consequently the history of slavery in Haiti and what happened to Vodou. That required a lot of work to find sources in many different ways, including hiring archival researchers and using what I looked up.
To touch on the black-and-white recreations, which are set in the 1790s, the photography in those moments isn’t necessarily trying to match the archival footage. It’s more spellbinding and ethereal. Could you talk about shooting those sequences and finding the right visual tone for them?
For me, the heart of the film was the story of the zombie that I learned about, which was really connected to one of the central tenets of Vodou, which is this idea that when you die, you return to this mythical Africa, and there’s this reconnection that happens with the ancestors and the spirits. I thought that was such a powerful story, especially for people who’ve been enslaved and have been uprooted from their lands and brought to the New World to toil—this idea that when you die you finally get to be free. The concept that the zombie would prevent you from having this reconnection and enslave you not just in your life, but in your afterlife, I thought was just such a horrific idea. Like, you can’t even control your spirit; it’s enslaved.
So I wanted to figure out how to tell that story in a way that would emotionally connect with people in the same way it connected with me. I came up with the idea of doing these recreations when I could get access to a sugarcane field and actually shoot in that kind of space. In terms of the aesthetic, I’m definitely referencing some of the older zombie films, so it’s kind of this visual reclamation of the story by taking back from these early zombie films that were very much rooted in this colonial space where they did talk about enslavement and Vodou, and the zombie was very much connected to these stories, but distorted.
And toward the end, you pull back from those recreations to show this meta-textual layer that’s happening where part of your film is about how cinema has destabilized these traditions, and here you are, toward the end, showing how your film is rectifying that in some way via these meta-textual means.
I hope so. Even though I am Afro-Caribbean and I’m part of the diaspora, I’m not Haitian, and I’m not, most importantly, a Vodou practitioner, so I felt like it was important to pull back and put the lens on me and why I’m doing this, what my intentions are, and what I’m really hoping to achieve with this film. Because so many people have come in and tried to tell the story of the zombie, and it’s just become a total show.
There’s also the globetrotting aspect to your film. You not only film in Haiti but also Montreal, Paris and New Orleans. When did the geographic scope of the film expand?
What’s happened is that zombies and Vodou have had such a far-reaching effect. The zombie isn’t just huge in the US. It’s also huge all around the world. The word is a common household name. So, the story was always more global as a result. Although many of the distortions do come from Hollywood, I think other places’ roles in the bigger story are very important. France, for example, being the place that colonized Haiti, a lot of the prior exploitation and oppression starts with that colonial story.
In fact, I always knew we were going to France. That was always on the table. I didn’t know how, but I always knew it. Because a lot of people will look at stories like this and be like, “Oh well, it has nothing to do with me. I’m not interested.” But this story involves us all. Colonialism has affected everyone on this planet. Some people got a lot out of it, and for others there was a lot of exploitation and oppression. It’s important to acknowledge that we’re all complicit in different ways, especially given what’s happened to Haiti. So, I always saw myself traveling to different places.
That said, the place I was most shocked to spend so much time in was Pittsburgh. I don’t actually give it a title card in the film, but Pittsburgh is the zombie capital of the world because that’s where Romero’s from, and that’s where “Night of the Living Dead” was shot.
Director Maya Annik Bedward.
I believe you watched 500 zombie-related films as research. In another filmmaker’s hands, this film would’ve purely been a historical Hollywood critique. But you’re balancing the cinematic legacy with larger themes. How did you strike that balance in the edit?
That was the hardest part of making the film: that balance of figuring out the story I wanted to tell about what happened to the zombie and how that extraction has shaped our popular misunderstanding of Bodhu and other African traditional religions, and also getting into the nitty-gritty of how that happened and the effects of that while showing zombie films. How do you do all that? The zombie film pieces I thought were particularly important were the comedic moments that bring key people into the film, so I can get them to the point where they’ll learn about the Haitian Revolution and what happened after that. So, there was a lot of editing and re-editing and re-editing and re-editing and re-editing to strike that balance.
There’s also so much on-the-ground footage featuring these Haitian parades and ceremonies. Could you talk about pulling these immersive images together?
I spent a lot of time with Yves-Grégory, who’s one of the contributors in the film, in his hometown of Jacmel, and we went to a lot of festivals and events with him. We were there during the Raras, and I worked with an incredible Haitian crew to shoot that and the Fèt Gede. My goal was to go back to Haiti when I had the funding to shoot with nicer cameras, because at the time I was only working on a really small research budget. I had this entire idea of how I wanted the color, the light, and the movement from these events to translate on film.
Unfortunately, our film was greenlit right before March 2020. COVID happened and the world shut down. We were in LA starting our first day of principal photography, and we had to cancel the whole thing. Because the film involved so much travel, I decided to take some time before going back into production. But then the really unfortunate event of the assassination of the president of Haiti happened, and things just descended into absolute turmoil, which made things very dangerous there. A lot of my crew and contributors were on lockdown half the time just because it became too risky to be out in the streets. Even in Jacmel, which is usually quite a calm city. The idea of going there and bringing out a camera to shoot in the streets would have put everyone’s lives at risk. I couldn’t go back to shoot what I had hoped to shoot.
All of the footage in the film was shot during research. Eventually, I had to bring the Haitian crew and our contributors to the Dominican Republic, which was very upsetting to do given the relationship between the two countries and how the Dominican Republic treats Haitians. Fortunately, we had a great Afro-Dominican team who made sure everyone was very safe. We worked with incredible Haitian communities in the Dominican Republic to show some of the culture there, because there is such a big Haitian community.
In the post-credit scene, there’s additional footage of one of the subjects, Erol Josué, doing a ceremonial dance. Why did you decide to end the film with that?
If I could, I would’ve had the whole film just be Erol’s performance. It was so powerful. We shot that in the ruins of a sugarcane mill in the Dominican Republic. Erol took the energy of the space and created this impromptu performance there. It’s 30 minutes long, and it’s incredible. I moved it around a lot in the film because it often got cut short to fit the narrative, and I wanted to give it more space. I kind of wanted it to stand on its own as something powerful.
You actually see him prepare for it and start it earlier in the film, but I thought it’d be really nice to have that at the end. It’s a kind of gift after the credits for those who have the patience to see it. People have asked me why I didn’t translate what he’s saying, and I didn’t want his performance to be about our consumption or the audience’s. It’s about being in this moment with him in this important place.
Speaking of consumption, what do you hope audiences take from the film?
I think the big thing I hope is that everyone knows about the origin of the zombie and its connection to Haiti. I really hope that just becomes commonplace knowledge. I also want people to better understand and want to learn more about the Haitian Revolution and to understand how Vodou is misrepresented and isn’t dark magic in any shape or form. It’s a religion to be respected and celebrated.
- Venice Film Festival 2026: Ink, Moragheb, Too Much Sugar (September 6, 2026)
“Ink,” Danny Boyle’s movie about the London newspaper scene in the 1960s and ‘70s, is a Frankenstein story. Strangely, however, the monster is not Rupert Murdoch, the most notorious and powerful character in the tale, and the architect of a very salable brand of right-wing mob-pandering journalism that helped reshape the world into a neo-fascist purgatory. Here, Murdoch is Dr. Frankenstein, tinkering in his lab in hopes of making loads more money than he already has and sticking it to the “posh” snobs who look down on him.
Murdoch’s monster is Larry Lamb, Northern editor for Manchester’s Daily Mail, who quickly shapes up as a favorite son, thrills Murdoch by going too far and then way too far, crossing lines that even Murdoch is afraid to flout. Lamb’s name is unknown outside journalism circles, but in Beatles-era London, he was the media equivalent of a bad-boy rockstar whose fame rose in proportion to how many journalistic norms he violated. Among other innovations, he invented the Page Three Girl, a daily dose of topless tease that he later said he regretted.
In 1968, Murdoch hired Lamb away from the Daily Mail, which, like most English newspapers, had a veneer of respectability and operated under the belief that the press had a moral responsibility to give citizens useful information about their community and the world (even as they rotted their brains in other ways). The story begins when Murdoch (Guy Pearce), who was already styling himself as a giddy rule-breaker who struck terror in the hearts of Fleet Street’s Old Guard, meets with Lamb (Jack O’Connell) at London’s oldest restaurant.
Lamb is the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith and shares the Aussie’s reflexive loathing of the ruling class, so he agrees with Murdoch’s dim view of the Daily Mail as a bland establishment mouthpiece that makes reading feel like homework. But he still resists Murdoch’s pressure to jump ship because he believes that even inconsistently observed rules are better than none. Murdoch plays on Lamb’s feelings of being unappreciated and meets his demand for an even larger salary than Murdoch was prepared to offer, plus a new Jaguar. And a brand new maverick is born.
What follows is a punk rock answer to “Citizen Kane,” a film Boyle references visually. Fisheye lenses warp straight lines and make rooms seem huge and roads endless. In an early pressroom sequence, Boyle and cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler put the camera on the floor pointing up, so Murdoch and Lamb tower over us while sheets of freshly-printed newspapers rush above and around them. Pearce is, as usual, very solid and unfussy, and so controlled that some of his most electrifying moments are captured from behind his back, or from a three-quarters view that shows only a sliver of his face. He also captures the mogul’s odd mix of puritanism and sleaze. O’Connell dazzles in a newly minted superstar performance that evokes the steamroller confidence of Jon Hamm in “Mad Men.”
“Ink” is a breezy, cheeky feature that packs three hours’ worth of story into two and finds ways to make history feel immediate. Boyle affixes GoPro cameras to Lamb’s Jaguar as he and a pair of arm-candy birds rip through small-town streets. The soundtrack throws in a few 2020s needle-drops alongside the expected period music. Daniel Pemberton’s score combines Nine Inch Nails-adjacent noise rock with the subterranean rumble of newspaper presses.
But the script, adapted by James Graham from his same-titled play, makes some unfortunate choices. The sexual politics, for instance, are altogether pretty rank, even after you’ve extended the movie the standard “depiction does not equal endorsement” waiver.
And some of the things it seems to think it’s doing to counter the ingrained sexism of that time and place instead come across as attempts to soft-pedal the facts. For example, Claire Foy plays a character named Jules Davies, described as a composite representing various women journalists from 1960s Fleet Street. Claire’s contributions to editorial meetings revolve around sex, and the most salient fact in her bio is that she’s Larry’s mistress.
It would’ve had more impact to write multiple women journalists based on actual people, and visit with each of them occasionally and briefly, so the movie had to struggle to make space for them in much the same way the newspapers did.
And then there’s the deeply weird turn the story takes near the end, when it’s implied that Lamb has repeatedly gone beyond the pale by pretty much everyone’s standards, including those of his boss, the original “move fast, break things” CEO.
Yes, it’s dramatically effective to have the protagonist end the story as such a pariah, but the implication that Murdoch distances himself from Lamb because he and his wife are uncomfortable with how far he’s gone is not just historically incorrect but dishonest. The Sun featured topless Page Three girls until 2015, and although Murdoch’s papers evolved over time, the changes were tactical and aesthetic, with nothing to do with remorse or personal evolution. Even the film’s own coda inadvertently confirms that Murdoch couldn’t have been that upset. If he had totally lost trust in Lamb, why did he keep him around for another 12 years? This is a dazzlingly assured but untrustworthy movie, almost as cynically expedient as the men it depicts.
As lean and focused as it is powerful, “Moragheb (Falling House)” is the sum total of its many influences, and as good as the best of them. It’s about a family in suburban Tehran whose house is slated for demolition in a redevelopment project that has already flattened most of what used to be their neighborhood. They’re supposed to move out in a few days, but bad luck and poor judgment leave them without a new home and few prospects for temporary housing. This nerve-wracking predicament is the ticking clock that drives the film’s action. But it’s also an amazingly versatile analogy for other problems facing the family as individuals and as a unit, and for much larger threats, from the ongoing rise of corporate-driven authoritarianism to the escalating effects of climate change.
Rashid (Farhad Aslani) is not only employed by the ruling powers (as a prison guard on death row), but he also embodies them. From his propensity for bullying to the ingrained patriarchal values that guide his decisions as a husband and father, he’s a reactionary to his core. This isn’t softened even by his evident love for his wife Zinat (Rima Raminfar), his bright and principled younger daughter Janan (Elena Khakbazan), and his older daughter Ensi (Laleh Marzban), whose great love is the history and craft of runway modeling, something that, to put mildly, is not a viable career path in modern Iran. Nevertheless, she’s secretly been sending headshots to foreign modeling agencies and just got an interview with one in Istanbul, an impressive accomplishment for a young woman who’s afraid to go outside without covering her hair.
If you think dad’s going to have an issue with that, you’re right. His reaction quickly escalates from sadness to bluster to condemnation and finally blatant oppression. All the doors inside the house have locks, and only he has keys (not a sign of a healthy household to start with), so he locks Ensi in her bedroom and tells her he won’t let her out until she surrenders her passport. Ensi refuses, rightly saying she doesn’t believe the standoff will end there.
Everyone turns against Dad, but his emotional stranglehold on the house is such that they can’t confront him directly, much less make demands. So they try to cajole and trick him while playing on his fatherly sentimentality. This doesn’t get them very far because Rashid is a soft-spoken but ruthless negotiator who’s good at convincing the ladies of the house that he’ll do things he has no intention of doing.
Directed and co-written by Mohsen Gharaei (with script collaborator Emad Khodabakhsh), “Moragheb” is an Iranian Neorealist drama in the vein of classic 1990s works by such giants as Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Majid Majidi. These directors and others from the period told realistic, empathetic, tough stories about working people struggling against society’s injustices and their own thorny personalities. In the spirit of that period of Iranian cinema, “Falling House” is a domestic drama that’s also a political one, in which women of independent spirit become prisoners of a man who’s supposed to be their protector.
The movie also feels indebted to Western stage and screen dramas with a “kitchen sink” flavor. There are fragments of Arthur Miller and John Osborne; the working-class-focused, live television plays of the 1950s (“Marty,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight”); and the 1960s American film dramas by politically progressive directors like Sidney Lumet. What these works all have in common is their ability to be micro and macro at the same time. They were about what they were about, but they were also aiming at bigger and more daunting targets than whoever happened to be the least likable character.
And, like those works, “Falling House” is as theatrical as it is cinematic. It gives every actor the equivalent of one or more spotlight moments, pairing them off to perform beautiful little duets that deepen both characters while advancing the story and adding more complications. It stages action within the family’s home, in the surrounding ruins, and inside and outside Rashid’s place of employment in a manner that converts real locations into sets in an enormous outdoor theater. The knockout final stretch is both tragic and cathartic, leaving us with a sliver of hope for positive change while also conceding that, with caveman values baked into societies all around the world, situations like this can never be transcended, only endured.
Calling filmmaker Robert Greene and his regular cinematographer Robert Kolodny documentarians doesn’t feel quite right. But there isn’t another word that precisely describes the merger of fiction, nonfiction, experimentation, and social work that has defined so much of their output (which includes “Procession” and “Bisbee ‘17”). And taxonomic labels seem beside the point when you surrender to the flow of the work itself and abandon any preconceptions you brought in.
“Too Much Sugar” might be the most audacious and free-form entry yet in their body of work. Imagine one of those workshops that are intended to help people process their traumas by making art, and then imagine it taking the form of a feature-length film where all the main players get to imagine a movie of their own lives, then cast, write, and direct it. The result illuminates hard truths about their personalities and experiences, just not necessarily the ones they hoped to present to the audience.
The main characters are a couple of ex-convicts who became best friends and now live in houses directly across from each other in a small-town Missouri cul-de-sac. Each has a brood of kids with different baby mamas. Ryan “Holli-wood” Hollinger, aka “Toe Tag,” is a former WWA fighter turned carpenter and volunteer children’s athletic coach who has fathered six children by five women. Most of his offspring live with him and his partner Amanda, a beautiful, generous, sweet woman whose default smile hides her anxiety over whether Ryan will ever stop screwing around and become the husband and father he loudly insists he’s trying to be. Ryan’s pal, boxer and fellow construction worker Michael Mydgett, aka “AccRite,” is also a veritable Johnny Appleseed of genetic material, with five kids by four women (including the one he currently lives with).
It was Ryan’s original idea to write, direct and star in a homemade movie about his own journey, but it was Greene (who met Ryan at a children’s basketball game and initially found him insufferable) who expanded the idea and brought everybody else into the project. We get to see personal stories reimagined as a fantasy, a love story, and a goofy slapstick comedy about a large family, among other genres. The subjects defy media stereotypes of ignorant Midwestern po’ folks, demonstrating an easygoing familiarity not just with cinematic grammar and tropes, but psychiatric terms and therapy-speak (“Is my dad a narcissist?” one of Ryan’s sons asks Greene).
What ultimately makes the movie powerful, as opposed to merely intriguing, is its mid-narrative pivot toward AccRite. He’s been a broken husk ever since he lost one of his sons, then 16, in a senseless shooting after a house party. AccRite wants to make a time-travel thriller in which he rescues his son and brings him forward into the future where he can live a full life. The agony emanating from AccRite’s haunted face and often watery eyes is almost too much to take.
Even with the filmmakers and his friends and family going out of their way to treat him with compassion, his unreachability can’t be breached. It’s only when Greene, Kolodny, Ryan and the others lure him into improvised scenes dealing with his loss that he begins to process what happened rather than continue hiding inside his pain. That so many of these moments could be either real, caught-on-camera eruptions of pure pain or improvisational theater exercises that mutate into primal scream therapy further emphasizes the film’s belief that, deep down, everyone knows how to act, and would use it for therapeutic purposes all the time if they only knew how.
At a time when the very idea of art as a useful human pursuit is under concentrated assault by technology, politicians, and the culture as a whole, this movie is as replenishing as a bottle of cold water on a hot day. It also gets across the idea that cinema, drama, writing, and creativity itself are sources of nourishment for human beings of every race, class, and nationality. It might fit well on a double bill with “Falling House” because it tackles many of the same conundrums and challenges with the same tools, but uses them differently.
