‘Exploring’ features the filmographies of filmmakers that I’ve largely completed and celebrates them on the week of their birthdays.
Exploring #19: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Author / Eternality Tan
2,000 Meters to Andriivka (2025)
Realism without filters, Chernov’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is a devastating war vérité that strips conflict of rhetoric, leaving only attrition, absurdity, and the unbearable weight of patriotic labour carried by ordinary Ukrainian men.
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Distant (2002)
A provincial man who’s trying to find a job stays with his city cousin in Ceylan’s masterful third feature that probes issues of personal stasis and social alienation in contemporary Turkish society, marked by restrained performances that accrue a quiet emotional depth.
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Palestine 36 (2025)
Unadorned in form yet uncompromising in purpose, Jacir’s invigorating new work about the late ‘30s Arab revolt in Palestine shows that power lies in the clarity with which one reframes both past injustice and present responsibility.
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Golden Globes 2026 Prediction
Awards season is right around the corner – here are my predictions for the Golden Globes 2026:
WW: Will Win
DH: Dark Horse
Prediction Results: 10/15 (13/15 if including dark horses)
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Ikiru (1952)
An old man who learns of his stomach cancer attempts to make the most out of his numbered days in Kurosawa’s powerful examination of body and soul, living and dying, and the societal conditioning of the common man in misjudging others.
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Exploring #18: Alice Rohrwacher
‘Exploring’ features the filmographies of filmmakers that I’ve largely completed and celebrates them on the week of their birthdays.
Blue Moon (2025)
Shot nearly entirely in one location, and very close to real time, Linklater’s sublime chill pill of a Berlinale entry centers on the legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart, who suffers a severe morale dip, played by Ethan Hawke in an Oscar-worthy performance.
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Love in the Afternoon (1972)
Rohmer’s provocative final entry from his ‘Six Moral Tales’ calls attention to the temptation of extramarital affairs, as a man in a happy marriage contemplates putting his immoral theoretical thoughts into practice.
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Love (2024)
A urologist and her gay male nurse are non-committal in their pursuit of relationships with others, but their array of experiences challenges their worldviews on love, sex and the ‘morality’ of values, in this outstanding middle entry of Haugerud’s loose thematic ‘Oslo’ trilogy.
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