#‘DJ Ahmet’ Review: Techno Music and Shepherding Collide in a Touching Coming-of-Age Tale

#‘DJ Ahmet’ Review: Techno Music and Shepherding Collide in a Touching Coming-of-Age Tale

Picture Footloose happening right now in a tiny village in Northern Macedonia, and you’ll get the vibe behind writer-director Georgi M. Unkovski’s touching feature debut, DJ Ahmet. Set in a remote Yuruk farming community where religion and tradition dominate both the young and old, the dramedy follows a 15-year-old shepherd who finds salvation from the…

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#‘Girls Will Be Girls’ Review: A Distinctive Drama About Fraught Mother-Daughter Relationships

#‘Girls Will Be Girls’ Review: A Distinctive Drama About Fraught Mother-Daughter Relationships

Before Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), a headstrong and academically gifted 16-year-old, met Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), she didn’t think about love. She focused on her classwork and dreamed of perfect scores. Their courtship, a series of endearing encounters that start with a night of stargazing, changes her priorities. Now, Mira studies Sri’s body, fantasizes about their…

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#‘A Different Man’ Review: Sebastian Stan Drops the Mask in a Provocative Dark Comedy With a Heart

#‘A Different Man’ Review: Sebastian Stan Drops the Mask in a Provocative Dark Comedy With a Heart

Looks can be deceiving in A Different Man, writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s endearingly twisted take on actors, playwrights, egos and the plight of the profoundly disfigured. Like the famous “Eye of the Beholder” episode of The Twilight Zone, in which humans turn out to be society’s freakish outcasts, this dark comedy suggests what happens when an…

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#‘Girls State’ Review: A Worthy, if Not Wholly Satisfying, Companion Doc to ‘Boys State’

#‘Girls State’ Review: A Worthy, if Not Wholly Satisfying, Companion Doc to ‘Boys State’

Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s Boys State, a winner at Sundance in 2020 and the Emmys in 2021, walked a delicate line between delivering an inspiring and wholly disheartening look at the civic-minded teens attending Texas’ version of the annual governmental jamboree.  Since that ideological conflict aligned perfectly with my own experiences at Massachusetts Boys…

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