What We Applauded & What We Endured at the New York Film Festival

On April 16, 2025, Fatma Hassouna was killed in an Israeli airstrike alongside her family, including her pregnant sister. It was—like all Palestinians whose lives have been stolen since even before October 7, 2023—an undeserved end to an existence made undignified at every turn. Still, the 25-year-old photojournalist lived through the bombings, displacement, and murder of her 11 family members, with indomitable will.

In the months leading up to her death, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi struck up a virtual friendship with Hassouna. The film pulls together hours of FaceTime footage and serves as yet another testament to the daily devastation perpetrated by the IDF. Farsi and Hassouna’s conversations are pockmarked by airstrikes, famine, and human suffering. Yet, Hassouna continued to dream—of visiting Paris, of getting married, and of liberation. As Farsi told the Guardian after the film premiered in Cannes in April, Hassouna became “my eyes in Gaza…fiery and full of life. I filmed her laughs, her tears, her hopes and her depression.”

During their final conversation, Farsi got to tell Hassouna that Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk would premiere at a French independent film festival that runs at the same time as Cannes. Farsi invited Hassouna, who was going to try and attend. Twenty-four hours later, she was killed.

“If I die, I want a loud death,” Hassouna wrote on social media before her murder. “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.”

Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk offers that terribly cold comfort.

After the Hunt

If you read this review, you already know how I feel about After the Hunt. For better, and most certainly for worse, Luca Guadagnino’s cancel culture opus is Tár for people who were confused by Tár.

Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts), a renowned philosophy professor at Yale, finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place when her favorite student, Maggie Price (Ayo Edebiri), accuses her work husband, Henrik Gibson (Andrew Garfield), of sexual assault. On the one hand, it would cause irreparable harm to her #girlboss reputation if she didn’t publicly support her student, whom she doubts. On the other hand, it would do even more damage to her relationship with Gibson if she didn’t take his side. Guadagnino wastes too much time toying with his audience about why Imhoff has such difficulty with the decision. In fact, the film’s entire second act asks you to consider where Imhoff’s loyalty actually lies—with Price, Gibson, or herself. Frankly, by the time you get confirmation that it’s her, you probably won’t give a shit anymore.

But it gets worse when Imhoff’s skepticism of Price is ham-handedly explained. At 15 years old, she was in what she considered to be a consensual sexual relationship with her father’s best friend. After he told Imhoff that he wouldn’t leave his wife, she publicly claimed he had raped her, and he ended his life. In admitting this to her husband, Imhoff’s internalized ire toward Price sort of makes sense. There’s an inherent distrust—not because we live in a society where most people don’t believe women, but because she herself “lied.” Never mind that statistically speaking, the number of women who lie about rape is near zero. What’s most maddening is that it’s Imhoff’s husband who informs her that there is no such thing as a consensual sexual relationship between an adult man and a child.

Stylistically, every still of After the Hunt is interesting, and between Roberts, Garfield, and Michael Stuhlbarg, there’s no shortage of talent on display. It’s just a shame the story wasn’t more reflective of today’s society

Sentimental Value

At this point, I would pay $20 to watch Stellan Skarsgård walk up and down aisles at Whole Foods for two hours. For now, though, there’s Joaquim Trier’s black comedy Sentimental Value, in which he stars as Gustav Borg, an egomaniac film director and the estranged father of two adult daughters trying to make good. It’s certainly no trip to the grocery store, but it’s still worth a watch.

When Borg’s career hits the skids, he’s left with one option: to recruit his famous actress daughter (the resplendent Renate Reinsve) to star in his next project and revive his reputation. Out of spite, she declines, and he gives the role to Hollywood starlet Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). But as Borg makes his movie—a biopic about his mother filmed in her home and the one he once shared with his ex-wife and his daughters—reconnection is inevitable. Redemption, too. If it sounds like a paint-by-numbers “bad dad becomes good dad but only in old age” movie, know that you’re dead wrong.

Sentimental Value is a meditation not just on fraught father-daughter relationships, but on memory and how we tend to trivialize it (or not) before ultimately paying tribute to it. If brought to life by a different cast, the screenplay would be bungled and the characters unrealized. Only these folks could make the stakes feel high and the payoff utterly heartfelt.

Father Mother Sister Brother

These days, family dramas are rarely clever, and most tend to be corny in their attempts at illustrating our shared traditions, trials, or traumas. Marriage Story and Everything Everywhere All at Once, I’m looking at you. Sorry! But not Jim Jarmusch’s Father, Mother, Sister, Brother. Instead of relying on melodrama, this touching triptych is a smartly-paced snapshot of three separate families. A plaintive stare out a car window. A shift in a seat after a parent says something you disagree with. Silence. There is no sentimentality here, but a certain starkness. We can’t choose our families, but we can decide how close we remain with them.

The first section sees Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) visit their nameless father, portrayed by Tom Waits. This kind of visit doesn’t happen often—Emily (the less patient, more selfish of the two) confirms as much. But Jeff feels compelled to at least pretend to care. Waits knows this, yet plays the role of the unsuspecting dad in their ritual. The kids think he’s a lonely recluse, and he lets them, accepts their pity gifts, and resists the urge to usher them out the door. The second section follows Lilith (Vicky Krieps) and Timothea (Cate Blanchett) as they suffer through their yearly afternoon tea with their mother (Charlotte Rampling). The only thing Lilith, the lying bohemian, and Timothea, the dutiful older sister, have in common is the arm’s length at which they keep their austere mother on the other end of. But that distance is happily maintained by both parties. Finally, there’s Billy (Luka Sabbat) and Skye (Indya Moore), twins who share a sincere appreciation for their parents who’ve just passed away. Was this appreciation only developed after their death? Maybe! Could they have ended up like Jeff and Emily or Lilith and Timothea? That’s also unclear. Regardless, their bond transcends that of annoyance and obligation.

Of all the films I saw at the festival, I was the least prepared to be moved by this one. And judging by the audible sniffles during the ending credits, I’m willing to wager I wasn’t the only one who called my mom immediately afterward.

Deliver Me from Nowhere

The much-anticipated Bruce Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White is hardly a perfect film. At times, it’s a little too saccharine. Some might even accuse it of being fan service. But if that’s the case, it’s still a damn fine dedication to a working-class rock legend.

In 1982, Springsteen returned home to New Jersey to write his next album, Nebraska, which would ultimately become one of his most beloved. Inspired by Flannery O’Connor stories, late-’50s serial killer Charles Starkweather, and an adulthood shadowed by childhood trauma, Nebraska would define him as a singular storyteller. Here, on the precipice of super stardom, however, a young Springsteen struggled with chronic self-hatred and a whole host of mental illnesses stemming from his father’s side. His solution? Living in near-seclusion to write and record a collection of stripped-down songs about outlaws and misfits. The result? A record studio execs thought would never sell. The joke, of course, was very much on them. Springsteen’s vulnerability—manifesting in raw vocals and ripped-right-from-the-heart lyrics—redefined the rock genre and represented an alternative to toxic masculinity.

Sure, the film has its ever-so-slightly saccharine moments. With White as Springsteen, however, I barely noticed.

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