Author: Caitlin Abe Gokool

• Dandelion’s Odyssey [Cannes 2025]

  

  In 2024, Flow reminded us of the power of animation. The ability to tell a story through animals and moving pictures, without dialogue, asking us to connect with other species that we saw ourselves reflected in. This year at Cannes, we were shown a new way to appreciate this style of film with Momoko Seto’s…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  May 22, 2025

• Caravan [Cannes 2025]

  

  Directed by Zuzana Kirchnerová, Caravan follows Esther, a devoted mother to her son David, who was born with an intellectual disability. Overwhelmed, she steals a caravan after a stressful night and takes David along with her on a van trip through southern Italy. As the pair travel, they meet a young drifter, who slowly starts…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  May 22, 2025

• A Nice Indian Boy

  

  If the queer rom-com we have come to know asks, how will your parents react when you come out and bring home a partner of the same sex, then A Nice Indian Boy complicated this by asking how will your traditional Indian parents react when you bring home your white-orphan-artist boyfriend. Directed by Canadian Roshan…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  March 19, 2025

• She’s the He [SXSW 2025]

  

  Following 2023, the unofficial year of the girl with Barbie and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Emma Seligman’s Bottoms redefined what the queer coming-of-age film could be. A film that film never shied away from being an unrestrained, provocative look at the lives of unpopular teenage lesbians, there was a clear new timeline beginning for the…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  March 12, 2025

• Glorious Summer [SXSW 2025]

  

  It is always curious to me when a film seems to sum up its central theme in a line a character directly says: what’s more important, security or freedom of choice? In Glorious Summer‘s case, this works, and ponders this question as it follows three young women who live in an idyllic home, separated from…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  March 10, 2025

• The Good Sister [Berlinale 2025]

  

  A stunningly mundane film about what happens when someone you love is accused of something horrible. In The Good Sister, Rose is very close with her brother, Sam. When sharing a home, Sam brings a woman over one night when Rose is home, and later the woman accuses Sam of rape. As Rose struggles to…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  March 5, 2025

• Hysteria [Berlinale 2025]

  

  What qualifies as an accident or an apology when your own beliefs, your own religion, become the target of a violent act that seems unintentional. Hysteria is one of the latest “film-within-a-film” films that follows Elif, working on a movie set, which is thrown into turmoil when a Quran is burned during one of the…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  February 24, 2025

• How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World [Berlinale 2025]

  

  In what could be the most unhinged, and relatable, film title of the year, How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World begins with a question all to familiar to the coming of age story and what makes it relatable, how can I be normal? After leaving a psychiatric hospital, Pia returns…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  February 17, 2025

• Oscars 2025: My Picks and Reactions

  

  Although awards season (in my opinion) has very much tainted the way a lot of viewers watch films these days, and the fact the Oscars has faced loads of backlash that effectively take away a lot of their integrity as a stage of merit for accolades in the film industry, I still love watching this…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  January 23, 2025

• The Room Next Door

  

  In his latest work, one of Spain’s most acclaimed directors, Pedro Almodovar, considers female friendships, motherhood, and euthanasia. This work is The Room Next Door, and stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. Based on the novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, Swinton’s Martha faces terminal cancer, and upon reuniting with her close…

  Caitlin Abe Gokool

  January 8, 2025