© 2026 The Couch Critic
While making his graduation film in Cairo, Omar Ibrahim learns that his home country, Sudan, is being shaken by revolution. In the film’s fictional story, a family is unable to bury their deceased child – a theme that strangely echoes the sense of powerlessness experienced by the filmmaker who, in Nothing Happens After the Revolution, reflects on exile.
Screw Sasquatch. This CA city deserves its own cryptid — and one guy is determined to make it happen.
Everyone in town knows Simón's story, because like a rumor or an urban legend, it has been spreading among its inhabitants, the few who believe him and those who question everything about his story... But Simón will clear up doubts, recounting what happened during those supernatural events...
An unsuspecting college kid gets dragged into a double date by his performative friend, only to find the girl he's paired with is an extraterrestrial.
In Cambodia, former Khmer Rouge child soldier Aki Ra and his wife Hout help communities reclaim their land by undertaking the potentially lethal task of clearing unexploded landmines left over from years of war. Along the way they adopt unwanted kids whose childhoods and limbs have been destroyed by landmines, and open a war museum that soon becomes world famous. Aki Ra fights to break free of shadows cast by his role in the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, and rebuild his shattered family. But in a country grappling to come to terms with its history, the past always has a way of catching up.
From the streets of Ocotlán, Jalisco—where growing up meant learning to endure before learning to dream—Carlos Salcido found an unexpected path in soccer. It was not a childhood plan or an early promise in the sport, but an opportunity that arrived late, when life had already taught him to fight for every step. Thus began the journey of a man who turned adversity into drive. With discipline and character, Salcido left behind the poverty of his origins to become a key figure for Chivas Guadalajara, PSV Eindhoven and Mexico's national soccer team, earning his place among the most respected defenders of his generation.
On the night of his messy breakup, a drunk and heartbroken brother reconnects with his estranged sister, who becomes the comfort he didn't know he needed.
Far from home, a young Burmese man struggles to escape the weight of a brutal and unforgiving military coup, threatening both his nation’s freedom and its very survival. Now, in Australia and unable to return home, he’s doing everything he can to stay connected to his people.
On the night of the national holiday of April 21st (Tiradentes Day), a group of young students breaks into the university where they study in order to play a tabletop RPG game. Throughout the night, they are brutally attacked by a mysterious killer who dresses as Joaquim José da Silva Xavier (the historical figure known as Tiradentes) and who harbors a dark secret involving the political course of Brazil over the last decade.
A brutal femicide has shaken the coastal city of Galway. Criminal psychologist Cathrin Blake, who was personally close to the young victim, is particularly distraught. The dehumanising violence against a defenceless woman challenges Cathrin not only professionally, but also, and above all, emotionally.
A casual evening gathering between friends quickly spirals into an awkward ordeal when unexpected personal revelations clash with unfolding global chaos. As tensions rise and social boundaries blur, the group must navigate a series of bizarre interruptions that challenge their attempts to maintain a normal vibe.
Deok-jung, a taxi driver who speaks of death as casually as small talk, receives a terminal diagnosis. He buys a worn-out coffee vending machine — a mirror of himself — and sets out to find meaning in whatever time he has left. At a cheap lodging house, he crosses paths with Jeong-suk, a down-on-her-luck karaoke hostess past her prime. Moved by something he can't quite name, he offers her a deal: look after the machine, and he'll call it a relationship. Bound together by hardship and loneliness, the two begin to quietly tend to each other's wounds, and what started as a contract slowly becomes something neither expected. Before he goes, Deok-jung leaves Jeong-suk the vending machine as his final bequest — and in that rusted, weathered thing, she finds a reason to begin again.
What does it mean to create and (re-)create a body on film? Crafted from a small set of short 16mm film negatives, assembled in repeating patterns through a loving and laborious process of DIY contact printing that is partially narrated in the film's soundtrack.
The crew of Phoenix Fire Department Station 42 and their stories.
The documentary was created to mark the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso's death. Inspired by his famous quote, "Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic" the film focuses on Picasso's life and legacy, centered around the Picasso Museum in Paris. It explores his deep connection to the city, his personal complexities, and new aspects of his work recently uncovered by historians.
Shenzhen, New York. The 16th typhoon of the year is approaching the Chinese coast. In the sweltering night, two queer voices call out to one another from each of the cities. Slowly, the two metropolises, filmed on celluloid, overlap and merge. The two voices then fear another typhoon approaching, one that is even more threatening.
Ira Melnichenko, a young Ukrainian refugee in Switzerland with her brother, creates a doll in her own image, through which she revisits the story of a family torn apart by the death of her father, a 2D animator in Kyiv, destroyed by alcohol and dereliction. In her eyes – those of a child forced to grow up too fast – we read tenderness and bewilderment in the face of a vanished world.
Inspired by a true a story. In 1888 James S. Jameson, heir to the Jameson Whiskey dynasty, returns to Ireland after a year long expedition to the Congo. Things start to unravel as he attempts a return to normality. Will he choose to face the truth? Or will he choose the axe once more?
