Philly Plain Dealer

2026 marks the 35th anniversary of the Philadelphia Film Festival, and with it another year of the Philadelphia Film Society bringing the best cinema has to offer into a city that’s woefully deprived of movie magic compared to its neighbors. The 35th annual Philadelphia Film Festival took place from Oct. 15 to Oct. 25, featuring favorites from Cannes and Venice as well as premieres of films made right here in Philly.

Programmers of the fest claimed in introductions that this was the biggest year in PFF history, with bigger audiences, bigger slates, and more events than ever all packed into 11 straight days of moviegoing. The secret to their success is easy to see: between affordable prices, an approach to programming that gives independent films the same grace as big studio titles, and a dedication to making sure every butt that wants a seat in their theaters is guaranteed one, the Philadelphia Film Festival remains one of the most accessible film festivals on the East Coast year after year. PFF35 offered one of their most diverse lineups yet, spanning across the globe as well as the funding bracket. Here are six notable films from this year’s Philadelphia Film Festival.

“Fatherland”

Academy Award-nominated Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski’s newest film is arguably his most piercing. “Fatherland” stars Sandra Hüller as Erika Mann, daughter of renowned German novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), and follows the father-daughter pair as they embark on a tour between West and East Germany in the wake of WWII. The ghosts of the war and Mann’s legacy collide with interpersonal family drama, as the two are forced to confront aspects of their identity as artists, Germans, and Manns while the beginnings of the Cold War unfold around them.

Pawlikowski’s screenplay, co-written with “Babylon Berlin” showrunner Hendrik Handloegten, is timely in a way that’s unique from the slew of other media to come out since 2016 warning us of the similarities between our current political moment and the horrors of 20th century fascism. Rather than just wagging a finger at its audience, “Fatherland” posits fascism as an ugly force of nature akin to death, something that can never be truly defeated. While it’s an incredibly bleak outlook, it feels honest and grounded in a reality nobody wants to admit. Pawlikowski’s chilly direction only aids in the honestly nihilistic feeling that pervades each moment of runtime.

In a year jam-packed with stupendous work from Hüller, her portrayal of Erika Mann stands solidly alone as her best performance of 2026. She isn’t seeking to recreate history, she’s merging the baggage of a real woman stuck in the awkward position of being her father’s keeper with the anxieties and politically-tinged traumas that ring true to us today. Moving in tandem with the cynical black-and-white eye of Pawlikowski’s camera and a subtle yet earnestly complex script, Hüller captures a life caught between past and future atrocities with incredible nuance. “Fatherland” doesn’t want to tell us anything we already know, nor warn us about tomorrows we’re already aware of, it simply wants to show us how the things we flee have a terrible way of reappearing when we least expect them to.

“Goodbye Cruel World”

Félix de Givry’s feature debut is one of the Frenchest films you could possibly watch this year, and it’s all the better for it. Shot on sumptuously beautiful 16-mm film, it feels like a lost gem of the New Wave movement, rescued from some vault or the confines of an attic and brought to life again on our screens. “Goodbye Cruel World” follows Otto (Milo Machado-Graner of “Anatomy of a Fall”), a teenager who disappears after sending a suicide note to his entire class. One of his fellow students, Léna (Jane Beever), spots him in town shortly after his disappearance, and what transpires turns into a bizarrely sweet ghost story by way of Éric Rohmer.

Though the tender performances of its teen stars are the groundwork on which “Goodbye Cruel World” is built, the most standout character in “Goodbye Cruel World” is the town of Lisieux, which de Givry and cinematographer Tara-Jay Bangalter photograph with a fairytale gaze. The entire film is buried beneath a bittersweet whimsy, as Machado-Graner and Beever wander through winding forests and abandoned prewar buildings like storybook characters, desperately searching for love in oblivion.

We know their time together is doomed, we know the little slice of heaven they find through disappearing into one another can’t last forever, and yet we’re just as swept away by it as they are. Its stunningly shot climax captures all the beautiful tragedy a chic European coming-of-age story deserves, leaving the audience alone but changed in little ways they won’t perceive until they lie in bed awake at night, thinking of the two lost kids and what their story meant. For a debut feature, de Givry displays a shockingly mature understanding of immaturity, and a self-suredness in his storytelling that guarantees we haven’t heard the last from him.

“Test”

Set against an Appalachian backdrop, “Test” is a tale of body dysmorphia and sexual confusion that verges on the gothic. Directed by Sam McConnell and penned by star Brock Yurich, the film takes its place in the world of competitive bodybuilding. Eddie (Yurich) is a young aspiring bodybuilder living with his overbearing Evangelical mother in rural Ohio. Eager to take himself to the next level, Eddie approaches a respected coach and former body builder (Mike Edward) in hopes of finally becoming the best. Instead, he finds himself spiraling down a road of steroids, queer awakenings, and brutal rituals.

Yurich’s semi-autobiographical script feels utterly fresh amidst a sea of repetitive sports dramas. The familiar beats are there, but they take the back seat to far meatier, more complex dynamics between characters. What’s especially commendable is the work done by Yurich and Edward, whose unethical yet endlessly compelling love-ish story gives the film its rocky, thorny heart. Juxtaposed with that is Tammy Blanchard as Eddie’s mother, who Yurich clearly knew would be the crown jewel of his story. It’s almost as if her Emmy Award-winning performance as Judy Garland 25 years ago was a mere “test” run for what she does with Yurich’s script. She is Mama Rose as imagined by Ethel Cain, able to loom twice as large as Eddie despite being half his size.

McConnell is no small part of bringing Yurich’s melancholic portrait of masculinity to life. He alternates between eroticism and horror when shooting Yurich’s chiseled physique with borderline athleticism, knowing when to find beauty in the body and when to churn the viewer’s stomach with Yurich’s talented contortion. “Test” wears many hats. At some points it is a heartbreaking tale of a toxic relationship between a damaged mother and her traumatized son, at others it’s a story of self-discovery unlocked by the inherent homoeroticism of gym culture. But for most of its runtime, “Test” is a terrifying look into a world of gender performance that is just as violently exploitative as beauty pageants, but receives half its ire. The men of “Test” are masses of blood, skin, and spray tan, but it’s the humanity beneath Yurich taps into that turns it from an American horror story to an American tragedy.

“Boatbuilders”

As “You Can See Everything” continues to dominate this year’s discussion of documentaries, Luke Lorentzen’s “Boatbuilders” acts as a breath of salty fresh air. The film tracks a year in the life of employees at Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine, as they work tirelessly to construct a specially crafted sailboat for their millionaire client. Lorentzen’s camera beautifully frames the artistry poured into every step of the process, while also documenting the ins and outs of artisan labor conditions as it drifts between the managers, ground employees, and contract workers employed by the boat yard. It all comes together to form a Malickean portrait of class and craftsmanship in late-stage capitalism.

Lorentzen’s cinematography is contemplative, sweeping when showcasing the gorgeous work of Brooklin’s employees and intimate when putting names and faces to the labor. It makes the gut-punching bookends of the films, when we’re left to question who the boat really belongs to, hit the viewer twice as hard. A score of wistful horns by partners Zack and Niki Hexum compliments the resplendent visuals, pushing and pulling between scenes and montages like the ocean’s waves. “Boatbuilders” asks its audience to sit with the labor we watch performed: each nail hammered in, each plank sanded down, to appreciate not just the beauty of what’s being built but the care put into its building. Lorentzen makes sure we see each worker clock out, eat lunch, crack jokes, so that we don’t lose sight of the artists behind the artistry. One scene shows Brooklin’s bosses applepicking with their families, another shows immigrant contractors dividing a single slice of pizza among them with a razor. The complicated dynamics at play in this high class blue-collar environment are never hidden from the audience, Lorentzen makes sure we see it all: the good, the bad, and the beautiful.

“First They Came for My College”

Hating Ron DeSantis is like riding a bike: once you learn how to, you never truly forget. “First They Came for My College” documents the beginnings of the DeSantis regime’s campaign against education by focusing on the school where it first began: New College of Florida, a liberal arts college in Sarasota. The film shows us the slow but steady takeover of the school by GOP-backed puppets, podcasters, and other odious figures as part of DeSantis’ deplorable overhaul efforts, slowly escalating until the school loses swaths of tenured professors and merit scholar students as it gets taken over by homophobic student athletes and  20-year-olds who wear full suits on a campus in Florida’s Gulf because they think it makes them look smarter.

Documentarian Patrick Bresnan’s approach is admirably unique: the majority of the film’s footage is shot by the students of New College themselves, allowing them to tell their own story and lending them the power DeSantis and his collaborators seem so sadistically set on robbing them of. Beyond that, it paints a clear picture of who genuinely cares about New College and its future. While students participate in clubs, lead marches, and frequent its libraries, chuds like Chris Rufo hardly ever set foot on campus. Out of the mouths of babes the injustice happening at New College gets laid bare, as clueless Republican influencers and pathetic losers desperate for power turn what was once one of the country’s greatest temples of higher learning into a trashy circus. The most brutal showcase of their evil comes in a scene following Hurricane Milton, which DeSantis-backed president Richard Corcoran allegedly used as an excuse to destroy conservation sites and scourge the university libraries of books spanning from Toni Morrison to the Bible. Bresnan aims to highlight how America’s youth are resisting fascist takeover, but what we see instead is something bleakly American.

The question of how strong the political divide truly is comes up through subjects like Joshua Janniere, a student who came to New College drawn in by its anti-woke rebrand and left allied with the very students that rebrand is displacing. Janniere is a fascinating focus for the documentary. He’s clearly a lost child, even before his come-to-Jesus moment, which makes his smugness far harder to hold against him than it is to hold against demons like Rufo. However, it’s hard to view Janniere’s redemption as the victory Bresnan wants us to, when dozens of other students are being forced out of New College at the same time by an increasingly hostile environment. This is exactly why “First They Came for My College” is such an important film, it shows us what happens when a country’s status quo skews in favor of the rightwing. Beyond Janniere, this is captured most poignantly by a scene in which Corcoran visits the students who tend New College’s garden, shortly before its mysterious destruction. As one half of New College’s student body gets called slurs on campus by the other half, it’s clear that consequences are a one-way street in this new America. Janniere, like all kids, is allowed to learn and grow. But as we look at the destruction of New College, it’s hard to not ask if what the rest of the world has to sacrifice for the learning moments of the right-wing is too high a price.

“Ink”

Danny Boyle’s chronicle of the spite-fueled foundations behind Britain’s biggest tabloid has been plagued with controversy surrounding the film’s AI usage. The reality of it is the most bizarre aspect of an already wild film: it appears briefly, has barely anything to do with the film, and seems to serve no purpose. Strangely enough, it doesn’t quite feel out of place amidst a cinematic vibe that feels best compared to a heavily-used toilet in a dive bar bathroom. It’s ironic to put AI in a film that places the burden of our current post-truth landscape on the slimy shoulders of Larry Lamb and Rupert Murdoch, but Boyle seems well aware of that irony, which only makes its usage a weird elephant to put into the room of what is otherwise a decently electric spin on the outdated Sorkinian newsroom flick.

“Ink” stars Jack O’Connell and Guy Pearce as Lamb and Murdoch respectively, covering the rise and fall of Lamb’s time as head Editor of The Sun, one of the U.K.’s most notorious publications. Lamb pulls together a crack team of rejects and losers, including former flame Jules Davies (Claire Foy), and sets out to create a newspaper that will outsell The Daily Mirror by any means necessary. We watch over the course of decades as the paper changes the landscape of modern journalism into one that values profit over truth, sacrificing all morals (and the safety of everyone involved) in Lamb and Murdoch’s combined quest to stick it to the English establishment.

The way Boyle connects the populist mindset of ‘60s and ‘70s counterculture to the hellscape of fake news that defines our lives today is interesting, but even at its wildest, something still feels missing from the mountain of scandals probed by the film. Boyle’s direction lends a gonzo touch that feels like a return to form, but the story itself grows winded towards its third act and never quite gets back up again. Despite some lulls, O’Connell leads the film’s charge with an energy that refuses to dip. Pearce and Foy find themselves precariously positioned as straight-men to O’Connell’s insanity (a questionable characterization for Murdoch, but he doesn’t escape without indictments of his own), but both hold their own despite the film’s breakneck pace. Visually, the film is a feverish spin of dutch angles, Y2K-esque scene transitions, and spastic cuts. It leaves the movie feeling like a train crash: no matter how bloody it gets, you just can’t look away.

Where the film stumbles is when it takes its breaths. The relationship between Lamb and Davies feels tacked on, and Murdoch’s evils never feel fully dived into even as the film doesn’t shy away from his greed. Worse, the way the movie wants to interrogate truth vs entertainment isn’t just at odds with the AI usage, but with a world that has grown beyond the illusion of traditional journalism as inherent truth. There are some moments where it’s acknowledged that newsrooms have always been perverted by lack of ethics, but they all hang limply at risk of derailing the film’s image of The Sun as the inventors of mainstream yellow journalism. “Ink” is at its best when it fully embraces Danny Boyle’s worst impulses (save, of course, the AI), and for the most part this proves to be the perfect story for him to unleash his whirlwind vision onto the audience. But in its more boring moments, it becomes what it clearly dreads being the most: just another newsroom movie.