Opinion

In “Riceboy Sleeps,” Choi Seung-yoon plays a single mother striving to give her son a better life.

MFF 2023: Festival Highlights

Never read your reviews, goes the old adage. But maybe it’s not so easy for an actor to ignore a bad notice while being heckled by his own director during their movie’s hometown premiere. “Boo!,” bellowed Mike Cheslik from the right aisle of the Oriental Theatre’s main auditorium, which was packed April 28 for the …

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Natalia Solián delivers an acclaimed performance in “Huesera” as a pregnant woman who finds herself threatened by a sinister entity.

MFF 2023: Worldviews section packs plenty of global pedigree

If the Mexican horror movie “Huesera” turned over a blood sample, its genetic makeup might prove startling. There’s a malignancy inside of Valeria, the young, pregnant wife at the center of Michelle Garza Cervera’s feature debut, and not just because the fetus inside her belly seems hijacked by dark forces. Valeria says she wants a …

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Hasti Ghasemivaghar is the director of “Coming to Small Town America,” one of the nonfiction shorts being showcased in this year's Milwaukee Film Festival.

MFF 2023: Local documentary spotlights four immigrant stories

To get invited to the Milwaukee Film Festival, all Hasti Ghasemivaghar needed was a good idea and 10 bucks. Ghasemivaghar’s “Coming to Small Town America” is one of six nonfiction shorts included in a festival package called The Milwaukee Youth Show: Recording Reality. The program, which is new this year, showcases documentaries made by area …

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Documentarian Maryam Sepehri, right, interviews Hamid Naficy, the subject of “Mouth Harp in Minor Key” at his home in Chicago. Naficy, a cultural studies scholar at Northwestern University, left his home country of Iran in 1979. Photo courtesy of Sepehri.

MFF 2019 Interview: Maryam Sepehri Says Her New Documentary is ‘Very Personal’

While it won’t win any trophies for elegance, “Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy in/on Exile” still has one of the best titles of any movie at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival. The documentary is indeed a minor, restrained affair about Hamid Naficy, a distinguished film scholar at Northwestern University. But when he demonstrates …

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