'One battle after another', an extraordinary audiovisual experience in the blackest heart of America

When the French 75's historic enemy, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, reappears in their lives, Bob Ferguson launches into a desperate quest to find his daughter and try to save himself at the same time.

Shot on film, the film is a true audio-visual experience, with a very high pace throughout its entire duration (around 160 minutes), enhanced by extremely precise cinematography and the thumping music of Jonny Greenwoord, the brilliant composer and member of Radiohead, whose constant sound carpet contributes to the involvement that the film offers from the first to the last sequence.

'Vineland' was published in 1990, but Pynchon not surprisingly chose to set it in 1984, the year of President Reagan's re-election. From the basis of that text, Anderson makes an adaptation that speaks of today's America, racism and the toxic white supremacism that is one of the central themes of the whole operation.

The profound political side of 'One Battle After Another', however, finds a perfect balance with the strong entertainment that the film manages to provide, thanks also to extremely amusing sequences (the irony also present in Pynchon is detected) set in a paranoid and grotesque atmosphere, just as our present often seems to be.

Simply perfect Leonardo DiCaprio as the protagonist, but the entire cast is fully up to the task and a special mention goes to Sean Penn, who plays the character of Lockjaw splendidly, giving one of the most remarkable performances of his entire career.

For all these reasons, but not only, 'One Battle After Another' is undoubtedly one of the most important titles to come out of the cinema in recent years.

This is as important as 'The Voice of Hind Rajab', a film directed by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, based on a tragic true story.

It was 29 January 2024, when Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call: a five-year-old girl is trapped in a car under attack in Gaza, begging to be rescued. While trying to keep her on the phone, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Her name was Hind Rajab.

Out of this terrifying news story came a chilling and powerful film: 'The Voice of Hind Rajab' recounts that day by filming the testimonies of all those who tried to help that little girl.

Almost the entire film is set in one location, the one where the volunteers receive the calls, and the voice we hear is that of the real audio recording of little Hind Rajab. This narrative mode would be enough to make one understand the scope of the entire operation, but director Kaouther Ben Hania has managed to do even more.

The Tunisian author - known for having directed 'Beauty and the Beasts', 'The Man Who Sold His Skin' and 'Four Daughters' - has really outdone herself with a highly tense staging, capable of keeping us glued to the screen and making us really hope that this little girl will be saved, even though we already know, in reality, how it turned out.

The entire work on the soundtrack contributes to a truly engaging operation, enhanced by the ability to best integrate reality within the filmic reconstruction: Ben Hania works on the off-screen in a very strong manner, and it is indeed essential to emphasise that in this film the political commitment is evident, but so are the consistent formal choices.

At the Venice Film Festival it won the Grand Jury Prize but, both for its theoretical strength and its ability to raise awareness of what is happening in Gaza, it would have deserved the Golden Lion.