The Gazette Reviews: The biggest blockbusters at AIFF

A Long Winter (2026)

By: Ellie Gary-Jones

And just like that, the director of All of Us Strangers has given the world yet another queer drama filled with hope, lust and longing — yet this one sits at a different temperature. With little romance and lots of snow, Andrew Haigh adapts Colm Tóibín’s short story into a family drama set in the Colorado Rockies in the early 1950s. In an isolated mountain cabin, a seemingly simple existence fractures when the first blizzard rolls in, exposing the cracks in an already volatile dynamic. Watching A Long Winter places you as a fly on the wall during Mike’s slow coming to terms as he maneuvers through his snowglobe of grief.

If you don’t stick around to see Fred Hechinger and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s friction evolve within the film, André Turpin’s cinematography certainly makes the slow plot worthwhile. Jutting peaks and plunging valleys transform the Rockies into something both breathtaking and suffocating. When you’re caught in a life you no longer want, one could only imagine it would be a very long winter, indeed.

Fjord (2026)

By: Jonas May, editor-in-chief

Fjord (2026) is a conflict that forces the audience to challenge their own political, cultural and religious beliefs and values over a gruelling two-and-a-half-hour family story. We follow Mihai (Sebastian Stan) and Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), husband and wife, as they move from Romania to rural Norway with their five children. The family is devout Christians and holds strong conservative beliefs. Once their neighbours and children’s teachers begin to suspect that they don’t align with their community’s far-left beliefs, they begin to suspect the couple of improper parenting.

After child protection services are called on the parents, they lose all five of their children for months. We watch the parents deal with the struggles of losing their children while trying to come to understand what they did to deserve losing all of their children. Long shots and blank space keep the audience in a constant state of internal debate in this emotional family drama. 

Honeyjoon (2025)

By: Jacqueline Graif, assistant arts and culture editor

Winner of the biggest production award in the world from the Tribeca Film Festival, Honeyjoon (2025) follows Iranian mother and daughter duo, Lela (Amira Casar) and June (Ayden Mayeri), as they take a “honeymoon” trip to Sao Miguel, Portugal. Their “honeymoon” is meant to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the passing of June’s dad/Lela’s late husband, who went to São Miguel because of his prior travels to the island. Through an exploration of the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, Honeyjoon attempts to show the bleak and beautiful moments of familial connections. Director Lilan T. Mehrel creates comedic and tear-worthy moments simultaneously through brilliant and evocative writing. The cinematography takes the cake, though, with beautiful shots of São Miguel and portraits of June and Lela looking out to the constant ocean. Honeyjoon takes the audience on an intricate journey of love, family, grief and “everyday goodbyes.”

Tender Loving Care (2026)

By: Theodore Boyce

Veteran British auteur Mike Leigh’s latest, and possibly last, film, Tender Loving Care follows a month or so in the lives of two thirty-something social workers trying to care for each other, their parents and everyone they encounter on the job. The movie rewrites what a “naturalistic” independent drama can be, taking what could so easily be drab, sentimental, and overbearingly ordinary and making it truly artful. Leigh portrays his characters at their most genuine, heroic and real only when they have to put on a face for others. Emotion is conveyed through poorly told jokes, impromptu karaoke, strained healthcare jargon and a barrage of small talk — all of which generate just as much power as the best bleeding-heart monologues.

It is a movie about loneliness in the 21st century that, instead of examining the internet, social media, etc., questions how much any of us can really love each other. As in life, there are no clean distinctions between the political and the personal, joy and despair, affection and obligation — it’s a movie that doesn’t have a point to make, but one that certainly has something to say.

The Banquet (2026)

By: Damini Awoyiga

Have you eaten? In The Banquet, the question is not really about food. The Banquet uses food, family, and cooking to explore how three generations of women understand, express, receive and give love. At its world premiere at AIFF, director Gloria Ui Young Kim introduces us to Sunny’s family and relationships. Sunny’s relationships with her mother and daughter reveal how love can look different across generations.

When Sunny is challenged by her mother to lead the cooking for Chuseok, also known as Korean Thanksgiving, food becomes both a point of connection and conflict. Sunny’s mother expresses love through tradition, cooking and caring for her family, while Sunny struggles to receive that love in the same way while expressing her love for her daughter differently. Visually captivating and emotionally impactful. The Banquet is a film about family, food, tradition and learning to understand the ways we love.

THE HISTORY OF CONCRETE (2026)

By: Theodore Boyce

The History of Concrete is the first full-length documentary by John Wilson, the creator of the HBO series How To. The movie is essentially a full-length episode of his show, compiling footage of Wilson walking around NYC every day, filming everything he sees. It’s a surprise at every turn, but its tangents and diversions never hinder its wonderfully cohesive and curious vision of not just contemporary New York, but America at large. It is uncynical, hilarious, and incredibly original. In addition to lots of information about concrete, Wilson, without pretension or pomp, makes a subtle ode to our sublimely inconstant world and the infinite ways people respond to their actively collapsing environment. Sometimes an interview with a seasoned bricklayer who insists on pronouncing “cement” like “semen,” and sometimes with someone who has just been blindsided by the death of a lifelong partner, The History of Concrete is a new kind of documentary, one that makes everything seem new, strange, and human — even the sidewalk.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (2026)

By: Mia Phillips, arts and culture editor

Noah Sagan’s profile of an old-school New York criminal has all the right ingredients, but the final result is bland, dry and simply cannot compete with comparable films. After I saw the film’s trailer over the summer, a flicker of hope was sparked. It seemed like another film akin to Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gems (2019), and that was enough to motivate me to see it as soon as I could. But within the first fifteen minutes, it became glaringly obvious that the painfully slow pace of Harry Lehman’s (John Turturro) character arc ruins any promise this movie may have shown in its previews.

Apart from being dreadfully slow, the threat Lehman faces gets lost in the film’s overall narrative, dulling what should be edge-of-your-seat, anxiety-inducing stakes. The genius of Uncut Gems is the sheer terror you feel for Adam Sandler’s character as he struggles to navigate his web of lies and crime. Sagan — while presenting a similar character in the same location, who navigates a similar, yet less luxurious lifestyle — fails to make audiences care enough about Lehman to have any stake in what happens to him in the end.