“‘Movies create community,’ said Campbell. That’s been IFFBoston’s mission from the beginning. As someone who’s been attending the festival for more than two decades, I can’t tell you how many dear friendships started while standing in line at the Somerville, or chatting about movies at an afterparty. It’s a perfect place for folks to come together and make discoveries.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/17/2026

“A naughty, big-hearted party of a movie, writer-director Sergio Tovar Velarde’s freewheeling sex farce The Divine Tragedy is a bawdy, ebullient film full of colorful costumes and even more colorful supporting characters. This messy, happily horny picture is exactly the kind of thing we come to festivals like Wicked Queer to celebrate.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 04/08/2026

“‘I’m calling it One Brattle After Another,’ laughed Campbell. The 27 Fall Focus selections span the globe and range from children’s animated adventures to Broadway biopics and drag queen zombie comedies. They’ve got domestic psychodramas, international political thrillers and Julia Roberts yelling at entitled college kids. This place has everything.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/06/2025

“Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece is one of the best arguments for the superiority of the 70mm format — a heady sound and light spectacular stretching from the dawn of man to Jupiter and beyond the infinite. The experience of seeing it on a massive screen with a rapt audience having their minds collectively melted is a defining moment in one’s moviegoing life.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/24/2025

“How can you use arts and culture to help people understand and get connected to certain issues? We always talk about film as a catalyst for conversation and we have built into the festival opportunities to have deeper discussions around these screenings. We’re bringing in people from organizations doing work in these spaces to do Q&As with the community.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/16/2025

“In a movie year without big-name, buzzy breakouts from Sundance or South By Southwest, IFFBoston is relying more on documentaries and foreign language films and less on marquee stars. Having been able to preview some of this year’s offerings, I found the scrappy lineup characteristically excellent, even if some of the topics sound like tough sells.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/17/2025

“The self-described ‘sensory bacchanalia from beyond the mainstream’ takes over the Brattle Theatre for five days of movie mayhem. This year’s BUFF lineup offers another smorgasbord of outré delights, stomach-churning horrors, celebrity guests and celebrations of bad taste. As always, the festival prides itself on pushing the limits of propriety with panache.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/17/2025

My second dispatch from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Hailey Gates’ Atropia, Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project and Sierra Falconer’s Sunfish (& Other Stories From Green Lake).

My first dispatch from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Josh Osit’s Predators, Albert Birney’s OBEX and Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill.