Claire Cao

Some of this year’s best television captures a fundamental change in our attitudes to work. The comedy is darker, the drama is more caustic and close-knit office dynamics are losing their sheen, as creators shift their focus from absurdity to alienation.

For a film whose action happens almost entirely offline, the internet is ever-present in Bodies Bodies Bodies. Halina Reijn’s horror comedy recognises that the internet’s hyper-awareness of genre tropes and packaged selves has become enmeshed in how we engage with those closest to us.

Revisiting one of Disney’s biggest box-office bombs reveals a bold but flawed relic of the 2000s, in which the House of Mouse risked it all on something angsty, odd and experimental.

Priests have long been an adaptable entry point into narrative struggles between good and evil. As audiences grow more secular and sceptical of the church, filmmakers are increasingly leaning into the inherent conflicts and contradictions of the calling.

The internet isn’t the utopia many originally envisioned—but for those who grew up online, cynical cautionary tales don’t reflect reality. Two anime films made a decade apart reflect our evolving ideas of virtual worlds, and hold out hope for connection within the chaos.

MIFF Critics Campus review In My Blood It Runs, The Dead Don’t Die and Sorry We Missed You