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Wendy Ide

@wendyide.bsky.social
3.5K followers 1.1K following 159 posts

Film critic for The Observer, Screen International. Usually can be found at a film festival. Parent. Brummie-born S E Londoner.

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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A powerful piece by my brave, brilliant friend. Please read and donate if you can. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
theguardian.com
The girl with a will to live: the love, hope and pain of raising Elsie – my one in 163 million daughter
She was born with an ultra-rare genetic disorder. After my decades working in film PR, I now face the biggest campaign of all: the fight for her life
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
PSA for anyone going to Green Man festival next month. I’ll be doing the Film Quiz as usual but just wanted to flag up an amazing top prize of Amores Perros goodies, courtesy of the lovely people at Mubi. related: a4K restoration of the film is currently streaming on Mubi
Generous selection of AmoresPerros swag
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Two things to appreciate: 1) last night’s screening and Q&A for Vampire’s Kiss at the Prince Charles cinema.
Director Robert Bierman waving from the stage in front of still of Nic Cage giving one of biggest performances of his career.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
And this animation is a work of sensual, shimmering loveliness www.screendaily.com/reviews/viva...
screendaily.com
‘Viva Carmen’ review: Sébastien Laudenbach follows ‘Chicken For Linda!’ with vivid animated take on Bizet’s ‘Carmen’
Laudenbach's third feature premieres in Cannes Directors Fortnight before moving on to Annecy
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Another Cannes highlight. Not everything works, it’s slightly overlong but Emmanuel Marre’s A Man Of His Time is such bold, bracing filmmaking. Haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Don’t bet against it winning something. www.screendaily.com/reviews/a-ma...
screendaily.com
‘A Man Of His Time’ review: A superb Swann Arlaud powers Emmanuel Marre’s ambitious, overlong Vichy France drama
The Cannes Competition title follows real-life opportunist Henri Marre as he seeks to make a mark in 1940s France
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Javier Bardem gives one of the stand out performances of the festival in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...
screendaily.com
‘The Beloved’ review: Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s muscular drama features a blistering Javier Bardem
Victoria Luengoemilia also stars in Sorogoyen's bold Cannes Competition entry
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Had a lot of fun with the sprawling, full throttle chaos of Hope www.screendaily.com/reviews/hope...
screendaily.com
‘Hope’ review: A rural South Korean community comes under attack in Na Hong-jin’s thunderously entertaining genre mash-up
The director's follow-up to 'The Wailing' stars Hwang Jung-min and 'Squid Game''s Hoyeon
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Time to post a few Cannes reviews. First up, Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid remains my fest stand out. www.screendaily.com/reviews/club...
screendaily.com
‘Club Kid’ review: Jordan Firstman’s queer drama is triumphant, acidic portrait of New York’s gay scene
The 'I Love LA' star's feature debut makes an impact in Cannes Un Certain Regard
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
My review of Jeanie Finlay's powerful doc All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea www.screendaily.com/reviews/all-...
screendaily.com
‘All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea’ review: Jeanie Finlay follows ‘Your Fat Friend’ with empathetic portrait of a community in turmoil
This CPH:DOX premiere follows the beleagured fishing communities of England's north east coast
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
More from CPH:DOX - my review of Hell's Army www.screendaily.com/reviews/hell...
screendaily.com
‘Hell’s Army’ review: Slick doc follows Russian journalists on case of alarming new world order
Oscar-nominated director Richard Rowley follows Katya Hakim as she tracks Russia's Wagner mercenary force
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Very keen on The Cord, a film that gives an insight into the ongoing disaster of the Venezuelan healthcare system and introduces us to exactly the kind of badass character you would want on your side in times of medical emergency. www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...
screendaily.com
‘The Cord’ review: Gritty, urgent doc follows one-woman crusade to fix Venezuela’s maternity system
French filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé's feature follows Carolina as she fights to support the mothers of Maracaibo
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
How to describe I Heard That They Are Not Going To See Each Other Anymore? A wild, uninhibited blend that has traces of Godard, Wong Kar Wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien plus Zoomer tik tok stunts and situationist provocations. Crazy, messy, rather special. www.screendaily.com/reviews/i-he...
screendaily.com
‘I Heard That They Are Not Going To See Each Other Anymore’ review: Offbeat, idiosyncratic Taipei-set debut defies easy categorisation
The improvised first feature from Ka Ki Wong bows in CPH:DOX Next Wave
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
In competition in CPH:DOX: Whispers In May is just lovely. A sensitive, perceptive account of the moment right at the very end of childhood. www.screendaily.com/reviews/whis...
screendaily.com
‘Whispers In May’ review: Lyrical, warm Chinese debut is poignant blend of documentary and fiction
Dongnan Chen's CPH:DOX competition title follows three teenage girls on a momentous journey
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
A few favourites from CPH:DOX: Amazomania is a deft interrogation of documentary ethics. Loved this smart, provocative film. www.screendaily.com/reviews/amaz...
screendaily.com
‘Amazomania’ review: Agile doc reframes 1996 expedition to isolated Korubo community
Swedish filmmaker Nathan Grossman's CPH:DOX title was made in collaboration with the Korubo people
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Just landed in rainy Copenhagen for five days of documentaries at CPH:DOX. One of my favourite film festivals. Stay tuned for some reviews.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Another highlight in Berlin's competition, Emin Alper's tale of a Turkish blood feud, Salvation. www.screendaily.com/reviews/salv...
screendaily.com
‘Salvation’ review: Emin Alper weaves timely tale of prophecy, paranoia and blood feuds in rural Turkey
The director's second Berlin competition title follows two warring clans in the Turkish mountains
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
My review of Rose: My favourite so far from Berlin's competition, and further proof that Sandra Hüller is one of the finest actors currently working. www.screendaily.com/reviews/rose...
screendaily.com
‘Rose’ review: Sandra Hüller is phenomenal in arresting character study set in 17th-century Germany
Markus Schleinzer's black-and-white Berlin Competition title also stars impressive newcomer Caro Braun
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
First of my Berlin reviews. Very impressed by Mouse, from the team behind Saint Frances www.screendaily.com/reviews/mous...
screendaily.com
‘Mouse’ review: Rich, bittersweet US coming-of-age drama from ‘Saint Frances’ filmmakers
The latest work from Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson bows in Berlin Panorama
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
I know we use the description “worst movie ever made’ in a fairly profligate manner but I just watched Take me High, the 1973 film that finished Cliff Richard’s acting career. And holy shit, it’s bad.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Do you have thoughts on culture and a way with words? Why not enter the Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Heading to Tromso today for the film festival. Thermals packed. Hoping for great cinema and - just maybe - a glimpse of aurora borealis.
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Reposted by Wendy Ide
The Observer @theobserveruk.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Hamnet is an earthy, grounded tale of grief. Jessie Buckley is a force of nature as Shakespeare’s witchy wife in an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the tragedy that inspired Hamlet. Read @wendyide.bsky.social's review now: bit.ly/3Z3tJfk
bit.ly
Hamnet is an earthy, grounded tale of grief | The Observer
Jessie Buckley is a force of nature as Shakespeare’s witchy wife in an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the tragedy that inspired Hamlet
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
First time watch tonight: Straight Time (1978) starring a never better Dustin Hoffman as a recently released ex-con. How have I never seen this before? It’s phenomenal.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Big thanks to Mubi for a New Year celebration kit, to promote Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s series The New Years. I’m a huge fan of Sorogoyen’s terrific drama The Beasts, so this is top of my watch list.
Silver tote, scented candle, Polaroid camera, matches: top swag
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
So proud to send my kid off to an early Halloween party in a Babadook costume. I feel that this is a film education win all round.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Also recommended for LFF animation heads, Endless Cookie www.screendaily.com/reviews/endl...
screendaily.com
‘Endless Cookie’ review: Annecy’s Contrechamp winner is an inventive portrait of Canadian half-brothers
Seth Scriver and Peter Scriver's animated documentary is a "picture infused with love"
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Animation fans at LFF: check out the gloriously batshit ChaO www.screendaily.com/reviews/chao...
screendaily.com
’ChaO’ review: Anarchic Japanese anime imagines a fantastical near-future Shanghai
Animator Yasuhiro Aoki makes his debut with this energetic tale of human-merpeople relationships
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Another Venice review: Ali Asgari’s cine-literate satire Divine Comedy. www.screendaily.com/reviews/divi...
screendaily.com
‘Divine Comedy’ review: Ali Asgari skewers Iranian cultural restrictions in witty satire
Charming performances carry Asgari's fifth feature about a fictional director attempting to screen his latest film in Tehran
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Honeyland director Tamara Kotevska returns with the lovely, lyrical Tale of Silyan www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...
screendaily.com
‘The Tale Of Silyan’ review: Tamara Kotevska follows ‘Honeyland’ with portrait of Macedonian farmer
Lyrical hybrid documentary charts the highs and lows of rural life in modern Macedonia
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Me on the Saudi drama Hijra www.screendaily.com/reviews/hijr...
screendaily.com
‘Hijra’ review: Family bonds are tested when a teenage girl vanishes in accomplished Saudi drama
Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen's story centres on a grandmother and granddaughter in search of their missing relative
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
My pick of the Venice Competion so far: Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice www.screendaily.com/reviews/no-o...
screendaily.com
‘No Other Choice’ review: Park Chan-wook’s economic satire is a darkly comic treat
The director's Venice Competition title stars Lee Byung-hun as a family man who turns to desperate measures
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Me on Broken English www.screendaily.com/reviews/brok...
screendaily.com
‘Broken English’ review: Marianne Faithfull’s life explored in inventive documentary with starry cast
Directors Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth have assembled collaborators including Tilda Swinton and George MacKay
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Motor City. Yikes www.screendaily.com/reviews/moto...
screendaily.com
‘Motor City’ review: Seventies Detroit revenge thriller proves more style than substance
Shailene Woodley stars in Potsy Ponciroli's schlocky, dialogue-light Venice Spotlight title
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Me on The Testament Of Ann Lee www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...
screendaily.com
‘The Testament Of Ann Lee’ review: Amanda Seyfried is 18th-century preacher in audacious musical
Mona Fastvold and co-writer Brady Corbet's uneven biopic of the eponymous Shaker founder bows in Venice Competition
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
A few of my Screendaily Venice reviews: loved Kent Jones' Late Fame www.screendaily.com/reviews/late...
screendaily.com
‘Late Fame’ review: Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe shine in pleasing New York Story
The second feature from Kent Jones bows in Venice Horizons
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Also out this week - me on Friendship, Smurfs, Gold Songs and Four Letters of Love observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Friendship, Four Letters...
A new comedy starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd is a grotesquely deformed mutation of the bromance genre
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Not for everyone, certainly, but I am a fan of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Harvest, a heady, muddy story of the end of a community observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
Harvest is an atmospheric, hallucinogenic story of displa...
This brooding adaptation of Jim Crace’s Booker-shortlisted novel about a village imperilled by outsiders is uncomfortably topical
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Gutted to read this. www.screendaily.com/news/frantie...
screendaily.com
František Klišík from ‘Better Go Mad in the Wild’ dies just after film’s Karlovy Vary win
Klišík drowned in a pond just hours after the film won the Karlovy Vary Grand Prix, according to Czech media reports.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Camille Cottin and top tier child actors are the main reason to watch Out of Love www.screendaily.com/reviews/out-...
screendaily.com
‘Out Of Love’ review: Camille Cottin stars as a French woman flung into motherhood
Nathan Ambrosioni's intimate drama premieres in Karlovy Vary
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
A few Karlovy Vary reviews: Paul Andrew Williams is back with Dragonfly, which takes a huge tonal swerve in the final act. Riseborough and Blethyn superb. I liked quite a bit. www.screendaily.com/reviews/drag...
screendaily.com
‘Dragonfly’ review: Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn headline potent Paul Andrew Williams drama
Williams returns to the big screen with unnerving study of a community in crisis
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
So delighted to be back in Karlovy Vary this year, for one of my favourites on the festival circuit, for its buzzy atmosphere, great programming and enthusiastic embrace of street drinking,
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Me on the turbo-charged midlife crisis that is F1: The Movie in The Observer observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
F1: the Movie is one long midlife crisis | The Observer
Cliches and product placement plague a film so corporate it comes with its own registered trademark symbol
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Me on Ocean With David Attenborough: Late to this, but what an important, impassioned film. Essential viewing observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
Film review: Attenborough’s deep dive reveals the pearls ...
Dazzling photography and a compelling argument from our favourite guide show a thrilling ecosystem at risk
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Me on the rather joyless Ballerina for oberver.co.uk observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
Film review: ‘Ballerina’ is on pointe blank | The Observer
Len Wiseman’s blood-and-guts John Wick spin-off features Ana de Armas as a ballet dancer turned assassin, fleeting glimpses of Keanu Reeves – and no sens...
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Travelling via Geneva today I walked past a shop selling a chair made of stuff toy flamingos for something like 10 grand, and I feel like humanity may have crossed a significant taste rubicon.
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Hard recommendation for the gorgeous The Ballad of Wallis Island, a lovely, bittersweet cardigan-clad treasure of a film. observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
Film of the week: A balm for battered souls | The Observer
Carey Mulligan at her most magnetic plays one half of an estranged folk duo booked by lonely superfan Tim Key in what deserves to be this summer’s breakout hit
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Me on Mission: Impossible - Final Reckoning and the libido-shrivelling anti-frisson between Tom Cruise and his female co-stars. In The Observer observer.co.uk/culture/film...
observer.co.uk
Cruise keeps us hanging on for the Mission: Impossible franchise climax | The Observer
Can breathtaking action sequences save the day as Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt strives to protect the world from malevolent AI in Mission: Impossible’s franchise climax?
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
If Jafar Panahi's unflinching and brave attack on the Iranian regime doesn't win at least something, I will eat my shoes. www.screendaily.com/reviews/it-w...
screendaily.com
‘It Was Just An Accident’ review: Jafar Panahi confronts the Iranian injustice system head-on
Cannes Competition title sees a traffic accident spark a series of devastating events
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Another Cannes highlight for me: The Secret Agent is terrific. www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-...
screendaily.com
‘The Secret Agent’ review: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s 1970s Brazilian thriller is ‘riot of a movie’
The director's anarchic follow-up to 'Bacarau' stars Wagner Moura and Udo Kier
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Wendy Ide @wendyide.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Another Cannes review: Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir is an intriguing, fractured exploration of grief from the perspective of a child. www.screendaily.com/reviews/reno...
screendaily.com
‘Renoir’ review: A grieving 11-year-old retreats into fantasy in 1980s Tokyo
Chie Hayakawa's elegant second feature plays Cannes Competition
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