IFFBoston’s ancillary Fall Focus Film Festival has grown from four films over a long weekend in 2015 to twenty-seven titles over two weeks in 2026. Bringing in nearly all of the award-season heavies coming out between now and the end of the year, it’s appointment viewing for Boston-area cineastes. Below are reviews of the six titles I saw during week one; the fest takes a break until resuming with week two starting October 29.

Possible Love

I’m convinced South Korean director Lee Chang-dong will never let me down. His glacial work ethic (one feature every 7-8 years) probably helps but since Secret Sunshine, everything of his has been essential, including this parable about a working-class family participating in a documentary and getting a little too close to its far more affluent director. Not a groundbreaking premise, but completely relevant in the age of content creation and blurred boundaries between an auteur and their subjects. As the profiled family’s mother, Jeon Do-Yeon is phenomenal with her body language and what she withholds and occasionally reveals.

All Of A Sudden

What I said about Lee goes double for Ryusuke Hamaguchi as his latest deserves all the attention and acclaim of his breakthrough Drive My Car. Centered on a director of a nursing home in France (a superlative Virginie Efira), this illustrates the director’s comfort in working outside East Asia for the first time, though a transplanted Japanese co-lead (Tao Okamoto) enables him to translate this cultural background to another setting. Very few films fully get at the essence of life and human nature in such a refreshing but also familiar way. As with Happy Hour and Drive My Car, the lengthy duration is key as feelings slowly accumulate and resonate until they crescendo powerfully at the end.

Look Back

At the very least an improvement over Sheep In the Box from earlier this year, Hirokazu Koreeda’s manga adaptation about two female teens who bond in their shared love of drawing is among his simplest and most immediate films—that is, until a third act reveal that doesn’t so much derail momentum as it punctures some of what made it special (no matter how true it stays to the source material.) Still worth watching for admirers but Koreeda’s work with younger actors is better showcased in Monster and Nobody Knows, among others.

Club Kid

Despite the ridiculous, “Big Daddy but for gays” premise and writer/director/star Jordan Firstman more compelling a presence than artist (for now), I liked this and fully understood its crowd-pleasing reputation because man, he has so much unexpected potential. He can play shades of himself that go far beyond snarky gay influencer and his ensemble cast is strong, from Kirby Howell-Baptiste against type as a hot mess and Colleen Camp (Yvette from Clue!) as a nosy neighbor to newcomers Edgar Isgandarov (with his sharp comic timing) and young Reggie Absolom, who could easily end up his generation’s Nicholas Hoult (a good thing!)

Minotaur

Adapting Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife (later remade as Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful), Andrey Zvyagintsev’s his first flick in nearly a decade unfolds with the director’s patented ambiguity, although one could also argue nothing happens in the first hour. That can’t be said for the second hour, fortunately. Russian corruption is still his preferred medium and the war with Ukraine has certainly incensed it, even if it’s not so much a return to form as a continuation of his past approach with somewhat diminished returns. At least it shows that one can still be a stupendously dumb criminal in contemporary Russia and get away with it!

Wild Horse Nine

Rest assured, John Malkovich is as great here as the hype suggests, leaning heavily into the exquisite bitch mode only he does so well. Sam Rockwell’s nearly his equal, playing off him wonderfully with just the right amount of snark and exasperation. There may be less going on (beyond the snappy dialogue, anyway) than in the average Martin McDonagh film although the Easter Island, 1973 setting is even more striking than the 1920s coastal Ireland of The Banshees of Inisherin. A hilariously blowsy Parker Posey makes the most of her two scenes as Rockwell’s trophy wife.