This episode was originally recorded for a panel at the Berlinale Film Festival called Let's talk about (short) films! Pluralistic Discourse in Film Criticism.

I was invited to speak about the online film programs I've been building for thinking and talking about film — where we don't just share opinions about a film and move on.

Instead, we're looking for something new: what does this film offer that I didn't notice the first time?

Because you don't need to wait for a major life change to see a film differently. Sometimes, all you need is a new question, a new lens, or the chance to look again with other curious people.

In this episode, I walk through some of the ways I structure those conversations to be places to explore ideas and discover something new.

And the best part? You don't need to be a film expert. You just need to be willing to notice something — even if it feels obvious — and let the group carry the torch from there.

Curious about joining the next film program?

👉 Join the waitlist to find out when the next one opens

Sound of Falling, the second feature by German writer-director Mascha Schilinski, follows women across four generations of the same farming family. Gothic and ambitious, it explores memory, intergenrational trauma, and what it's like to live inside a woman's body — while still showing moments of joy and connection. Through its form, the film offers the audience a catharsis that the characters don't have access to.

So on today's episode, host Alex Heeney digs into why the film won her over…and then talks to Schilinski about developing the film's

Schilinski talks about how the film blurs memory and imagination, the titular image of falling, the sound design, and more.

Want to learn how, like Schilinski, Joachim Trier builds a catharsis that only the audience has access to?

👉 Join the waitlist for The Deep Focus: Oslo, August 31st

The best directed TV show of 2025 is a queer hockey romance from Canada called Heated Rivalry.

And like the rest of the internet, host Alex Heeney has become quite a fan.

But she's been thinking a lot about what makes it good and what has made it popular, and how those two things definitely intersect, but the Venn diagram isn't just a circle.

So on today's episode, Alex talks about why she, too, was very excited for the cottage, why the show is hitting in this cultural moment, what still felt lacking — and how all of that sent her to rewatch Looking, a very different kind of show, to get the hit she was really craving.

👉 Want to watch/rewatch Looking with Alex and a small group this spring? Get on the waitlist here: http://email.seventh-row.com/looking

Early screenings of Chloé Zhao's Hamnet had critics weeping in the aisles

Host Alex Heeney left it dry-eyed — and so did her guest, Angelo Muredda.

We're Shakespeare fans, long-time film critics, and not exactly immune to a good cry — so in this episode, we try to figure out why the film didn't land.

We dig into what works in the film (a short list) and what doesn't (a longer one), where the adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel went awry, and whether having read a synopsis of Hamlet on Wikipedia might actually impede your enjoyment of the film.

👉 Stay updated on Alex's next group experiences

169. David Cronenberg's The Shrouds with Angelo Muredda

132. Sarah Polley's Women Talking with Angelo Muredda

159. Macbeth with David Tennant

This Tuesday, October 28, I'm hosting The Short Take — a free, one-time-only live workshop for film lovers who want to watch and think together.

We'll watch an award-winning 22-minute short from 2017 that looks at queer history — and who gets to tell it. It's a film I haven't stopped thinking about in the last 8 years.

Then, we'll rewatch key scenes and unpack how the film's form (e.g. blocking, shot choice, editing, production design, and more) shapes what it makes us feel.

🗓️ When: Tuesday, Oct 29 → 2 PM ET / 11 AM PT / 7 PM Europe

💡 More info on The Short Take

🎟️ Register free (no replay)

What if the most powerful insights about a film don't come from watching it alone — but from talking it through with curious people who notice what you missed, and help you turn half-formed thoughts into something deeper?

In this episode, I share why I built The Long Take —

A space for deep, layered, perspective-shifting conversations about film — and how a spirit of collaboration, attention, and trust can transform how we see movies…and ourselves

We kick off Nov 2 with a zero-prep welcome session. 👉 Save your seat

How can a film with a queer protagonist, written by a queer playwright, and directed by a queer man… not be a queer film? That's the tricky question I'm tackling with The Choral, the WWI period drama that just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

In this episode: my Ralph Fiennes/Nicholas Hytner fangirling, why the film works as a crowd-pleaser but flattens queerness and other marginalized identities, and the bigger questions it raises about reclaiming — or sanitizing — queer history.

🎟 Plus, a sneak peek at Living Out Loud, my FREE three-day summit on queer and trans storytelling happening Oct 3–5.

👉 Sign up for Living Out Loud

Alice Winocour's Couture is a backstage film about the fashion world — less about the clothes than the bodies who wear them, shape them, and photograph them. It's a film about the ways that commerce and fashion (and medicine) shape and damage women's bodies.

As a Winocour fan and researcher since 2015, Alex Heeney connects Couture to Winocour's explorations of traumatized bodies, outsiders, and backstage stories throughout her body of work.

🎟 If you want to explore a film together in conversation — not just listen in — join me for Living Out Loud, my free Queer and Trans Storytelling Summit happening the first weekend of October.

On Day 3, I'll be hosting a short film screening and live group discussion — and you're invited.

👉 Save your seat here.

At TIFF, Alex dives into Iranian filmmaker Farnoosh Samadi's Between Dreams and Hope, a powerful film about a trans man in Iran navigating the dehumanizing maze of gender-affirming care — and connects it to two others, from Canada and France, that reveal how patriarchy, money, and bureaucracy shape queer and trans survival. These aren't straight reviews so much as reflections on how films spark curiosity, uncover hidden systems, and resist erasure.

✨ Don't miss it! This October, join me for Living Out Loud — a FREE three-day live online summit all about queer and trans stories and queer and trans history.

Sign up here

Joachim Trier's new film, Sentimental Value, is already a buzzy hit. Alex Heeney has been thinking and writing about Trier's films for more than a decade, and this one sharpened her sense of what she values in his work. In this episode out of TIFF, she look at the film's portrait of a complicated family and the role of the family home in telling that story.

✨If you enjoyed the episode, The Deep Focus: Oslo, August 31st is where you can explore the opening of Oslo, August 31st, trace its echoes through that film, and then see how Trier evolves those ideas in Sentimental Value.

👉Spots will be limited, so make sure you're on the waitlist here.