Valeria Berghinz, Author at The Cold Magazine

Viva Varda Club at The Rio Cinema, in The Cold Magazine

Viva Varda Club! Joyous Cinema at The Rio

June 11, 2026

If you’ve seen the films of Agnès Varda, you love Varda. If you haven’t heard of her before, you’re in great luck. What joy to be at the precipice of watching masterpiece after masterpiece. Even better, you can start what will be your new, Varda-filled life from the comfort of the Rio Cinema. This is a serious establishment of grandeur and pomp. It is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a months-long curation of films. One of such films will be Faces Places, Varda’s 2017 documentary where she and collaborator JR

Author Jem Calder posing for a portrait in a gray plaid shirt and glasses against a lush green foliage background.

Jem Calder’s ‘I Want You To Be Happy’ is the Doom-Pilled Romance of Our Times

May 31, 2026

Joey – girl, 23, barista – meets Chuck – man, 35, copywriter – at a bar. She’s an aspiring poet struggling to write, stalled in her career path, placid in the precipice of adulthood. He’s recently out of a years-long relationship, which had graduated to an engagement, which he broke off. He also has a drinking problem. Against all odds, the two form the spark of a connection, and find in each other exactly what they were looking for: for Chuck, that’s the freedom and brazen carelessness of youth; for

Ben Faccini's In Other People's Children, in The Cold Magazine

In Other People’s Children, Faccini Unravels the Burden of Family Histories

May 13, 2026

Speaking with author Ben Faccini, he tells me that writing his third and latest novel, Other People’s Children, felt like building a “house of cards”. I think about the metaphor long after our conversation ends. It perfectly captures the experience of reading the novel itself: a delicate, intricate structure of characters and their memories, each layer precariously balanced upon the next. The novel follows Tommaso, a British-Italian man largely raised by his very Italian grandmother, Alma. In her old age, Alma has withdrawn into her flat, an ecosystem unto itself

Sally Potter on Orlando at The Rio, in The Cold Magazine

‘Orlando’ Forever! An Interview With Sally Potter at The Rio

May 1, 2026

I’m standing in the much-mythologised screening room of the Rio Cinema in Dalston as projectionist Andrew Woodyatt walks me through its history. In the 1970s, the Rio had a stint as an adult film cinema, hosting burlesque shows alongside its screenings. One such performer included a snake in her act, which she’d keep warm on top of the 35mm projector between performances. I try to imagine a live snake replacing what’s now winding through the projector: the original 1992 35mm print of Orlando. This very special screening of Sally Potter’s

Michelle Steinbeck on her novel Favorita, in The Cold Magazine

“How Can I Write About Violence Without Reproducing It?”: Michelle Steinbeck on Her Novel ‘Favorita’

April 13, 2026

Fila, short for Filippa, sits in her recently deceased grandmother’s kitchen when she receives a call informing her of her mother’s death: “they say it’s because of her liver, but I can assure you that it was not her liver… I’m sorry, your mother was murdered.” She’s in Switzerland, where she was born and raised amidst the constant battleground of her family: the fraught relationship between her traditional grandmother, Lavinia, and her erratic, defiant mother, Magdalena – later, Favorita. Despite a lifetime of distance from, and rejection of, her mother,

Art Central Hong Kong, in The Cold Magazine

What to See at Art Central Hong Kong

March 20, 2026

As Hong Kong’s art month draws to a close, Art Central returns to the Central Harbourfront for its 11th edition. Set against the skyline of Victoria Harbour, the fair has become a key stop during Hong Kong Art Week, known for its discovery-led focus which champions artists from across Asia, alongside many other international voices. Curated this year by Enoch Cheng and Zoie Yung, the programme reflects the fair’s strong regional outlook. Around 20% of the participating artists are based in Hong Kong, while roughly 75% come from across the

Zapote restaurant in London, reviewed by The Cold Magazine

Playing Favourites at Zapote

March 16, 2026

Leonard St, London, is a funny little sliver of a street. It’s a couple of steps away from Old Street, and all the ensuing high-rise buildings of corporate techy acclaim (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, the likes). But it’s also nestled against the very different conglomerate that is Shoreditch, with its constellation of overpriced vintage stores, fashionably made-up Gen Z, and a revolving door of pop-ups (as I write this, a queue of hundreds is wrapping around Bethnal Green buildings to enter Harry Styles’ merch pop-up). “We get a varied clientele,” says

Mothers on screen, selected by The Cold Magazine

A Cinematic Guide to Mothers

March 14, 2026

Good mothers, bad mothers, mothers trying their best, mothers too tired to try at all. Just in the past year, cinema has had a great many mothers to celebrate or examine, and more than one of these actresses will be gearing up for their potential Oscar victories tonight. In the running: motherhood as an exhausting nightmare in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a grieving, devastating mother in Hamnet, and a woman who rejected motherhood all together in One Battle After Another. We’ll never exhaust of telling the stories

Two women stand side by side outdoors: one in a white dress with puffed sleeves and gloves, the other in a black dress and white bonnet, holding a bird of prey. A chessboard sits in front of them, with a mansion and greenery behind.

“It’s an Absurd World”: ‘100 Nights of Hero’ Director Julia Jackman

February 11, 2026

In the fantastical, medieval-styled world of Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero, a beautiful lady named Cherry (Maika Monroe) faces imminent execution for failing to become pregnant by her new husband, Jerome (Amir El-Masry). The couple are given 101 nights to conceive a child, lest it cost Cherry dearly. But Jerome is not so interested in conceiving. It seems he’s not so interested in Cherry at all. Instead, the cocksure Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine) is enlisted to seduce her over that same amount of time. How to defend herself from Manfred’s

A man and a woman stand in a dimly lit room, partially obscured by hanging strings of glowing orbs. The background is dark, highlighting the illuminated orbs and creating a dreamy, contemplative atmosphere.

Aisling Franciosi is the “Guiding Light” in Sundance-winning ‘Twinless’

February 5, 2026

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a twin? For most of the population, myself included, twins are a mysterious blip in the gene code, a fun if bizarre dynamic from an outsider’s perspective, sweet and creepy and beautiful all at once. James Sweeney’s Twinless, which he writes, directs, and stars in, drops us straight into the centre of those complex feelings. The film unfolds as his character, Dennis, meets the brooding Rocky (Dylan O’Brien) at a support group for people who have suffered through the

A man with a dark beard and mustache looks to the side with a concerned expression, holding large headphones around his neck. The background is blurred with green and light bokeh, suggesting an outdoor forest setting.

Talking Folklore with ‘Rabbit Trap’ Director Bryn Chainey

January 29, 2026

When my Zoom call with Bryn Chainey finally connects, there’s no audio. If any speech does come through, it’s garbled at best, inhuman at worst. Several minutes of hang-ups and call-backs later, we finally get to speak with one another, and our interview begins with a slight distrust on my end that Zoom would even be recording the call at all. Technology, it seems, is not our friend. We’re calling to discuss Chainey’s feature debut Rabbit Trap, a folk horror film set in the Welsh countryside of the 1970s. Starring

Cover of the book May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, featuring ripe pears with numbered stickers arranged on shelves and large white text overlaying the image.

Rebecca Perry on Her Debut ‘May We Feed the King’

January 27, 2026

“Do you think a part of you wants to escape reality?” A scene curator who builds portraits of lives lived in old houses, castles and manors.

Two young people outdoors, one making a rock and roll hand gesture close to the camera while both smile, echoing the rebellious spirit of Dirty Girls documentary. Several people and cars are visible in the background on a cloudy day.

Cult Documentary ‘Dirty Girls’, Across the Years

December 19, 2025

In 2013, a 17-minute video titled Dirty Girls was uploaded to YouTube by Michael Lucid. In it, a high-school-aged Lucid interviews his peers about a group of girls who embraced a riot grrrl ethos, making feminist zines and appearing purposefully disheveled. They were mockingly known around school as the “dirty girls”. Within its first day online, the video drew thousands of views – and the numbers steadily climbed. Not so long thereafter, this school project from 1996 – later edited into a short film for a 2000 festival run –

A large group of young men in shorts, many shirtless and wearing red or black caps, stand closely together outdoors, most looking down at their smartphones. A man in a white naval uniform stands among them. This is a still from ‘Fiume o Morte!’ by Director Igor Bezinović.

On a Fascist Past and Present with ‘Fiume o Morte!’ Director Igor Bezinović

December 18, 2025

Nestled in an inlet of the Adriatic Sea, Rijeka is Croatia’s largest port city and its third largest city overall. But a visit today gives little hint that, a century ago, the city stood at the centre of one of Europe’s strangest political experiments. In 1919, Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio marched into Rijeka – then known as Fiume – declared it his own, and staged a year-long spectacle of militarised pageantry, cocaine-fuelled bravado, and self-mythologising. His bizarre insurgency would go on to inspire Mussolini, prefigure the aesthetics of

Horror films selected by The Cold Magazine

Seven Films to Watch Before October Ends

October 23, 2025

With the first half of October behind us, those miraculous sunny days already fading into distant memory, and Halloween plans starting to feel more urgent, the urge to stay in on a misty evening and watch a good horror film only grows stronger. So, we’ve put together a small compilation of October recommendations, ranging from horror-thrillers to horror-comedies, from lesser-known finds to genre-defining classics. Many of these films will be screening across London venues in the coming weeks, and it’s well worth checking your local theatres for their halloween themed

David Lynch and Sabrina Sutherland inside the iconic Red Room set from Twin Peaks.

Sabrina Sutherland on the Women and Meditations of David Lynch

October 23, 2025

It has been less than a year since David Lynch’s passing, and the outpouring of love and grief from his fans around the world continues to be felt. Among the many tributes honouring this iconic director and his truly unique, Lynchian worlds is MUBI’s newly released podcast series, Ladies of Lynch. Through conversations with some of Lynch’s closest and longest-standing collaborators, host Simran Hans explores the complex, subversive, and remarkable women who have been at the centre of his cinema, both on and off the screen. Among these collaborators is

Mariana Enriquez, interviewed by The Cold Magazine

Mariana Enriquez: A Maiden Walking with Death

October 13, 2025

Here lies nothing. Just dust and bones. Nothing. So states a tomb in Recoleta Cemetery, belonging to a certain Mendoza Paz and, one day, to the ashes of Mariana Enriquez, if her friends are to fulfill her wishes. For Enriquez – celebrated Argentine author, powerhouse of the neo-gothic genre, rockstar of all things morbid and occult – death is everywhere. In her beloved short story collections, it takes the form of ghosts, children, insatiable fetishes. In her latest novel, Somebody is Walking on your Grave, death is a little different.

Olivia Kan-Sperling, interviewed by The Cold Magazine

Olivia Kan-Sperling on Romance and Performance in her Little Pink Book

October 9, 2025

By day, Limei works in a coffee shop in Shanghai, where she’s the best latte artist, thanks to her “slender, delicate and nimble fingers.” She is also the most beloved, because her art is always beautiful. Limei is beautiful herself; she is sensitive, a dreamer, with hopes for a singing career as she sits in her bedroom, all alone, by night. In Little Pink Book: A Bad Bad Novel, writer Olivia Kan-Sperling brings Limei’s internal world to life. The prose is sugary, feminine, and coy – a performance of a

Filmmaker Sayna Fardaraghi, interviewed by The Cold Magazine

Filmmaker Sayna Fardaraghi on the Terrors of Growing Up

October 5, 2025

Sayna Fardaraghi’s work has been circulating online for years now, her soft cinematography and pensive short films regularly finding virality in Twitter (before its X-days) film circles. I first came across her in 2019 when she posted L’Observateur, a Wes Anderson–inspired student short about a girl and her beloved binoculars. Sitting down with her all these years later – crammed into the delightful Moko Made Café, her own recommendation – to discuss her latest project, Glint, felt like a true full-circle moment. In our conversation, Fardaraghi reflects on those early

Kou sits isolated among classmates during a tense school assembly in Happyend.

Neo Sora on Friendship and Resistance in “Happyend”

September 19, 2025

Set in a near-future Tokyo, Happyend follows Kou, a teenager sneaking into raves with his group of best friends, trying his best to graduate, and following the lead of the daring Yuta. But the looming threat of an earthquake has tightened the government’s hold over the city, and an increasingly oppressive political climate is seeping into school life. When facial recognition software arrives on campus, the teens are forced to confront the creeping shadow of fascism and their own uncertain place in the world. Political awareness doesn’t look the same

A newsstand scene from “Paul and Paulette Take a Bath,” with Paul and Paulette looking through magazines.

In Conversation with “Paul and Paulette Take a Bath” director Jethro Massey

September 4, 2025

A boy meets a girl in the middle of Paris. She is kneeling in the Place de la Concorde, recreating Marie Antoinette’s execution. She is drawn to these things: tragedies, murders, the darker folds of history. When he tells her that Marie Antoinette’s hair would have been chopped off before the guillotine fell, the girl asks him to cut her own hair. So begins Paul and Paulette Take a Bath, Jethro Massey’s debut feature film. With this off-kilter meet cute, Paul is quickly folded into the dark fantastical world of

The St Moritz Art Film Festival, in The Cold Magazine

Beyond Reality at the St. Moritz Art Film Festival

August 23, 2025

So comments Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Artistic Director of the St. Moritz Art Film Festival, which will open for its fourth edition on August 24th. Held at the Cinema Scala in the Engadin valley, the festival brings together artists, filmmakers, and audiences for four days of avant-garde cinema and video art, in dialogue with the high-altitude landscape that surrounds it. As Pansera states, “This year’s incredible selection stage emotional, spatial, and ontological virtualities – emerging worlds of potentiality that question the fixity of time, identity, and place.” This year’s theme, Emerging

Iconic shot from Stephanie Rothman's 'The Velvet Vampire': a confident woman in a red jacket and black hat sits in a yellow convertible, embodying the film's feminist and countercultural spirit.

Stephanie Rothman: A Feminist Eye in ’70s Exploitation Cinema

July 14, 2025

Before vampires became a beloved cinematic staple, before science fiction was taken seriously as a lens for societal critique, and before hospital dramas dominated primetime television, they were the stuff of B-movies – cheap, sensational, and unapologetically pulpy. These genre films formed the underbelly of Hollywood’s golden age: first known as B-movies for their secondary status in double-bill screenings, and later dubbed Exploitation Films for their unabashed fixation on nudity, violence, and taboo. Today, they’re sometimes indulged as campy fun or dismissed entirely for their questionable politics, but rarely are

Screening of the film 'The Wicker Man' inside a Gothic church, with an audience seated in front of the large screen.

How Secret Ceremony Is Re-Imagining The Movie Night

July 12, 2025

As dusk began to set on June 26th, only a few days after the summer solstice, 250 people filed into St Giles’ Church for an evening of pagan-friendly merriment. The first great London heatwave had finally broken, and inside the cooling stone of the Gothic hall, summer held its breath. As people grabbed ciders, took their seats, and the last few guests slipped through the heavy doors, the church filled with the live folk performance of Painted Bird. This was the spellbinding prelude to the much-awaited main act – a

Teen boys boxing in stone courtyard under adult supervision, tigueraje training in Tiguere

A Conversation with Tiger director José María Cabral

June 3, 2025

Tiguere – or Tiger, in its English translation – had its UK premiere during the Barbican’s Chronic Youth Festival, where it opened the programme with an unflinching look at socialised masculinity. Set in the striking mountains of the Dominican Republic, director José María Cabral confronts the deeply rooted tradition of tigueraje – a performative code of masculinity that prizes strength, cunning, and independence. Amid roaring waterfalls and dense, verdant foliage, a gothic stone residence nestles within Tiguere’s dramatic landscape – the site of a summer-long tigueraje camp run by Alberto

The Barbican Chronic Youth Festival, in The Cold Magazine

Against All Odds: Resilience at The Barbican Chronic Youth Festival

May 20, 2025

What shape does resistance come in? Is it heard in the laughter of artists, felt in the quiet rage of children, seen in the vibrant celebrations of a community? These are the questions that audiences were confronted with at Chronic Youth Festival’s landmark 10th year. In this edition, a cohort of 20 young creatives came together to carefully organise the curation of Against All Odds, a cinematic programme filled with indie gems and international must-watches alike. Catching the attention of the curators between screenings, engaging in fleeting but passionate conversation

Valeria Berghinz