It is a testament to the quality of this year’s Sundance Film Festival back in January—in the good old pre-lockdown days—that close to a year later, its offerings are still finding outlets for those who weren’t in Park City, Utah. Such is the case for Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire,” a film that is neither comedy nor drama yet teases elements of both such that, when it ends, the filmmaker forces the audience to undergo hard questions about empathy and identity.

After nearly four hundred films screening over ten days to 21,000 accredited guests and a third of a million ticket buyers, the Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close this past Sunday. The 68th installment of Europe’s largest film festival was a robust edition, with an unusually-high number of worthy films spread over the Berlinale’s dozen sections. As he did in once already in 2014 with “The Grand Budapest,” Wes Anderson

Complaining that a Miranda July film is too quirky is like complaining that the Saw franchise is too violent. Anyone who ever dabbled in performance art from an early age has had that eccentric, overzealous, slightly creepy teacher: a dance instructor in a way-too-tight leotard, jiggling to New Age music, a drama teacher overemphasizing inflections of gibberish words—Miranda July is that performance artist. Frizzy-haired, pale, and willowy, looking like a cross between ...

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Quick Facts: won a Caméra D'Or at the Cannes Festival and the Special Jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival (both in 2011); shot in Los Angeles and Santa Clarita, Calif.; alternate title: “Satisfaction.”

In an independent film scene which has been stagnant of late filmmaker Miranda July is a breath of fresh air. The Berkeley, California-born, filmmaker who reminds one of a more sprightly Michel Gondry mixed with a dash of Todd Solondz, is also a performance artist and a writer.