Seventh Row Podcast

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 fangirli...

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 bod...

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...

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, the way it reframes familiar Trier themes, and how it ...

What happens when a story that once felt modern… suddenly doesn't?
And what does that tell us about the limits — and possibilities — of the stories we tell about women?

In this solo episode, Seventh Row Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney tracks a shift in perspective — hers, and maybe yours to...

What happens when you watch a film — not just to be entertained — but to reflect, notice, and share?

In this episode, Alex Heeney (curator of Reel Ruminators) sits down with Hazel Shaw, a UK member of the community, to uncover what really makes this unique movie-of-the-month space so rewarding — and how it sparks discoveries you might not expect.

Together, they talk about:

Ten years on, 45 Years hasn't lost an ounce of its emotional weight. In fact, it might just cut deeper.

On this episode, host and Seventh Row Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney is joined by Lindsay Pugh (Woman in Revolt) to revisit Andrew Haigh's masterpiece about a childless couple celebrating th...

In this episode, Alex Heeney digs into Celine Song's Materialists, a film about Lucy, a matchmaker struggling with her own love triangle. Will Lucy (Dakota Johnson) choose love — in the form of her poor ex John (Chris Evans) — or money with eligible bachelor Harry (Pedro Pascal)? And can love and money even co-exist?

With its charm...

Join me (Alex Heeney) on a journey through three films I programmed inside Reel Ruminators — a British political thriller, an Indigenous Canadian documentary, and a queer South African drama — and discover how their contrasts actually illuminate one another. 

By the end of this episode, you'll see how exploring differences between films can reshape your own viewi...

Now best known for its stunt-heavy sequels, Mission: Impossible began as a Brian De Palma thriller about surveillance, performance, and how what you see isn't always the whole story.

In this episode, we get into:

• How the...

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is one of the best films of 2025. In this episode, Alex Heeney zooms in on its beginning and ending scenes to show how they set up and pay off the film's emotional arc.

From the start, you know you're in a warm, fun place (with a touch of sadness); by the end, you land on a romantic high the film truly earns. 

Alex unpacks how choices from structure to song lyrics to blocking work together to deliver tha...

Laura Piani's Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is more than just a great rom-com — it's a funny and moving portrait of grief, writer's block, and a woman learning to move forward. Alex Heeney digs into how Agathe's emotional arc is mirrored in the film's structure, how the frame composition is key to the film's humour and storytelling, and how Piani reimagines Jane ...

The 2025 Cannes Film Festival kicks off today...and the question on everyone's mind is: what will be the great movies?

Mostly, people look to the Cannes Competition (the films that compete for the Palme d'Or) to find the best films. But it's a lesser-known fact that many amazing films screen in the festival's sidebars.

And many of the best films in cinema history have screened in the festival's sidebars. In fact, Chantal Akerman's ...

If you look back on the last year, how many African films have you watched?

And how does this compare to the other international films you've seen from other continents?

Chances are, you're seeing way more films from every other continent than from Africa. That's not your fault. That's how the film industry works.

So on today's episode, Alex talks about why it's so hard to see African films and what you can do if you'd like to add ...

Today on the podcast, Dr. Angelo Muredda joins Alex Heeney to discuss one of the year's best films: David Cronenberg's The Shrouds.

We talk about why The Shrouds is a good entry point if you're new to Cronenberg, but will also please diehard fans. And we discuss how what we love about Cronenberg's films isn't necessarily the selling point you'll often hear.

Yes, he sometimes directs body horror, and he often makes movies about sex ...

Alex reviews Andrew Ahn's 2025 adaptation of the 1993 film The Wedding Banquet, starring Lily Gladstone, Youn Yuh-jung, and Joan Chen (and many more). The film is about two queer couples who end up conspiring to marry one half of each couple in exchange for a green card and money for IVF treatments.

Alex discusses the film's unexpected delights — including the wonderful, tender sound design and lovely blocking — and how the film th...

Pope Francis died today, which means it will soon be time to elect a new pope. Instead of rewatching Oscar Winner Conclave, Alex recommends catching the delightful Italian comedy We Have a Pope.

On this episode, Alex talks about why watching Conclave made her immediately want to rewatch Nanni Moretti's We Have a Pope, and what Moretti's film has that Conclave lacks. 

If Conclave is a film about how everyone wants to be pope, We Hav...

What if one of the most important movies of this decade, maybe even this century, flew under your radar?

What if it won major awards in its country of origin, including audience awards at festivals, and yet you still hadn't heard of it?

Would you want to see it? 

We're watching one of those movies this month in the April 2025 edition of Reel Ruminators. 

On today's episode, Alex discusses the film we're watching — an Indigenous fil...

Today, Alex Heeney recommends Alain Guiraudie's multi-César-nominated erotic thriller Misericordia. Since the film takes many twists and turns that she doesn't want to spoil, she introduces the film briefly before delving into what we can learn from the opening sequence.

In excellent movies like this one, the opening scene can teach us so much about how to watch the film and what's to come. Alex teaches how to read a film's opening...