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Rafa Sales Ross

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Rafa Sales Ross is a Brazilian film journalist and programmer. She has a Master’s in Film and Visual Culture and has spent over a decade researching the portrait of suicide in cinema. Rafa has written for publications such as BBC Culture, BFI, Little White Lies, i_D, and Total Film and regularly hosts talks and Q&As. When she isn’t at a festival, she can be found next to her two cats, Clifford and Oliver.

Official Website:

https://rafiews.com/

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
A Private Life (2025) 81% C+ EDIT ““A Private Life” grasps at something real and raw. It’s a shame Zlotowski so willingly refuses to take her finger off that pulse, even if the result remains a pleasurable ride. ” – The Playlist Dec 31, 2025 Full Review DJ Ahmet (2025) 92% EDIT “As it ticks its familiar yet lovingly tendered boxes, it becomes clear that DJ Ahmet is less about music than it is about rhythm – rhythm as kinship, but also the unspoken dialogue that serves us during unrefined years of youth.” – Sight & Sound Nov 6, 2025 Full Review Ballad of a Small Player (2025) 48% 3/5 EDIT “The Swiss-Austrian director crafts a welcome sensorial encapsulation of this see-sawing between grandeur and disgrace, largely helped by the composer Volker Bertelmann’s big, operatic numbers.” – Little White Lies Oct 17, 2025 Full Review Below the Clouds (2025) 94% EDIT “Longtime Rosi fans already familiar with the rhythms of the Italian filmmaker, are in for a beautiful, sprawling treat. ” – Little White Lies Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Orphan (2025) 63% C- EDIT “Still, “Orphan” feels like an exercise more concerned with the precision of its technical execution than the more ungovernable reins of its emotional axis.” – The Playlist Sep 2, 2025 Full Review Jay Kelly (2025) 75% B+ EDIT “This tenderness, so welcomingly earnest, precedes a climax that will grant those willing to do away with the temptation of cynicism a beautiful reminder of the magic of movie stars. ” – The Playlist Sep 2, 2025 Full Review After the Hunt (2025) 37% C+ EDIT “The film’s preoccupations lie not as much with existential questions of morality but with more primitive matters of yearning.” – The Playlist Sep 2, 2025 Full Review Frankenstein (2025) 85% A EDIT “A stunning piece of text, acutely aware of the labyrinthine nature of our most primitive emotions, and zigzagging through musings on love and loss and want with the careful rhythms of a writer who gets that tackling the grandiose often merits delicacy.” – The Playlist Sep 2, 2025 Full Review The Smashing Machine (2025) 70% B+ EDIT “Without a skilled hold of this fragile dichotomy, Safdie’s examination of Kerr would crumble under the weight of the pastiche. However, Johnson’s performance roots the film in a sharp subversion of expectation.” – The Playlist Sep 1, 2025 Full Review Landmarks (2025) 93% C+ EDIT “Despite the frustrations of its labyrinthine rhythms, “Landmarks” is a worthy companion to Martel’s “Zama” in its prodding at the contradictions of a country whose denial is so grave it will bend its language and its laws before acknowledging truths.” – The Playlist Sep 1, 2025 Full Review The Wizard of the Kremlin (2025) 49% EDIT “It is a commendable endeavour, but also one that completely misunderstands where the treasure chest of its premise lies.” – Little White Lies Aug 31, 2025 Full Review Rose of Nevada (2025) 100% EDIT “It is an experience as moving as it is unnerving.” – Little White Lies Aug 30, 2025 Full Review The Wave (2025) 60% EDIT “It feels like The Wave doesn’t want you to empathise with the cause as much as it wants you to praise its director.” – Little White Lies May 27, 2025 Full Review Romería (2025) 86% EDIT “Despite a taste of confrontation when the film leaves the realm of the harbor and finally enters the family home and a brief, somewhat tonally misguided flashback, Romería is loyal to its sense of withholding almost until the very end. ” – Little White Lies May 22, 2025 Full Review The Secret Agent (2025) 98% EDIT “The large ensemble cast, plural and charming and ever-interesting to look at and listen to, crowns a film that grabs at the fabric of a people with the confident, hungry hands of those who love it.” – Little White Lies May 19, 2025 Full Review The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (2025) 95% EDIT “It’s a captivating exercise in capturing a specific social malaise.” – Little White Lies May 18, 2025 Full Review Love (2024) 96% EDIT “Sadly, without insight into the intimacy of communion, many of the conversations Haugerud brings to the fore end up laying a bit too close to the didactic.” – Little White Lies Jan 28, 2025 Full Review April (2024) 95% EDIT “It is a disorienting, all-consuming sensorial experience and made all the much better to those willing to surrender to its mysteries. ” – Little White Lies Jan 28, 2025 Full Review Lula (2024) 64% EDIT “Stone’s gaze — both physical and cinematic — is unfocused and ever-shifting, and the questions that he asks are superficial, a guiding frame concocted solely to be interwoven with the archival material of Lula’s rise and demise.” – Little White Lies Jan 28, 2025 Full Review The Quiet Son (2024) 55% EDIT “The cautionary tale The Quiet Son succeeds in building is not one on the perverse sneakiness of recruitment but on the dangers of rooting a story solely on the flimsiness of good intentions.” – Little White Lies Jan 28, 2025 Full Review I'm Still Here (2024) 97% EDIT “It is a lead performance that finds great potency in containment, with Torres never as striking as when the camera quietly rests on her face, her eyes always looking forward, her intent unshakeable.” – Little White Lies Jan 28, 2025 Full Review Emmanuelle (2024) 18% EDIT “That a filmmaker who previously displayed such a deep understanding of the pleasures and burdens of the female body is behind this tepid exercise in desire is a great shock — and an even bigger shame.” – Little White Lies Jan 28, 2025 Full Review The Room Next Door (2024) 80% C EDIT ““The Room Next Door” a surprisingly vapid case of style over substance, unable to mask its tameness under the smokescreen of a peculiar premise.” – The Playlist Sep 6, 2024 Full Review Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) 31% B EDIT “Of all the things Phillips does better in “Joker: Folie à Deux” than he did in “Joker,” the best is by far his course correction in catering to radical misogynists.” – The Playlist Sep 6, 2024 Full Review The Order (2024) 93% EDIT “The Order sees the director at his most tame, with few violent sequences interspersed through a tense thriller that favours large ethical questionings over the minutiae of heinous crimes. ” – Little White Lies Sep 3, 2024 Full Review
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