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Olivia Popp

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Olivia Popp is a film writer, critic, and programmer based between Berlin and Brussels. Her writing can primarily be found in the European trade publication Cineuropa, for which she also serves as the publication coordinator for the outlet’s GoCritic! emerging film critics workshop. Her other bylines include MUBI Notebook, Senses of Cinema, Little White Lies, Zippy Frames, Modern Times Review, Screen Slate, and Purple Hour. Olivia is an alumna of several film criticism workshops, including Locarno Critics Academy (2025) and Berlinale Talents (2024). She supports International Film Festival Rotterdam’s editorial team and is a programmer for One World Slovakia International Documentary Film Festival. She is also a member of FIPRESCI and the European Film Academy. itsoliviapopp.contently.com

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Kabul, Between Prayers (2025) EDIT “Amini uses the principle of "show, don’t tell" to maximum effect and with profound results.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Currents (2025) 100% EDIT “It is the director’s dedication to emphasising, in an unexpected way, how generational trauma manifests itself that ultimately emerges as The Currents’ strongest thematic throughline.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Visitor (2025) EDIT “Katkus draws our attention to fleeting encounters and conversations that are often the first ones to be forgotten because of their seeming inconsequentiality, but these ultimately make up the bedrock of our sensorial memory.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Rain Fell on the Nothing New (2025) EDIT “Rain Fell on the Nothing New raises highly relevant, burning social questions and has the premise to support something larger, but the script never digs deep enough into David’s plight to fully satisfy.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Renovation (2025) EDIT “Renovation is a curious, delightful beast that, at times, borders on a dry-humoured dramedy driven by situational irony while at other times taking on the sentimental romantic themes of a work like The Worst Person in the World.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Acts of Love (2025) EDIT “Rønde’s work is led by a strong performance by Lassen, and the director cinematically blends past and present through scenes of ritual, with the community seemingly overtaken by the presences of those being "treated".” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Moelln Letters (2025) EDIT “If one thing is clear by the end of The Moelln Letters, it’s that bureaucratisation is not true remembrance – a condolence letter here, a memorial there; only real actions could serve as such.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Good Sister (2025) EDIT “Miro Fischer succinctly shows how we have yet to understand how best to speak openly about incidents of trauma when they are inflicted by those close to us – we would rather remain tight-lipped than courageously confrontational.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Cicadas (2025) EDIT “In Weisse’s extraordinarily well-paced interrogation of socioeconomic class – not just conflict, but also the difficulties that arise while trying to find solidarity – one might expect the film to rise to a higher fever pitch before its end.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Deaf (2025) 100% EDIT “The filmmaker meets the audience most effectively in the film’s stiller moments, where Ángela’s emotive state can be felt through the heaviness of Garlo’s expressions.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Message (2025) 89% EDIT “Moments dedicated to cats, dogs and even a solo capybara rightfully stir viewers’ own sensitivities.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Dreamers (2025) 92% EDIT “It’s clear that Gharoro-Akpojotor admirably aims to create a sort of utopia-in-a-dystopia, as discovered through an impossible love, but neither the emancipatory potential of sapphic love nor the ramifications of the centre are thoroughly explored.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Blue Moon (2025) 90% EDIT “The scenes between Elizabeth and Larry further make for a touching final few moments, marking a rewarding finale for the impressive "Great American Tragedy", if you will, of Lorenz Hart.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Gülizar (2024) EDIT “The filmmaker’s feature debut is a character study first and foremost, imbued with a powerful interrogation of gendered and politicised social roles.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Waterdrop (2024) EDIT “But the fact that the director chooses to tell this story through the eyes of a woman who herself participates in this violence owing to social conditioning before trying to extricate herself makes this a remarkably realist film.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Return of the Projectionist (2024) EDIT “Guliyev and Aghazadeh use symmetry to their great advantage to capture curious schoolchildren in neat rows à la Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House?, making the film feel like an eternal tribute to the Iranian New Wave.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Ancestral Visions of the Future (2025) EDIT “The filmmaker is more interested in setting the scene and creating a mood and landscape, but never one that’s romanticised. ” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Once Upon a Time in a Forest (2024) EDIT “As alluded to in the film’s title, Suutari occasionally creeps into fairytale territory in the imagery of Lapland, but it feels warm and lush, never inauthentic or tacky.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Exiles (2024) EDIT “Funes never overstretches the story to unbelievable places, instead leaving us to put the pieces together.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review A Want in Her (2024) 91% EDIT “It’s a remarkably realist work – and not innately a hopeful one – but glimpses of peaks must creep through.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Personale (2024) EDIT “Trocker leaves the outside world out of focus and instead keeps crisp the pastel-pink window-box flowers, the literal fruits of the staff’s hard work.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Writing Hawa (2024) EDIT “Its dually joyful and realist end titles snap the story into place: frankly, we are only privy to this piece of powerful filmmaking out of somewhat extraordinary circumstances.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review The Southern Chronicles (2025) EDIT “The ways in which the well-meaning young man finds ways to entertain himself in a stereotypically drab environment, all while making the best of some tougher situations, grow to a fever pitch through the touching last scene.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Fanon (2024) EDIT “This is Barny’s truest success: maybe Frantz Fanon will finally have the chance to become a name known not only by scholars, activists, and those interested in Pan-Africanism and decolonial thinking.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review Ma: Cry of Silence (2024) EDIT “The final shots of MA – Cry of Silence don’t tint the situation through rose-coloured glasses, but The Maw Naing suggests that the fight must, and will, still go on.” – Cineuropa Jan 17, 2026 Full Review
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