In some respects, the “officially sanctioned” of the SWYC Collective’s productions — it was scheduled for broadcast in China, before it was pulled by its…
When a long-suppressed work of art finally surfaces, it generates unexpected conceptual ripples. We understand that the work was made in a particular time and…
In German, Kai Stänicke’s debut feature Trial of Hein bears the title Der Heimatlose, which translates as “the stateless person” or “the homeless.” This is…
In the first half of Fantasy, Isabel Pagliai’s feature debut, it is easy to become fixated on Fatty, the Calico-mix cat who lives with the…
When you see a lot of movies at film festivals, you begin to notice certain patterns in the cinema as a whole. One such pattern…
In my day job as a college writing instructor, there is a lot of talk about “multi-modal composition.” This simply means that instead of remaining…
Burak Çevik’s films often use a narrative framework as a jumping-off point for formal experimentation. This is perhaps best seen in his 2019 feature Belonging,…
Julian of Norwich was a religious mystic and anchoress in the Middle Ages. After a grave illness during which she experienced visions of Christ on…
Alain Gomis’ new film achieves something both impressive and paradoxical. It is simultaneously intimate and panoramic. Dao is built around two very large family gatherings,…
Sometimes the footage is the thing. Nova ’78 represents the completion of an observational documentary by the late Beat-adjacent filmmaker Howard Brookner, perhaps best known…
One would be hard-pressed to identify a film director on the world stage who has done a better job of articulating our historical moment than…
For the most part, the documentaries that have made Gianfranco Rosi’s reputation have a firm basis in geography. Sacro GRA (2013) explored life in Rome…
It’s a classic conundrum: a documentary focuses on advocacy on a very important topic, and manages to some extent to communicate meaningful information about that…
Despite being so nondescript, the title of The Arab actually communicates quite a lot. In the singular nominative, it reduces a specific man or woman…
Fuori, the latest film by Italy’s Mario Martone (Nostalgia, The King of Laughter), is curiously inert, especially when you consider that most of the film…
Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s last film, 2023’s Green Border, was a fact-based drama about migrants who were lured to Belarus by false promises of asylum,…
With his third feature film, The Things You Kill, Iranian-born filmmaker Alireza Khatami turns his perspicacious gaze away from the overtly political themes of Oblivion…
The makers of The Perfect Neighbor, which is largely composed of police bodycam and dashcam footage, decided that it was necessary to include a recording…
Raoul Peck’s latest documentary certainly has timeliness going for it. There is of course a rise of authoritarianism around the world, a set of schemes…
Coming to NYFF by way of the Giornate degli Artori in Venice, Gabriel Azorín’s debut feature is a bold swing for the fences, the sort…
In the last 10 or 15 years, the micro-universe that we call the experimental film world has made a decisive shift toward a form of…