Karl Marx’ oft-cited quip about how history repeats itself, “first as a tragedy, second as a farce,” could easily apply to Special Operation, Oleksiy Radynski’s…
It all starts with a bang. Sirât immerses itself into a spectacular DIY rave in the Moroccan desert, before its narrative kicks off proper. Engulfed…
“Knights are now rooks! All bishops must leave the board! Pawns can now fly!” — not a surrealist pamphlet upon obvious improvements to the game…
Eugene Kotlyarenko is a filmmaker invested in making sense of our current technology-driven world. His camera frame often has live action footage sharing the screen…
Josef von Sternberg always had a materialistic streak — it was a necessity to produce the kind of effects he was chasing. He never embraced…
The soldiers of Roberto Minervini’s The Damned play cards, wander around, and casually debate theology. The year is 1862, and these Union soldiers find themselves…
Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides, currently in U.S. theaters after initially premiering nearly a year ago at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in May…
It makes sense that Joel Potrykus has remained a Michigan filmmaker his entire career. His rebellious, don’t-ask-permission attitude is right at home in a state…
The two sequences that form the beginning of Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April set a mood of violent unease. We follow a faceless creature, vaguely humanoid despite…
After 2021’s El Planeta, Amalia Ulman ups the ante with her second feature, Magic Farm, in every conceivable way. Black-and-white cinematography here gives way to…
I was not surprised that I was deeply charmed by young Joel Alfonso Vargas’ Mad Bills To Pay, which screened at this year’s New Directors/New…
Among the most serene of thought experiments is the suggestion that a monkey, given a typewriter and unlimited time, will write a perfect copy of…
Alexandra Simpson’s No Sleep Till is an impressionistic look at a small beach town in South Florida awaiting a large Hurricane to pass through. Simpson’s…
There’s a scene in Alex Garland’s Civil War, in which a man is shot in the heart and killed. The man is from Hong Kong,…
For a film with such a coy name, we necessarily prepare, consenting or not, to play a game of comparison: why did James Benning call…
“Everywhere animals disappear,” wrote art critic John Berger in his seminal book Why Look at Animals? Berger proposed an argument from capitalism, where the industrialized…
Miguel Gomes first began to build attention in the United States with his film Our Beloved Month of August in 2008. Since then, the Portuguese…
Film has always stood in tense relation to history: it both creates and consumes it. Often, it does both simultaneously. Steve Erickson’s book Days Between…
Since the release of his first short film, Heroes Never Die, 35 years ago, Alain Guiraudie has gradually built a reputation as one of world…
As Shadow of a Doubt opens, Joseph Cotton’s uncle Charlie is running away from the police. He has been lying down in his cheap hotel…