In a less-than-apocryphal anecdote repeated throughout the French media, Jean Renoir once said, “I made La Bête humaine because [Jean] Gabin and I wanted to…
Quebecois director Denis Côté is something of a cinematic explorer. Over the course of his 25-year career, he has established himself as one of Canada’s…
One often encounters the (admittedly lazy) critical idea that a particular film “would’ve been better as a short,” suggesting that whatever ideas or formal attributes…
In 2014, the Dutch filmmaking duo of Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan made a film called Episode of the Sea, collaborating with the…
Whatever else one can say about the merits of experimental film, “it looks expensive” is typically not one of the usual citations. Malena Szlam’s Archipelago…
When Armand Yervant Tufenkian worked as a fire lookout in the forests of Central California, his protracted, expectant gazing into the distance made him wonder…
In Lee Anne Schmitt’s latest feature, Evidence, which premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year, the conspiracy theory adopts a progressive slant. With Schmitt’s characteristic…
Though plenty of movies have been made either focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic in a literal way, and even more movies had been converted into…
The best of the experimental film programming at the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look 2025 is actually found outside the program specifically dedicated…
Brigid McCaffrey’s debut feature plays very much like a pleasant walk in the woods. One is surrounded by the hazy glint of sunlight on foliage,…
There’s an opaque yet stern quality to Kaloyan (Ognyan “Fyre” Pavlov), a heavily tattooed young man returning to his small Bulgarian hometown after many years…
In Aude Léa Rapin’s sci-fi drama, Planet B, the French government has imprisoned dissidents in a virtual prison. Bodies are kept in a vegetative state…
In a concise opening, Thierry de Peretti’s In His Own Image introduces its heroine Antonia (Clara-Maria Laredo), a young and passionate photographer who seems to…
The title of Claire Burger’s film Foreign Tongue holds both literal and symbolic meaning: its leading characters, French and German teenagers Fanny (Lilith Grasmug) and…
Patricia Mazuy is one of the greatest directors working today, but you’d hardly know it from how often her films are screened or talked about.…
At one end, a nearly perfunctory art documentary; on the other, a lively essay film on color; in between, a shambolic chronicle of a failed…
Few works of art have a history as rousing or enigmatic as Francisco Goya’s Black Paintings. The tale goes something like this: Goya, possibly very…
A simple sprinkling of chemicals into an in-ground pool reveals more about the enigmatic figure at the center of Ted Kennedy’s B.F. Skinner Plays Himself…
Julian Castronovo is 27 years old. He’s 6’1” and 155 pounds. This is the only biographical information you’ll find about him on his website, and…
It’s a sign of great writing when you can identify everything you love and hate about a character, but can’t decide whether you love or…
Coming-of-age movies are a dime a dozen, at this point practically an entire sub-genre of Sundance-approved indie calling cards. Which is perhaps why Henry Bernadet’s…