Last year at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Estonian art film 8 Views of Lake Biwa translated a Japanese storytelling tradition of “eight views”…
As loglines go, a Chloë Sevigny-narrated, archive-heavy documentary about an infamous, largely discredited dolphin scientist has a kind of whimsical ring to it. And indeed,…
The first shot of Julian Chou’s film Blind Love is both jarring and literal: a closeup of a doctor draining a cyst under a twitching…
“Is what you’re doing worth a child’s tears?” a stranger asked Georgian filmmaker Nutsa Gogoberidze as she was heading off to make her film Uzhmuri…
There are few rings of cinematic hell worse than bad broad comedies. Watching Rasmus Merivoo’s Alien 2 or: The Return of Valdis in 17 Episodes…
Arriving at the Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia this year, I found myself witness to a brewing controversy. Deaf Lovers, a new film…
“This city takes time away from you,” says one of the seven disembodied voices introducing us to the wide-awake-at-night Mumbai city in the lyrical opening…
Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s (L for Leisure, Two Plains & a Fancy) new film Dream Team boasts two assets not often paired together in…
While the experimental “sidebar” screenings at larger film festivals receive more than their share of critical attention, they only have so many slots to program.…
The Gloria of your Imagination, the new experimental feature from Jennifer Reeves, arrives at a moment when the future of women’s autonomy is an open…
While the bibliographic career of Michel Houellebecq has never failed to court intrigue, praise, and rancor, his filmed performances have garnered relatively little attention. Perhaps…
Favoriten (2024), Ruth Beckermann’s latest, rolls production titles over a series of children’s drawings of buildings. Following a nigh universal youthful design scheme, the drawings…
“Our dominance is supreme and our isolation is profound.” These words, taken from N. Scott Momaday’s essay, “A Storyteller and His Art,” pronounce the condition…
Revolving Rounds In Johann Lurf’s thrilling 2019 film Cavalcade, a 35mm camera records an apparent long take of a six-foot phenakistoscope water wheel constructed by…
At first, Eephus holds the potential to make one quite sad. For this writer, the effect did not seem intentional and was more about my…
A young American wanders around Buenos Aires, looking for the grave of the famed pirate Hippolyte Bouchard, who once conquered the American’s hometown of Monterey,…
As attention spans dwindle to below-goldfish levels, researchers are looking for new therapeutic treatments to tackle the steadily growing mental health issues many are facing.…
It has now been seven years since Heinz Emigholz, until 2017 mainly known for his semi-silent architecture films, reintroduced language into his cinema with Streetscapes…
In his new film Being John Smith, premiering alongside Jean-Luc Godard’s for-real-this-time last two films in TIFF’s Wavelengths program, filmmaker John Smith starts with a…
Until 2019, the Toronto International Film Festival had a section called Masters. As you might assume, it was a space for major filmmakers with significant…
Aberdeen offers unfortunate proof — not that any was really needed — of how hard it is for well-intentioned films addressing important subject matter to…