Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s lo-fi, low-key films seem to be increasing in ubiquity as reference points for young filmmakers. Nelson Yeo’s Dreaming & Dying initially…
Director Yamaguchi Junta’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was a delightful no-budget time travel comedy that hit the scene a couple of years ago, delighting…
Allegedly an “experimental” video essay/documentary on the history of the doorbell, director Graeme Arnfield’s Home Invasion purports to be an unsettling and insightful exploration of…
One of Fantasia’s 2023 archival presentations is Jeong Jae-eun’s 2001 coming-of-age ensemble film Take Care of My Cat. The movie was a critical hit when…
The programmers at the Fantasia International Film Festival can be counted on, year after year, to assemble a strong lineup of retrospective screenings, from new…
French documentarian and academic Sylvain George has been making a particular kind of film for nearly twenty years, carving out a specific cinematic niche. In…
Writing about Larry Fessenden’s new film Blackout, recently screened as part of the Fantasia Film Festival, we commented on its “shaggy structure” and noted that…
One or two festivals ago, who can remember which — this time of year they all blend together — this critic wrote about Nomad, Patrick…
One of the finest films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Patrick Tam’s Nomad (1982), plays at this year’s NYAFF in a new restoration, advertised…
“Gang gang.” “Ice cream so good.” You can listen to these words while buttering toast (the voice belongs to Pinkydoll). You can gamble online while…
Redemption With Life is a story of corruption and redemption — a “classic” rise and fall tale set within the anodyne world of finance and…
Few locations are more central to the scares of a haunted house film than a basement. Perpetually underlit, unfinished underground spaces make for strong centers…
Cheuk Wan-chi is an accomplished director, screenwriter, and stand-up comedian in Hong Kong. She co-wrote Sylvia Chang’s excellent 2004 film 20 30 40 and Pang…
“What is society’s ratio of good people to bad people?” This is the question a police officer puts to his partner at the beginning of…
It’s strange how quickly time flies. Looking back, the surreal and challenging days of the pandemic may appear merely a distant, vague memory to the…
Soundtracked by a recording of John Cage’s minimalist piano piece “Dream,” a rocky terrain sits next to a sprawling seascape. Cyclists cruise beachy pathways as…
In 2020, French director Mathilde Girard released Episodes — Spring 2018, a half-hour film that played like a fictionalized diary and was notable for its…
Film often exists in a curious relation to the art world. Though there’s no formal distinction between film and video art or artists’ moving image,…
How I Became a Communist opens on a static shot of an elderly woman cleaning out the chimney of her rural Irish farmhouse. There is…
Argentinian filmmaker Gustavo Fontán has produced fourteen feature films since 2003, but still hasn’t broken through on the film festival circuit in a substantial way.…
Nicolas Klotz and Elizabeth Perceval’s new film, New World! (The World Anew), was shot on Ushant, an island off the coast of Brittany where Jean…