Huang Ji is among the last handful of Chinese directors to sneak through the portal distribution company dGenerate Films, the center of an important 2000s…
Camarera de piso — Lucrecia Martel’s latest short, commissioned as part of The National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Síntesis project — comes with a curious…
In an interview with Michael Guarneri, Lav Diaz states quite emphatically that “tragedy and suffering are an inherent part of man’s existence and death is…
It’s the pillowing warmth of nostalgia, which sporadically rears its head that it may provide orientation and affirm consciousness amidst historical chaos, that makes up…
At its core, the intellectual thesis of Julia Murat’s intelligent if inconclusive film belies a more emotional investment. As its title might imply, Rule 34…
Ana Vaz’s meditative documentary on the conundrum of wildlife habitation, as considered through the intensified processes of urbanization, is a more frustrating exercise in atmosphere…
Slow cinema miserabilism — right up there with elevated horror and anything written by Steven Knight (Serenity gloriously excepted) — is among the most irksome…
Early on in Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s new film Matter Out of Place, a man investigating an unearthed landfill site utters the phrase “out of sight, out…
There’s a relaxed tone to Alessandro Comodin’s The Adventures of Gigi the Law — one that’s so lackadaisical the film often threatens to stall whenever…
The needle-eye gateway of the coming-of-age film is a near-obligatory rite of passage for the “emerging” Canadian director. Accordingly, Trevor Anderson sets his debut feature,…
Lisbon plays itself in Where Is This Street? or With No Before or After, the first collaboratively directed film from partners João Pedro Rodrigues and…
Bouncing back from two years worth of Covid-related disruption while still riding out some major switch-ups and art direction, the Locarno Film Festival returned in…
Since the advent of an autonomous African cinema in the 1960s, Western audiences have grown accustomed to a realist, declarative style that served to describe…
The latest film from veteran Malaysian director Woo Ming Jin (Monday Morning Glory, The Tiger Factory) is an interesting cinematic specimen. A filmmaker with sensibilities…
Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s A Woman (Une femme de notre temps) could be taken for a statement film: Juliane (Sophie Marceau) is a Parisian chief of police;…
Within every poorly constructed jape, at the center of every cringe-inducing bit, lies the art of the dick joke. For the foul-mouthed comics who enjoy…
Without the director’s name attached to the credits, and without Alain Chabat’s happily nonchalant presence gracing the screen, one might not recognize Incredible But True…
In Im Sang-soo’s Heaven: To the Land of Happiness, the money its pair of protagonists happen upon, no matter how welcome, has a rapidly depreciating…
Short films are particularly difficult to finesse into satisfying wholes. Often fashioned as simple calling cards, an attempt to show off technical specs or a…
It’s perhaps become a moot point to invoke the shadow of Apichatpong Weerasethakul when talking about an emerging festival filmmaker’s work in the 21st century.…
Competitive speed stacking — a sport that involves stacking specially designed cups in predetermined sequences as quickly as possible — is the eccentric pastime at…