Only the teeming right-wing critics of mid-20th century Cahiers du Cinéma could have so fervently opposed the notion of political didacticism in film. Needless to…
Bernardo Bertolucci passed away in 2018, but his unfinished film is still echoing. Andrea Pallaoro’s The Echo Chamber unfurls from the final screenplay Bertolucci conceived,…
“Talk to me in a Continental accent.” That’s what Juana (Esmeralda Pimentel), a Mexican corporate heiress, begs of her Cuban immigrant husband Camilo (Gael García…
Hungarian writer-director Gábor Reisz garnered significant notice on the festival circuit for his third feature film, 2023’s Explanation for Everything. That film was a pointed…
Few filmmakers have confronted the fractures of modern America with such formal rigor and moral devotion as Barbara Kopple. For several decades, the legendary documentarian…
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.” So begins Kamel Laaridhi’s debut feature, The H@llow Man, with a quote…
Because of its ability to replicate life, the cinema has long been a preferred medium for exploring the meaning of death. People die in films…
According to the UN, nearly 1,000 Palestinians currently living in Jerusalem face eviction at the hands of the Israeli government. Of those permitted housing, less…
The mononymic Japanese director SABU, despite 30 years of steady work in the offbeat genre film mines, has never broken through in the West in…
Victims of bullying rarely find solace in the solutions of the school administrations that are meant to protect them and will often experience punishment for…
Italian filmmaker Riccardo Giacconi has been making experimental documentaries for the past 15 years. Possibly his best-known film to date is Two (2017), a medium-length…
Chris Hansen is a crusader of the postmodern world. A relentless careerist and ten-time Emmy winner, the Chicago-born media personality weaponized his television appearances in…
Identical twin sisters — so closely connected that they speak in unison, dream the same dreams, and furiously love the same man — dig a…
Film sets tend to be loud, full of people bustling around each other, in one breath bemoaning the lack of budget, materials, and film stock,…
In this dispatch: You Don’t Belong…
A staid frostiness envelops the frames of Florin Şerban’s smoldering latest feature, whose clinching of the top prize at its Locarno premiere serves as an…
A woman of unknown origin and, for a time, unknown purpose, Mira (Larissa Corriveau) observes. For some, her observation is distant, silently watching the people…
A purveyor of artifice and decadence, the films of Bertrand Mandico are at their most interesting on the purely visual plane. He fills his frames…
It’s fairly easy for an artist to commit themselves to a concept, less easy for them to do it justice through their art. Lê Bảo’s…
Small talk counts more critics than supporters. Pleasantries about families, careers, mutual acquaintances, or — if the conversation really gets dire — the weather, despite…
True objectivity is, practically speaking, virtually impossible when analyzing art. Each individual approaches each work of art, whether film, painting, music, literature, or so on,…