Symbols are like Alfred Hitchcock’s (flawed) definition of drama — “life with the dull bits cut out.” Their universal appeal derives from prioritizing a familiar…
To view history through the lens of the present frequently engenders all kinds of catharsis, from the moral smugness of the studio biopic to the…
There’s no denying the contemporary trend to “narrativize” otherwise fact-based documentaries, filmmakers shaping reams of footage into something resembling the three-act structure of the average…
One of the most discussed Estonian films of the year, Dark Paradise is a strange beast from one of the country’s most promising and rising…
Free Solo, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s 2018 documentary, was a visually stunning document of a truly impressive feat: Alex Honnold climbing the entirety…
When critic Darren Hughes and filmmaker Paul Harrill founded The Public Cinema in 2015, their goal was to bring important works of world cinema and…
Until 2021, France did not have a set legal age of consent. Then Vanessa Springora wrote Le Consentement in 2020, an autobiographical memoir about her…
Light Matter’s fourth 2023 program is titled “Blurred Lines.” Though lines literal and figurative blur within many of the constituent films, the title refers more…
Now in its third consecutive year, the Light Matter Festival has become a major East Coast showcase for experimental film and video, presenting a diversity…
One of the pleasures of encountering experimental film and video in a festival setting is the chance to get a survey, the lay of the…
Maestro When the 2018 remake of old Hollywood standby A Star is Born dropped, it marked the culmination of over a decade’s worth of effort…
After dipping his toes in the waters of English-language filmmaking, Yorgos Lanthimos makes his return to his Greek roots with Bleat, inviting a cadre of…
We Don’t Talk Like We Used To, the title of Joshua Gen Solondz’s latest film, has a few potential meanings to account for. The first…
Few directors have explored the implications of real-time continuity — or a reasonable approximation thereof — as resolutely as Romanian director Cristi Puiu. From his…
After his disappointing 2021 film The Restless, a film in which a story of an artist’s manic episodes mostly provided an opportunity for actorly histrionics,…
An artist and documentary filmmaker, Eléonore Saintagnan makes her feature debut with Camping du Lac, although such a biographical description does little to adequately describe…
Nicole Midori Woodford’s Last Shadow at First Light occupies an exasperating middle ground between heartfelt sincerity and hoary cliché, exploring generational trauma and survivor’s guilt…
The Delinquents Blanket declarations about three-hour-plus runtimes always seem curious when filmmakers employ said length for wildly different purposes. Though the sweeping epic may be…
Next Goal Wins Consider the fortunes of Taika Waititi in just the last five years. Briefly heralded as one of the more exciting voices in…
When I worked the film scanner at a home media transfer house, among the foremost moldy delights I could regularly expect to find on my…
Amidst the ongoing renaissance of Indigenous art, there is one existential crisis that is rarely addressed: First Nations’ access to clean, drinkable water. It’s not…