Analyzing a Wang Bing is never such a small feat, regardless of length; and Youth (Homecoming), the final entry in the director’s Youth trilogy, premiering…
Wang Bing films have a reputation for their difficulty, but the opening film in his Youth trilogy, Youth (Spring), managed to be surprisingly varied and…
The capacity to imagine a better future is integral to any successful progressive movement. Amidst historic protests around the United States against both the relentless…
Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam’s debut feature, Mambar Pierrette, opens with the mundane rhythms of domestic work. Mambar (Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat), a seamstress in the city…
Youth (Spring) arrives in the midst of something of an inflection point: The West’s orientation toward China has shifted radically since Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang…
Despite being born in Surrey, British director Peter Watkins has evolved into a nomadic artist, having lived in Sweden, Canada, Lithuania, and now residing in…
Users, Natalia Almada’s new essayistic documentary, is a text at war with itself, equal parts poetic rumination on the place of modern technology in our…
At the outset of White Balls on Walls, it’s so decreed: the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam will remove the massive welcome at their entrance that reads…
Documentarian of the personal, Su Friedrich’s latest film, Today, begins with a story. A friend reads aloud a passage from The Odyssey, in which Odysseus…
My Imaginary Country finds Guzmán contending with nostalgia for perhaps the first time, and the resultant film isn’t quite sure how to handle this pivot.…
Blue Island is a similarly interrogative work to the director’s Yellowing, but here taking on a grander and more experimental form. Chan Tze-woon’s Yellowing was…
A New Old Play is a rich, complex contribution to the Chinese folk tradition, and a “theater” film for the ages. Without getting too far into…
Suzanna Andler seems to spawn from a place of loving tribute, but it does little to contribute new insight or appreciation. During her lifetime, Marguerite Duras…
Heimat Is a Space in Time is a film of palpable gravity but one that may always be more meaningful to Heise than to audiences. Heimat…
The sixth feature film from Pema Tseden is a dream-inflected, almost Rashomon-like take on a road movie that uses the barren hills of the Kekexili…
Patricio Guzmán’s latest documentary offers similar but waning insight to his two previous, more successful efforts. The Cordillera of Dreams is the third and final film…
There’s a moment at the end of the first part of Dead Souls (roughly three hours into the film’s eight-hour runtime) when its director, Chinese…
From the opening credits, something seems off about Under the Sun, and the “truth” it projects. “My father says that Korea is the most beautiful country in…