Wang Bing films have a reputation for their difficulty, but the opening film in his Youth trilogy, Youth (Spring), managed to be surprisingly varied…
The capacity to imagine a better future is integral to any successful progressive movement. Amidst historic protests around the United States against both the…
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…
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…
Despite being born in Surrey, British director Peter Watkins has evolved into a nomadic artist, having lived in Sweden, Canada, Lithuania, and now residing…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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,…