Heaven Reaches Down to Earth Tebogo Malebogo’s Heaven Reaches Down to Earth begins with red embers dancing. Their subtle flickers, alongside the pulsing buzz of insects, lead into the sounds of two men’s footsteps. They belong to Tumelo (Thapelo Maropefela) and Tau (Sizo Mahlangu),…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2021 — Dispatch 3: Dark Red Forest, Radiograph of a Family, Liborio
Dark Red Forest Spiritual faith, by virtue of its abstract and elusive qualities, rarely translates well to the visual medium, if indeed it can be translated at all. Depictions of this faith have ranged from the sacred to the sacrilegious, articulated with either austere…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2021 — Dispatch 2: El Planeta, Pebbles, Azor
El Planeta This year, New Directors/New Films opens with Amalia Ulman’s debut feature film El Planeta, a cool choice for MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, two institutions that generally shy away from any youth-facing programming. Granted, ND/NF tends to be a more hospitable…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2021 — Dispatch 1: Films We’ve Already Covered
It’s been only a short four months since the postponed 2020 edition of New Directors/New Films wrapped up, but the fest is back on schedule in 2021 (only slightly delayed from its usual late-March commencement) and celebrating its 50th Anniversary. ND/NF ’21 kicks off…
by Joshua Minsoo Kim Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2020 — Dispatch 4: The Shorts Programs
Wong Ping’s Fables 2 The first of two fables in Wong Ping’s Fables 2 is entitled “Cow the Super-Rich.” It’s an amusing anti-capitalist tale about a cow who was, early in his life, a “radical social activist.” He believed violence was necessary for meaningful…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2020 — Dispatch 3: Nasir, The Metamorphosis of Birds, The Cloud in Her Room
Nasir What’s immediately striking about Nasir, Arun Karthick’s sophomore feature, is the ebb-and-flow rhythm of its slice-of-life portraiture. Karthick immediately and consistently trains his camera on the toil of hands, maestros of daily drudgery; characters’ heads, meanwhile, often extend beyond the frame, as if…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2020 — Dispatch 2: Identifying Features, The Killing of Two Lovers, The Mole Agent
Identifying Features Within a cinematic tradition that associates the violence of Mexico’s crime-infested northern border with the high-stakes machismo of drug cartels and CIA spies, Identifying Features sets itself apart by virtue of its provenance and scope. The feature debut of Fernanda Valadez, a…
by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
New Directors/New Films 2020 — Dispatch 1: Films We’ve Already Covered
The New Directors/New Films festival has emerged in recent years as a major player on the festival scene, programming such diverse heavy-hitters as Black Mother, An Elephant Sitting Still, Milla, and End of the Century over the past two years. And so it was disheartening, an eternity ago…
The 48th edition of New Directors/New Films runs March 27th – April 7th. Here’s our first dispatch. Included — very much intentionally — in our second and final dispatch from the fest is a film that isn’t actually playing the fest at all, at least not…
The 48th edition of New Directors/New Films runs March 27th – April 7th. For our first of two dispatches, we tackle the second feature from Canadian filmmaker Philippe Lesage (Genesis); a “deceptively minimalist” debut from a Mexican actress-turned-filmmaker (The Chambermaid); a Turkish love story spun on its…
