Set in the year 2019, An Unfinished Film is a fictional documentary about a film crew that reunites to finish a queer feature from 10…
The notion of “camera-consciousness” in the cinema is not, on the face of it, a terribly plausible idea. Apart from point-of-view shots, or extended experiments…
Just barely after the advent of photography, the concept of putting a camera in a balloon was born. Taken long before commercial air travel, these…
Halina Reijn’s Babygirl is aware of the discourse. It’s read all the articles that have been passed around online, it knows what’s considered problematic in…
Six years ago, Mike Leigh produced his first war film, Peterloo, in which domestic unrest in 1819 led British troops to slaughter protesting civilians. At…
One of the more indelible sequences in Joshua Oppenheimer’s breakthrough documentary, The Act of Killing, features one of its subjects, the Indonesian paramilitary thug Anwar…
In the opening moments of Nightbitch, director Marielle Heller appears alongside her star Amy Adams, both playing frustrated mothers in a grocery store. Both Heller…
Andrea Arnold is not without talent, but she has some of the worst instincts of any allegedly major director. Take Fish Tank, for example. Not…
Xu Haofeng makes movies for people who enjoy and understand the finer points of martial arts choreography. His best-known film work (he’s also a novelist)…
Just shy of 10 years after winning an ill-deserved Palme d’Or for Dheepan (2015) — a leering intrusion into the lives of a makeshift Sri…
Before making her feature film debut with 2019’s Atlantics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop produced a series of poetic short films, all of which explored a…
The title character of Sean Baker’s Anora notably does not go by that name for most of the film, and appears uncomfortable when male characters…
“Someone’s inside.” These two words, uttered with ominous clarity, spur Jason Yu’s invigorating debut, Sleep, into malevolent and mysterious somnolence; for in the world of…
Pepe Just barely after the advent of photography, the concept of putting a camera in a balloon was born. Taken long before commercial air travel,…
While Taiwanese arthouse films have been regulars on the international festival circuit since the breakthroughs of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and the rest of the…
In his new film Being John Smith, premiering alongside Jean-Luc Godard’s for-real-this-time last two films in TIFF’s Wavelengths program, filmmaker John Smith starts with a…
Botox is everywhere, and Ozempic will follow. To voluntarily place a needle in one’s skin is no longer an image of deviancy, but one of…
Anora The title character of Sean Baker’s Anora notably does not go by that name for most of the film, and appears uncomfortable when male…
Until 2019, the Toronto International Film Festival had a section called Masters. As you might assume, it was a space for major filmmakers with significant…
Aberdeen offers unfortunate proof — not that any was really needed — of how hard it is for well-intentioned films addressing important subject matter to…
As he did in his directorial debut, the excellent Bones and Names (2023), Fabian Stumm mines the details of his own life and adapts them,…