Nothing stays buried under the snow forever. In the early ‘90s, Chile was a country eager not just to move forward, but to prove it…
With The Blood Countess, Ulrike Ottinger makes the case that there’s only one suitable way to open a movie where Isabelle Huppert plays a resurrected…
The cinema of Clio Barnard takes place in corners of the world familiar to those living in, or near, them, but invisible to those living…
Passion is subsumed into stricture in Aung Phyoe’s Fruit Gathering, a graceful Burmese drama about the relationship between two colleagues at a garment factory. Patient…
Sometimes, the riskiest thing to do can be to play it safe. With her 2016 breakthrough and solo directorial debut, Wolf and Sheep, Shahrbanoo Sadat…
“Can the copy of something embody the truth of its original self?” The world we have built for ourselves is an ersatz one. We gaze…
Why are filmmakers today so afraid of melodrama? Many’s a recent feature, from the acclaimed (Celine Song’s Past Lives) to the less so (Luca Guadagnino’s…
How to escape from the bottom of the barrel? In Ferit Karahan’s Djinn Wedding, a family in desperation moves into an abandoned house in rural…
Some directors pick a lane and stay in it their entire careers. Some genre-hop, exploring different styles and methods, courting different audiences. So it’s of…
The pressure of representation weighs heavily on Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog. With its accessible arthouse style and the sobriety of its subject…
We, in the modern world, are more connected to one another than ever before, and increasingly so. But are we also lonelier than ever? In…
“An ode to cinema” — an audacious claim with which to open one’s feature, but audacity courses through the work of Mosotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah…
It makes sense that an author like Enid Blyton might enjoy a resurgence in popularity in times like these. War, political turmoil, the looming threat…
A woman of unknown origin and, for a time, unknown purpose, Mira (Larissa Corriveau) observes. For some, her observation is distant, silently watching the people…
It’s fairly easy for an artist to commit themselves to a concept, less easy for them to do it justice through their art. Lê Bảo’s…
True objectivity is, practically speaking, virtually impossible when analyzing art. Each individual approaches each work of art, whether film, painting, music, literature, or so on,…
Representation does not equal inclusion. With ostensibly good intentions and plenty of compassion, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s attempt at telling the story of refugee…
Troubled souls trapped: the parameters of a typical Claire Denis narrative are rarely complex. Beau Travail’s French Foreign Legion soldiers were confined to their base…
Pain is not a present sensation. Pain is a memory. Like all sensations, by the time information — be it visual, aural, or anything else…
In dreams, everyone is equal. Regardless of age, status, or character, we all sleep. In sleep, we all dream. And there, what happens is, for…
If who you are is a sin, what are the consequences of simply living your life? Traditional spiritualism clashes with modern individualism in Nader Saeivar’s…