In New Directors/New Films Ideas Bubble from the Cultural Magma
New Directors/New Films presents a cross-section of ideas and styles bubbling from today’s cultural magma, and elements and themes resonate from film to film. It’s our zeitgeist, baby.
Film Festivals
Berlinale Part 1: Bob Dylan, Trauma Drama, and Time-Shifting Romance
The 75th edition of Europe’s preeminent film festival, Berlinale, kicks off with politics center stage, an efficient new director, and more celebrities than ever before.
BFI London Film Festival 2023: Critics’ Chat
BFI London Film Festival’s most impressionable films of the year, industry strikes, awards season, and the shoe-leather journalism of a film festival critic.
Will Online Participation Be the Future of the Sundance Film Festival?
Watching Sundance Film Festival 2023 from the cost-saving comfort of my couch got me thinking about the sustainability of in-person attendance.
NYFF 2017: ‘The Rape of Recy Taylor’
This haunting documentary about a black woman assaulted by six white men in 1944 Alabama pivots deftly from crime story to history lesson without losing track of the human pain at its core.
TIFF 2017: ‘The Shape of Water’
The Shape of Water comes off as uninformed political correctness, which is more detrimental to its cause than it is progressive.
TIFF 2017: ‘The Royal Hibiscus Hotel’
Though a typical rom-com, Ishaya Bako's film is never boring.
TIFF 2017: ‘Never Steady, Never Still’
The troubled characters in this film deserve a more complex, nuanced approach.
TIFF 2017: ‘Ta peau si lisse’ (A Skin So Soft)
Denis Côté introduces viewers to five bodybuilders, the alternative beauty of their insular community, and their magnificent descent into nature.
Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2017: ‘Black Code’ + ‘Bill Nye’ + ‘The Blood Is at the Doorstep’
A trio of documentaries on ostensibly diverse subjects (suppression of online dissent, a climate change crusade, a family’s struggle for justice after a police shooting) all circle back to the fight for agency in the modern world.
After Images: Poland’s 41st Gdynia Film Festival
From painters to interrogators, some of the finest films at Gdynia Film Festival 2016 dramatized real-life figures from the country’s past.
A Spiderweb of Sorts: Interview With Juanita Apraez Murillo of SEEYOUSOUND
An avid music film watcher with a knack for creating a web of connections between art and people, SEEYOUSOUND International Music Film Festival artistic director Juanita Apraez Murillo keeps an ear to the outlying perimeters of the world.