During the 2024 New York Film Festival, Film Comment’s Devika Girish had the chance to chat with Julianne Moore, one of the great American actresses of the last three decades and more. She was at the festival for the premiere of The Room Next Door, the first English-language feature film by Pedro Almodóvar, which stars Moore as a writer in New York who reconnects with an old friend, now in the late stages of cancer, played by Tilda Swinton. The friend makes a strange request of Moore’s...

When Payal Kapadia won a historic Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her second feature, All We Imagine as Light (the first Indian film to play in competition at Cannes in 30 years), she paid homage to another Cannes prizewinner whose work has deeply influenced her: Miguel Gomes, whose Grand Tour won the award for Best Director. The resonances between their latest films go beyond Cannes laurels and directorial inspiration. All We Imagine as Light, which opens in American...

The films of Robert Kramer blend fiction and documentary modes to engage with, and expand on, traditions of militant political cinema and subjective essay filmmaking. A founding member of the New Left activist film collective Newsreel in 1967, Kramer devoted himself to the group’s radical ethos, but he also began to make his own hermetic and probing fiction films—like The Edge (1967) and Ice (1969)—which turned the camera back onto the mostly white middle-class milieu of his comrades, posing...

As the 62nd New York Film Festival drew to a close last weekend, it was once again time for Film Comment’s Festival Report, our annual live overview of the NYFF that was. This year, the end-of-fest ritual took place in collaboration with the New York Film Critics Circle, which will celebrate its 90th anniversary in 2025. Devika and Clint were joined by NYFCC members Bilge Ebiri and Lovia Gyarkye for a spirited wrap-up analysis of the highlights and lowlights from the NYFF62 lineup. In front...

Two films in this year’s New York Film Festival lineup grapple beautifully with the challenge of narrating stories of collective movements without giving in to the allure of the heroic individual protagonist. John Hanson and Rob Nilsson’s Revivals selection Northern Lights (1978) stages the founding of the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota—formed in the mid-1910s by farmers from that state—parallel to a tale of young love, using a dramatized approach to explore the tensions between personal...

The films of Christopher Harris are haunting and cerebral in equal measure—blending the sensorial power of analog avant-garde cinema with a thoroughly researched and deeply felt engagement with African-American history. Starting in 2001 with the 16mm feature still/here, which was also his MFA thesis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Harris has created a rich and versatile body of work that draws on the legacy of the slave trade, the present-day realities of racism and capitalism,...

This week, Film Comment is on the ground at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which began on September 5 and runs through September 15. This year, as ever, the festival’s lineup is full of buzzy titles, including new films from directors like Luca Guadagnino, Pedro Almodóvar, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Brady Corbet, Dea Kulumbegashvili, and more. For our fourth and final Podcast from the shores of Lake Ontario, critics David Schwartz, Saffron Maeve, and Robert Daniels join Film...

This week, Film Comment is on the ground at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which began on September 5 and runs through September 15. This year, as ever, the festival’s lineup is full of buzzy titles, including premieres of new films from directors like Luca Guadagnino, Pedro Almodóvar, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Brady Corbet, Dea Kulumbegashvili, and more. For our third Podcast from the home of David Cronenberg, Drake, and the great Tim Hortons, Film Comment editor Devika Girish...

This week, Film Comment is on the ground at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which began on September 5 and runs through September 15. This year, as ever, the festival’s lineup is full of buzzy titles, including premieres of new films from directors like Luca Guadagnino, Pedro Almodóvar, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Brady Corbet, Dea Kulumbegashvili, and more. For our second Podcast from the Great White North, Film Comment editor Devika Girish welcomes programmer and critic Madeline...

This week, Film Comment is on the ground at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which began on September 5 and runs through September 15. This year, as ever, the festival’s lineup is full of buzzy titles, including premieres of new films from directors like Luca Guadagnino, Pedro Almodóvar, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Brady Corbet, Dea Kulumbegashvili, and more.  For our first Podcast from the land of maple syrup, hockey, and Guy Maddin, Film Comment editor Devika Girish welcomes...

Last April, Film Comment invited writer Adam Shatz on the Podcast to talk about The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, his new biography of the Martinican writer, psychiatrist, and anti-colonial revolutionary. The Podcast explored Fanon’s lasting impression on the world of cinema since his untimely death in 1961—and it became the basis for a four-day series of screenings and talks we presented last weekend, called The Rebel’s Cinema—Frantz Fanon on Screen. The series...

Last April, Film Comment invited writer Adam Shatz on the Podcast to talk about The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, his new biography of the Martinican writer, psychiatrist, and anti-colonial revolutionary. The Podcast explored Fanon’s lasting impression on the world of cinema since his untimely death in 1961—and it became the basis for a four-day series of screenings and talks we presented last weekend, called The Rebel’s Cinema—Frantz Fanon on Screen. The series...

Last April, Film Comment invited writer Adam Shatz on the Podcast to talk about The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, his new biography of the Martinican writer, psychiatrist, and anti-colonial revolutionary. The Podcast explored Fanon’s lasting impression on the world of cinema since his untimely death in 1961—and it became the basis for a four-day series of screenings and talks we presented last weekend, called The Rebel’s Cinema—Frantz Fanon on Screen. The series...

Last April, Film Comment invited writer Adam Shatz on the Podcast to talk about The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, his new biography of the Martinican writer, psychiatrist, and anti-colonial revolutionary. The Podcast explored Fanon’s lasting impression on the world of cinema since his untimely death in 1961—and it became the basis for a four-day series of screenings and talks we presented last weekend, called The Rebel’s Cinema—Frantz Fanon on Screen. The series...

As part of this year's Locarno Film Festival, scholars at the Università della Svizzera italiana organized a conference called Cinema Audiovisual Futures, with a series of panels and workshops exploring cinema's importance in constructing a new and alternative futures. As part of the conference, Film Comment editor Devika Girish moderated a panel with filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri and writer and programmer Greg de Cuir called Digital Migrations. Their conversation delved into the ways in which...

The Locarno Film Festival takes place every August in the Swiss town of Locarno, at the base of the Alps, with a robust mix of discovery titles, repertory selections, and premieres of films by major auteurs. Film Comment was on the ground this year, combing through the lineup for highlights, and this episode—featuring critics and curators Inney Prakash and Cici Peng in conversation with FC Editor Devika Girish—covers some of the notable titles: Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices) by Maxime...

For the third and final installment of our Summer Rep Report series, Sam Fleischner and Courtney Muller, the founding programmers of the Rockaway Film Festival, join Film Comment editor Devika Girish to discuss this year’s edition, which runs from August 17 to 25. Launched in 2018 in the Queens, New York oceanside neighborhood, the festival draws upon the cultural history and environmental features of its location to offer a uniquely eclectic program that emphasizes the relationship between...

For Part 2 of our Summer Rep Report, film programmer Jessica Green joins to discuss Passing You By: Impostorism on Film, a new series she’s programmed titled at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The series opens today and runs through August 15 and focuses on movies that all explore the act of passing—be it for another race, gender, class, or nationality.  Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish spoke with Jessica about some of the highlights from the lineup, including Rebecca...

Early August is usually something of a lull in the film calendar, but this year, at least in New York City, it’s proved to be a goldmine—particularly for repertory programming. We had planned to record a single episode of our Rep Report series this week, but there was so much good stuff out there that we ended up recording three different conversations about three different programs, which we’ll be sharing over the next few days. Stay tuned!  On today’s episode, Jed Rapfogel, film programmer...

The guest on this week’s episode will need little introduction to anyone who reads film criticism or follows film culture. Jonathan Rosenbaum, one of the most prolific and respected critics of the last half-century, began his career at publications like Film Comment and Sight and Sound in the ’70s, and later became known for his writing at The Chicago Reader. More recently, he’s gained notice for his website, jonathanrosenbaum.net. He is known for his erudite yet accessible writing, and his...

In April, Film Comment published an article by Phillip Vance Smith II, titled “Streaming Behind Bars.” Phillip is an incarcerated writer, and his piece delves into the ways in which people in prison watch movies—the technology they’re able to use, the programming they can access, and the exorbitant costs involved. That piece was facilitated by Empowerment Avenue, an organization that supports incarcerated artists and writers. Empowerment Ave was founded by Rahsaan Thomas, a journalist who...

In a recent essay, critic Isabel Stevens writes: “There is much discussion of childishness—popular cinema is often described as ‘infantilized’—but how often do we consider what children want and need from films, and what they are watching and where (outside the usual narrow, artificial controversies about the dangers film poses to their innocent minds)? How are their critical faculties and understanding of cinema being nurtured, or not…?”  For this week’s episode, Film Comment managing...

The Flaherty Film Seminar is one of the nonfiction film world’s most interesting events. Founded by Frances Flaherty in 1955 in honor of her late husband, Robert—the documentarian best known for Nanook of the North (1922)—the Seminar brings together scholars, artists, programmers, critics, and more to watch and intimately discuss a selection of works curated by rotating guest programmers. But here’s the twist: none of the films are revealed to the audience in advance of the screenings, in...

In April 2021, Film Comment published a Trans Cinema Roundtable Podcast, in which two trans film critics and two trans filmmakers answered questions submitted by listeners on what constitutes a cinema of transness. Now, two of those panelists—Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay—are about to publish a new book on that very subject. Corpses, Fools and Monsters is a thorough inquiry into the history, present, and future of what Caden and Willow call the “trans film image”—not a fully...