The meticulous palette, the bursts of Academy ratio, the faux literary origins, the use of the word “divers” — Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch looks, from this first trailer, to be the most, well, Wes Anderson movie yet. As it’s described by its distributor, Fox Searchlight, “The French Dispatch brings to life a collection of stories from the final issue of an American magazine published in a fictional 20th-century French city. It stars Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.” The […]

Lynne Sachs’s Film About a Father Who opens Slamdance tonight, and we’re pleased to share an apposite exclusive clip from it—archival footage of Ira Sachs Sr. talking about the development of the Yarrow Hotel (now the DoubleTree), one of his first ventures in Park City, and a mainstay gathering site for Sun-/Slam-dance attendees. Take a look, and click here to read Daniel Eagan’s interview with Lynne Sachs.

Premiering today from Focus Features is the trailer for writer/director highly anticipated Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Produced by Adele Romanski, Sara Murphy and Rose Garnett, shot by Hittman’s Beach Rats DP Hélène Louvart, and edited by Scott Cummings, the film is described as “an intimate portrayal of two teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania. Faced with an unintended pregnancy and a lack of local support, Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) embark across state lines to New York City on a fraught journey of friendship, bravery and compassion.” The trailer is set to a track by […]

Tom Quinn’s Spirit Award-nominated Colewell receives a limited theatrical as well as digital release beginning this Friday, December 13. The theatrical starts with a run at Facets Theater in Chicago, with other cities to be announced. On the occasion of its premiere earlier this year at the SFFILM Festival, I wrote, “Colewell is a gentle, melancholic film, one inflected by bursts of real anger and sorrow, that is both character study as well as meditation on loneliness and community in a time of both technological and political change.” The trailer just dropped, which gives a good look at lead Karen […]

Receiving its world premiere tomorrow at DOC NYC is filmmaker Cara Jones’s Blessed Child, a documentary about her own childhood spent in Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. From the press release: More than a decade after leaving the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (the “Moonies”), through a trove of never before seen footage from within the church and extraordinary home videos of her family’s upbringing alongside Reverend Moon and his disciples, filmmaker Cara Jones attempts to finally break free from the religious cult which dominated her childhood. Blessed Child is one daughter’s attempt to unpack the legacy of the […]

Beth B’s Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over, her doc about the provocative and pummeling musician, writer, multi-media artist, social critic, No Wave pioneer and recent podcast host premieres Saturday night at DOC NYC, and the first trailer is online. Writes B about the film: Voicing the unheard and seeing the unseen are themes that have run through my films with an eye to creating dialogue, community, and a place for self-knowledge and acceptance. My documentary films are social, political and personal investigations; home movies focusing on people I know or have come to know. Lydia Lunch was 19 […]