In films like Actress, Kate Plays Christine and Bisbee ’17, filmmaker Robert Greene has explored the interstices between documentary and fiction storytelling, particularly how the latter’s dramatic strategies can shape issues around self-knowledge and historical memory found within the former. In his latest, Procession, which had its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, this exploration is undertaken with the most direct and wrenching of intents as it involves the work of a group of men using drama therapy and role play to confront memories of their childhood abuse. In reporting from the Camden International Film Festival, Pamela Cohn wrote in […]

We profiled writer-director Brad Bischoff back in 2018 as part of that year’s 25 New Faces of Film. At the time, Vadim Rizov described his feature screenplay as “A bleakly funny Before Sunrise for mutually destructive alcoholics, it follows unstable couple Ray and Lisa over one increasingly sodden day and night, roaming through neighborhood streets, bars, open houses and many places they’re increasingly unwelcome.” Three years later, the film is making its world premiere as part of this year’s BendFilm Festival. We’re happy to share the premiere of the film’s trailer, whose visual control grounds performances by Saleh Bakri (The […]

Here’s the first teaser trailer from IFC Films for Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven’s long-awaited “lesbian nun” movie. Verhoeven’s characteristically provocative drama about a 17th-century nun who claimed to experience visions of Jesus premiered at this year’s Cannes (where Blake Williams reviewed it). The movie’s in theaters and on demand on December 3.

After winning an Oscar for portraying a sociopathic villain, Joaquin Phoenix now essays a (seemingly gentle) radio journalist in the new picture from Mike Mills, his follow-up to 2016’s 20th Century Women. Gabby Hoffman co-stars in the road trip film, which finds Phoenix’s character traveling cross country to interview children and teens about the state of the world. Wrote Rodrigo Perez in his Playlist review, “Vaguely reminiscent of Wim Wenders’ Alice In The Cities—a journalist is saddled with a young girl and lets her tag along on his road trip—the filmmaker’s dynamic work shares little else with the film and […]

Writing out of Cannes, Blake Williams reviewed Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest, Bergman Island, a meta-fictional drama about a female filmmaker’s marriage to a fellow director and the ways in which she mines her life, creative anxieties and influences for narrative material. About the film, which jumps between the filmmaker’s (played by Phantom Thread‘s Vicki Krieps) exploration of the Baltic island where Ingmar Bergman lived and shot several of his films, her conversations with her partner (Tim Roth) about her efforts to crack her third act, and imagined scenes from the film to be, which feature Mia Wasikowska and Joachim Trier-regular Anders […]

When I recently interviewed Cam Archer about his latest short, His Image, the director told me that he has been revisiting old projects, creating new high-definition scans and working on new edits. The first of those projects to see the light of day is out October 26, and a trailer has just dropped. Via video label Altered Innocence comes a 15th anniversary edition of Archer’s debut feature, Wild Tigers I Have Known, in what’s billed as a “2021 Edit and Mix.” Bonus features on the disk include: -Pull-out Poster by Michael Gillette -Deleted Scenes -A 2021 Interview with Lou Stumpf (who […]