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Border Crossings: Paul Schrader on Oh, Canada
Jacob Elordi in Oh, Canada
The face of Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) is a slab—gaunt, ashen, with a firm, unsmiling mouth. In front of the camera, he’s at once impassive and confessional before his two interlocutors, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill). They’ve recruited… Read more
Sentient Images: RaMell Ross on Nickel Boys
Brandon Wilson in Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross’s 2018 feature debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, is a non-narrative portrait of its Alabama locale, shot entirely by the filmmaker over years of immersion, his instinctually captured material assembled into intricate juxtapositions. Few scale-ups for a… Read more
Order Fulfillment: Halina Reijn on Babygirl
It’s appropriate that Halina Reijn, the Dutch actress-turned-filmmaker who previously directed the Gen Z whodunnit Bodies Bodies Bodies, would look to ’90s erotic thrillers as fodder for her next feature. After all, her countryman Paul Verhoeven (she has a supporting… Read more
“This World Is Hell for Women”: Magnus von Horn on The Girl with the Needle
Vic Carmen Sonne in The Girl with the Needle
Caroline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young factory worker living in abject poverty, serves as our window into the perilous post-war landscape of Copenhagen circa 1919 in The Girl with the Needle. Her dire situation is compounded by her social position… Read more
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“I Had Given Up on this Film”: Payal Kapadia on All We Imagine as Light
On a dull white piece of archival paper measuring 39.3 x 27.3”, ghoulish figures in wispy gray and red stenciled figures are engaged in various jousting poses. Text is sandwiched between the figures: “One day the streets all over the world will be empty. From every tomb I’ll learn all we imagine of light.” The 2016 painting by Nalini Malani, one of India’s foremost video artists, is titled All we Imagine of Light. Years later, her daughter Payal Kapadia would ask to borrow and rework the title for her film All We Imagine As Light, which would eventually go on […]
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“It’s Punk Rock to Be Hopeful These Days”: Harley Chamandy on His Self-Distributed Feature Debut Allen Sunshine
The somber existence of a reclusive electronic musician is the focus of Allen Sunshine, the feature debut of 25-year-old Harley Chamandy. The eponymous character (played by Vincent Leclerc) resides in a charming lakeside cabin in Quebec, yet the idyllic nature of his surroundings is tempered by inconsolable grief over his wife’s recent death. As a big-name musical talent in her own right, the solitary Allen is pained by the fact that his grief is not just his own; though he deeply adored her and produced most of her music, it’s clear that fans, both rabid and casual alike, feel equally […]
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“Don’t Call It ‘Magic Realism'”: Andrea Arnold on Returning to Narrative Cinema with Bird
Shot and set in Gravesend, a town in Kent, England, Andrea Arnold’s new film Bird, starring newcomer Nykiya Adams alongside Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, is a portrait of a young girl coming of age under chaotic circumstances. Twelve-year-old Bailey, played brilliantly by Adams, is bound by poverty and a dearth of options to her unstable father, Bug (Keoghan); she seeks solace in whatever independence she can find. When a mysterious stranger (Rogowski) appears on her doorstep, an uncanny bond is formed between them, altering the course of her life. Bird is currently in theaters from MUBI. Filmmaker: Your narrative […]
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Hawai’i International Film Festival 2024: Zoë Eisenberg on Chaperone
A chance encounter with a teenage Lothario who thought she was still in high school inspired Zoë Eisenberg to begin writing her solo directorial debut, Chaperone, which premiered at the 2024 Slamdance Film Festival and won the Breakouts Grand Jury Prize. “When I was 29, a 17-year-old boy mistook me for a teenager and asked me out to a party,” Eisenberg recalls. “While I declined, I couldn’t help but wonder: what kind of woman would have gone to that party? From there, the questions grew. What happens when a woman chooses not to pursue career or motherhood, the two narrow […]
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Hawai’i International Film Festival 2024: Alika Tengan on Molokai’i Bound
I first learned of Alika Tengan (then Alika Maikau) when his short Mauka to Makai (co-directed with Jonah Okano) screened at the 2018 Hawai’i International Film Festival, where I was a member of the Made in Hawai’i jury. The film’s naturalism, commitment to its characters and refusal of easy melodrama demonstrated a maturity far beyond the young filmmaker’s age; our jury gave it the Best Film award. It turned out to be just the first of several Made in Hawai’i Best Film awards for Tengan; he also won for his 2019 short Molokai’i Bound, and this year won it again […]
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“I Actually Feel Like the Firefly Was Caught in the Jar”: Tyler Taormina on His Cannes-Premiering Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
The below interview was originally published May 20, 2024, during the Cannes Film Festival, where Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point premiered in the Directors Fortnight section. It is being republished today, as the film is released nationally by IFC Films, including at New York’s IFC Center. — Editor Whether the sprawling fantasia that is Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point proves heartwarmingly reflective or personally destabilizing in its near-ethnographic study of American holiday ritual will depend, largely, on the composition and size of your own Xmas memories. It’s a strength of the film, however, that Taormina’s expansive […]
