In a contemporary take on Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard depicts a woman who lives amongst wolves being whisked away and plunged into human society. Director David Verbeek presents this… Read more
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling was so rapturously acclaimed upon its premiere on the first full day of Cannes 2025 that some thought they’d already seen a possible Palme d’Or winner. In the end, her film shared the Jury Prize… Read more
Raoul Peck’s new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 opens with a credit sequence featuring images of what appear to be microscopic larvae wriggling across the screen. The message seems clear: something nefarious is afoot on this globe, but still in its incipient… Read more
Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason’s epic 2022 film Godland mapped the crisis of faith experienced by a 19th-century Danish priest on a mission to Iceland. A majestic tapestried shot of a horse skeleton lifts viewers from the difficult physical and emotional… Read more
It’s a full eight-and-half minutes into Sister Midnight before newlyweds Uma (Radhika Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak) even say a word to each other; conflict immediately ensues. Confined to a cramped, one-room apartment after moving to Mumbai, the spitfire Uma finds herself ill-suited to the rigid traditional roles expected of Indian brides. Her bashful husband, on the other hand, rebuffs her attempts to seduce him with a polite handshake. In this lonely arranged marriage of stifled desires and out-of-sync conversations, even bangles soon begin to feel like shackles. Despite this, Karan Kandhari’s Hindi-language directorial debut unfolds as a domestic drama […]
In The Fuse, an elderly sanitation worker named Cassius (non-professional actor Jorge Gabino) decides to quietly shuffle himself off of this mortal coil. Written and directed by Kevin Haefelin as part of his MFA studies at Columbia University, the narrative may not provide direct context for Cassius’ fatal decision, but it certainly does make it difficult for him to complete his morbid task. When a fuse blows out and makes electrocution an unviable option, Cassius traverses his Bronx neighborhood looking for a quick-fix to get his plan back on track. Black comedy abounds, pointing to the universe’s general indifference to […]
With Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides sneak previewing in New York via Sideshow/Janus Films, we are unlocking our Spring, 2025 cover story, an interview with the director as well as lead Zhao Tao covering their collaboration on this film as well as across their filmographies. On May 4, 5 and 6, Jia will be doing Q&As at New York’s IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center. Caught by the Tides opens May 9. — Editor Few major auteurs have successfully used footage from their previous films to create an entirely new one on equal footing with their greatest works, […]
“I always was hoping that it was music for the future. I mean, I think everyone who’s not that successful in their time tries to think that,” says Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus early on in Pavements, a new hybrid music documentary about the band. The group was certainly successful during their heyday in the ’90s, at least in indie rock terms—a perfect discography that drew near-universal critical acclaim, multiple tours including major international festivals and a hit on MTV—but their stature and popularity has only grown since they broke up in 1999. Beginning in 2002, Matador Records slowly re-released every […]
Even before its smashing opening weekend theatrical success, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s first original directorial outing since his 2013 indie hit Fruitvale Station, was knocking loud on the box office doors. Early reviews praised the film’s unique genre-bending vision, weaving vampire lore and Irish songs into a 1932-set horror-musical dramatic thriller about identical Black twin brothers leaving behind their Chicago gangster lives to return to their sharecropper roots in the Mississippi Delta and start their own juke joint—that is, before the vampires come a-seducing. Before that, Smoke and Stack, twins played by Michael B. Jordan in a bravura dual performance, throw […]
There are a set of rules that have long-guided ultra-low and microbudget production. Lots of daylight exteriors, one or two central locations (to minimize company moves and location rental cost), a small cast, no stunts, no child actors and a compressed shooting schedule. If today it’s not uncommon to see a 24-day schedule on films of $12 million, and most independents with sub $3-million budgets are boarded between 18 and 24 days, a filmmaker considering their first ultra-low-budget picture should think about going even lower, to 11 or 12 days, even. And, of course, shooting digital is probably the economically […]