No one expected Claire Denis to soften with age. At 72, the French auteur has been a daring and unpredictable force in cinema for three decades now. After delivering last year’s talky romantic comedy Let the Sunshine In, which offered the unexpected sight of Gérard Depardieu as a lovesick psychic, Denis has returned with a certified leap into the unknown.  High Life is the filmmaker’s first English-language film, her first science fiction foray, and her first featuring eye-popping CGI. Boasting an international cast that includes Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth and André Benjamin, and set to be released by […]

After his road movie Kaili Blues became an international success, writer and director Bi Gan turned to the film noir genre for his follow up, Long Day’s Journey into Night. The layered, dreamlike plot follows Luo Hongwu (played by Huang Jue) as he returns to his hometown, looking into the past for clues about what happened to Wildcat (Lee Hong), a lost love he last saw more than a decade ago.  Set in the bars, alleys and seedy hotels of Gan’s home province, the film is divided into two parts. Elliptical scenes and a fractured timeline give the first half […]

We were a week away from principal photography on my fourth feature film, Relaxer, and I wanted to run away. Production designer Mike Saunders and I had been building our apartment set inside his parents’ two-car garage, and things were taking too long. The entire shoot was to happen in that garage, so it had to be perfect. It didn’t look like it’d ever be ready, and I was stressing hard. My stomach burned. I couldn’t keep anything down. I’d been losing weight. I just wanted to sleep for three weeks and wake up with a finished film, but I […]