After a four-hour flight delay (owed to a malfunctioning back-up system accessory, subsequent plane evacuation and a lengthy re-fueling process), I arrived in New Orleans exhausted but still, miraculously, eager to spend much more time sitting in a shifting rotation of seats. Even if I wanted to, I wasn’t entitled to complain much. I’d been invited to cover the annual genre-themed Overlook Film Festival, now in its seventh year, and was genuinely thrilled by the opportunity. As a relatively green (not to mention newly full-time) magazine staffer, longtime horror obsessive and someone who’d yet to visit New Orleans, Overlook presented […]
A document is always an outsider’s view. –John Berger It had been five years since I attended CPH:Forum, with a pandemic in between. I’m having a lot of trouble recognizing once-familiar things in general but I know CPH:DOX well, having attended off and on for over 12 years, and I know that it used to stand for something unique in the nonfiction landscape. And while vestiges are still there, it felt this edition (March 15 – 26 in Copenhagen, Denmark) as if the whole enterprise was at a tipping point in terms of growth. Don’t misunderstand: What the team there accomplishes, […]
Today, BAVC Media (formerly Bay Area Video Coalition) announces their 2023 MediaMaker Fellowship cohort, comprised of emerging and mid-career artists embarking on social documentary projects. All seven participants will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funding as well as mentorship, feedback sessions and workshops during a nine-month period. The fellows are Paige Bethmann (Remaining Native), Aurora Brachman (Dear You), ilana coleman (The Inventory, also a 25 New Faces of Film from 2017 and co-writer of fellow 25 New Face Juan Pablo González‘s 2021 film Dos Estaciones), Tommy Franklin (You Don’t Know My Name), Cyrus Moussavi (Somebody’s Gone), Hannah Myers (Daddy) and tashi […]
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes last year, the U.S. trailer arrives today for Belgian directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, adapted from the novel of the same name by Italian author Paolo Cognetti. The film stars Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi as, respectively, Pietro and Bruno, two childhood best friends who first meet in the Italian Alps and then re-connect later in adulthood. The Eight Mountains will be released stateside this spring by Sideshow and Janus Films. The film’s official synopsis reads: Pietro, a city boy who visits the tiny mountain village of Grana […]
Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes last year, writer-director Saim Sadiq’s feature debut Joyland depicts a blooming love between closeted married man Haider (Ali Junejo) and Biba (Alina Khan), a trans erotic performer who employs Haider as one of her (heretofore untrained) back-up dancers. The film chronicles the ever-shifting dynamics between Biba, Haider, his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) and their intensely patriarchal immediate family. A ban on the film in Sadiq’s native Pakistan occurred due to Joyland‘s queer explorations. In a public statement, a right-wing government pundit stated that the film was “against Pakistani values,” adding that “glamorizing transgenders […]
A favorite on the festival circuit last year, the U.S. trailer arrives for Argentine filmmaker Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen, which took six years to make. Co-written by Citarella and Laura Paredes (who stars), the film totals 262 minutes and follows a woman also named Laura who has disappeared in the titular town (which the filmmaker has familial roots in). This is the second film of Citarella’s that revolves around the Laura character, the first being 2011’s Ostende. Notably, Trenque Lauquen was one of Film Comment’s Best Undistributed Films of 2022, and will now get a North American theatrical release courtesy […]
Another trailer drops today for a film featured in our most recent issue, this time for the docu-fiction hybrid Dry Ground Burning from directors Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós. This is the first film that Pimenta and Queirós have co-directed together, but the duo previously collaborated on Queirós’s 2017 film Once There Was Brasilia, which employed Pimenta as the cinematographer. Vadim Rizov wrote about the film during TIFF back in September: The plot revolves around two half-sisters who get involved in manufacturing and distributing gas illegally, and its title is a description, not a metaphor—the fuel’s potency is demonstrated to […]
If there’s one thing pandemic shutdowns have proven over these past few years, it’s that (far too) many film festivals can just as easily be covered online. (Do I really need to hop on a plane and into a faraway cinema to view the latest Netflix Original?) That, thankfully, is not the case when it comes to the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, now in its 20th year and still one of the most punk rock rebellious events around, as evidenced by e.g. the fest’s decision this edition (March 15-26) to team up with Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the palatial contemporary art […]
Featured in our recent Spring Issue, Swiss filmmaker Cyril Schäublin’s Unrest now has an official trailer. The film premiered last year during Berlinale’s Encounters section, where Schäublin won Best Director. It went on to screen at TIFF, the New York Film Festival and the Viennale, among several other international festivals. Unrest will open via KimStim on May 5 at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City and May 19 at Laemmle Monica Film Center in Los Angeles. An official synopsis for the film reads: New technologies are transforming a 19th-century watchmaking town in Switzerland. Josephine (Clara Gostynski), a young […]
After a whole assortment of Barbies (and the actors who’ll play them) were announced earlier today, a full-length trailer has landed for Barbie. Directed by Greta Gerwig (her follow-up to 2019’s Little Women) and co-written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (partners and frequent collaborators, most recently on Baumbach’s White Noise), the film will hit theaters this summer. Margot Robbie stars as the titular Mattel toy icon, with Ryan Gosling embodying her long-term boyfriend, Ken. While Robbie and Gosling appear as the Barbie and Ken blueprints, an ensemble cast will portray several different iterations of Barbie—like a mermaid (Dua Lipa), Nobel […]