alexander sokurov
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“War Is a Source of Human Nature”: Kantemir Balagov on His Women-Centered Period Two-Hander, Beanpole
Exquisitely grueling yet fiercely humane, Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, an astounding Russian period drama, cements the artistically mature director as a prodigy of international cinema moving towards an auspicious career. At age 28, Balagov has had his first two features premiered at Cannes with both earning prizes in the Un Certain Regard section. Situated in 1945 Leningrad among the ashes of World War II, Beanpole, which was also shortlisted for the Best International Film Academy Award, explores the harsh aftermath of the conflict through the tortured friendship between Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), two women who served in the […]
by Carlos Aguilar on Feb 19, 2020 -
Halftime Disappointment at the Venice Film Festival
In its first half, the Competition of the 72nd Venice Film Festival has been a let-down, failing to present a single truly great title. The Orizzonti and Out of Competition selections have generally proved a safer bet, and of course the excellent Venice Classics program, which so far included screenings of restored masterpieces by the likes of Fellini, Melville and Hou Hsiao-hsien, has been a reliable and most welcome morale boost whenever necessary. Following Birdman and Gravity in the last two years, the festival extended its string of star-studded, big-spectacle openers with Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a fictionalization of an infamous 1996 commercial […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Sep 8, 2015 -
A Series of Visitations: Alexander Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse
The Strugatsky brothers novel upon which Alexander Sokurov’s 1988 Days of Eclipse is based has the following fairly mind-blowing premise: a group of scientists in Moscow find their research in various fields frustrated by inexplicable events, and conclude that the universe is deliberately sabotaging them in an attempt to preserve its mysteries. Sokurov’s film has plenty of the inexplicable but none of this throughline — it’s parsable only with difficulty and guidance from external sources — and relocates the settting from St. Petersburg to Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan. Krasnovodsk is now Türkmenbaşy, having reclaimed an indigenous name in the post-Soviet era. This […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 22, 2014 -
ALISTAIR BANKS GRIFFIN, “TWO GATES OF SLEEP”
American independent films of the narrative variety are rarely hard art films. But in the case of Alastair Banks Griffin’s Two Gates of Sleep, which bowed at last year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes before finding its way to AFI Fest last Fall, one should be ready to enter a long-take heavy, unspeakably gorgeous dirge that is sure of its influences and even more sure that it has something deeply resonant to express to you. It’s the type of movie that, as the cliche goes, requires the audience to “do some work,” that isn’t going to bend over backwards to entertain […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 30, 2011
