Benjamin Naishtat
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Sundance 2025: BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, Atropia
After the unscheduled drama of BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’ abrupt removal from Sundance’s lineup, financier Participant Media’s attorney’s open letter accusing public director Kahlil Joseph of creating a secret cut as justification for said removal and the feature’s reinstatement in the lineup thanks to a new buyer, the film finally screened with the now-very-known context that somewhere in there is an extra minute not in the Participant-cleared cut. I can’t imagine where; this sprawling 113-minute essay film is all tangents and free association, to the point where it seems like you could subtract or add an infinite amount of material […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 27, 2025 -
“I Don’t Think Reconciliation is Possible”: Benjamín Naishtat on Rojo, ’70s Filmmaking and Living in a Right-Wing Zombieland
A charcoal-black comedy about the early days of the Argentinean Dirty War, Benjamin Naishtat’s third feature Rojo accumulated a small but devout critical following after its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, then went on to win Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Actor last week at San Sebastian. Naishtat’s 2014 debut History of Fear questioned the companionability of day-to-day life with lingering, suppressed trauma, while his black-and-white followup The Movement cast a brutally acerbic eye to 19th century nation-building in the Pampas, satirizing the belief (perennial in Latin America and other places) that a strong autocrat can bring order and stability, […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Oct 1, 2018 -
TIFF 2018 Critic’s Notebook 5: Her Smell, Rojo, A Faithful Man
World premieres x3, appraised in greater haste (and mercifully smaller word counts) than usual, starting with this morning’s viewing. I woke up to a slew of tweets saying that the first half of Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell is an impossibly testing experience that dares audiences to walk out; now that I’ve seen it, it appears people have a remarkably low tolerance for abrasion. Five real-time scenes tracking the disastrous, inevitable rock bottom and sort-of rebirth of ’90s riot/it-grrl-turned-serious-hot-mess Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss), Her Smell strays noticeably outside of ARP’s normal comfort zone, in which people are reflexively, casually bruising and vicious to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 10, 2018
