The Film Stage

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we speak to Nancy Savoca, the...

Following up his documentary Pictures of Ghosts, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho has unveiled his first narrative feature since 2019’s Bacurau. He’ll next direct the political thriller The Secret Agent, set to star Brazilian icon Wagner Moura (Elite Squad, Civil...

It’s been a few months since I saw Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow at Sundance Film Festival and I haven’t been able to shake its overwhelming, ultimately terrifying power. Telling the story of Owen (played early on by...

The tagline of Clair Titley’s The Contestant is “The naked truth about the world’s first reality star.” The show referred to is Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, which aired in Japan from January 1998 to March 2002, and which saw participants––usually young...

Argentine master Lisandro Alonso teased his next feature at Space Not Time, a Los Angeles retrospective of his work. Speaking after a 35mm screening of the 2001 debut feature La Libertad, Alonso told James Benning his plans to revisit that...

Cannes begins, against all reason, two weeks from today, and with it comes the trailer for this year’s opening-night selection. (Arriving in French theaters the same day is no doubt further incentive to get the marketing machine rolling.) Quentin Dupieux’s...

On a bright summer day in a tent on top of the sultry clay courts that give the Tennis Club Venezia its name, writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi––known for his searing stories of love and longing and a taut, cryptic cinematic style...

On a streak like few other directors working today, Christian Petzold’s mesmerizing, humorous Rohmer-esque drama Afire was the finest film of last year. The German director is now swiftly beginning his next project, set to kick off production this spring....

A month so staggering in quality new releases that a new Mad Max film from George Miller barely cracked the top five, May kicks off the summer movie season with a bang. From the best American film of the year...

Now that Francis Ford Coppola has unveiled his long-in-the-works epic Megalopolis to buyers and the industry, we’re just a few weeks away from its official premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. As he hopefully secures U.S. distribution soon, the first...