The Film Stage

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the feature debut from artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, aims to foreground its primary literary material and historical context, but instead directs more attention to its oneiric touches and environmental phenomena––the “wind in the trees,”...

Rohmer Summer has fed into Rohmer Fall: following sold-out screenings of The Green Ray and a shorts program, my screening series Amnesiascope has partnered again with Instagram auteur Rohmer Fits for two special screenings of Éric Rohmer’s 1998 triumph A...

While his work was recently seen worldwide (or least screened worldwide, even if the theaters were empty) with crafting the opening animated sequence of Joker: Folie à Deux, Sylvain Chomet is also hard at work on his next feature. Set...

The best holiday movie of the season, Ham on Rye director Tyler Taormina expanded his star power with Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, which brings together Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Sawyer Spielberg, Francesca Scorsese, and many more. After...

A premiere in the World Cinema Documentary section at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s Agent of Happiness is quite an intriguing premise, following Bhutan’s official “Happiness Agents” as they quantify the true measure of...

Following up his sci-fi trilogy World of Tomorrow, animation extraordinaire Don Hertzfeldt unveiled his latest project earlier this year. Beginning a few months ago, his 22-minute, dialogue-free musical ME embarked on a nationwide tour, screening alongside his 2012 masterpiece It’s...

Few titles at Cannes carried greater weight than The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof’s first project to debut since an exile from his native Iran––little wonder in light of its focus on injustice and unrest as they reflect...

“Leave the light on. It’s easier for me to dream.” The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and...

After screening his latest film Caught by the Tides at the Busan International Film Festival, director Jia Zhang-ke met with the press, accompanied by his wife Zhao Tao. A frequent visitor to the BIFF, Jia started by saying he is...

Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’ narrative feature debut, is the story of a stubborn world, resisting change. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, it’s an experimental rendition shooting mainly through POV. We meet our protagonist not by looking at him,...