Film International | Thinking Film Since 1973

Post-Soviet Descent into Capitalist Chaos: Alex Gibney’s Citizen K »

By Michael Sandlin. After narrowly avoiding being nicked by the UK authorities for supposed “document theft” during the filming of his Troubles documentary No Stone Unturned, Alex Gibney…

Babenco’s Swansong: My Hindu Friend »

By Ali Moosavi. Death has been a popular theme for filmmakers to explore almost ever since cinema was invented. Some of the films dealing with mortality have contained…

Marion Davies: Gifted Actress and Impossible Boy »

By Thomas Gladysz. I rejoice in this opportunity to record something which today is all but forgotten except for those lucky enough to have seen a few of…

The Best Iranian Films of the Year: A Personal Selection »

By Ali Moosavi. Among the many Iranian films that I have watched this year, six have stood out for me. If we don’t consider the purely commercial and state-funded…

“When There Are No Good Answers”: Barbara Kopple’s Desert One (2019) »

By Kate Hearst. At the New York premiere of Desert One at the DOC/NYC film festival, Barbara Kopple recounted how the History Channel provided her with a list…

Richard Jewell and the Damn Yankees »

By Christopher Sharrett. I have had sympathetic interest in the work of Clint Eastwood over the years, but such interest has been hard to sustain with antics like…

This is the End: 63 Up »

By Michael Sandlin. “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” is the bit of ancient philosophy that serves as the…

Much to Remember: Chris Wade on Memories of Lindsay Anderson »

By Tony Williams. Leeds-born Chris Wade is one those unique talents thankfully outside the existing psychologically dysfunctional terrain of higher education. A highly creative and prolific artist, filmmaker…

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Real-Life Libertarian Nightmare: Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family »

By Michael Sandlin. From a strictly academic point of view, 26-year-old boy wonder documentarian Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family affecting ticks all the boxes of a classic “observational” mode of…

John Waters’ Polyester: The Suburbs Arrive (Criterion Collection) »

By Christopher Sharrett. Anyone viewing Polyester for the first time might be a little confused: hasn’t all this been done before? Satires or eviscerations of the suburbs have…

The Irishman: Requiem for Very Little »

By Christopher Sharrett. It has been some time since Martin Scorsese has interested me, his achievements in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull still notable, but faded a bit…

Festival Reports

Come One, Come All!: The 67th San Sebastian International Film Festival, 20-28 September 2019 »

By Ali Moosavi. San Sebastian is a beautiful coastal town in the Basque region of Spain. It has one of the oldest film festivals in the world which somehow has not become as…

By Gary M. Kramer. There are 40 shorts screening in six programs (as well as in front of features) at this year’s AFI Fest presented by Audi. Here are ten highlights from the…

By Ali Moosavi. Three interesting documentaries screened at the Open City Documentary Festival in London, September 4-10, 2019. Sergei Loznitsa, the distinguished Ukrainian director known for films such as A Gentle Creature (2017) and…

By Mina Radovic. A lady patiently cleans her house. The yellow lights of Athens peer in through the windows as her husband smokes a cigarette and between puffs complains to her about his…

By Gary M. Kramer. Two shorts programs at this year’s New York Film Festival are designed to provoke audiences. This is a welcome approach to short films, where the format encourages experimentation. As…

By Gary M. Kramer. At the 2019 AFI Docs Film Festival this year, five provocative shorts and features tackled important topics ranging from the drug crisis and immigration to the creationism debate and…

By Gary M. Kramer. Now in its 21st year, the Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore is a showcase for eclectic independent features, shorts, and documentaries. This year’s program features films both homegrown and far-flung.…

By Gary M. Kramer. The Tribeca Film Festival, April 24-May 5, offers a variety of features, shorts, documentaries, television and new media productions from new and established filmmakers. This year’s programs offered some…

Interview

Much to Remember: Chris Wade on Memories of Lindsay Anderson »

By Tony Williams. Leeds-born Chris Wade is one those unique talents thankfully outside the existing psychologically dysfunctional terrain of…

By Matthew Sorrento. Review Filmmaker David Shields found an ideal style to document the onscreen (but off the field)…

By Alex Ramon. Speaking with Film International last year, François Ozon asserted that, for him, “the story comes first” when…

By Yun-hua Chen. A hidden gem in the sidebar section “Concorso Cineasti del presente” at Locarno Film Festival, Trương Minh…

By John Duncan Talbird. Grady Hendrix is a novelist, sometimes-journalist, essayist, and screenwriter. He’s written several horror novels, including…

By Tom Ue. Aaron Harvey is the writer and director of several award-winning feature films including Catch.44 (2011), starring…

By David A. Ellis. Fifty-year-old Mike Hall is a film composer who lives in Le Claire Iowa. He grew…

By Jeremy Carr. On the occasion of two recently published collections – Cinematic Encounters: Interviews and Dialogues (2018) and…

By N. Buket Cengiz. The 12th edition of Documentarist, the sole independent documentary festival in Turkey, was held on 15-20…

By Ali Moosavi. Pendulum is the first film made by Amir Ganjavie, an Iranian diaspora film critic (and a Film…

By N. Buket Cengiz. Documentarist, an independent documentary film festival held in Istanbul since 2007, had the acclaimed British…

Tony Williams: Thank you for publishing this interview. There may be hope for this “ugly society” if more...
Matthew Sorrento: Reading about this “misfit” cowboy narrator, I can’t help wonder if the Coens...
Matthew Sorrento: This sounds like an interesting mediation on the politics of gender and, more specifically, our...
Melinda: Great interview, John! I enjoyed the specificity of your questions as well as the conversational style of...
Matthew Sorrento: I agree with Tony, Daniel — thanks for commenting on the issues this film addresses. This...

Review

Post-Soviet Descent into Capitalist Chaos: Alex Gibney’s Citizen K »

By Michael Sandlin. After narrowly avoiding being nicked by the UK authorities for supposed “document theft” during the filming of his Troubles documentary No Stone Unturned, Alex Gibney is back…

Babenco’s Swansong: My Hindu Friend »

By Ali Moosavi. Death has been a popular theme for filmmakers to explore almost ever since cinema was invented. Some of the films dealing with mortality have contained some autobiographical…

A Very English Cinema – Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting to This is England by Matt Glasby »

A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Hear the term “Britpop,” and the usual musical suspects come to mind: Blur, Oasis, Suede, and the like. Less obvious is the movement’s cinematic…

Empathetic and Unblinking: The Painted Bird »

By Yun-hua Chen. Seldom can film-viewing be such a devastating experience. Having competed in the category of main competition at the Venice Film Festival and being handpicked by Around the…

Making and Taking: Overseas »

By Yun-hua Chen. After a very personal debut Full of Missing Links (2012) about her journey back to South Korea in search of her father and the experience of separation…

“All Archives Create Futures” – Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project »

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There’s a moment in Matt Wolf’s documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project where the enormous value of the VHS archival project of the film’s title spirals is…

To Know Them Doesn’t Mean You Love Them: Bombshell »

By Elias Savada. The stars are blondly aligned: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, as three of the many victims of the “real scandal” at Fox News on which Charles…

Perforation: On Ken Loach’s Factory Humans in Sorry We Missed You »

By Susana Bessa. We could never say it had been the worst week of her life. Because to see it as the worst is to be hopeful on its recovery.…

Richard Jewell and the Damn Yankees »

By Christopher Sharrett. I have had sympathetic interest in the work of Clint Eastwood over the years, but such interest has been hard to sustain with antics like his talking…

A Sense of Loss: Dónal Foreman’s The Image You Missed »

By James Slaymaker. Jean-Luc Godard once explained that he pioneered his late-period, archival style after realizing that “in a striking manner, film was able to recount its own history in…

And You Thought Your Family Was Dysfunctional: Mario Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket (Criterion Collection) »

By Rod Lott. Given how ahead of its time Fists in the Pocket is, I’m surprised Mario Bellocchio’s first feature isn’t more widely known, in the way that François Truffaut’s…

This is the End: 63 Up »

By Michael Sandlin. “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” is the bit of ancient philosophy that serves as the abiding impetus…

Real-Life Libertarian Nightmare: Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family »

Strange Metamorphosis: Jessica Hausner’s Little Joe »

By Thomas Puhr. “Who can prove the genuineness of feelings?” a scientist asks in Little Joe (2019). “Moreover, who cares?” These startling questions cut right to the heart of Jessica…

John Waters’ Polyester: The Suburbs Arrive (Criterion Collection) »

By Christopher Sharrett. Anyone viewing Polyester for the first time might be a little confused: hasn’t all this been done before? Satires or eviscerations of the suburbs have been standard…

Crafting Place Through Film – The Cultural Practice of Immigrant Filmmaking: Minor Immigrant Cinemas in Sweden 1950-1990 by Lars Gustaf Andersson and John Sundholm »

A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. It’s easy to see a film as a cultural object, a product, but it is much harder to conceptualize the act of filmmaking as…

A Hunt, Sans Suspense: After the Murder of Albert Lima »

By Gary M. Kramer. The earnest documentary After the Murder of Albert Lima depicts the painstaking efforts of Paul Lima to get justice by sending the man who killed his father…

Transnational Identities in the Dramatically Tense Synonyms »

By Travis Merchant. The power of language and assimilation runs rampant throughout Synonyms (2019), Nadav Lapid’s semi-autobiographical film about an Israeli immigrant in France. Throughout the film, Yoav (Tom Mercier)…

Whose Decision?: To Kid or Not to Kid »

By Janine Gericke. “When are you having kids?” on my wedding day people half joking (but not really) asked me. Most women ask themselves this very question, but the answer…

The Irishman: Requiem for Very Little »

By Christopher Sharrett. It has been some time since Martin Scorsese has interested me, his achievements in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull still notable, but faded a bit with time.…

Edmond O'Brien in 1984 (Michael Anderson, 1956)

An Author’s World, Extended: George Orwell on Screen by David Ryan »

A Book Review by Tony Williams. After reviewing the latest Criterion DVD release of Michael Radford’s 1984 (1984), I felt obligated to obtain a copy of the above book since the author’s…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Born and raised in New Zealand, filmmaker Daniel Joseph Borgman has traveled from one of the most southernmost cities…

By Jeremy Carr. There are, in Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo Boshoku), many of the familiar refrains common to Yasujirô Ozu’s conspicuously singular filmmaking.…

By Tony Williams. Although envisaged before the rise of Trump and his campaign hate clarion calls of “Send her back!” etc., on…

By Brandon Konecny. Moldova is currently the least visited country in Europe, attracting fewer tourists each year than Juneau, Alaska. So when…

By Brandon Konecny. During Nikita Khrushchev’s tenure, he wanted to make Moldova an agricultural powerhouse. The “Garden of the Soviet Union,” he called…

By Elias Savada. April Wright likes to get the word out about grand things. As with Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There’s a scene in Ant Timpson’s debut feature Come to Daddy where Elijah Wood’s character, Norval Greenwood, is being…

By James Slaymaker. It’s been less than a decade since the momentous critical and commercial success of Drive catapulted Nicolas Winding Refn…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. With its world premiere in the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery program, stalwart short film director Minos Nikolakakis…

By Tony Williams. Gwen (2019) is one of those rare surprises in contemporary film reviewing. Rather than fall into the usual mindless…

By Rod Lott. One of the first lines uttered in 1983’s The Prey is “Good chow,” a simple statement that could double…

A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Joan Neuberger’s This Thing of Darkness (Cornell University Press, 2019) illustrates, perhaps more than any other cinema…

By Yun-hua Chen. Salvodor Simó, the layout artist for Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017), The Jungle Book (2016) and Prince…

By Ali Moosavi. The majority of films occupying the cinema screens in Iran belong to either of two genres: social dramas and…

By Elias Savada. Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, please step aside…at least for 91 minutes…and allow the world to shine a…

By Matthew Fullerton. First Love (Hatsukoi), prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s sixtieth film in twenty-four years according to last count, is a…

By Michael Sandlin. Since 2016, documentaries about influential far-right sociopaths have been on the uptick, having become almost an industry within an…

By Elias Savada. H.G. Wells, move over. In the century-and-a-quarter since his science fiction novella popularized the notion of time travel, the…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. To say that the US premiere of cult filmmaker Richard Stanley’s much-awaited return to feature filmmaking was one of…

By Elias Savada. There’s a swarth of idiocy running through this so-called dark comedy, but for the most part it fails at…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. South African filmmaker Jenna Bass has made somewhat of a splash with her third film, Flatland, as it makes…

By Elias Savada. No, Linda Ronstadt is not dead. While Parkinson’s Disease has sadly removed her from the public and concert stage…

By Yun-hua Chen. Justin Chon, the American actor of Korean descent who made his name since his role as Eric in The…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. With its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit functions as the final…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Although often unspoken, there is a frequently assumed “right” and “wrong” way to approach an artist’s body of work,…

By Elias Savada. There’s a certain phantasmagoria at play in Alejandro Landes’ Monos, in which a group of eight teenagers are living…

By Ali Moosavi. Many years ago, I attended a scientific conference in Damascus. I was touched by the beauty of the place…

A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. Apocalypse Then (McFarland, 2017) is an informative and entertaining examination, and comparison, of science fiction films from…

By Tony Williams. Though most notably associated with the Marseille Trilogy of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932), and Cesar (1936) as well as…

By Ali Moosavi. Two films which premiered in the 2019 Venice Film Festival, both looking critically at the role of religion in…

By Greg Burris. Early on in the Tunisian horror film Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak, 2018), we see a class of university students as…

By Rod Lott. One could find irony in the United States’ collective history of regional horror films being written by a Brit.…

By Elias Savada. At moments during filmmaker Max Lewkowicz’s lovely homage to one of the world’s greatest musicals, I was verklempt. I…

By Jeremy Carr. Immigration enforcement agent Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson), who moves from Los Angeles to El Paso, where he joins the…

By Elias Savada. Sad to say, but it wasn’t a good idea for American filmmaker Bart Freundlich to remake the Oscar-nominated Best…

By Gary M. Kramer. Arrow Films’ new Blu-ray edition of William Friedkin’s Cruising offers viewers the opportunity to reconsider this “controversial” thriller nearly…

A Book Review Essay by Ali Moosavi. There is an old adage that oppression and suppression fuels creativity. In the world of…

A Book Review by John W. Fawell. The title of Murray Pomerance’s latest book on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, A Dream…

By Janine Gericke. There is a significant amount of symbolism throughout Ash Mayfair’s feature debut The Third Wife. The director and cinematographer…

By Michael Sandlin. It’s now been eight years since Scandinavian prankster filmmaker Mads Brugger donned his pith helmet and jodhpurs in Angola to…

By Yun-hua Chen. Paying tribute to the late actor Anton Yelchin’s life, this biographical documentary extends far beyond his acting career. As…

By Christopher Sharrett. The premises of the new documentary Mike Wallace is Here are contradictory, and I suppose meant ironically so. The…

By Elias Savada. In a way, I consider myself a film archivist. I don’t do that for a living now, but I…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Some months ago, I struggled through a book about remembering British Television published by the BFI.…

By Ali Moosavi. Pirahnas, which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, is based on a…

By Christopher Sharrett. My subtitle is taken from a moment in Rick Alverson’s film The Mountain, where we see a black-and-white, furniture-bound TV,…

By Jeremy Carr. Septuagenarian grandfather Angus (Richard Dreyfuss) has harbored dreams of space since he was a child. Although the waning years…

By Yun-hua Chen. What would bring the two opposing sides across the Israel-Palestinian borders together? Tel Aviv on Fire’s answer is, through…

By Rod Lott. Ah, young love! When John (enfant terrible extraordinaire Klaus Kinski) meets Helen (Margaret Lee, Venus in Furs) on holiday…

By Martin Kudláč. The Brazilian cinema has been in the viewfinder of the International Film Festival Rotterdam for some time now and certainly…

Joker: Notes from Underground »

By Christopher Sharrett. In what follows I am conscious that Todd Phillips’ Joker is another addition by a corporation to its “DC…

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. As we move further into the new millennium, we appear to benefit not only from development…

A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Joan Neuberger’s This Thing of Darkness (Cornell University Press, 2019) illustrates, perhaps more than any other cinema…

By Yun-hua Chen. Salvodor Simó, the layout artist for Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017), The Jungle Book (2016) and Prince…

By Jake Rutkowski. There’s an old Simpsons bit that I often turn to in times of ambivalence: Homer, faced with the prospect…

By Matthew Fullerton. First Love (Hatsukoi), prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s sixtieth film in twenty-four years according to last count, is a…

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. This book is the latest production of prolific archivist Derek Sculthorpe. If not, “The Man…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. To say that the US premiere of cult filmmaker Richard Stanley’s much-awaited return to feature filmmaking was one of…

“Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers” is a blog on serials by Geoffrey Mayer, the author of Encyclopedia of American Film Serials (McFarland, 2017).…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. South African filmmaker Jenna Bass has made somewhat of a splash with her third film, Flatland, as it makes…

By Yun-hua Chen. Justin Chon, the American actor of Korean descent who made his name since his role as Eric in The…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. With its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit functions as the final…

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Although often unspoken, there is a frequently assumed “right” and “wrong” way to approach an artist’s body of work,…

By Ali Moosavi. Many years ago, I attended a scientific conference in Damascus. I was touched by the beauty of the place…

A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. Apocalypse Then (McFarland, 2017) is an informative and entertaining examination, and comparison, of science fiction films from…

By Greg Burris. Early on in the Tunisian horror film Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak, 2018), we see a class of university students as…

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Usually, I’m hesitant when presented with another biography for review. Despite the dedication and research…

A Book Review Essay by Ali Moosavi. There is an old adage that oppression and suppression fuels creativity. In the world of…

A Book Review by John W. Fawell. The title of Murray Pomerance’s latest book on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, A Dream…

By Janine Gericke. There is a significant amount of symbolism throughout Ash Mayfair’s feature debut The Third Wife. The director and cinematographer…

By Jeremy Carr. After concluding what was ostensibly his second phase of filmmaking – if one accepts the admittedly blurred lines that divide a…

By Michael Sandlin. It’s now been eight years since Scandinavian prankster filmmaker Mads Brugger donned his pith helmet and jodhpurs in Angola to…

By Heather Hendershot. The following is excerpted from When the Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited, edited by Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis…

By Yun-hua Chen. Paying tribute to the late actor Anton Yelchin’s life, this biographical documentary extends far beyond his acting career. As…

By Christopher Sharrett. The premises of the new documentary Mike Wallace is Here are contradictory, and I suppose meant ironically so. The…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Some months ago, I struggled through a book about remembering British Television published by the BFI.…

By Ali Moosavi. Pirahnas, which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, is based on a…

By Dean Brandum. The following was originally written as a chapter for inclusion in ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May (Edinburgh University Press,…

By Christopher Sharrett. My subtitle is taken from a moment in Rick Alverson’s film The Mountain, where we see a black-and-white, furniture-bound TV,…

A Book Review Essay by John Talbird. “Words flown out can’t be caught on the wing.” Supposedly, this is a saying from…

A Review Essay by Tony Williams. Following the commercial success of The Dirty Dozen (1967), iconoclastic director Robert Aldrich fulfilled his dream…

By Jeremy Carr. Septuagenarian grandfather Angus (Richard Dreyfuss) has harbored dreams of space since he was a child. Although the waning years…

By Tony Williams. While we lament today current low standards represented by mainstream Hollywood cinema, those of us resilient enough to resist…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. This recent monograph (Bloomsbury/BFI, 2019) aims to debate the importance of everyday TV memories involving academics,…

By Christopher Sharrett. Bruno Dumont is one of the outstanding figures of the twenty-first century’s European cinema, so the Criterion hi-definition releases…

DocuChronicles is a blog dedicated to independent documentary cinema by filmmaker Marjorie Sturm. It includes a mix of reviews, interviews, and longer pieces. By Marjorie…