Interview

By Sergey Toymentsev. Alexei Uchitel is the leading Russian director whose features regularly receive awards at international and domestic festivals. He was born to the family of the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Efim Uchitel, who is known for his chronicles about Leningrad’s blockade during World War II. By following the footsteps of […]

By Tom Ue. With A Moment in the Reeds, London-based filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä seeks to fill the queer void in Finnish cinema: he returns, imaginatively and literally, to his native Finland through the character of Leevi (Janne Puustinen), who seeks to help his father Jouko (Mika Melender) repair their lakehouse. […]

By Ali Moosavi. Iranian cinema has made its mark on the global film world thanks to film makers such as Kiarostami, Farhadi, Panahi and many other distinguished Iranian film makers who have attracted widespread critical acclaim and won numerous awards and accolades. One branch of filmmaking in which Iranian cinema […]

By Tom Ue. Much of contemporary crime fiction revolves around the search for resolution rather than solution. Some, such as Epix’s new television adaptation of Joël Dicker’s bestselling novel The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (2018), offers both. Christophe Charrier’s Jonas (also known as Boys) (2018) offers neither. The […]

By Roberto Cavallini. Yom Adaatou Zouli (The Day I Lost my Shadow) by Syrian director Soudade Kaadan, was presented as a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti Competition, where it won the prestigious “Lion of the Future, Luigi De Laurentiis award for a debut film”. The film soon […]

By Yun-hua Chen. Watching Aquarela, a documentary under the section of Out of Competition in Venice International Film Festival, is definitely one of the most inspiring experiences during this year’s program. It is everything that cinema should be and at the same time, something that we have never seen on screen […]

By Janine Gericke. What makes Lisa D’Apolito’s new film Love, Gilda so special is that, like the 2015 documentaries Listen to Me, Marlon and Ingrid Bergman: in Her Own Words and Samantha Fuller’s A Fuller Life (2013, also discussed here), Gilda tells us her story. Out of Gilda’s own journals, recordings, photographs, and home movies, D’Apolito […]

By Areum Jeong. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, South Korea’s first found-footage horror film, directed by Bum-shik Jung, is a low-budget film that scored at the box-office and was a hit with critics. It was the first attempt in South Korea at combining the found-footage technique with the setting of YouTube live streaming. The film […]

By Sergey Toymentsev. German-born director Robert Shwentke is mostly known for his glossy, action-packed Hollywood blockbusters, including RED, R.I.P.D, and two Divergent installments. But this time he turns to his German roots and offers a sleek black comedy about the final days of World War II from the perspective of a […]

By Jake Rutkowski. I confess I was intimidated by the prospect of interviewing Tag Gallagher regarding John Ford: Himself and his Movies. His initial study of the director, John Ford: the Man and His Films (1986), was a massive biography and exegesis of an entire oeuvre, matching prolific artistic output with […]