By Nathaniel Bell. One of the most elusive major works by a celebrated film artist has been restored in 4K….” Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest (original Bengali title: Aranyer Din Ratri) was, until now, one of the most elusive major works by a celebrated film artist. Its […]
Power of Solitude: Chen Deming on Always (Cong Lai)
By Yun-hua Chen. The film records the solitude of childhood and shows the power of poetry within that solitude.” Black and white, left-behind children, rural China – Director Chen Deming, in Always, uses a familiar formula to bring out a unique layer of poetry and coming-of-age. The Chinese title, Cong […]
A Clarifying Distance: Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown, Global Art Cinema, and the European Union
By James Morrison. My films are meant as polemical statements against the American ‘barrel-down’ cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance instead of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead […]
Dead Souls on the U.S. Border: On Alex Cox’s “Final Film”
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. Alex Cox, in what may be his final film, smartly reconfigures the classic theme of bureaucratic greed in Tsarist Russia into a bold, timely political Western situated in the borderlands of the 19th-century American West.” Alex Cox’s newest release Dead Souls (2025), stands as a […]
Questioning Authority: Jim Towns’ Mercy
By William Blick. Towns’ is unafraid to ask hard questions about education, religion, morality, censorship, gender bias, and civil rights. He does so in the format of a dystopic, sci-fiction vehicle in 90 minutes on a limited budget, with limited actors, to impressive results….” Jim Towns’ new film, Mercy is […]
Signs of the End Times – Saluting the Blood of Heroes: Behind the Apocalyptic Film
By Andrew Kolarik. Danny Stewart’s Saluting the Blood of Heroes: Behind the Apocalyptic Film could not be more timely. The opening sections of the book, which dive into the background of the apocalyptic film, are rather alarming in the way that they highlight the many colourful ways in which humanity […]
Small Nuances: Bernhard Wenger on Peacock
By Ali Moosavi. We were working on small details like what it means to be lost for so long over the course of the movie; Matthias just stares and looks a lot throughout the film. We were working on small nuances….” Austrian Bernhard Wenger‘s debut film Peacock has been selected […]
Alex Cox’s Dead Souls to Close SF IndieFest
January 22, 2026
Cox’s new revisionist Western offers commentary on contemporary immigration policy and violence.” Alex Cox will appear at SF IndieFest at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater for the closing night screening of his new film, Dead Souls. His adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s novel resituates the story as a Western, placing the action […]
Primal Ponderings: Home Invasion Horrors
A Book Review by William Blick. The last word on this niche genre, with a dense amount of information….” No genre of film is more subdivided and diverse than the horror genre. Over the years, this form of cinema has radically morphed into myriad subgenres that reflect the most primal […]
Filmic Imagination: An Interview with Shahram Mokri and Nasim Ahmadpour
By Ali Moosavi. Instead of storyboards we make a 3-D model where we can have an aerial view of the action. We can then envisage the placement and movement of actors.” –Shahram Mokri Shahram Mokri and Nasim Ahmadpour are partners in work and partners in life. They write the screenplay […]