On Emma Seligman’s ‘Shiva Baby’
Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is a confused and hectic debut that follows a young woman, Danielle (Rachel Sennott), who is…
Charlie Kaufman’s ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ begs for forgiveness yet again
What might Charlie Kaufman have left to say about himself after writing about himself and his screenwriter ego personified as…
Despite its Name, Maya Da-Rin’s ‘A Febre’ (‘The Fever’) Wards Off Pathologising
In Maya Da-Rin’s first narrative feature film, A Febre (The Fever), Justino sits with his grandson Josué in the kitchen…
The Luxury of Savouring in Kelly Reichardt’s ‘First Cow’
One of the pleasures of Kelly Reichardt’s narrative films is that their plots (where they exist) never feel artificial: the…
A Language of Traces: The short films of Mati Diop
“My characters rarely find themselves where they want to be in the world: there is always somewhere to escape from,…
As a Woman in America, Always: Eliza Hittman’s ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’
Autumn, the 17-year-old protagonist of Eliza Hittman’s sophomore film Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), first stands out because of her…
The 57th New York Film Festival: Looking Towards Convergences in a Cluster of Films
Having just seen Alla Kovgan’s documentary about the monolithic figurehead of modern dance, Merce Cunningham, it is now my job…
Dominga Sotomayor’s Unstable Utopias: ‘Too Late To Die Young’ (‘Tarde para morir joven’)
Utopias critique by differentiation, springing from a lack. They work, writes Lucy Sargisson, “by creating distant spaces whence to interrogate…
Chaining Female Reproduction to Analogy: Kantemir Balagov’s ‘Beanpole’
“What would happen to a woman after the war, when there is a tectonic shift in her mind, her nature?”1…
Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé Mévellec’s ‘The Swallows of Kabul’ (‘Les Hirondelles de Kaboul’) Takes a Rosy Look at Female Sacrifice – Cannes
In their adaption of Yasmina Kadra’s novel The Swallows of Kabul (2002), director/actress Zabou Breitman and animator Eléa Gobbé Mévellec…