A Different Kind of Duration: Lila Avilés’s 'The Chambermaid'
The Hotel, Room 47 : an open suitcase; mussed bedsheets; a torn postcard of Venetian sights, its eight pieces carefully…
Another Gaze↑
A journal of films and feminisms
The Making of a Millennial Woman
Being a millennial feels like being stuck in a permanent state of on-the-cusp adolescence. Sulky, prickly, and painfully hyper-visible, our…
Aude Léa Rapin’s 'Les héros ne meurent jamais' ('Heroes don’t die') takes on the ethics of the documentary film – Cannes
Aude Léa Rapin’s Les héros ne meurent jamais (Heroes don’t die) begins with Joachim (Jonathan Couzinié), a thin, bearded young…
No other voice: Claire Denis’s 'High Life'
Claire Denis’s latest film, High Life, opens with an exchange of voices: the cry of a baby, Willow, and the…
Rebecca Zlotowski’s 'Une fille facile' ('An Easy Girl') takes on the cliché of the woman of leisure – Cannes
Rebecca Zlotowski’s Une fille facile (An Easy Girl) opens with a contradiction. A quotation from 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise…
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…
On Well-Meaning White Women: Josephine Decker’s 'Madeline’s Madeline'
“What you are experiencing is just a metaphor,” a nurse hovering above the camera says in the opening scene of…
Monia Chokri’s 'La femme de mon frère' ('A Brother’s Love') ventures beyond the hellscape of the self – Cannes
La femme de mon fr è re opens to a combative discussion between four philosophy professors about whether they should…
Pushing at the Wound: Sex in Lola Clavo’s ‘No Love Lost’ and Maria Llopis’s ‘El Belga’
A few years after I first saw it, I wrote a character in my novel Vitrinerie who described Lola Clavo’s…
Watching Bo Burnham’s 'Eighth Grade' with my teenage sister
“It’s like I’m waiting in line for like a rollercoaster,” says 14-year-old Kayla to the very small, potentially even non-existent…
De-fetishising the Commodity: Xiaolu Guo’s 'Five Men and a Caravaggio'
Five Men and a Caravaggio is true to its title: a story of five men, each from different artistic professions,…
On Solitary Companionship: 'A Wild Stream' ('Una corriente salvaje') by Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda at Cinéma du Réel
Nuria Ibánez Castañeda’s Una corriente salvaje (A Wild Stream, 2018) opens on Omar, wading waist-deep off a remote beach in…
After Agnès Varda: A Discussion
Following Agnès Varda's death and inspired by the importance of collaboration in Varda's work, we asked eight writers, programmers and…
Earth Signs: Reading the Post-Pastoral in Alice Rohrwacher's ‘The Wonders' ('Le Meraviglie')
There is a scene in Alice Rohrwacher’s 2014 film The Wonders (Le Meraviglie) in which the protagonist Gelsomina, the eldest…
Wonder in Miniature: Shireen Seno’s 'Nervous Translation'
In Shireen Seno’s Nervous Translation (2017), the world is cut to eight-year-old Yael’s measure. The film unfolds almost exclusively within…