©Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures When filmmaker Raoul Peck took on the iconic James Baldwin (1924-1987), in his Oscar-nominated documentary I am Not Your Negro (2016), he wanted the writer himself to tell the story, not by a narrator like in a regular biography. Samuel L. Jackson read Baldwin’s profound words like he was him and…
In the opening scene of Mike Leigh’s Oscar nominated and Golden Palm winner Secrets & Lies (1996), Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s character sings at her adopted mother’s funeral on a lush cemetery. She then played the mild-mannered and soft-spoken optometrist with a contagious smile who searches for her biological mother (Brenda Blethyn). When she now revisits Mike…
It’s in the glimpses tragic and poetry happen. In the beginning of RaMell Ross’s extraordinary first narrative feature Nicke Boys, a realization of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, which opens the New York Film Festival, the filmmaker creates a world unlike any other. A child’s hand holds a leaf in the grass, a…
©Courtesy of Neon To avoid an eight-year prison sentence for making his latest film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof fled his native country to begin a life in exile. In two hours, he made the decision to embark on the risky escape on foot across the mountains. Two weeks later his film…
Not even Lorne Michaels himself could describe what the show was about. The turmoil around the founder of Saturday Night Live, America’s longest running sketch variety show and one of the most famous institutions in the history of television, is the focus in Jason Reitman’s latest film Saturday Night (as the show used to be…
Las Vegas, showgirls and Pamela Anderson. One can easily imagine this film to be filled with sparkle, glitter, neon signs and energetic dancing, perhaps a sibling film to Paul Verhoeven‘s “Showgirls” (1995). But Gia Coppola‘s “Palo Alto” (2013), latest film is everything but. This is a dreamy and intimate character study of a veteran Las…
I’ll remember it all. Though I won’t recall it. The words echo in the theater and a man’s androgynous face makes expressive grimaces on a large screen. In front of it, the same man, long haired with sideboards, moves down in fright, like he’s detaching himself. Just before, a police squad has arrived at a house…
It’s in the common things we come across daily that life happens, not among the grand gestures, the dramatic moments, decisive turning points or splendid vacations. Although many yearn for the smell of freshly cut grass on the other side of the fence – if only a small or big change takes place, life would…
©Courtesy of Tribeca Festival Time stands still in Bolivia’s La Paz. Every day, thousands of shoeshine boys swarm to the highest altitude capital in the world to find customers. Wearing thick balaclavas and baseball caps pulled down low to hide their faces, the lustrabotas come to work in one of the most undesirable professions facing discrimination…
©Elle, Isabelle Huppert In a scene in The Lacemaker (La dentellière, 1977), Isabelle Huppert’s character is led with closed eyes by her lover. He takes her closer and closer towards a steep cliff and open sea. There she opens her eyes, and he asks, “do you trust me”? “Of course,” she replies. The scene has…
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