The Film Comment Podcast

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year's edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers.To kick off our daily Podcasts from the Croisette, critics and Film Comment contributing editors Jonathan Romney and Beatrice Loayza join FC editor Devika Girish to discuss the highs and lows of the festival's first few days. The group begins by debating Pierre Salvadori's The Electric Venus (4:30), the festival's opening night film, and Kantemir Balagov's Butterfly Jam (9:58), the opening selection of the Directors' Fortnight section. Next, they share their responses to Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (22:15) and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet's A Woman's Life (33:45) before discussing the films they are most looking forward to seeing at this year's edition. Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage. 

On this week’s Podcast, Boots Riley joins to discuss his new film, I Love Boosters. The director of 2018’s Sorry to Bother You and the 2023 streaming series I’m a Virgo has returned with a movie that provides a new, invigorating riff on the theme that runs through all his work: the destruction of capitalism by an organized working class. I Love Boosters, which opens in theaters later this month, is a kaleidoscopic joyride that features professional shoplifters, lurking demons, a Marxist teleportation device, and more, all anchored by a cast par excellence: Keke Palmer in the lead, with Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Demi Moore, Eiza González, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, and LaKeith Stanfield making up a pitch-perfect ensemble. Film Comment Editor Devika Girish had a long conversation with Boots about everything from how he got into fashion when he was depressed to why it’s important for him to make movies that show that the left can win.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Next week, on Monday, April 27, Film at Lincoln Center honors George Clooney with their annual Chaplin Award. Clooney has been a shining star in the American media firmament since the 1990s, from his breakout role on E.R., through innumerable hits, like O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Michael Clayton (2007), The Descendants (2011), just to name a few—to Noah Baumbach’s recent Jay Kelly (2025), in which he gave a twinkling, reflexive performance as a movie star looking back on the choices made during a long and illustrious career. Throughout roles big and small, as well as directorial outings, Clooney has combined versatility, humility, humor, and strong moral convictions, with an undeniable screen presence.   As Adam Nayman writes in an essay for The Film Comment Letter, dropping this Friday: “Pauline Kael, who shouted out Clooney’s performance in Three Kings (1999) in her final on-the-record interview (‘he was very good’), once called Cary Grant ‘The Man From Dream City.’ Clooney’s gifts put that phrase in reverse. Instead of materializing out of thin air, he’s grounded, earthbound—not a figure of fantasy but a stickler for mischief. Tasked consistently with playing petty thieves, swindlers, and ethically flexible professional types, Clooney traverses familiar actorly terrain and transforms it, by sheer force of presence.” In advance of next week's Chaplin Award Gala, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish chatted with Clooney about the depth and breadth of his career—his key roles, his approach to his craft, and his vision of the world which he brings to every performance and work.Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring podcasts, features, reviews, interviews, streaming picks, news, and more.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. For more than two decades, Melissa Anderson has been one of New York City’s most important film critics—and one of Film Comment’s favorite writers. From her start as a freelancer in the 2000s, through her editorships at Time Out, The Village Voice, and most recently 4Columns, she has regaled readers with her peerless wit, her attunement to desire, especially queer desire, and her facility for writing about actors. A new book published by The Film Desk—evocatively titled The Hunger: Film Writing, 2012–2024—offers an invaluable compilation of Melissa’s writing. Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Melissa on this week’s episode to talk about her formative experiences of film and film criticism, her development as a writer and editor, and the genesis of this new collection. Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring podcasts, features, reviews, interviews, streaming picks, news, and more.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. On October 30 of last year, we lost one of cinema’s most daring auteurs: the British director Peter Watkins. Starting out in television in the 1960s, Watkins developed an utterly unique and militantly political mode of filmmaking. In works like Culloden (1964), The War Game (1966), Punishment Park (1971), and his magnum opus, La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000), he cast nonprofessional actors in enactments of political events from the past, present, or a dystopian future, which he then shot in the style of live news reporting on TV. The results are thrilling films that startle with their naturalism and urgency, and provoke thorny questions about authoritarianism—not just of the state, but also of the media. To commemorate this great filmmaker’s legacy, Film Comment editor Devika Girish invited critic J. Hoberman, who has not only admired and written about Watkins’s work, but also took a class with the man himself back in the 1970s. They talk about the trajectory of Watkins’s life and work, what makes his films feel so singular even today, and the contemporary directors that carry forward his legacy.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It’s that time of year again: the Academy Awards are just around the corner. In anticipation of the winners being revealed this Sunday, Devika and Clint teamed up with some colleagues from Tinseltown—the writers and editors of the Los Angeles Review of Books—to scrutinize this year’s nominees. The publication’s Editor-at-Large Eric Newman, Senior Humanities Editor Annie Berke, and Contributor Elizabeth Alsop joined for a special collaboration with their podcast, the LARB Radio Hour. The group debated the relative merits and shortcomings of this year’s Best Picture contenders—from Sinners to The Secret Agent to F1—and also discussed trends, surprises, and snubs.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Set in Nigeria in 1993, Akinola Davies Jr.’s elliptical, atmospheric My Father’s Shadow is a portrait of a country on the cusp of a political crisis. We experience these events through the eyes of the film’s young protagonists, two boys who spend a day in Lagos with their father. They’re thrilled at the prospect of some quality time with their often-absent old man—but they also sense that there’s trouble brewing around them, even if they don’t understand all the details.  Film Comment Editor Devika Girish spoke with Davies, who just won a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut for the film, about the extent to which he drew upon family memories while writing the script with his brother, Wale; how the crew recreated the textures, sounds, and feel of 1990s Nigeria; and why it was important to have a children’s perspective at the heart of this story.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Across his contributions to Film Comment and other publications, and his programming as the Curatorial Director of the Criterion Collection, Ashley Clark has established himself as one of the smartest, sharpest taste-makers in the film scene in New York and beyond—particularly through his championing of underseen films by people of color. So we were very excited by the announcement of his new book, The World of Black Film, which comes out this week. The beautifully designed volume is a historical survey of a hundred significant films made by Black filmmakers or centering Black life. It adopts a rigorously critical and curatorial approach, taking care to define what a “Black cinema” can mean, and assembling a series of titles, accompanied by deft appreciations, that capture its breadth, depth, and diversity.  Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited Ashley on the Podcast to discuss his methods in researching and shortlisting films, titles that he discovered while writing the book, and what it meant for him to have legendary Black filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah write the book’s introduction.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew has been on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the past week, we’ve gathered the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. For our final Podcast from Sundance 2026, critics Bilge Ebiri and Tim Grierson and programmer Madeline Whittle joined Film Comment Editor Devika Girish to close out the fest, discussing Padraic McKinley's The Weight (2:56), Noah Segan's The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (24:26), Dawn Porter's When a Witness Recants (28:46), Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans's Who Killed Alex Odeh? (34:34), Josephine Decker's Chasing Summer (47:20), Walter Thompson-Hernández's If I Go Will They Miss Me? (1:05:46), Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei The Friend's House Is Here (1:10:28), Rafael Manuel's Filipiñana (1:14:05), and more. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2026 coverage at filmcomment.com

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. For our fourth Podcast from the fest, critics Robert Daniels, Will Tavlin, and Natalia Winkelman joined Film Comment Editor Devika Girish to discuss William Greaves and David Greaves’s Once Upon a Time in Harlem (2:15), Michał Marczak’s Closure (22:30), Adam Meeks's Union County (31:03), and Kogonada's zi (41:35). Catch up on all of our Sundance 2026 coverage at filmcomment.com

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. For our third Podcast from the fest, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics and FC Podcast veterans Tim Grierson, Robert Daniels, and Monica Castillo to discuss some of this year’s buzziest premieres to date, including Cathy Yan’s art world–satire The Gallerist (3:00), Gregg Araki’s erotic romp I Want Your Sex (20:15), and Olivia Wilde’s couples' night dramedy The Invite (31:45, 42:40). Catch up on all of our Sundance 2026 coverage at filmcomment.com

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. For our second Podcast from the fest, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish sat down with programmer Madeline Whittle (Film at Lincoln Center) and critic Will Tavlin (n+1) to discuss Adam and Zack Khalil's Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] (1:54), John Wilson’s The History of Concrete (14:05), and Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman's Nuisance Bear (28:11). Catch up on all of our Sundance 2026 coverage at filmcomment.com

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. To kick things off, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited programmer Madeline Whittle (Film at Lincoln Center) as well as critics Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) and Will Tavlin (n+1) to share their responses to the films premiering during the first few days of the fest. The group discusses the tongue-in-cheek Charli XCX mockumentary The Moment (3:30), Casper Kelly's dark comedy Buddy (20:15), and Beth de Araujo’s sophomore feature Josephine (29:50). Stay tuned for more of our Sundance 2026 coverage.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Every January, as we ring in the new year, we take a moment to take a look at some of the major new releases of the holiday season. This year, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited critics Beatrice Loayza and Mark Asch to focus on a select handful of titles that have recently graced the marquees of multiplexes, and which continue to stir up discourse. The group kicks things off with a deep dive into James Cameron’s latest 3D space opera, Avatar: Fire and Ash (4:00), before turning their attention to another epic, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme (33:34)—which both Beatrice and Mark have written great essays on in recent weeks. They also touch on James L. Brooks’s Ella McCay (51:15), which Mark reviewed for Film Comment just last week.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. On December 11, 2025, as part our annual winter list extravaganza, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute were joined by esteemed critics Amy Taubin and Bilge Ebiri for a real-time countdown of the films topping our year-end critics’ poll. The evening featured a lively discussion (and some hearty debate) about the films as they were unveiled—and now it’s available in Podcast form, for your home-listening pleasure. Consider it a holiday gift from us to you, our loyal listeners. Read the full list, plus best undistributed films, individual ballots, and more, here: https://www.filmcomment.com/best-films-of-2025/

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week’s Podcast features an in-depth interview with Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose latest feature, The Secret Agent, is in select theaters now. The film was a highlight of both this year’s Cannes, where Mendonça won the Best Director prize, and this fall’s New York Film Festival. The Secret Agent is set, like many of the director’s films, in his Northeastern Brazilian hometown of Recife, in 1977—“a time of mischief,” as a title card tells us early on. Wagner Moura (Cannes Best Actor winner) plays Marcelo, a man on the run from powerful forces connected to the ruling military dictatorship, seeking refuge and possible safe passage out of the country with a ragtag group of dissidents and political exiles. The Secret Agent is an endlessly inventive, lively, and frightening excavation of the specifics of past and place. And like the filmmaker’s recent work, including the scathing genre hybrid Bacurau (2019, co-directed by Juliano Dornelles) and the autobiographical documentary Pictures of Ghosts (2023), it’s in thrall to the history and possibilities of cinema. Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute spoke to Mendonça about the film, his tendencies to set his stories in familiar locales, his fascination with recording technology and voices out of the past, and how he managed to blend fantasy and humor into this chilling political thriller.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute sit down with writer-director Noah Baumbach, whose new feature, Jay Kelly, is in select theaters now. The movie stars George Clooney as an aging Hollywood star reckoning with the choices he’s made on his way to the top. The action unfolds on a trip Jay takes to a tribute to his career in Tuscany, trailed by an entourage of handlers (played by Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, and others), and haunted by his missteps as a friend, lover, and parent. Jay Kelly blends Fellini-esque memory theater, a screwball-inspired train journey, and a self-reflexive contemplation on the world of filmmaking to arrive at something universal; as Noah says in our conversation, the theme at the heart of the film is one that has animated many of his works: coming to terms with an irretrievable past. We also talked about his remarkable casting choices, how he and his crew built sets to facilitate the dreamlike flashback sequences without the use of CGI, and much more.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Last week, Devika returned from the Tokyo International Film Festival, which ran from October 27 to November 5 in the Japanese capital. As one of the major festivals in Asia, the event is a great showcase for new and restored films from the region, as well as Japanese specialities like animation. While there, Devika recorded three Podcasts exploring the lineup with a stellar rotation of guests. On our third and final Podcast from the festival, programmer, translator, and producer Aiko Masubuchi shares her thoughts on three Japanese titles. The first, Yama: Attack to Attack, a documentary from 1985, was screened outside of the festival; the latter two, Lost Land and In Their Traces, were highlights of its Nippon Cinema Now section.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Last week, Devika returned from the Tokyo International Film Festival, which ran from October 27 to November 5 in the Japanese capital. As one of the major festivals in Asia, the event is a great showcase for new and restored films from the region, as well as Japanese specialities like animation. While there, Devika recorded three Podcasts exploring the lineup with a stellar rotation of guests. On the second episode from the festival, critics Kambole Campbell and Sasha Han discuss selections from their areas of expertise—respectively, animation and Southeast Asian cinema. Some highlights include Momotaro, Sacred Sailors, a piece of WWII propaganda and the first-ever animated feature made in Japan; Mamoru Oshii’s cult classic Angel’s Egg; and Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s culinary thriller Morte Cucina.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Last week, Devika returned from the Tokyo International Film Festival, which ran from October 27 to November 5 in the Japanese capital. As one of the major festivals in Asia, the event is a great showcase for new and restored films from the region, as well as Japanese specialities like animation. While there, Devika recorded three Podcasts exploring the lineup with a stellar rotation of guests. First up, critics Vadim Rizov and Kong Rithdee join to talk about some of the big competition titles, including Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36, which ended up winning the Grand Prix, and Rithy Panh’s documentary We Are the Fruits of the Forest; as well as the the long-overdue official Japanese premiere of Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, 40 years after its making.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another has been the talk of the town since its wide release last month—from critics to filmmakers to audiences, the reception has been nothing short of euphoric. Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the film opens in an unspecified present, detailing the activities of a militant group led by a Black revolutionary (played by Teyana Taylor). Years after her disappearance, her partner (Leonardo DiCaprio) and their daughter (newcomer Chase Infiniti) are hunted down by an old enemy, Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. The chase takes them across California, with an assortment of other characters becoming embroiled along the way.  The movie is an unabashedly fun, feel-good action flick—one that also calls back to films as disparate as The Searchers, Commando, and Running on Empty. But is it among the greatest of the decade, as some have claimed? Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited critics and programmers Miriam Bale and Adam Piron on the Podcast to discuss the film’s successes and failures, how it fits into PTA’s larger body of work, and its engagement with American history and the present. If there’s one thing the four agreed on, it’s that One Battle After Another is indeed a “very rich text.”

Subscribe to Film Comment today. As the 63rd New York Film Festival drew to a close last weekend, it was once again time for Film Comment’s Festival Report, our annual live overview of the NYFF that was. FC Editor Clinton Krute was joined by critics Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman, and Beatrice Loayza for a spirited wrap-up analysis of the highlights and lowlights from the NYFF63 lineup. In front of a lively audience, the panel discussed and debated Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, Lav Diaz’s Magellan, Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf, and many other selections.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. One of the highlights of this year’s New York Film Festival is the latest feature by the nonfiction master Gianfranco Rosi, known for documentaries like Sacro GRA (2013), Fire at Sea (2016), and Notturno (2020), which paint both lyrical and urgent portraits of places that function as thresholds—between land and water, life and death, heaven and hell. His new cinematic essay, Below the Clouds, brings that approach to the Italian city of Naples. Shot in ethereal black and white, the film explores Naples as an environment both cosmic and prosaic—a city whose skies are suffused with volcanic ash and whose earth is shaken by tremors; and where a glorious and ancient past scaffolds a gritty, melting-pot present.  Below the Clouds premiered in August at the Venice Film Festival, where Film Comment's Devika Girish sat down with the filmmaker for a conversation. The two discussed how Pietro Marcello (director of the NYFF selection Duse) inspired Rosi to make a film in Naples, as well as Rosi’s uniquely embedded and immersive technique, and the state of nonfiction cinema today. 

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Three films in this year’s NYFF lineup explore the intersections of quotidian life and the arts, following artists whose efforts to make time and space for their creative passions are thwarted or frustrated by the grind of the everyday. In Kent Jones’s Late Fame, adapted from an Arthur Schnitzler novella, a once-upon-a-time New York poet (and now a postal worker) is intoxicated by the sudden attentions of a coterie of twentysomething wannabe poets. In Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, set in the 1970s, an aimless art-school dropout executes a comically sloppy heist at a local museum, as if seeking escape from his banal, bourgeois family life. And in Lucio Castro’s Drunken Noodles, an art student spends a summer in New York, having a series of serendipitous and erotic encounters around painting, poetry, and writing. Each film dwells in how both the making and consuming of art can force life into a pace incompatible with that of the modern world. Last Sunday at NYFF, Jones, Reichardt, and Castro joined Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a conversation exploring the temporality of cinema versus the other arts, the challenge of being a working artist, and the exquisite craft behind their new films.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. “That’s the majesty of rock / The mystery of roll / The darning of the sock / The scoring of the goal / The farmer takes a wife / The barber takes a pole / We’re in this together…and ever.” These lyrics ring as true today as they did back in 1992, when Spinal Tap penned them for their song “The Majesty of Rock,” from the classic album Break Like the Wind. Centering around the core trio of frontman David St. Hubbins, lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, and bassist Derek Smalls, Spinal Tap have exerted a significant amount of musical force since the early ’60s, when St. Hubbins and Tufnel first linked up as young rockers in the rough-and-tumble London neighborhood of Squatney. After trying on a few different styles and names—including The Originals, then the New Originals, then the Thamesmen—the group eventually settled into their now very-well-worn position as the elder statesmen of rock.  But now, after a long, peaceful silence, Spinal Tap is back with a new film, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, in theaters on September 12. With noted filmmaker Marty DiBergi returning to the director’s chair, the movie follows the band as they prepare for a triumphant reunion concert, offering an intimate view of the Tap working through festering interpersonal conflicts, rehearsing material and potential new drummers, and dealing with interruptions from the likes of Paul McCartney and Elton John. As with all things Tap, there’s more: on September 16, the Criterion Collection will release a new special edition of the 1984 classic This Is Spinal Tap. Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute spoke with St. Hubbins, Tufnel, Smalls, and DiBergi about the new movie, which the band hasn’t seen yet, and the old one, which they hate. They also discussed their long careers in music and film, the influence of cinema on their chosen art of music (including formative encounters with “good violent Westerns” like Run of the Arrow and sci-fi fare like The Tingler), and much more.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our sixth episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics Guy Lodge and and Öykü Sofuoğlu to discuss some recent festival premieres, including Pietro Marcello's Duse (2:45), Ross McElwee's Remake (12:39), Kaouther Ben Hania's The Voice of Hind Rajab (21:42), and Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite (41:32). Stay tuned for more Venice coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our fifth episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics Savina Petkova and Jordan Mintzer to discuss Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine (3:00), Lucrecia Martel's Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks) (18:26), and Olivier Assayas's The Wizard of Kremlin (31:49). Stay tuned for more Venice coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our fourth episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics Bilge Ebiri and Jonathan Romney to talk about some recent premieres, including Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Brother Sister, Kent Jones’s Late Fame, Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada, and Gianfranco Rosi’s Below the Clouds. Stay tuned for more Venice coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our second episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics Joseph Fahim and Öykü Sofuoğlu to talk about some recent premieres, including Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, Jihan K’s My Father and Qaddafi, and Shahad Ameen’s Hijra; the group also discussed the rise of the Saudi film industry and its role in contemporary Arab cinema. Stay tuned for more Venice coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our second episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics Tim Grierson and Katie McCabe to talk about recent festival premieres, including Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, László Nemes’s Orphan, and Poitras and  Mark Obenhaus’s Cover-Up. Stay tuned for more Venice coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year, and this year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our first episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited FC contributors and Venice veterans Jonathan Romney and Jordan Cronk to talk about what sets this festival apart from other major international film showcases. Next, the group turned to some of the most highly anticipated premieres of the first few days, including Paolo Sorrentino's La grazia (8:28), Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly (16:21), Yorgos Lanthimos's Bugonia (26:50), Claire Simon's Writing Life: Annie Ernaux Through The Eyes Of High School Students (36:40), and Mike Figgis's Megadoc (47:03). Stay tuned for more Venice coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. The Locarno Film Festival takes place every August in the Swiss town of Locarno, at the base of the Alps, with a robust mix of new discoveries, repertory selections, and premieres of films by major auteurs. Film Comment was on the ground this year, combing through the lineup for highlights, and this episode—featuring critics and programmers Inney Prakash and Cici Peng in conversation with FC Editor Devika Girish—covers some of the notable titles: Radu Jude's Dracula (3:09), Alexandre Koberidze's Dry Leaf (16:10), Kamal Aljafari's With Hasan in Gaza (23:45), Sophy Romvari's Blue Heron (30:38), and more

Subscribe to Film Comment today. At this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish moderated a conversation between the filmmakers Miguel Gomes and Alexandre Koberidze. The talk took place as part of the Future of Reality conference at the festival, organized by Locarno Factory and Università della Svizzera italiana, and the subject of the conversation was “the reality of the film set.” What is the daily experience behind making transcendent cinema? What are the tactical and interpersonal challenges of orchestrating resources and labor, all in pursuit of a singular artistic vision? Devika explored these questions with the two directors, who reflected on the making of their most recent films—last year’s Grand Tour for Gomes, and Dry Leaf, which premiered at this year's festival, for Koberidze.  Please note that the audio quality isn’t up to our usual standards due to technical problems during the recording. 

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Today’s episode is an entry in our regular Rep Report series, where we survey the best and most interesting offerings at repertory theaters in New York City. This month and next, the rep calendar is particularly packed with gems, so Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited filmmaker, critic, and archivist Gina Telaroli, film scholar Benjamin Crais, and Film Comment’s Assistant Editor Michael Blair to spotlight some of the unmissable series on view right now or on the horizon.  The group discussed a program at Anthology Film Archives dedicated to unusual stories about immigration, which features Kidlat Tahimik’s 1970s classic Perfumed Nightmare (5:56); a series at the Asia Society that pairs films from India’s Parallel, or arthouse, cinema movement with classics of Bollywood (16:39); and upcoming retrospectives and screenings of the works of Luc Moullet at Film at Lincoln Center and Anthology (32:00). They also reflected on the state of repertory moviegoing in New York more broadly—including the admittedly enviable problem of too many things going on at the same time as well as what it means to see works made defiantly outside of institutional structures at august institutions.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. From July 4 to July 8, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish presented a series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music called Let Them Cook: Cinema of the Rice Cooker, which spotlit movies where the humble household appliance takes on a poetics and pragmatism uniquely suited to the screen. Some of the films in the series included Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (2024), Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum (2008), Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), Raymond Yip's Sixty Million Dollar Man (2005), Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning (1959), and Bong Joon Ho's Incoherence (1994).  After a screening of Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill (1967)—which follows a yakuza assassin with a fetish for the smell of cooking rice—Devika recorded a panel discussion with film scholar and critic Phoebe Chen, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Bedatri Datta Choudhury, and Bon Appétit's Joseph Hernandez about the cinematic appeal of the rice cooker.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. It’s officially summertime, and with the AC blasting in multiplexes around the globe, Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited two fellow respite seekers, critics Alana Pockros and Adam Nayman, to chat about some of the buzziest new releases in circulation. The group begins with a deep dive into Celine Song’s romantic comedy Materialists (2:50) before turning to Eva Victor’s Sundance sensation Sorry, Baby (25:25); the racing blockbuster F1 (41:15), starring Brad Pitt; and the latest entry in Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise, 28 Years Later (56:03).

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Earlier this month, Film Comment hosted the author Malcolm Harris for a special event celebrating the launch of his latest book, What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis—an invigorating analysis of climate change and the collective solutions required to rescue humanity from it. In addition to being a trenchant public intellectual, Harris is also a dedicated cinephile who often uses movies to make sense of politics and history—something we explored on a 2023 Podcast focused on his previous book, Palo Alto: The History of California, Capitalism, and the World.  One film Harris discusses in detail in his latest book is Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s GriGris. It’s a sensuous, suspenseful thriller about a disabled dancer in Chad who takes up petrol smuggling in order to pay for his stepfather’s medical expenses. As Harris describes in his book, it’s also an incredibly intelligent movie about the life-and-death stakes of the petrochemical industry, especially in the Global South. To dig deeper into Harris’s unique attraction to the film, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited him to present a screening of GriGris, followed by a panel discussion with Harris and Ugandan scholar Anselm Kizza-Besigye. The group dug into movie’s alluring classical structure and its explosive conclusion, cinematic portrayals of the climate crisis, and much more.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. One of our favorite movies of 2025 so far is Sarah Friedland's debut feature Familiar Touch, which opens in theaters in New York on Friday, June 20. The film follows an octogenarian with dementia, played by Kathleen Chalfant, as she settles into her new life in a nursing home. It’s a delicate, touching, and surprising work that evades clichéd depictions of elderly people—thanks in part to the collaborative process through which it was made. The film was shot in a real care facility in Pasadena, with residents participating in the production process and appearing in the film.  Chalfant, a stalwart of the New York stage, anchors the film with a towering performance. On today’s episode, Film Comment invited Molly Haskell, herself a stalwart of American film criticism, to interview Chalfant, after learning she was particularly impressed by Chalfant’s work in the film. Their fascinating conversation touches upon depictions of aging onscreen, Chalfant's preparation for the role, how the film resists sentimentality, and more.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. For the last two weeks, our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors has been reporting from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. Before the festival wrapped on May 24, Film Comment partnered with Cannes Docs, the nonfiction-focused section of the Marché du film, on a panel titled “The Voice of Documentary.” Moderated by FC Editor Devika Girish, the panel convened three practitioners of radical nonfiction—Eduardo Williams (The Human Surge 3), Brett Story (Union), and Zoya Laktionova (Ashes Settling in Layers on the Surface)—to unpack the ethical and practical ways in which documentaries use sound, voice, and audio to speak to us and shape us as listeners. 528861

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 is wrapping up this weekend—and our intrepid on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors has been high-tailing it from screening to screening, cutting through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. For our ninth episode from the sunny shores of southern France, all-star critics Justin Chang, Tim Grierson, and Allison Willmore join Editor Devika Girish for our final on-the-ground panel conversation from this year’s edition. The four dig into two of the most anticipated films from the festival’s later days, including Bi Gan’s Resurrection (4:30) and Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (26:10), before touching on some heretofore undiscussed competition selections: Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme (45:00), Saeed Roustayi’s Woman and Child (46:25), the Dardenne Brothers’s Young Mothers (50:40), and Mario Martone’s Fuori (1:02:05). Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has arrived—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year's festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our fifth episode from the French Riviera, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Abby Sun, Beatrice Loayza, and Giovanni Marchini Camia to discuss some late-festival premieres, including Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Carla Simón's Romería, Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound and Nadav Lapid’s Yes. Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 is in full swing—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year’s festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our seventh episode from the film world's grandest event, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Kong Rithdee (back by popular demand!) and Inney Prakash to debate two recent premieres from legendary auteurs: Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident (2:33) and Lav Diaz's Magellan (14:12). Next, the group discusses one of the highlights of this year's Cannes Classics section, T’ang Shu Shuen's 1968 film The Arch (23:14), before turning to Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's A Useful Ghost (29:09), which just won the Grand Prize at Cannes Critics' Week. Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition. Note: Around 18:00, we experienced some equipment problems that resulted in slight glitches on the audio track. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has arrived—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year’s festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our sixth episode from the French Riviera, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics and FC stalwarts Miriam Bale, Robert Daniels, and Jessica Kiang to discuss their recent viewing at the fest, including Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Julia Ducournau’s Alpha (23:09), Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father's Shadow, and Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains (49:25). Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has arrived—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year's festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our fifth episode from the French Riviera, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by critic Kong Rithdee and scholar Neta Alexander to discuss some of the most highly anticipated premieres to screen to date, including Christian Petzold's Mirrors No. 3 (2:30), Sebastián Lelio's The Wave (16:50), and Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent (27:14). Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has arrived—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year's festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our fourth episode from the sunny shores of southern France, Film Comment contributor Mark Asch and critics Kong Rithdee, and Isabel Stevens join Editor Devika Girish to discuss some of the festival's buzziest titles, including Kristen Stewart's The Chronology of Water (3:35), Lynne Ramsey’s Die My Love (12:00), Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (29:22), and Harris Dickinson’s Urchin (40:35). Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has arrived—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year's festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our third episode from the sunny shores of southern France, Film Comment contributors Mark Asch and Beatrice Loayza join Editor Devika Girish to unpack two of the most go-for-broke selections to screen so far—Oliver Laxe's Sirât (2:25) and Ari Aster's Eddington (21:20)—before turning to the more modest charms of Hafsia Herzi's The Little Sister (41:20). Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has arrived—and you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year's festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. For our second Podcast from the French Riviera, Isabel Stevens and Thomas Flew from Sight and Sound sit down with Film Comment Editor Devika Girish to discuss Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the purported final installment of the long-running action series. To set things up, Isabel talks about her recent career-spanning interview with Tom Cruise, the cover story of the latest issue of Sight and Sound, before the group leans into the high-octane pyrotechnics of the film. Next, they turn to two other hotly anticipated premieres: Two Prosecutors (19:55), from Ukrainian auteur Sergei Loznitsa, and Left-Handed Girl (32:20), directed by longtime Sean Baker–collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou. Subscribe today to the Film Comment Letter for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2025 edition.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Cannes 2025 has at last arrived—and while news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood your feed, you can count on our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors to cut through the noise with thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and Podcasts. This year's festival is packed with exciting premieres, including new films from Richard Linklater, Lynne Ramsay, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Spike Lee, Bi Gan, Julia Ducournau, Wes Anderson, and many more. To kick off our patented daily Cannes Podcasts, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish gathered FC Podcast veterans Jonathan Romney and Guy Lodge to discuss the first day's offerings. Jonathan begins by describing the Opening Night selection, Amélie Bonnin's Leave One Day (7:00), before the group debates other early festival premieres like Robin Campillo's Enzo (11:20) and Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling (22:17).

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Legendary American scholar and critic Tom Gunning has changed the way we think about film history and the future of the medium, profoundly influencing generations of academics, artists, and cinephiles. On Sunday, April 27, Devika Girish and Clinton Krute hosted a live conversation with Gunning and curator David Schwartz at the Museum of the Moving Image, following a screening of Hal Hartley’s Flirt (1995), an experimental narrative of love and loss set in three cities—New York, Berlin, and Tokyo. The event was part of a multiday series of screenings and discussions organized by Schwartz, taking place at venues including MoMI, Anthology Film Archives, and Light Industry. This special weekend marked the publication of a new collection of Gunning’s writing, entitled The Attractions of the Moving Image: Essays on History, Theory, and the Avant-Garde. The conversation covered a wide range of topics, from Gunning’s seminal essay “The Cinema of Attractions” (1986) to his teacher-student relationship with Hartley to some contemporary films that he’s (perhaps surprisingly) enjoyed.

Subscribe to Film Comment today. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a singularly ambitious horror film set in 1930s Mississippi, is currently setting theaters ablaze (in an array of formats and aspect ratios to boot). The film stars Coogler mainstay Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as a pair of badass twins returning to their rural hometown of Clarksdale to build a blues joint—with performers whose talents are powerful enough to summon some unwanted spirits.  To talk about this fascinating film—which weaves together genres and tones to startling, if at times overwhelming, effect—Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Podcast veteran Robert Daniels (Rogerebert.com) and FC’s very own Michael Blair into their humble juke-joint. After sinking their fangs into Sinners, the group touches on a few other new theatrical releases they’re excited about, including Steven Soderbergh’s stylish spy thriller Black Bag (42:26) and Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet (52:22), a refreshing update on Ang Lee’s 1993 classic.