First Position

Mar 8, 2024 — This week calls for notes on some of the best writing on each of the ten nominees for Best Picture.

Feb 20, 2024 — I have, over time, become wary of and impatient with the word authentic, especially when it’s too casually and blithely deployed, as it often is these days, to defame or diminish someone or something based on arbitrary standards of what...

Jan 10, 2024 — The twentieth edition of MoMA’s festival of film preservation features classics and fresh discoveries from around the world.

Dec 14, 2023 — Greta Gerwig will preside over the jury in Cannes, Sundance will celebrate forty years, and the Berlinale names a new director.

Dec 12, 2023 — Deep Dives Beloved for his poetic observations of domestic life and intergenerational conflict, Yasujiro Ozu is an icon of international art-house cinema whose patient, exquisitely restrained style has influenced filmmakers around the world. But even though he directed more than...

Dec 5, 2023 — While 2023 is sorted, Sight and Sound invites critics and filmmakers to revisit some of their all-time favorites.

Nov 21, 2023 — The decades have flown by, but Mean Streets (1973) has not become the least bit dated, even though we know how the careers of all the principals have evolved in the years since, not to mention that the world just...

Oct 31, 2023 — With the full force of her imagination, director Nikyatu Jusu examines the complicated nature of Black motherhood, as well as the importance of Black communion as an antidote to racial oppression.

Sep 19, 2023 — Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the unfinished tale of a man living under arrest and prosecution for an unspecified offense, is perhaps the iconic author’s most paradigmatic text. Following its posthumous publication in 1925, and its translation into English by Willa...

Sep 18, 2023 — Winners and runners-up include American Fiction, The Holdovers, Dicks: The Musical, and Dear Jessi.