Before the Night

Apr 25, 2022 — During a precarious time for film exhibition, Inney Prakash, a programmer at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, New York, had an idea to rethink the bounds of nonfiction cinema. He ended up conceiving Prismatic Ground, a festival that launched...

Apr 7, 2021 — Songbook Zula knocks back two shots like they’re water, picks up a brimming martini glass, and struts right up to her current lover’s former lover—a poetess, at that—to introduce herself. “Bon soir,” says Zula, French still a little heavier on...

Mar 21, 2019 — “The world is full of skeptics,” Detour’s Al Roberts struggles to explain, in voice-over, while on-screen we’re pondering Vera’s dead body. “I know. I’m one myself . . .”Even now, closing in on seventy-five years after the Producers Releasing Corporation...

Apr 12, 2017 — With a comprehensive retrospective of her work opening at New York’s Quad Cinema, Lina Wertmüller chats with us about her early days as a moviegoer and her collaborative process.

Feb 24, 2015 — Federico Fellini’s fragmentary and picturesque tale of death and debauchery in ancient Rome is a surreal take on reality.

Jun 28, 2011 — Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro is the funniest book ever written in, and about, the French language. When it came out in 1959, it “made the whole of France laugh,” Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who helped Louis Malle adapt it to...

Jun 18, 2026 — We’re wrapping the week with top docs, Black writers, screwball comedies, and appreciations of Raoul Peck and Jafar Panahi.

Apr 9, 2026 — Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art introduce New Yorkers to some of the most exciting new voices in cinema.

Feb 27, 2026 — Tony Kushner revisits Munich, a Satyajit Ray restoration hits theaters, and the new Film Quarterly is out and free.

Sep 22, 2025 — The LA genre festival presents a doc on a reviled sequel as well as the latest features from Radu Jude and Lucile Hadžihalilović.