The Other Side of Hope

Feb 17, 2010 — The feature film debut of British artist Steve McQueen, Hunger dramatizes the final weeks in the life of Irish Republican Army commander Bobby Sands and his death by hunger strike, aged twenty-seven, in 1981. Combining intense formal control and extreme...

Jan 14, 2009 — Gregory Nava, with his writing partner and producer, Anna Thomas, made the courageous decision to tell their story of a cold-war battleground from the point-of-view of the colonized “natives,” eschewing an English-speaking protagonist.

Sep 24, 1992 — It was in 1947 that Vladimir Nabokov began writing what he described as “a short novel about a man who liked little girls.” Completed in 1954, the manuscript was rejected as pornographic by at least four New York publishers. Nabokov...

Mar 9, 1992 — The ads for Boyz N the Hood, the debut of a 23-year old writer-director named John Singleton, treated the film as if it took place in another galaxy—a mysterious fiefdom far, far away. And so it does, set in a...

Jul 20, 2018 — American audiences weren’t ready for Barbara Loden’s Wanda when it premiered in 1970. A stark portrait of a working-class woman (played with raw conviction by Loden herself) who breaks free of a miserable marriage, only to find herself on the...

Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...

Oct 4, 2024 — The week offers conversations with Francis Ford Coppola and John McNaughton, deep dives into a horror classic, and a guide to Indie’a Parallel Cinema.

Feb 25, 2014 — A testament to Steven Soderbergh’s versatility, this story of a boy growing up during the Great Depression is a tender but tough-minded look at a child’s inner world.

Jan 6, 2009 — Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film is not just an epic but also a small film, one in which, somehow or other, the scope of David Lean has been enriched with the vision of Ozu.

Jul 17, 2026 — Channel Calendars This month on the Criterion Channel, crank up the volume on our playlist of (actually good) rock biopics that go beyond cliché to explore the elusive place where inspiration sparks and musical legends are born. Our Southern Gothic...