The Present

Oct 25, 1994 — Kenji Mizoguchi develops his medieval fable about moral freedom and slavery with intuition, cunning, and an overarching sense of tragedy.

Apr 29, 2025 — Drawing from a rich tradition of films that depict the lives of sex workers, Sean Baker’s Oscar-winning triumph takes a complex approach to exploring the fundamentally transactional nature of human relationships.

Apr 1, 2023 — This week: Heart-stopping stunts from Harold Lloyd and Michelle Yeoh plus writing on Dziga Vertov and Kenji Mizoguchi.

Apr 22, 2020 — Deep Dives The Forest for the Trees, by German filmmaker Maren Ade, is one of the deepest depictions of loneliness on-screen. After serving as a television producer and shooting two shorts, Ade made this first feature, based on her own...

Sep 7, 2018 — Hoberman on Romero, Anderson on Godard, Gallagher on Ford, filmmakers’ top fifties, and more.

Apr 5, 2018 — In celebration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s centennial year, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute presents one of the director’s most masterful thrillers.

Feb 13, 2018 — Lucrecia Martel was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this year not only to present Zama but also to deliver a masterclass. Giovanni Marchini Camia was there, and reports for Filmmaker: To illustrate her conception of mise en scène, Martel...

Dec 22, 2017 — “There are two basic types of Errol Morris film,” writes Evan Kindley in the Nation: One is the character study of an obsessive individual pursuing a difficult, perhaps impossible goal. Morris loves his Ahabs: the animal-obsessed eccentrics of Fast, Cheap...

Nov 11, 2017 — Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, screens tomorrow and Tuesday as part of The Strugatsky Brothers on Film, a series running through November 21 at Anthology Film Archives...

Nov 3, 2017 — “The return of Twin Peaks in 2017 came like a Taser shock to the ‘golden age of television,’ overturning audience expectations for what Twin Peaks—and TV—could encompass, both in narrative and form,” writes Aliza Ma in the new issue of...