The Portrait

With his candid portraits of musicians and political figures, this trailblazer of observational cinema redefined the documentary form and popular culture at large.

Jun 25, 2024 — Barry Jenkins’s extraordinarily ambitious limited series distinguishes itself in the tradition of the cinematic slavery epic through its understanding that Black joy and Black trauma cannot be cleaved from each other.

Jan 23, 2024 — Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane star in the story of a cantor who has lost his wife, voice, and will to live.

Sep 13, 2021 — The Los Angeles–based artist behind the covers for our editions of Amarcord and The Awful Truth discusses the evolution of her work.

Nov 18, 2025 — Though the first two decades of the Iranian filmmaker’s career have long been underappreciated, this fertile period yielded philosophical and restlessly innovative works that reinvigorated both documentary and narrative-fiction cinema.

Nov 7, 2025 — Ira Sachs’s new film opens this week, plus: Joy Williams on Gene Hackman and Claire Atherton’s work with Chantal Akerman.

Aug 8, 2024 — The monumental forty-film box set CC40 celebrates forty years of the Criterion Collection with an electrifying mix of classic and contemporary films, and presents them with all their special features and essays.

Dec 5, 2023 — A tight-lipped stranger arrives in a gold-mining town. After checking into a hotel, he heads to Charlie’s Saloon, one of those gambling palaces with glittering chandeliers and be-feathered hostesses. He is told that Charlie “runs the town” and “owns a...

Mar 3, 2023 — The reconstruction and preservation of history are crucial elements of all of this week’s stories.

Jan 4, 2023 — New York’s Film Forum presents three recently restored short films that capture the writer in Istanbul, Paris, and London.