Sisu

Feb 2, 2017 — In her just-released Sundance hit The Lure, Agnieszka Smoczyńska evokes both the decadence and decrepitude of 1980s Poland through the adventures of Silver and Gold, two man-eating mermaid sisters who decide to go terrestrial and soon become a nightclub singing...

Feb 1, 2017 — The latest release from Janus Films, Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s debut feature, The Lure, opens today at New York’s IFC Center. In this spectacular horror-musical hybrid, two carnivorous mermaid sisters are enticed into a lurid life on land in a...

Jan 30, 2017 — It wasn’t until the second half of his life that Senegalese master Ousmane Sembène dedicated himself to cinema, with his debut feature, Black Girl, premiering in 1966 when he was forty-three. Already an acclaimed novelist, Sembène had lived in France...

Jan 27, 2017 — In a series of tautly constructed marriage dramas, filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has proven himself a remarkable observer of the social, moral, and personal dimensions that shape contemporary Iranian society.

Jan 23, 2017 — In his radical debut feature, Ousmane Sembène reveals the agony of the postcolonial experience through the story of a Senegalese migrant abused by her French employers.

Jan 20, 2017 — Did You See This? Over at the BFI, John Berra has published a guide for getting to know some of Chinese-language cinema’s most revered filmmakers, including Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Wong Kar-wai. For its upcoming edition in Hong Kong...

Jan 19, 2017 — Repertory PicksThis week in Seattle, Washington, the Grand Illusion Cinema screens a towering portrait of political treachery, Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Throne of Blood. Transposing Macbeth to medieval Japan, this Shakespearean masterpiece gives Toshiro Mifune one of the most intense roles...

Jan 19, 2017 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a working-class gay man hoodwinked by his uppity bourgeois lover in this unsparing portrait of queer culture in 1970s West Germany.

Jan 16, 2017 — Jack Garfein’s no-holds-barred account of sexual assault and trauma captures the volatile sensibility of the Actors Studio.

Jan 11, 2017 — A revelatory restoration of Lewis Milestone’s underappreciated newsroom comedy accentuates the film’s punchy rhythms and breakneck banter.