The Absent One

Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s 1952 comedy celebrates existence by presenting a world full of unresolvable contradictions.

Jan 12, 2021 — In the course of selling or promoting a film, a director will invariably be asked, “What’s this movie really about?” The desired answer is usually predetermined—marketers want a concise, two-sentence hook; reporters want a sound bite; critics want a thesis...

Jan 28, 2014 — Terence Davies beckons the viewer into a private world of moods and sensations with this exquisite childhood reverie.

Feb 6, 2019 — Ten forward-looking features and a few intriguing revivals will screen from today through Sunday in New York.

Jul 18, 2017 — With a weeklong run of our new restoration of Desert Hearts opening at the IFC Center in New York, we spoke with director Donna Deitch about this landmark of LGBT filmmaking.

Jan 21, 2008 — As late as 1970, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s play was declared as inaugurating “a new cinematic language.”

Jun 1, 2022 — UCLA spotlights a diverse array of American lives depicted in films made between 1984 and 2020.

Jan 14, 2025 — There’s a Delphine Seyrig retrospective on in New York and another will open at the Harvard Film Archive on Friday.

Nov 10, 2023 — Black mothers’ stories come around again, Matt Wolf probes the archives, and Lizzie Borden conjures the streets of mid-1980s New York.