The Present

Dec 17, 2025 — Spike Lee captures the democratic spirit and the galvanizing, near-spiritual feeling of togetherness at the heart of David Byrne’s acclaimed stage production.

Nov 21, 2025 — Look who’s talking: Sissy Spacek, Sylvia Chang, Ryan Coogler, Jean Renoir, and Roberto Rossellini.

Sep 5, 2025 — We’re listening in this week on conversations with Charlie Kaufman, Alice Diop, and Zeinabu irene Davis.

Jun 18, 2025 — Bologna’s festival of rediscoveries and restorations now draws around 130,000 attendees each year.

Aug 28, 2023 — Throughout her four-decade career as a writer and director, Susan Seidelman has told complex stories about unconventional women striving to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-melding films fuse a passion for the pleasures of Hollywood spectacle with a...

Jul 10, 2023 — Writer-archivist-filmmaker Jenni Olson and critic Caden Mark Gardner discuss Masc, a collection of films on the Criterion Channel that explores the many forms of masculinity beyond the realm of cisgender men.

Mar 26, 2021 — Today’s round features writing on Catherine Breillat, William Greaves, Thom Andersen, and Patricia Highsmith.

Feb 24, 2018 — Starting yesterday, and on through Wednesday, Anthology Film Archives in New York is presenting a series curated by Steve Erickson, Documentary, Iranian Style: The Films of Mehrdad Oskouei. “It’s about as essential a film series as I can imagine,” writes...

Jan 20, 2018 — “Twenty years ago,” begins Variety’s Peter Debruge, “Robin Williams approached director Gus Van Sant about developing irreverent Portland cartoonist John Callahan’s memoir, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, with the intention of playing its author—a quadriplegic skirt-chaser, wheelchair...

Oct 1, 2017 — “Since I saw Faces Places at its premiere at Cannes in May, [Agnès] Varda’s latest documentary has cemented itself on my running list of the year’s best titles,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “Made with the French...