Murder in the First

Apr 1, 2026 — BAMPFA presents a retrospective in conjunction with the filmmaker’s residency at UC Berkeley.

Jun 3, 2019 — Wisdom from the Pope of Trash, the making of Raging Bull and The Wild Bunch, and studies of Tarkovsky and the Berlin School all figure in this month’s round.

May 17, 2019 — Moving from the merely unsettling to the outright bloody, the Brazilian directors come down hard on their new government.

Feb 4, 2019 — All four of this year’s top prizewinners have been directed or codirected by women.

Sep 12, 2018 — Both Sunset and Our Time have their champions and detractors.

Mar 15, 2016 — Set during the height of McCarthy-era paranoia and arriving in 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Frankenheimer’s high-anxiety Communist conspiracy thriller tapped into the darkest fears of Cold War America.

Dec 3, 2013 — This scathing drama about a toxic society established Elio Petri as an important director of popular political entertainment in Italy.

Oct 24, 2013 — In John Cassavetes’s personal cinema, the director was always trying to break away from the formulas of Hollywood narrative, in order to uncover some fugitive truth about the way people behave. At the same time, he took seriously his responsibilities...

Dec 5, 2012 — In René Clément’s sparkling but menacing anti-noir, the Mediterranean setting is as seductive as Alain Delon’s baby blues.

Apr 24, 2006 — M ade in 1965 and still considered by many to be Marco Bellocchio’s masterpiece, Fists in the Pocket foreshadows the years of student protest in a family tragedy bordering on horror. This seminal first feature catapulted the twenty-six-year-old Bellocchio to...