The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 8, 2012 — These thoughts on La haine by director Costa-Gavras first appeared in the program book for the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, where the film was screened. La haine is a phenomenon, in that it is an abnormal, a surprising, and...
Short Takes
Oct 22, 2009 — Sheila Heti of the Believer had a chance to talk to Agnès Varda during the Toronto International Film Festival—or rather, a chance to be one of a group of reporters whom Varda, at the festival with her film The Beaches...
Jun 12, 2008 — Spring is ready to surrender to summer here in the Big Apple, and in keeping with my intentions, I sat down and watched The Love Parade and Monte Carlo from the Lubitsch Musicals Eclipse set. I found them to be...
Jan 21, 2008 — In September 1997, I saw Agnès Varda introduce a brand-new 35 mm print of her first feature film, La Pointe Courte (made in 1954), to an admiring audience at Yale University. More astonishing than the luminous black-and-white images was Varda’s...
Aug 14, 2006 — La collectionneuse is a strong, sensuously lush, deceptively slight film, a Riviera fruit with a bitter, uncompromising aftertaste. In retrospect, it is both classically Rohmeresque and atypical, as befits a film in which the director was still finding his way....
Feb 13, 2006 — Jean Renoir’s classic film shows the natural world and the power of technology as wedded through the closely coordinated labor—effected through glances and sign language—of two men.
The Daily
Jul 24, 2026 — September will bring new films from Lee Chang-dong, Julia Loktev, Barbara Kopple, Mariano Llinás, and Takashi Miike.
Jul 22, 2026 — In his fiction features Beginners, 20th Century Women, and C’mon C’mon, the acclaimed director casts a sensitive gaze on the rich psychodynamics of human relationships and the hidden interconnections of our unconscious motivations.
The Daily
Jul 16, 2026 — Marking the publication of Rohmer’s only novel, Élisabeth, the Six Moral Tales cycle is revived in four U.S. cities.
The Daily
Jul 8, 2026 — Around five hundred films—restorations, revivals, rediscoveries—screened last month in Bologna.