Film

May 21, 2017 — “Neo-realism isn’t necessarily a genre built for star turns,” writes Guy Lodge for Variety, “but director Jonas Carpignano happened upon one anyway in his debut Mediterranea: Then-preteen Pio Amato wasn’t the lead in that accomplished, affecting refugee drama, but his...

May 21, 2017 — “In Sicilian Ghost Story, co-directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s superb follow-up to 2013’s Critics’ Week prizewinner Salvo, the duo evocatively interweave the richness of fairy tales with the obscenity of Mafia control,” writes Jay Weissberg for Variety. “Based on...

May 21, 2017 — We begin with Leslie Felperin in the Hollywood Reporter: “A debut feature from Lea Mysius, who only graduated from Paris’ La Femis film school a few years ago, Ava is a sensual, accomplished but awkward study of teen female sexuality,...

May 21, 2017 — Sea Sorrow, premiering Out of Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is Vanessa Redgrave’s directorial debut. “A heartfelt, formally messy documentary about the international refugee crisis, the movie is largely a plea for compassion and action,” writes Manohla Dargis in...

May 20, 2017 — “Robin Campillo’s 120 Battements Par Minute [BPM (Beats Per Minute)] is a passionately acted ensemble movie about ACT UP in France in the late 80s, the confrontational direct-action movement which demanded immediate, large-scale research into AIDS,” begins the Guardian’s Peter...

May 20, 2017 — “If he hadn’t already laid claim to the title of king of the cringe-inducing confrontation and nabob of the nervous laugh with the withering Force Majeure, Ruben Östlund truly anoints himself with The Square, an excoriating razor-burn of a movie...

May 20, 2017 — “The film industry is full of unassuming figures quietly holding everything together without ever demanding a share of the limelight,” begins Gwilym Mumford in the Guardian. Filmworker, a “tender documentary” premiering in the Cannes Classics program, “makes time to profile...

May 20, 2017 — “To fans of the mononymous Barbara—the delicate-voiced, emotionally acute French chanteuse adored by everyone from Jacques Brel to François Mitterand—Mathieu Amalric’s mega-meta, dreamily blurred biopic-within-a-film may seem a bemusing tribute to a national icon,” writes Guy Lodge at the top...

May 20, 2017 — “Custody of a white horse is one of several bones of contention between Bulgarian locals and visiting German laborers in Valeska Grisebach’s Western, a dispute that takes on the most classic symbolic dimension of the traditional oater,” begins Guy Lodge...

May 19, 2017 — Let’s open today’s round of interviews with one from the archives, a conversation with Michelangelo Antonioni that originally ran in Corriere della Sera in 1982 but evidently took place during the final stages of shooting Blow-Up (1966). It’s been translated...