The Experiment

Mar 27, 2012 — The mysterious letter was signed “Joe.” David Lean’s lawyer had sent me a batch of old correspondence. Struggling with a biography of Lean, I was desperate for any leads, and this one seemed worth following up. But how does one...

Oct 24, 2005 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s great film flirts with macho extremism and slips over into dream and poetry just as it has us most alarmed.

Jul 18, 2024 — Daniella Shreir, the translator of a collection of Duras’s writing on her films, has curated a comprehensive retrospective.

Apr 23, 2019 — The independent program will premiere new work by Robert Eggers, Lav Diaz, Bertrand Bonello, Rebecca Zlotowski, Takashi Miike, Luca Guadagnino, and Ariane Labed.

Apr 23, 2007 — Louis Malle’s documentary work adopts certain tenets of cinéma direct—improvisation, minimal crew, the refusal to organize reality—and applies them to a consistently class-conscious, outsider perspective.

Jan 12, 2026 — Let’s catch up with some of the most notable best-of-2025 listing and polling.

Feb 28, 2023 — One of the towering figures of postwar French literature, Marguerite Duras was also an innovative filmmaker whose rarefied cinematic style dared audiences to see less and listen more.

Dec 28, 2022 — We’re getting real in January with a spotlight on cinema verité, a movement that revolutionized documentary filmmaking.

Sep 2, 2021 — Translated into English for the first time, this afterword to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s novelization of his film explores the director’s attraction to fiction writing and how the art form differs from narrative cinema.

Aug 26, 2019 — In the first twenty-four features he directed, between 1925 and 1939, Alfred Hitchcock —always working closely with his wife Alma Reville (variously credited for assistant direction, screenplay, and continuity)—evolved from apprenticeship to technical mastery to an exuberant flowering that made...