Of Men and War

Jun 5, 2006 — Painful, beautiful, and discomfiting, Maurice Pialat’s coming-of-age drama remains as startling in its honesty, its unique mix of savagery and delicacy, as it was in 1983.

Jul 12, 2022 — In David Lean’s Venice-set romance, a fleeting love affair prompts a woman’s self-exploration.

Jul 25, 2019 — My first three films—Angela, Personal Velocity, and The Ballad of Jack and Rose—are all mysteries of female identity, how it can be warped, destroyed, or saved, particularly in the context of family and sexual love. These films are highly charged...

May 25, 2017 — Emmanuel Gras’s Makala has won the Grand Prix at this year’s Critics’ Week Awards. “The Sisyphean task of making charcoal in the Congolese countryside and then carrying it in overstuffed bags on an overloaded bicycle to a city that’s a...

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....

Jan 22, 2026 — This visually stunning masterpiece from Kazakh New Wave iconoclast Ardak Amirkulov is one of the few films that looks evil in the eye without flinching.

Nov 8, 2016 — This adaptation of one of the most influential series in manga history is a delirious mix of breathtaking swordplay and pop vulgarity.

Sep 26, 2024 — The directors discuss their award-winning documentary Bad Press and their effort to invert the exploitative dynamics that have long existed between documentary filmmakers and Indigenous communities.

Jan 17, 2005 — Along with Touchez pas au grisbi and Le Trou, Casque d’or is now widely recognized as the summit of Jacques Becker’s achievement as a filmmaker.

Jan 9, 2023 — The films in the Criterion Channel collection Free Jazz chronicle the development of a deeply experimental music that has baffled and enthralled listeners in equal measure.