The Prize

May 24, 2011 — Andrei Tarkovsky belongs to that handful of filmmakers (Dreyer, Bresson, Vigo, Tati) who, with a small, concentrated body of work, created a universe. Though he made only seven features, thwarted by Soviet censors and then by cancer, each honored his...

Sep 28, 2010 — “The past, again and again.” —Major Jack Celliers, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Nagisa Oshima’s filmmaking career began with the risen sun—or rather, with the promise of a sun soon to rise: Tomorrow’s Sun (1959), a dizzyingly designed faux “coming attraction”...

Aug 9, 2010 — San Francisco filmmaker Terry Zwigoff’s first cinematic effort, the 1985 Louie Bluie, is a wry, ribald, and magical portrait of the country-blues string band player and irrepressible raconteur Howard Armstrong (a.k.a. Louie Bluie). This catchy, engaging sixty-minute documentary, a clattering...

Jun 27, 2005 — Kô Nakahira’s taboo-busting melodrama heralded a reinvention of Japanese cinema.

Jul 13, 2023 — Celine Song’s feature directorial debut, Past Lives, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 and was released in theaters by A24. Her play Endlings received its world premiere in 2019 at the American Repertory Theater and had its New...

Oct 26, 2017 — Jonas Carpignano was born in 1984 and grew up in New York City and Rome. His first feature film, Mediterranea, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival—Semaine de la Critique in 2015 before receiving the award for the best directorial debut...

Sep 23, 2016 — Young Jean Lee has written and directed ten shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and toured her work in over thirty cities around the world. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Obie Awards,...

Kadish Morris is a journalist and arts critic at the Observer. She also writes for the New York Times, the Guardian, Frieze, ArtReview, and the Financial Times. Her essays have been published in books by Phaidon and Taschen. She is...

Fred Kaplan is the War Stories columnist for Slate and the author of seven books, including The Insurgents (a Pulitzer Prize finalist for general nonfiction) and A Capital Calamity, a satirical novel.

Feb 3, 2025 — The vibe in Park City was unsettling, but critics and juries discovered plenty of films to fall for.