A Scene at the Sea

May 23, 2018 — About halfway through Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016), Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) finds himself in a patch of woods in the middle of the night, crying. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable moment for a protagonist who is usually all business. We’re...

Oct 24, 2017 — In this intimate psychological thriller, Olivier Assayas interrogates contemporary society’s near-religious reliance on technology and its mediation of reality.

Aug 26, 2015 — A seasoned, Oscar-winning actor like Marion Cotillard has to throw out the rule book when it comes to acting for the brilliant Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. In this clip from a new interview with Cotillard available on...

Mar 21, 2011 — Living Room The cinema of Mikio Naruse is one of heartbreak but also one of indomitable poise. Melodrama is the director’s stock-in-trade. His stories are inhabited by people, generally women, imprisoned in their domestic and professional circumstances by the status...

Sep 6, 1999 — The subject of loneliness and the observation of the isolated person has always interested me. Even as a child, I couldn’t help but notice those who didn’t fit in for one reason or another—myself included. In life, and for my...

Mar 12, 2026 — A selection of fine writing on this year’s Academy Award nominees.

Dec 12, 2025 — This week: Bi Gan, Radu Jude, a new Film Quarterly, and of course, more year-end lists and polls.

Dec 11, 2024 — Sean Baker’s eighth feature has been picking up awards and nominations and landing on several best-of-2024 lists.

Jul 2, 2024 — Self-destruction is not only an aesthetic but its own subject matter in Sam Peckinpah’s deeply elegiac western, a towering masterpiece that examines American power and greed.

Jun 28, 2022 — Part rom-com, part existential meditation, the final installment in Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy dignifies the fluctuating desires of a woman on the cusp of thirty.