The Human Experience

May 10, 2017 — Whether evoking the pain of first love or investigating the challenges of the contemporary immigrant experience, Tunisian-French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche depicts human behavior in all its unruly complexity. In 2007, his gift for infusing rich, classically structured narratives with documentary-like...

Feb 16, 2017 — In his Palme d’Or–winning masterpiece The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Ermanno Olmi depicts both the hardship and the beauty of late nineteenth-century agrarian life in the Italian province of Bergamo, telling the story of four families that live and work...

Oct 11, 2018 — Did You See This? Five highlights of the past seven days:Films by Michael Mann are the subject of two not-to-be-missed pieces this week. Writing for Oscilloscope’s Musings, Bilge Ebiri argues the case for the neglected Blackhat (2015): “When video liberated...

Nov 11, 2017 — Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, screens tomorrow and Tuesday as part of The Strugatsky Brothers on Film, a series running through November 21 at Anthology Film Archives...

Apr 14, 2025 — This month’s programming brings seaside thrills and white-knuckle tension, noir classics from a politically repressive era in American history, early gems from Kathryn Bigelow, and guest-curated picks from Spike Lee.

Apr 28, 2003 — François Truffaut’s third Antoine Doinel installment is a perpetual juggling act by which harsh truths are disguised as light jokes.

Dec 20, 2017 — Over the past decade, contemporary Greek cinema has erupted onto the international film stage with a new vanguard of directors whose bold works share a taste for provocation and highly stylized worlds. This week on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck,...

Mar 7, 2019 — Repertory Picks This year’s SXSW Film Festival kicks off tomorrow, and one of the lineup’s special repertory events is a presentation of True Stories, David Byrne’s first and only feature film, screening next Wednesday in our own 4K restoration with the director...

Dec 3, 2018 — True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 paean to American eccentricity and ordinariness, called to me from the shelves of a video store in Austin, Texas. Subtitled “A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil, Texas,” True Stories is not “true”...

Jul 20, 2017 — Director Ken Loach and his longtime screenwriting partner Paul Laverty, recipients of this year’s Crystal Globe award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, speak about the complex relationship between politics and cinema.