First Blood

Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...

Mar 30, 1992 — John Schlesinger’s controversial masterpiece made moviegoers squirm with its bold, bleak portrayal of unrequited love, gay and otherwise, and it remains as jolting and thought-provoking as ever.

Sep 29, 2026 — With their mix of comedy, ecstasy, and aesthetic strangeness, the French auteur’s first three features grant us access to psychic states that we might not otherwise be able to enter.

Mar 17, 2026 — In her first and only theatrical feature, director Lynne Littman presents an unbearably intimate vision of apocalypse, focusing on the effects of a nuclear blast on one suburban American family.

Jul 24, 2025 — Along with new work from Arnaud Desplechin and Anne Émond, the festival will present first features directed by Brian Cox, James McAvoy, and John Early.

Jan 21, 2025 — In his first Hollywood film, British director Stephen Frears dives into the nihilistic world of Jim Thompson’s fiction, delivering an adaptation profoundly attuned to the novelist’s sense of ineluctable suffering.

Mar 12, 2024 — The thirteenth edition offers twenty features, new short films by Kevin Jerome Everson and Nathaniel Dorsky, workshops and more.

Feb 27, 2024 — Hollywood legend Raoul Walsh’s first movie for Warner Bros. is an epoch-spanning tall tale that takes inspiration from the New York City of his childhood and closes out a run of influential gangster films he inaugurated in the silent era.

Sep 8, 2022 — All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is the only nonfiction film competing in Venice—and Werner Herzog and Mark Cousins remain as busy as ever.

Aug 10, 2022 — Selections range from award-winners in Cannes, Berlin, and Sundance to promising titles heading first to Venice and Toronto.