The Film Comment Podcast

Several films—both old and new—across this year’s NYFF lineup push the boundaries of depictions of sensuality and desire on screen, posing provocative questions for the current cinema landscape, where sex has become a divisive subject. Last Tuesday at the festival, filmmaker and scholar Ayanna Dozier and Film Comment Contributing Editor Melissa Anderson joined Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute to explore films like Nitrate Kisses, The Devils, The Drift, The Unknown, and others to discuss what thrills and terrifies us about sexuality on screen. Subscribe to Film Comment to explore our brand-new Fall 2026 digital issue, the entirety of our archive dating back to 1962, and much more.

For the last two weeks, we've handed over The Film Comment Podcast to the participants of the 2026 Film at Lincoln Center Critics Academy—an annual program for up-and-coming critics held during the New York Film Festival, led by Film Comment editors. On this week's episode, four of this year’s critics—Eliel Peterson, Brennan Ryan, Auhjanae McGee, and Brian O’Connell—discuss some of their highlights from NYFF’s Spotlight Shorts and New York Shorts programs, including Kamal Aljafari’s Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo, Camilo Restrepo’s A Stolen Movie, and Heather Landsman's ee. Subscribe to Film Comment to explore our brand-new Fall 2026 digital issue, the entirety of our archive dating back to 1962, and much more.

This week and next, we're handing over The Film Comment Podcast to the participants of the 2026 Film at Lincoln Center Critics Academy—an annual program for up-and-coming critics held during the New York Film Festival, led by Film Comment editors. For this week's episode, four of this year’s critics—Yezen Saadah, Kathy Ou, Samuel Brodsky, and Rebecca Turner—discuss some of their highlights from the shorts screening as part of NYFF’s Currents Program 5: The Material Ghost, including Peggy Ahwesh’s The Wayfinders, Adam Piron’s The Flesh of the Mountain, and Kevin Jerome Everson’s National Seating. Subscribe to Film Comment to explore our brand-new Fall 2026 digital issue, the entirety of our archive dating back to 1962, and much more.

For the past two weeks, Film Comment has been reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido di Venezia, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. For our final Podcast from this year's edition, which wrapped over the weekend, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish invited critics Mariona Borrull, Leonardo Goi, Luke Hicks, and Öykü Sofuoğlu to discuss three late-festival premieres: Ali Asgari's A Bit of Light (4:30); Casey Affleck's Company (8:42); and Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's NAZA (15:25). The group closed things out by shouting out their personal highlights from this year's Venice. Subscribe to Film Comment to explore all of our Venice 2026 coverage.

This week, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido di Venezia, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year’s edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Werner Herzog, Lee Chang-dong, Tsai Ming-liang, and more. For our fifth Podcast from the fest, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish invited critic and programmer Jordan Cronk and critic Öykü Sofuoğlu to discuss Theo Rollason's Queer Edward II (2:40), Jacqueline Lentzou's A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra (11:45), María Aparicio's Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion (18:30), Luke Lorentzen's Boatbuilders (24:55), Ilya Khrzhanovsky's DAU (29:20), and Luca Guadagnino's Joie de vivre (42:00). Subscribe to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Venice 2026 coverage.

This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido di Venezia, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year’s edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Werner Herzog, Lee Chang-dong, Tsai Ming-liang, and more. For our fourth Podcast from the floating city, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish invited two native Italians and longtime festival attendees—Viennale Artistic Director Eva Sangiorgi and critic Paola Casella—to discuss how the festival has grown and changed over the last few decades as well as its broader significance within Italian cinema culture. The group also debated several notable premieres from this year's edition, including Rubaiyat Hossain's The Difficult Bride (11:00), Florian Zeller’s Bunker (17:45), Alex Gibney’s Musk (24:15), Mariano Llinás’s Life of Jorge Luis Borges (32:40), and more. Subscribe to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Venice 2026 coverage.

This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year’s edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Werner Herzog, Lee Chang-dong, Tsai Ming-liang, and more. For our third Podcast from the festival, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish invited critics Jonathan Romney and Tim Grierson to share their reactions to The Pervert's Guide to Utopias (2:38), director Sophie Fiennes’s latest collaboration with philosopher Slavoj Žižek, as well as Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger (14:36), Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s concert documentary following the band's recent reunion tour. Finally, the three discussed one of the major standouts in the fest’s Competition section: May el-Toukhy‘s Woman Unknown (26:25). Subscribe to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Venice 2026 coverage.

This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year’s edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Werner Herzog, Lee Chang-dong, Tsai Ming-liang, and more. For our second Podcast from the city of canals, critics Bilge Ebiri (New York / Vulture) and Guy Lodge (Variety) join Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish to discuss two standouts of the festival's Competition section: Danny Boyle's Ink (2:28) and Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love (12:05). Next, they discuss a highlight of the Horizons sidebar: Robert Greene's Too Much Sugar (27:30). Subscribe to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Venice 2026 coverage.

This week and next, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year’s edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Werner Herzog, Lee Chang-dong, Tsai Ming-liang, and more. To kick off our coverage, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish invited critics Miriam Bale and Öykü Sofuoğlu to discuss some of the most highly anticipated premieres of the festival's first days, including Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine (2:45), Werner Herzog's Bucking Fastard (10:10), Paul Schrader's The Basics of Philosophy (22:06), and Lance Oppenheim's Primetime (31:52). Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Venice 2026 coverage.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun’s third narrative feature, opens in theaters tomorrow. Dizzyingly meta-textual and deliciously, well, campy, the film stars Hannah Einbinder as an emerging queer filmmaker tasked with directing a reboot of a fictional ’80s slasher franchise titled Camp Miasma. She decides to visit the final girl of the original movie who is now an eccentric middle-aged recluse, played by Gillian Anderson, who’s living on the campgrounds where the first movie was shot. What unfolds is, in the words of our critic Nathan Lee, a “gore-soaked, titty-bouncing, sexploitation fever dream girded by real conceptual brio.” Meditations on the perverse riddles of desire as well as the queer subtexts of many slasher films and the kind of strange identification they invite from the spectator are rendered with perfectly pitched horror theatrics and laugh-out-loud humor. Film Comment Editor Devika Girish spoke with Schoenbrun about this very rich text, trying to unpack the film’s…

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, and more, is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated films of the year. Last week, FC Contributing Editor Genevieve Yue wrote about Nolan’s latest, calling it a “strangely bloodless” adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. Genevieve writes: “The film is shrouded in Nolan’s characteristic dourness, so that Homer’s lively world of men and gods is purged of lightness and humor. Odysseus’s homecoming brings relief, but not joy. A lot of people cry, but no one laughs except the suitors, whose sport is to insult beggars. Even the Sirens’ song, famed for its irresistibility, causes Odysseus to wail in grief.” For this week’s Podcast, Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute invited Genevieve and fellow FC Contributing Editor Inney Prakash to discuss how the film fits within Nolan’s body of work, how it stacks up against other cinematic adaptations of The Odyssey, and more.

This week, Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute is in the Czech Republic, reporting on the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Located in a picturesque spa town, the fest has long been the home of hidden gems in its Competition sections, as well as a mid-summer stop for major films making the international circuit. This year’s edition features many of both, as well as an excellent retrospective sidebar highlighting some favorites from the festival's past, stretching back to the days when it was located in Moscow every other year. For our third and final episode from the fest, Clint welcomed critics and FC Podcast veterans Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) and Guy Lodge (Variety) to discuss some of the highlights of the festival, beginning with two Bulgarian films: Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s dark comedy Black Money for White Nights (04:24), and Martina Buchelová’s debut feature Lover, Not a Fighter (13:28), the winner of the festival’s Proxima Competition Grand Prix award. Finally, Robert talks about…

This week, Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute is in the Czech Republic, reporting on the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Located in a picturesque spa town, the fest has long been the home of hidden gems in its Competition sections, as well as a mid-summer stop for major films making the international circuit. This year’s edition features many of both, as well as an excellent retrospective sidebar highlighting some favorites from the festival's past, stretching back to the days when it was located in Moscow every other year. For our second episode from the fest, Clint welcomed critic and FC Podcast veteran Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) to discuss some of the highlights of the festival so far, beginning with Alain Gomis's family epic Dao (3:09) before turning to Joan Bofill Amargós's The Hanging of Stuart Cornfeld (16:50), a documentary portrait of the legendary Hollywood film producer. Next, Clint shouts out Yashasvi Juyal​'s magical realist The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb (25:42) and Robert…

This week, Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute is in the Czech Republic, reporting on the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Located in a picturesque spa town, the fest has long been the home of hidden gems in its Competition sections, as well as a mid-summer stop for major films making the international circuit. This year’s edition features many of both, as well as an excellent retrospective sidebar highlighting some favorites from the festival's past, stretching back to the days when it was located in Moscow every other year. To kick off our coverage, Clint welcomed critic Pavel Sladký and programmer Irena Kovarova to discuss the festival’s history and present, and to hear about some highlights from this year’s selection. The group began by discussing two Czech highlights from the festival's retrospective section: Věra Chytilová's Tainted Horseplay (8:16) from 1988, and Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos's The Defendant (14:40) from 1964. Next, they dig into standouts among the new films, including Kristina Grozeva and…

Listeners might know John Early as a very funny comedian and actor—but last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, John debuted a new role: an auteur. His first feature, Maddie’s Secret, takes cues from TV movies, PSAs, erotic thrillers, internet videos, Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, and more to craft a movie that, despite all these influences and parodic touches, feels wonderfully original and earnest. Early plays the titular Maddie, a food influencer who struggles with bulimia, with sincere commitment, somehow walking the tightrope between campy, laugh-out-loud wit and a profound empathy. Maddie’s Secret opens in cinemas on June 19. Keep your ears open for Part 2 of this conversation, which will be dropping soon as an exclusive for Film Comment subscribers.

On May 15, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish moderated a panel at Cannes Docs, an industry sidebar dedicated to nonfiction filmmaking. Titled "Breaking Borders," the conversation examined how, even as the film market has become increasingly globalized, traditional professional networks and production infrastructure are still structured around exclusionary ideas about countries and continents. Devika gathered three panelists who lead groundbreaking networks that are nourishing connections across borders, changing not just the terrain of cinema but also of our notions of power, place, and belonging. The speakers included Jason Ryle, the Chief Executive Officer of the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund; Mark Mushiva, a creative technologist and Research Fellow with Forensic Architecture; and Lisa Smith, a founder of the Romani Filmmakers Network. Subscribe today to Film Comment to catch up with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage. Image courtesy of the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund.

Cannes 2026 wrapped this past weekend, but the Film Comment crew has not slowed down one bit as we continue to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. For our final Podcast from the Croisette, FC Editor Devika Girish gathered three of our favorite critics—Justin Chang (The New Yorker), Tim Grierson (Screen International), and Jessica Kiang (Variety)—to unpack the festival's final days. The group discussed three late-premiering Competition titles: Valeska Grisebach's Jury Prize–winning The Dreamed Adventure (4:00), Léa Mysius's The Birthday Party (21:58), and Lukas Dhont's Coward (35:09)—before turning to Ken Russell's newly restored The Devils (1971) (50:15), which screened in the Cannes Classics section. Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage.

Cannes 2026 is nearing its close, but the Film Comment crew has not slowed down one bit as we continue to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition has been packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our seventh Podcast from the Croisette, FC Editor Devika Girish invited Sight and Sound’s Thomas Flew and scholar Neta Alexander to discuss a trio of late-festival Competition premieres: Andrey Zvyagintsev's Palme d'Or–contender Minotaur (3:50); Ira Sachs's 1980s period drama The Man I Love (18:16); and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo's The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) (32:48), which received a rousing 20-minute ovation from the Cannes audience. Next, the group shout out highlights from other sections of the festival: Tom Fontenille's documentary A Secret Heart (41:52), which premiered in the ACID sidebar; Clio…

Cannes 2026 is in full swing and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, cutting through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our sixth Podcast from the sun-dappled shores of the French Riviera, Sight and Sound's Isabel Stevens and scholar Neta Alexander join FC Editor Devika Girish to share their responses to two Competition titles that are sure to generate lots of chatter: Cristian Mungiu's legal thriller Fjord (3:15) and Pedro Almodóvar's self-reflexive drama Bitter Christmas (19:25). Next, they turn to two highlights from the festival's other sections: Austrian director Sandra Wollner's Everytime (26:00), which premiered as part of Un Certain Regard, and Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor's La perra (32:50), a selection in the Directors' Fortnight program. Subscribe…

Cannes 2026 is in full swing, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Pedro Almodóvar, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our fifth Podcast from the Croisette, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics (and programmers) Jordan Cronk, Adam Piron, and Ruun Nuur to dive into some mid-festival highlights: James Grey's buzzy crime drama Paper Tiger (3:15); Thai director Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s family road movie 9 Temples to Heaven (11:08); a selection of documentaries including Gabin, The Match, and The Story of Documentary Film (22:00); and the out-of-body experience that is Arthur Harari's thriller The Unknown (34:15). Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage.

Cannes 2026 is in full swing, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Pedro Almodóvar, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our fourth Podcast from the Croisette, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish is joined by critic Öykü Sofuoğlu as well as FC Contributing Editor and Asia Society programmer Inney Prakash to debate their reactions to Clarissa (3:18), Arie and Chuko Esiri's Mrs Dalloway adaptation set in contemporary Lagos; Sheep in the Box (18:50), Hirokazu Kore-eda's parable about the dangers of AI; and Hope (33:09), Na Hong-jin's high-throttle monster movie. Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage.

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Pedro Almodóvar, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For the third of our daily Podcasts from the Croisette, critic Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) and FC Contributing Editor and Asia Society programmer Inney Prakash join FC Editor Devika Girish to discuss Radu Jude's The Diary of a Chambermaid (3:45), Marie Kreutzer's Gentle Monster (19:55), and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden (28:16). Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage.

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year's edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. On the second of our daily Podcasts from the Croisette, critics Katie McCabe (Sight and Sound) and Alison Willmore (New York, Vulture) join FC editor Devika Girish to talk over their recent festival viewing. They begin with Pawlikowski’s highly anticipated Fatherland (3:20), before moving to Kôji Fukada’s subtle Nagi Notes (11:30), Asghar Farhadi’s surprisingly soapy Parallel Tales (19:56), and Maxence Voiseux’s documentary Gabin (27:30) before wrapping up by revisiting Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (31:52). Subscribe today to Film Comment to stay up-to-date with all of our Cannes 2026 coverage.

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year's edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. To kick off our daily Podcasts from the Croisette, critics and Film Comment contributing editors Jonathan Romney and Beatrice Loayza join FC editor Devika Girish to discuss the highs and lows of the festival's first few days. The group begins by debating Pierre Salvadori's The Electric Venus (4:30), the festival's opening night film, and Kantemir Balagov's Butterfly Jam (9:58), the opening selection of the Directors' Fortnight section. Next, they share their responses to Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (22:15) and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet's A Woman's Life (33:45) before discussing the films they are most looking forward to seeing…

On this week’s Podcast, Boots Riley joins to discuss his new film, I Love Boosters. The director of 2018’s Sorry to Bother You and the 2023 streaming series I’m a Virgo has returned with a movie that provides a new, invigorating riff on the theme that runs through all his work: the destruction of capitalism by an organized working class. I Love Boosters, which opens in theaters later this month, is a kaleidoscopic joyride that features professional shoplifters, lurking demons, a Marxist teleportation device, and more, all anchored by a cast par excellence: Keke Palmer in the lead, with Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Demi Moore, Eiza González, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, and LaKeith Stanfield making up a pitch-perfect ensemble. Film Comment Editor Devika Girish had a long conversation with Boots about everything from how he got into fashion when he was depressed to why it’s important for him to make movies that show that the left can win.

Next week, on Monday, April 27, Film at Lincoln Center honors George Clooney with their annual Chaplin Award. Clooney has been a shining star in the American media firmament since the 1990s, from his breakout role on E.R., through innumerable hits, like O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Michael Clayton (2007), The Descendants (2011), just to name a few—to Noah Baumbach’s recent Jay Kelly (2025), in which he gave a twinkling, reflexive performance as a movie star looking back on the choices made during a long and illustrious career. Throughout roles big and small, as well as directorial outings, Clooney has combined versatility, humility, humor, and strong moral convictions, with an undeniable screen presence. As Adam Nayman writes in an essay for The Film Comment Letter, dropping this Friday: “Pauline Kael, who shouted out Clooney’s performance in Three Kings (1999) in her final on-the-record interview (‘he was very good’), once called Cary Grant ‘The Man From Dream City.’ Clooney’s…

For more than two decades, Melissa Anderson has been one of New York City’s most important film critics—and one of Film Comment’s favorite writers. From her start as a freelancer in the 2000s, through her editorships at Time Out, The Village Voice, and most recently 4Columns, she has regaled readers with her peerless wit, her attunement to desire, especially queer desire, and her facility for writing about actors. A new book published by The Film Desk—evocatively titled The Hunger: Film Writing, 2012–2024—offers an invaluable compilation of Melissa’s writing. Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Melissa on this week’s episode to talk about her formative experiences of film and film criticism, her development as a writer and editor, and the genesis of this new collection. Subscribe today to The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring podcasts, features, reviews, interviews, streaming picks, news, and more.

On October 30 of last year, we lost one of cinema’s most daring auteurs: the British director Peter Watkins. Starting out in television in the 1960s, Watkins developed an utterly unique and militantly political mode of filmmaking. In works like Culloden (1964), The War Game (1966), Punishment Park (1971), and his magnum opus, La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000), he cast nonprofessional actors in enactments of political events from the past, present, or a dystopian future, which he then shot in the style of live news reporting on TV. The results are thrilling films that startle with their naturalism and urgency, and provoke thorny questions about authoritarianism—not just of the state, but also of the media. To commemorate this great filmmaker’s legacy, Film Comment editor Devika Girish invited critic J. Hoberman, who has not only admired and written about Watkins’s work, but also took a class with the man himself back in the 1970s. They talk about the trajectory of Watkins’s life and work, what makes his films…

Having programmed two high-profile Netflix premieres, Bong Joon Ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), in the main competition, Cannes was shadowed by a debate over distribution—theatrical versus streaming—and the role of heavyweight newcomers Amazon and Netflix. The controversy placed streaming services in direct opposition to cinemas, but the shifting landscape is more complex; for one, Amazon also distributes its titles with more conventional theatrical rollouts, and the same-day VOD release model doesn’t apply to every Amazon title in the market. This episode of The Film Comment Podcast focuses not only on streaming, but also on the interactions between global markets and studios, film critics and consumers, and cinephiles and local art house circuits—and why it’s difficult to make a monolithic statement about what the future holds. Daniel Loría, Editorial Director of Box Office Magazine, and Nick Pinkerton, member of the New York Film Critics Circle, offer up their…

Maybe it’s the magnetic pull of a performance, a sequence, or a mood, but there are some movies that demand multiple rewatches. This episode of the podcast samples some films that keep our critics coming back, and here—staring at last into the abyss of compulsive movie love—they do some soul-searching as to why they resonate so strongly. Questions of childhood nostalgia or perfect timing enter the mix, as well as how personal responses to a film might shift over time. FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca offers a couple of “movie addictions” with Ashley Clark, regular Film Comment contributor; K. Austin Collins, staff writer for The Ringer; and Michael Koresky, Director of Creative and Editorial Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Did the golden age of television already happen? This episode of the podcast makes the case that it has—in 1970s Germany, courtesy of the one and only R.W. Fassbinder. In her feature in the May/June issue, Aliza Ma tackles Fassbinder’s recently restored and rediscovered Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, the nearly eight-hour series the auteur wrote and shot at a crucial moment in his career. The ensemble story involves the friends and family of a worker in a machine parts factory as he slowly mobilizes colleagues against the management. Ma writes: “With Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, Fassbinder channels his unique capacity for self-interrogation and curiosity about new social modes of existence into mass media, proving—at least for five episodes—that it is possible to create popular entertainment that manages to be multifaceted, provocative, and meaningful.” Film Comment Digital Producer Violet Lucca was joined by Ma, head of programming at Metrograph, and Nick Pinkerton, regular FC contributor, to bask in the…

The agony and the ecstasy of festivalgoing continues on this week’s episode. In the second week of Cannes, two television shows by established auteurs—Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks—premiered, along with grittier indie fare, like Josh and Benny Safdie’s Good Time and Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. Film Comment Editor Nicolas Rapold was joined by contributing editors Amy Taubin and Jonathan Romney, as well as Jordan Cronk, co-founder of the Locarno in Los Angeles Film Festival, to discuss the standouts and the failures.

The dark of the theater and the sunny seafront come together but once a year at the Cannes Film Festival, and in this week's episode of the Film Comment Podcast, the critics weigh in live from the south of France on the slate's standouts, surprises, and offenses so far. Film Comment Editor Nicolas Rapold chats with a roundtable—namely Jordan Cronk, co-founder of the Locarno in Los Angeles Film Festival; Nicholas Elliott, New York correspondent for Cahiers du Cinéma and contributing film editor for BOMB; and FC Contributing Editors Jonathan Romney and Amy Taubin—about the first week of screenings, including Claire Denis's Un beau soleil intérieur, Agnès Varda and JR's Visages Villages, Bong Joon-ho's Okja, Ruben Östlund's The Square, and Michael Haneke's Happy End.

There's one alliterative movie musical that's dominated the recent conversational limelight, but less frequently discussed is how it operates within the genre. In this spirit, Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, uses La La Land as a starting point to delve into the form of the movie musical in his May/June Film Comment feature "Working It" As a second act, this week's episode of the FC podcast expands the sample set of movie musicals—each panelist brings in a favorite classic musical, as well as a newer musical that pushes the form forward—to look at a wider variety of global cinemas, performance techniques, and ways of deploying music in the narrative. To talk it over—and sing it out—FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca joins Koresky; Andrew Chan, Web Editor for the Criterion Collection; and Eric Hynes, Associate Curator of Film at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Following a free screening of Michael Radford's adaptation of 1984 in early April as part of a nationwide event, Film Comment Editor Nicolas Rapold moderated a panel discussion about present-day doublespeak and dystopia. This week's episode of the FC podcast presents the conversation, which took place at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Using the film's aesthetics and narrative as a starting point, the panel—featuring critic and curator Ashley Clark; filmmaker Petra Epperlein, director of the Stasi documentary Karl Marx City; and New York Magazine book critic Christian Lorentzen—considers the Trump administration's manipulations of memory, motifs in modern dystopian literature and film, the role of media in public discourse in the UK and Russia, and how Orwell's original text resonates in 2017.

To celebrate the 55th birthday of our magazine, we present a special gift-giving episode of the podcast. The gifts in this case are movies: as in a Secret Snowflake office gift exchange, each critic gave two films to another participant that the recipient hadn’t seen before. One was a film that they’d be interested in hearing that person talk about; the other, a film that was just for fun. As you’ll hear, some gifts were more appreciated than others—but each of the viewings yielded a fascinating discussion. Along with Film Comment Digital Producer Violet Lucca, the gift-givers/recipients included Michael Koresky, the Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Nick Pinkerton, regular contributor to Film Comment, and Aliza Ma, head of programming at Metrograph.

This week's episode of the Film Comment podcast takes a sonic journey through this year's edition of Art of the Real, which runs through May 2 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. First, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca speaks with AotR co-programmer Rachael Rakes about searching for formally daring new nonfiction work, as well as the preconceptions people bring to concepts like "film," "entertainment," and "art." Then, Lucca delves into the stylistic and structural intricacies of three festival selections—Patric Chiha's Brothers of the Night, Robinson Devor's Pow Wow, and Shengze Zhu's Another Year—to explore the range of techniques and stories on view. Reflecting on these films are Rakes; Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Genevieve Yue, critic and assistant professor at the New School's Eugene Lang College.

On the occasion of Criterion Collection's home video release of Multiple Maniacs and the publication of his new book Make Trouble, Violet Lucca chats with John Waters—the director, writer, artist, sometime actor (most recently of FX's Feud: Bette and Joan), and Christmas card sender extraordinaire. Waters talks about the freedom of writing across multiple media, film critic Parker Tyler, his early days abusing zoom lenses and getting arrested for Mondo Trasho, and how his bad taste movement has been folded into the mainstream, from reality television to raunchy Hollywood comedies, to the current occupant of the White House. Waters called in from his home in Baltimore (where there's a special word tailor-made for the likes of Trump).

James Gray's The Lost City of Z, which opened last Friday, charts a course into the jungle alongside a character in search of transcendence. Shot on gorgeous 35mm and masterfully structured, it crafts a fittingly sublime cinematic texture to evoke its protagonist's quest. It's not uncommon to come across criticism identifying Gray as a "classicist," but what exactly does "classical cinema" mean? This question guides the conversation in this week's episode of the Film Comment podcast, featuring Kent Jones, critic, filmmaker, and Director of the New York Film Festival; and Michael Koresky, the Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, who conducted a feature-length interview with Gray for our March/April issue. The discussion, moderated by FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca, touches on the nuances of the word "classical," the evolution of film grammar, the intersection of art and commerce, and other entries in Gray's singular body of work.

"You don't want something to look too staged in movies or they look overly presented. You don't know what comes out . . . You don't know what you have at the end of the day." That was Terrence Malick during a rare public appearance at SXSW last month, on the occasion of the premiere of the Austin, Texas–set Song to Song. Although the film nominally follows characters through the city’s music scene and features the likes of Patti Smith (for a few minutes) and John Lydon (for 10 seconds), it doesn't seek to document a milieu so much as evoke the breadth of human experience in all its tactility and transience. Needless to say, there's a lot to discuss, so this episode of The Film Comment Podcast thoughtfully considers Song to Song and Malick's artistic output. FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca mulls it over with contributors Shonni Enelow, English professor at Fordham and author of Method Acting and Its Discontents, and Nick Pinkerton, member of the New York Film Critics Circle, in a conversation covering…

In a March/April 2017 feature titled "No Joke," Film Comment Digital Producer Violet Lucca traces current trends in modern American comedies to the pressures of globalization and the rise of the internet. "The specificity of wordplay and sociological observation—two things that non-silent comedy thrives on—is therefore diminished or omitted to ensure its international portability," Lucca explains. "Remakes and adaptations of successful, preexisting intellectual property are nothing new—they have been part and parcel of Hollywood since its inception. However, as the media scholar Mark Fisher suggested, 'capitalist realism' resigns us to this repetition by telling audiences that we are in crisis mode and there’s no time to think about anything outside of the current system: Hollywood really is out of ideas this time, so just get used to it. It is the seventh art acknowledging its marginalized state and throwing up its hands." This episode of The Film Comment Podcast focuses on the past six to eight years of…

This week's episode of the Film Comment podcast begins with an interview with the irrepressible Albert Serra, director of our March/April cover film The Death of Louis XIV, which opens this Friday. Then we move on to the annual New Directors/New Films series, which wrapped this past weekend. FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca speaks with two members of the ND/NF selection committee—La Frances Hui, Associate Curator of Film at MoMA, and Dennis Lim, Director of Programming at Film Society of Lincoln Center—about what they look for when scouting for new filmmaking voices, as well as the process of crafting a well-rounded festival slate. They are joined by Nicholas Elliott, the New York correspondent for Cahiers du Cinéma and Contributing Film Editor for BOMB, in a detailed look at ND/NF films such as Arábia, The Challenge, and The Future Perfect that defy labels.

Horror films are unusually adept at giving mutable flesh to the terrors of adolescence, and Julia Ducournau's new film Raw is no exception. After a choice freshman-year hazing ritual involving a rabbit liver, the veterinary-school protagonist of Raw finds herself developing a taste for raw flesh, which she processes as she adjusts to life at school. Metaphorical monsters and latent taboo impulses like these are to be expected when it comes to horror-movie growing pains, and so this episode of The Film Comment Podcast revisits a few classics of coming-of-age horror. Pig's blood, werewolves, and the Eraserhead baby all appear in this conversation, featuring frequent FC contributors Margaret Barton-Fumo, editor of Paul Verhoeven: Interviews and author of a feature on Raw in the March/April issue; Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; Nick Pinkerton, member of the New York Film Critics Circle; and Violet Lucca, FC Digital Producer and podcast…

The True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Missouri, reliably assembles a selection of the world’s finest nonfiction film, tracking down surprises from smaller festivals across the globe and picking highlights from Sundance. This year, Film Comment traveled to Columbia for a long weekend of documentary and essay film—and hosted a festival recap at the festival’s traditional closing-night spot, a waffle bar that doubles as a music venue. This special live edition of the Film Comment podcast features the critics Ela Bittencourt, a selection committee member for It's All True International Film Festival; Jordan Cronk, founder of the Acropolis Cinema in Los Angeles and co-founder of the Locarno in Los Angeles Film Festival; Aliza Ma, Head of Programming at Metrograph; and Nicolas Rapold, Editor of Film Comment. And, thanks to the open audience format of the event, a couple of filmmakers from the festival join the conversation to discuss the emotionally intimate work of editing and shooting documentary: Shevaun…

Jean-Pierre Léaud's familiar face graces the cover of the new March/April issue of Film Comment, waiting out his final days in Albert Serra's new film The Death of Louis XIV. As Yonca Talu observes in her feature on the film, "The film relies heavily on Jean-Pierre Léaud’s vulnerable acting. Famous for his vibrant, unrestrained body language as the enfant terrible of the French New Wave, the legendary actor exists in a state of complete paralysis here, dependent on others to meet his basic needs." In some ways, she continues, the film serves as a symbolic conclusion to the Antoine Doinel cycle—Jean-Pierre Léaud's mere presence adds a layer of film-historical context to the film that might not otherwise be there. This week's episode of the Film Comment podcast explores the nuances of legacy, persona, and presence when it comes to acting. As with Léaud, we watch actors with enduring careers mature onscreen, developing their crafts and playing off of already formed associations that viewers might have with…

As filmmaker and critic Jeff Reichert put it in his January/February 2017 Film Comment feature on Steve Bannon's documentary work, "We could dismiss Bannon as the Rainer Werner Fassbinder of shoddily made straight-to-video white supremacist documentary. But his tactics have helped put Trump in the White House, so what can we learn about Bannon or America from watching them?" This episode of the Film Comment podcast tackles that very question. Reichert, along with Chapo Trap House podcast co-host Will Menaker and FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca, looks back on Bannon's nine films released under the “Citizens United” banner. It goes without saying that there's a lot to talk about regarding their unlikely aesthetic sensibility (sales presentation meets Leni Riefenstahl meets Michael Bay meets Vic Berger ECUs) and their characterizations of history and reality. The panel also digs into the past 15 years of political documentary on the right and the left (hello, Adam Curtis!), including the ways in which…

In his 1985 film God's Country, Louis Malle visits a small town in Minnesota both before and after Reagan's election, documenting the stark economic despair that the agricultural community was forced to face. Following a screening of God's Country in the Film Society of Lincoln Center's screening series Film Comment Selects, we conducted a live the Film Comment Podcast about how we differently perceive certain films before and after the election. To discuss this fraught political moment, we invited Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and FC's Cinema '67 Revisited column; Genevieve Yue, critic and assistant professor at the New School's Eugene Lang College; and Farihah Zaman, filmmaker, critic, and Production Manager for Field of Vision to join FC Editor Nicolas Rapold and FC Digital Producer and podcast host Violet Lucca. Films discussed include those by Chris Marker, Errol Morris, Jason Osder, Alexander Payne, and more.

“I always go back to Ozu and Bresson, both of whom I admire a great deal. I like the way Bresson frames midriff: a person going across the room but you’re just seeing the half, the midriff of the body. The scene in Pickpocket at the racetrack. And Hitchcock, any of the inserts: the scene in The Wrong Man where Fonda is booked and Hitchcock shows you the detail, each step of the process. It has such a sense of isolation and helplessness, because these objects, these inserts, they speak to you. They tell you how to look at them. They direct the viewer,” Martin Scorsese said to Nick Pinkerton in the cover feature of our January/February issue. This special live episode of the Film Comment podcast deep-dives into perhaps the most appropriate Scorsese film for a live media event, The King of Comedy, shown in the Museum of the Moving Image’s Martin Scorsese retrospective. Following its screening of the film, the Museum hosted The Film Comment Podcast, featuring Pinkerton; Eric Hynes, MoMI curator and FC columnist;…

Road-tripping crises of masculinity soundtracked by classic rock, Harvey Keitel making up for his sins in the streets—a laundry list of 1970s New Hollywood highlights can tend to lack a nuanced female presence. But the ’70s also gave us Wanda, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, Girlfriends, A Woman Under the Influence, and even Five Easy Pieces, all of which explore female identity in the era of second-wave feminism. This episode of the Film Comment podcast spirals outwards from From Reverence to Rape author Molly Haskell's essay on Mike Mills's 20th Century Women and accompanying interview with Annette Bening, in the January/February issue, taking a closer look at depictions of women in New Hollywood. Some of these were "neo-women's films," dealing with disillusioned housewives fleeing the domestic sphere; others took on female friendship without turning a blind eye to its messiness, a line that runs through Thelma and Louise, Frances Ha, and Broad City. In addition to Haskell, FC Deep Cuts columnist Margaret…

This week's two-pronged episode of the Film Comment podcast digs into a varied slate of contemporary filmmaking. First, from the New York Film Festival, FC columnist and Museum of the Moving Image Associate Curator Eric Hynes speaks to Raoul Peck, whose vital new film I Am Not Your Negro opens this Friday, February 3 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Peck explains his approach to James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House, his use of archival footage to create arresting counterpoints, his experience rehearsing Samuel L. Jackson to deliver Baldwin's words, and his personal reflections on the author's work. Our podcast then flashes forward for a final dispatch from the Sundance Film Festival, a live discussion from the Kickstarter House featuring two directors the magazine has supported who have made films with the help of crowdfunding: Laura Dunn, who co-directed Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry (shown in Sundance’s Spotlight section), and Dustin Guy Defa, who directed Person to…