The Film Comment Podcast

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2024 Berlinale kicked off on February 15. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Bruno Dumont, Hong Sangsoo, and many more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter to stay up-to-date. On today’s episode, FC Editors Devika Girish is joined by critics (and FC stalwarts) Jordan Cronk, Jessica Kiang, and Jonathan Romney to talk about the festival's change in leadership, before turning to the cinematic haul of the first couple days, including Tim Mielants’s Small Things Like These, Assayas’s Suspended Time, Alonso Ruizpalacios’s La Cocina, Nicolas Philibert’s At Averroes & Rosa Parks, P. S. Vinothraj’s An Adamant Girl, and Ruth Beckermann’s Favoriten. Stay up to date with all of our Berlinale coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/berlin/

The Finnish filmmaker Ilkka Järvi-Laturi, subject of an ongoing retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, made only three features in his life, each of which is maverick in its own right. His 1989 debut, Homebound, is a gritty realist film about a young man struggling to escape a cycle of violence; City Unplugged sets a heist in the wake of Estonia’s independence in the 1990s. And History Is Made at Night, the strangest of the bunch, is an international, star-studded spy-thriller-slash-screwball-comedy set between New York City and Helsinki. The films together represent a unique creative vision—one that combines genre ambitions with a defiantly indie sensibility and unexpected sense of humor. To learn more about Järvi-Laturi’s career, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Steve Macfarlane, one of the curators of the MoMA retrospective, and Hannu Björkbacka, a Finnish critic, to the join Podcast. And if you live in New York, don’t miss the screenings this week at MoMA.

Last week, FC Editor Devika Girish attended the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)—a Dutch festival that, since its inception in 1972, has become known for showcasing independent and experimental cinema by both emerging and established filmmakers. This year was no exception, with a lineup that spanned feature debuts like The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire by Madeleine Hunt-Erlich; wacky American indies like Dream Team; Mario, a new documentary by L.A. Rebellion luminary Billy Woodberry; as well as a robust shorts selection, including Frank Sweeney's Few Can See and Valentin Noujaïm's To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion. To discuss these highlights and more titles to look out for in the coming months, Devika is joined by critics Jordan Cronk and Beatrice Loayza.

It’s January, which means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches, interviews, and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2024 edition. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. On today’s episode, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish is joined by critic and programmer Monica Castillo (The Jacob Burns Film Center) and critics Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) and Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker) for a documentary-centric discussion of festival selections including DEVO, Eno, Power, Union, and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, along with the narrative feature Kneecap. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2024 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2024/

It’s January, which means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches, interviews, and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2024 edition. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. On today’s episode, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Justin Chang (Los Angeles Times), Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker), and FC contributor Madeline Whittle to discuss festival selections A Different Man, A Real Pain, Sujo, Good One, and Black Box Diaries. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2024 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2024/

It’s January, which means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches, interviews, and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2024 edition. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. Today, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Abby Sun (Documentary), Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker), and FC contributor Madeline Whittle to discuss festival selections War Game, Realm of Satan, Love Lies Bleeding, Presence, Stress Positions, Girls Will Be Girls, and more. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2024 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2024/

Critics Robert Daniels, Guy Lodge, and Madeline Whittle discuss visually stunning films exploring media's impact on identity and the trans experience. They also dive into a dark film featuring a terrifying game, analyze a film's premise and cinematography, explore the effects of China's one child policy, and discuss a spiritual awakening within a Jewish community. Finally, they delve into a 'life affirming' film journeying through grief and differing opinions.

It’s January, which means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches, interviews, and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2024 edition. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. To kick things off, Film Comment co-editor Devika Girish invited critics Lovia Gyarkye (The Hollywood Reporter) and Guy Lodge (Variety) to chat about the films we caught during the first few days of the fest—including Freaky Tales, Handling the Undead, Skywalker: A Love Story, Girls State, God Save Texas: Hometown Prison, and Ghostlight. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2024 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2024/

More than thirty years ago, director Nancy Savoca premiered what the New York Times described as a “miracle” of a film. Household Saints was adapted from a novel by Francine Prose about three generations of an Italian-American family navigating faith and modernity in post–World War II New York City. The movie brought together an incredible ensemble cast, including Tracey Ullman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lili Taylor, and Michael Imperioli, and told a strange and charming tale of fanatically headstrong women who were unlike any other characters to grace the movie screens of the 1990s. It all begins when Joseph, a handsome butcher (D’Onofrio), wins the stubborn Catherine (Ullman) as his wife in a game of pinochle. The first half of the film follows their relationship, which is plagued by the superstitions of Joseph’s bitter mother, while the second half follows their daughter, Teresa (Taylor), who becomes consumed by a saintly devotion to a Catholic God. Last year, after a long and arduous effort to recover and restore the movie’s materials, a new restoration premiered at the New York Film Festival, and introduced contemporary audiences to what still feels like a cinematic novelty. With a restored Household Saints in theaters now, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish interviewed Savoca and her star, Vincent D’Onofrio, to talk about making the film, how they infused it with their own Italian-American upbringing, and the daring mix of sex and religion that the movie explores.

Every January, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute like to take stock of holiday multiplex offerings with an episode they call "New Year, New Releases." For the 2024 edition, they invited FC podcast veteran Alissa Wilkinson, staff critic at the New York Times, and first-time guest Robert Daniels, an editor at RogerEbert.com. They started off this year’s haul with a pair of sports movies about bad dads and the perils of masculinity: The Iron Claw, directed by Sean Durkin, about the Von Erich family of pro-wrestlers; and Ferrari, by Michael Mann, about Enzo Ferrari, and his F1 racing ambitions. Then they discussed the new book-to-movie-to-stage-to-movie adaptation, The Color Purple, and The Book of Clarence, a befuddling Jesus comedy starring Lakeith Stanfield.