The Film Comment Podcast

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. For our latest episode from the shores of the Riviera, critics Mark Asch, Miriam Bale, and Kevin B. Lee join FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish for a discussion of their recent festival viewing, through which they trace a thematic thread of performance. The four touch on Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, Wei Shujun’s Only the River Flows, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts, and more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. On today’s episode, FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish is joined by Dennis Lim, Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival, for a special joint interview with Todd Haynes, whose new film, May December, is one of the unanimous favorites of this year’s lineup. The film was inspired by one of the great scandals of the 1990s: Julianne Moore plays Gracie, a woman who, twenty years ago, was convicted of having an affair with a 13-year-old, a lover (played by Charles Melton) with whom she now lives a cozy married life. Natalie Portman plays an actress who arrives at Gracie’s home to do research for a movie based on the affair and starts probing into the couple’s lives, slowly pulling down bother both their and her own façades. Haynes turns the tabloid-fodder source of the script into a remarkably witty, dark, and intelligent meditation on the ways in which we construct and consume identity. Devika and Dennis talked to Haynes about his references for the movie, his thoughts on the term camp, why he loves zooms, and much more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. Our latest episode covers Cannes 2023 as it crosses the midpoint, with critics Lovia Gyarkye, Abby Sun, and Kelli Weston joining FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish to discuss some of the festival’s buzziest films, including Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Todd Haynes’s May December, Joanna Arnow’s The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, and more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. On our latest episode from sunny shores of Southern France, critics Jonathan Romney and Giovanni Marchini Camia join FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish to discuss two of the festivals most fascinating films: Jonathan Glazer’s much-anticipated The Zone of Interest, and Lisandro Alonso’s mysterious western Eureka. Listeners be advised: spoilers abound—along with our critics’ typically insightful, in-depth analysis. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

On today’s episode, FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish sits down with Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen, whose new documentary Occupied City was one of the early standouts at the festival. It’s a more than four-hour opus that combines a voiceover drawn from a book written by Bianca Stigter, McQueen’s collaborator and spouse, about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, with footage of the city shot by McQueen in the last three years. The result is a haunting superimposition of the past and the present that makes us think about the ways in which the spaces we occupy today are resonant with history. Devika talked to McQueen about the genesis of the film, the experience of making it during the pandemic, and why it feels so crucial to revisit history right now. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. For our second episode from the Riviera, critics Beatrice Loayza and James Wham and programmer and critic Inney Prakash join FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish discuss some recently screened high-, low-, and in-between–lights, including Sean Price Williams’s The Sweet East, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, Wim Wenders’s Anselm, and Wang Bing’s epic Youth (Spring). Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. First up, critics and frequent FC contributors Jordan Cronk and Jessica Kiang join FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish  to open the proceedings with some lively discussion of early festival films—including Maïwenn's Jeanne du Barry, Steve McQueen's Occupied City, Marie Amachoukeli's Ama Gloria, and Cédric Kahn's The Goldman Case—before previewing this year’s lineup. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: https://www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

The 30th edition of the New York African Film Festival runs May 10 to 16 at Film at Lincoln Center, with a showcase that spans the historic past and the vital present of cinema from Africa. Last weekend, the festival hosted a special conversation in tribute to the great filmmaker Safi Faye, who passed away in February. Faye is best known as the first woman from Sub-Saharan Africa to ever direct a commercial feature film—1976’s Kaddu Beykat—but the Senegalese pioneer’s accomplishments and groundbreaking influence extend far beyond that landmark. Introduced to the world of cinema via an acting role in Jean Rouch’s Petit à petit (1971), Faye went on to create a monumental body of work that includes award-winning shorts and features, including Selbe: One Among Many (1983), and Mossane, which won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. Through both documentary and fiction modes, Faye sought to capture the agency, subjectivity, and beauty of African women, and bring to vivid life the everyday realities of rural Senegal.  To explore Faye’s legacy and lasting influence on African women’s cinema today, NYAFF brought together the filmmakers Nuotama Bodomo, Jessica Beshir, Akosua Adoma Owusu, and Johanna Makabi for a roundtable led by the scholar and critic Yasmina Price. Film Comment is thrilled to share the conversation on today’s episode in collaboration with the festival. Find out more about the NYAFF30 lineup here: https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/new-york-african-film-festival/#films

Writer Malcolm Harris has a new book out called Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. It’s as sweeping as the title suggests: a lively biography of the author’s hometown that covers nearly two centuries. In the book, Harris traces the connections between the settling of California and the advent of the railroad, the establishment of Stanford University, the technological boom of the long 20th century, and own data-driven present.  What you may not expect is that the book is also, in many ways, a history of the cinema: as Malcolm details, Eadweard Muybridge developed his pioneering equine motion studies under the patronage of railroad baron Leland Stanford, who wanted to figure out how to raise better race horses. So on today’s episode, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited Malcolm to join them for a conversation about his new book and California’s decades-spanning nexus of technology, capital, and the moving image. From Muybridge, they moved to several other movies that Malcolm cites in the book, including Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow, Wayne Wang’s Chan Is Missing, the dot-com era thriller Antitrust, and more.

This week we’re celebrating the recipient of Film at Lincoln Center’s 48th Chaplin Award, one of America’s preeminent actresses: Viola Davis, who has dazzled us for over three decades on the stage and the screen, and whose life story is as inspirational as her craft. A couple of days ago, I sat down with Davis to dig into some of the most memorable on-screen moments from her career, and how she shapes her formidable performances by being a keen observer of life. We discussed her iconic turns in Denzel Washington’s Fences, Steve McQueen’s Widows, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, and some deeper cuts, like her early role in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight.