The Film Comment Podcast

“To be Black is the greatest fiction of my life. Yet I’m still bound to its myth.” The filmmaker and photographer RaMell Ross shares this excerpt from an artist statement in a conversation with Jason Fox, the editor of nonfiction journal World Records, in a new audio series called Trust Issues. Produced by World Records, the series explores how images can both bring us together and alienate us from each other. The first episode, featuring RaMell, focuses on the historical role of nonfiction cinema in teaching us to see, inhabit, and police race. How do documentaries both reflect and actively reshape the lived experiences of people of color? Last week, at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine, Devika moderated a panel discussion with Jason, RaMell, and Milisuthando Bongela (director of CIFF selection Milisuthando) expanding on some of the core ideas of the series—including the responsibilities of the maker, the critic, and the viewer in how nonfiction images construct and reinforce ideas of racial difference. Listen to the end for a surprise cameo from the filmmaker Kirsten Johnson! P.S.: This conversation was recorded live with an audience. Please excuse the occasionally spotty audio quality!

We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our fourth (and final!) podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Lovia Gyarkye (The Hollywood Reporter) and Alex Barasch (The New Yorker) to talk about festival selections Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario, Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, Ellen Kuras's Lee, Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, and many more.

We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our second podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by local critics Adam Nayman (The Ringer, Cinema Scope, and elswhere) and Saffron Maeve (Cinema Scope and elsewhere). They kick things if with a focus on Canadian films, including Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, Chloé Robichaud’s Days of Happiness, and Michael Snow’s Standard Time, before expanding their scope to encompass Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, Pedro Almódovar’s Strange Way of Life, and Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023.

We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our second podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Adam Nayman (The Ringer, Cinemascope, and elswhere)and Chloe Lizotte (MUBI Notebook and elsewhere) to talk about festival selections Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Evil Does Not Exist, Dumb Money, and The Boy and the Heron. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023.

We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our first podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by Film at Lincoln Center programmer Madeline Whittle and critic Mark Asch to talk about Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, The Human Surge 3, Laberint Sequences, God Is a Woman, and The Mother of All Lies. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023!

Film Comment just happens to be next-door neighbors with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, whose film and video collection is filled with treasures. On August 31, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited our neighbors over for a special, Labor Day–themed screening of 16mm shorts from the NYPL’s collection. The program was curated by Elena Rossi-Snook, the film specialist at the library, who chose four fascinating shorts that captured microhistories of labor organizing across different industries in the ’60s and ’70s. The films offered a window into the history of the American labor movement and also spoke to the worker struggles currently roiling the film industry. To dig into the films and these themes, Devika and Clint sat down after the screening with Elena and filmmaker Brett Story, who reflected on her own experience making a forthcoming film about unionizing efforts at an Amazon facility in Staten Island. For more on the films screened, check out the event page, here: https://www.filmlinc.org/events/film-comment-live-labor-day-with-the-nypl/

At this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Film Comment participated in a fascinating experimental event called “A Long Night of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence.” Curated by Rafael Dernbach in collaboration with the Università della Svizzera italiana and Locarno Film Festival BaseCamp, the event began at sunset on August 9 and ended at sunrise on August 10, and involved a series of talks and workshops about the many connotations of “intelligence,” how A.I. is changing our relationships to ourselves and the world, and how dreams may offer up keys to our future. The event was co-hosted by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This week’s episode is an excerpt from her moderating shift, featuring a conversation with A.I. scholar Andrea Rizzoli and critic Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts, about the history of artificial intelligence, and its limitations and possibilities vis-à-vis art. Check out last week’s episode for another excerpt from “A Long of Dreaming About the Future of Intelligence,” featuring Stanford University scholar Shane Denson on the brave new world of “post-cinema.”

At this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Film Comment participated in a fascinating experimental event called “A Long Night of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence.” Curated by Rafael Dernbach, a researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana, the event began at sunset on August 9 and ended at sunrise on August 10, and involved a series of talks and workshops about the many connotations of “intelligence,” how A.I. is changing our relationships to ourselves and the world, and how dreams may offer up keys to our future. The event was co-hosted by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This week’s episode is an excerpt from her moderating shift, featuring a lecture and Q&A with Shane Denson, a Stanford University scholar who explores the terrain of “post-cinema”—the brave new world of digital images untethered to classical notions of time, space, and reality. Check back next week for another episode from “A Long of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence,” featuring A.I. scholar Andrea Rizzoli and critic Kevin B. Lee.

Over the course of his storied career, filmmaker Steve James has delved into the many ways in which individuals—frequently residents of his native Chicago—are subject to the whims of history, society, and life itself. Whether detailing the struggles of young athletes in his watershed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams, the heroic efforts of anti-violence activists in 2011’s The Interrupters, or the daily experience of high schoolers in his 2018 series America to Me, James has combined sharp social analysis with striking warmth and sympathy for his subjects. His latest documentary, A Compassionate Spy, might seem on the surface to be a departure. The film tells the story of Ted Hall, a physics prodigy who, at age 18, was invited to join the Manhattan Project. Perceptive beyond his years, Hall found himself haunted by the implications of his work and, in 1944, made the decision to share nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union. As compelling as this tale of espionage is, James’s film becomes, in the director’s words, “a love story,” with Ted’s widow Joan taking center stage as she recounts their life together, sharing the burden of her husband’s secret. For today’s episode, Film Comment editor Clinton Krute called up the director to discuss the impetus behind A Compassionate Spy, the film’s surprising use of recreations, and how Ted Hall’s fascinating story might complement—or offer a counter to—the themes of a certain summer blockbuster about atomic weapons. (Hint: it’s not Barbie.)

If you’re a follower of contemporary world cinema, chances are, you’re a fan of Franz Rogowski. Known for his distinctive screen presence and extraordinary physicality, the German actor has blazed a trail through some of the most well-regarded movies of the last few years, including Michel Haneke’s Happy End, Christian Petzold’s Transit and Undine, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, Angela Schanelec’s I Was At Home, But…, to name only a few. His latest role is as the lead in Passages, a new film by Ira Sachs. Rogowski stars Tomas, a diva-esque filmmaker and very indecisive queer man, who vacillates erratically between his husband, played by Ben Whishaw, and a new love interest, played by Adele Exarchopoulos. It’s a role of chaotic contradictions that seems made for Rogowski: Tomas is self-absorbed, brilliant, repulsive, sexy, vulnerable, and malicious all at once—and Rogowski brings to him a truly unselfconscious, combustible sense of humanity. For today’s episode, Film Comment co-editor Devika Girish called up Rogowski on Zoom to chat about his inspirations as an actor and how he crafted his firecracker performance in Passages. Please note that because Rogowski is not a member of SAG-AFTRA, he is not currently on strike.