The Film Comment Podcast

The 76th Venice International Film Festival opens today, kicking off a jam-packed fall festival season. Before heading off to the Lido, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with FC Assistant Editor Devika Girish to discuss the films in the lineup—by auteurs both established and new—that we're most excited about. They speculate about Haifa Al-Mansour's The Perfect Candidate (which has the dubious distinction of being one of the only two Competition films directed by women), Roy Andersson's About Endlessness, Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, Ciro Guerra's Waiting for the Barbarians, Lou Ye's Saturday Fiction, and James Gray's Ad Astra, amongst others. Check back over the course of Venice for a regular stream of new episodes diving into these and other films.

Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, Before Sunset and beyond—it’s hard to match Richard Linklater when it comes to movies basically about how we find our way through life. And probably a lot of us found our way with the help of Linklater’s thoughtful, restless movies. His latest film Where’d You Go Bernadette adds another chapter to his work with the story of a woman rediscovering a creative self she left behind when she started a family. It’s a terrific, nervy, and funny performance by Cate Blanchett, with a touching portrait of a mother-daughter relationship. So for our latest Film Comment talk at Film at Lincoln Center, we were extremely happy to feature Linklater alongside his producer Ginger Sledge. FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with the two for a conversation on Bernadette and beyond.

This week, the Film Comment podcast reports on location from the 2019 Locarno International Film Festival. FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was joined by Jessica Green, programmer and Artistic Director of the Houston Cinema Arts Society, and programmer and FC contributor Jordan Cronk, for a discussion of festival highlights. These include Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela, Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter’s doc Space Dogs, Ja'Tovia M. Gary’s The Giverny Document, Ulrich Köhler and Henner Winkler’s A Voluntary Year, Nadège Trebal’s Twelve Thousand, and a selection of films from the festival’s retrospective program which shined a spotlight on black cinema.

Welcome to another edition of the Rep Report, our regular roundup of retrospectives, repertory cinema, and other film series in New York. This week, we focus on the series Another Country: Outsider Visions of America, currently running at Film at Lincoln Center. The program looks at America through the eyes of a wide range of artists born abroad: Chantal Akerman (News from Home) Lars Von Trier (Dogville), John Woo (Face-Off), Jane Campion (In the Cut), and many more. Each filmmaker brings something distinctive and personal to America’s inspiring myths and its strange, wonderful, as well as brutal realities. To discuss the series, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by one of its organizers, Thomas Beard, Programmer-at-Large at Film at Lincoln Center and co-founder of Light Industry, and Becca Voelcker, FC contributor and doctoral student at Harvard. Flash Sale: Save 50% on a subscription to Film Comment through our limited-time-only sale, starting August 9! Go to filmcomment.com/subscribe for more information.

Quentin Tarantino, a renowned filmmaker celebrated for his distinctive storytelling, shares insights into his latest film, set in the vibrant yet tumultuous world of 1969 Hollywood. He discusses the box office success of the film and its unique narrative style. Topics include the emotional depth of Margot Robbie's performance, character portrayals, and the film's commentary on violence in the industry. The conversation also touches on cinematic techniques and the enchanting portrayal of Los Angeles, making for an engaging exploration of filmmaking.

We tend to agree on the classic films of the past, from Breathless, to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, to Tokyo Story. A new series at Film at Lincoln Center looks to more recent history with a survey of outstanding debut films from the 21st century so far. The series includes Medicine for Melancholy from Barry Jenkins (director of Moonlight), The Forest for the Trees from Maren Ade (director of Toni Erdmann), and many more. For the latest Film at Lincoln Center talk, Film Comment put together a critical discussion of these works and their place in cinema. The participants were Florence Almozini (associate director of programming at Film at Lincoln Center), Eric Hynes (curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image), Devika Girish (assistant editor at FC), Ashley Clark (senior repertory and specialty film programmer at BAM), and FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold.

Welcome back to the second installment in our monthly series covering new releases. This week, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by critic Emily Yoshida, who has written for Vulture and Vanity Fair, and frequent FC contributor Devika Girish. The three sat down to discuss Lulu Wong’s The Farewell, which has already received a fair amount of attention for its sweet story about a family reacting to the illness of a beloved grandmother in China. They also talk about two lesser known films that recreate vivid moments from the past in Argentina and England, Benjamín Naishtat’s Rojo and Richard Billingham’s Ray & Liz, before wrapping up with The Art of Self-Defense, starring Jesse Eisenberg.

One of summer’s most anticipated films is Midsommar, from filmmaker Ari Aster. The director joined us last summer for a talk at Film at Lincoln Center to discuss his previous feature, the unforgettable Hereditary, and we were delighted to welcome him back for another Film Comment chat on Tuesday, July 10. In front of a packed house, Aster sat down with author and Film Comment mainstay Michael Koresky for a discussion about his Swedish countryside-set horror film, working with star Florence Pugh, and favorite movies such as 45 Years. Also, listen up for a few details on the forthcoming director’s cut of Midsommar, and don’t forget to read about Aster’s inspirations for the film in the July-August issue of Film Comment.

A big part of Film Comment’s mission is to bring well-informed insights and original voices to the rich heritage of movies. One beautiful example of this is our regular column, Queer & Now & Then, written by Michael Koresky. With every column, Michael picks a single movie from a specific year for a discussion in terms of queerness, as part of what he calls, “a conversation with himself and the movies.” For our latest Film Comment roundtable talk at Film at Lincoln Center, we invited several critics to join Michael for a talk about the interconnections between their experiences and memories of movies and their sense of identity. This podcast is record of this insightful, funny, and candid conversation between Koresky, Melissa Anderson of 4Columns, best-selling author and critic Mark Harris, Wesley Morris of The New York Times, and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman.

As summer officially begins and vacations mount, more and more find themselves stranded on remote, unspoiled beaches, far from the nearest cinema. We decided to throw those unfortunate souls a lifeline with a podcast focusing on new and upcoming movies. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by FC contributors Devika Girish and Maddie Whittle for an in-depth (and occasionally spoiler-adjacent) conversation about the latest and greatest films currently and imminently gracing the big screen, including Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Peter Parlow’s The Plagiarists, and Eva Trobisch’s All Good.