The Film Comment Podcast

The New York Film Festival is here! And there’s a lot to talk about. Film Comment will have three onstage talks during the festival, as well as special screenings of the much-anticipated Portrait of a Lady on Fire. But first we wanted to dip our toe into the lineup by talking with two recent guests at Film at Lincoln Center: Ashley Clark, Senior repertory and specialty film programmer at BAM; and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold welcomed the two to talk about Mati Diop’s Atlantics, Bertrand Bonello Zombi Child, Diao Yinan’s Wild Goose Lake, Michel Gondry’s Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Elia Kazan’s America, America , and others.

One of the highlights of the fall, and this year’s New York Film Festival, is the new film by Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory. Our new September-October issue features an essay by Michael Koresky about the film and it’s fearless autobiographical story. Koresky writes, “There has been no clearer onscreen representation of the filmmaker’s essence than the main character of Pain and Glory, played with exquisite middle-aged restraint by Almodóvar’s longtime muse, Antonio Banderas.” To discuss the director, his new film, and his beloved career, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat with Koresky and Film at Lincoln Center’s Eugene Hernandez. Also: pick up the new issue of Film Comment to read Koresky’s essay as well as an article by Almodóvar himself about the literary inspirations behind his cinematic achievements.

For our third roundup of all the on-screen goings-n at TIFF 2019, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sits down with critic and FC contributor Michael Koresky and Justin Chang, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, to discuss Waves, Jojo Rabbit, Africa, Two of Us, Uncut Gems, Marriage Story, Saturday Fiction, Color Out of Space,and others.

For our second dispatch from the not-yet-frozen tundra of Toronto, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold welcomes back Devika Girish (FC Assistant Editor) and programmer and critic Abby Sun for a rundown of highlights, including Lina from Lima, Just Mercy, Synonyms, Terminal Sud, Blood Quantum, and Simple Women.

After a whirlwind tour of Venice (don't forget to check out those episodes!), we dive right into the Toronto International Film Festival this week. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sits down with guests Devika Girish (Assistant Editor at Film Comment), Jessica Green (programmer and Artistic Director of the Houston Cinema Arts Society) and Eric Hynes (curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image)to discuss some highlights from the festival, including Knives Out, Collective, The Lost Okoroshi, Martin Eden, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and others.

In our third and final dispatch from the Venice Film Festival, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Jay Weissberg, film critic for Variety, and Christina Newland, writer for Sight & Sound and Little White Lies. They discuss a packed line-up of films: Olivier Assayas's Wasp Network, Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden, David Michôd's The King, Pablo Larraín's Ema, Roy Andersson's About Endlessness, and some picks from the festival's sidebar sections.

In our second dispatch from the Venice Film Festival, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Justin Chang, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, to discuss some much-anticipated titles, including Todd Phillips' Joker, Nate Parker's American Skin, and Steven Soderbergh's The Laundromat. Plus: our new Which Movie quiz, in which critics try to find some order in the chaos of festival-viewing.

This week The Film Comment Podcast reports on the latest premieres at the Venice Film Festival, already in full swing with the fall’s first wave of highly anticipated titles. Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold joins FC contributing editor and veteran international correspondent Jonathan Romney at an undisclosed alfresco location for an in-depth discussion of festival highlights. These include James Gray’s Ad Astra, Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy, Haifaa al-Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate, and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. Stay tuned for another edition of our Venice podcast series.

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.