The Film Comment Podcast

We’re back from Cannes with day 5 of our podcasts covering all the cinematic goings-on in the south of France. For today’s episode, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by FC contributing editor Amy Taubin and Justin Chang, critic at the Los Angeles Times. The three kick things off a conversation about Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory before taking a look at Mati Diop’s Atlantique, Mounia Meddour's Papicha, Michael Angelo Covino’s The Climb, and Jessica Hausner's Little Joe, one of the most anticipated entries at the festival. Check out all of our Cannes coverage: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/cannes/

We’re back from Cannes for day four of our series of podcasts on the cinematic goings-on on the Riviera. For today’s episode, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Brazil-based critic and FC contributor Ela Bittencourt. The two discuss the young Russian filmmaker Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, which tells the story of two young women navigating the ruins, both emotional and environmental, of post-War Leningrad. The two also return to Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau, discussed in our previous episode, and touch on Franco Lolli’s Litigante, a look at the trials and tribulations a single mother and lawyer living in Bogota, Colombia.

Welcome back for day 3 of our podcasts from Cannes 2019. Joining us on the Riviera for today’s episode are Bruno Dequen, critic and Director of Programming at Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal and Eric Hynes, Film Comment contributor and Curator of Film at the Musuem of Moving Image. Along with host and FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold, the two dive into the depths of Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacarau, which Dequen describes as “The Most Dangerous Game if it were co-directed by Reygadas and Robert Rodriguez.” They also discuss Mati Diop’s Atlantique, a love-story focused on the intertwined lives of North African immigrants to Europe, Monia Chokri’s A Brother’s Love, and the documentary programming (or lack thereof) at the festival.

For day 2 at Cannes, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sits down with Eugene Hernandez, Deputy Director of Film at Lincoln Center, to chat about a handful of the most impactful films they've seen so far. The two take a look at the breakout immigration drama Les Misérables, from Cannes rookie Ladj Ly. The film, set in a rough Parisian banlieue, builds to an explosive confrontation between authorities, community leaders, and a group of intrepid, angry teens. They also discuss Bull—the first feature from director Annie Silverstein—a coming-of-age story set in rural Texas, and the line-up of movies by young filmmakers at the festival.

Let the games begin! We’ve touched down in Cannes and, for our first of many podcasts from the festival, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold found a quiet corner with FC contributing editor Amy Taubin to talk over some of the titles—both big and small—that we’re most excited about. On this episode, we focus on the opening film, Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, and chat about the expectations surrounding Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. We also touch on Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, Mati Diop’s Atlantiques, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, and many others. Check back over the course of Cannes for a regular stream of new episodes diving into these and other films. And, in case you missed it, be sure to check out Taubin’s interview with Jim Jarmusch, posted yesterday: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cannes-interview-jim-jarmusch/

In our May-June issue (out now!), Aliza Ma writes about the new film Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction, a comedic portrait of a Paris literary set struggling to adapt to the digital age. Her essay begins, “In the cinema of Olivier Assayas, we find a laboratory of the world.” We had the good fortune to visit that laboratory in a new interview with the director. Film Comment contributor (and Curator of Film at the Museum of Moving Image) Eric Hynes sat down with Assayas for a conversation that expands on the ideas about technology and human relationships contained in Non-Fiction, and which bubble up throughout the director’s movies, such as Irma Vep, Personal Shopper, and Le destinées. Non-Fiction is in theaters now, including at Film at Lincoln Center.

The Rep Report is our regular roundup of current retrospectives and film series. This week, we're focusing on an important and fun series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music called Black ’90s: A Turning Point in American Cinema. It's a carefully curated look at major works by black filmmakers in the 1990s, such as the late John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger, Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou, Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., and Hype Williams’s Belly, as well as lesser known works like Zeinabu Irene Davis’s Compensation and Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, among many others. The programmer of the series, Ashley Clark—who has written for Film Comment about Burnett and Ava Duvernay, among others—joined FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for an in-depth conversation about Black ’90s and the riches on offer throughout the series.

In our March-April issue, Michael Koresky writes about history of a movie magazine with a humble name: Films and Filming. Koresky writes about the importance of this long-defunct publication as both a classic movie journal and a cultural phenomenon for gay readers. He writes, “Our culture instills mighty shame in us for knowing what we want, and that shame has long been magnified to the point of obscenity even stigma, when that desire is gay. The shamelessness of the magazine’s appeal, and the way it so rudely bound sexual desires to movie love, felt like a rich, purposeful affront.” Jumping off from this feature, Koresky joins Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for a wide-ranging discussion of the role of desire in our love of movies. We were delighted to also bring in Aliza Ma, programmer at Metrograph, and Andrew Chan, Web Editor at the Criterion Collection.

For our latest Film Comment Free Talk, Claire Denis and Robert Pattinson joined FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to discuss their singular new film High Life, which graces the cover of Film Comment’s March-April issue. In his feature on the film, Nick Pinkerton writes that, “While High Life is the biggest and most expensive movie that Denis has ever made, it gives little indication of its scale having been bartered for at the sacrifice of freedom—or with the stymieing of the go-with-the-gut intuition that has produced a sui generis body of work, created with enormous craft but a total disdain for the rules of the ‘well-made’ film, elliptical in approach and full of jarring tonal shifts.” In this conversation, the filmmaker and actor discuss working together to bring High Life to the screen, as well as Denis’s remarkable eye for physicality, encountering the taboo, considerations of genre, and much more.

New Directors/New Films has always been a vital for, well, new directors and new films. Over the course of its nearly 50 years, the festival has introduced audiences to filmmakers like Spike Lee, Chantal Akerman, Bi Gan, Valerie Massadian, Gabriel Mascaro, RaMell Ross, and Kelly Reichardt. The 2019 edition continued in this tradition, bringing a bracing selection of films, many still without distribution, to screens in New York. This week, we take a closer look at ND/NF 2019, paying particular attention to a few of our favorites this year, including Clemency, Joy, Genesis, and Fausto, among others. Film Comment Editor in Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Rosa Morales, development and membership coordinator at SFFILM, Sebastian Rea, founder of the 30UNDER30 Film Festival, and Abby Sun, FC contributor and programmer at True/False Film Fest to reflect on this year's festival, and to dig a little deeper into some standout selections.