The Film Comment Podcast

FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Otros Cines critic Manu Yáñez Murillo sit down in the Palais to discuss the day’s films: Jaime Rosales’s Petra; Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s multigenerational, Godfather-esque cartel drama Birds of Passage; Ali Abbasi’s sweet, oddball Border; and Paul Dano’s emotionally charged Wildlife.

FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, Curator of Film at the Museum of Moving Image and FC Columnist, as they reflect on day two of Cannes from the roof of the Palais. As a newcomer to the festival, Hynes recounts his first impression—from the grandeur of the red carpet to the banality of waiting in line—and the two discuss both the second feature of this year’s competition, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto, as well as the opening night film of Un Certain Regard, Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass.

It’s Cannes, day one! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Amy Taubin, FC contributing editor and Cannes veteran, to discuss the films they’re excited to see at this year’s edition (Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree, Alice Rohrwacher’s Lazzaro felice) and a few they’re anticipating with some trepidation. The two also discuss the opening night film, Ashgar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows. Plus: an incredible anecdote about Lucrecia Martel and Marvel.

Acting dynasties—like any kind of dynasty—rarely produce talents as great as Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie’s daughter, who ended up a sui generis figure in cinema history herself. Writer Andréa R. Vaucher and David Bloom joined Chaplin at the Panama Film Festival to discuss her incredible career; working with David Lean, Carlos Saura, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, and J. A. Bayona; her teenage years as a ballerina; and, of course, her father. A few of Paul Newman’s best pranks also crop up. A Words & Deeds production; produced, engineered, and directed by David Bloom.

The incomparable French director Claire Denis returns with Let the Sunshine In, a romantic comedy of sorts that stars Juliette Binoche. Denis’s fluid vision and singular sense of timing mixed with Binoche’s endearing performance make for a thoughtful glimpse into a woman’s quest for love on her own terms and, as Andrew Chan explains in his cover story about the film, “shows us not how we feel about love but how we look at it and talk about it—how it appears to us when experienced by others.” In this episode, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca is joined by Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to discuss Denis and Binoche’s film; then stay tuned for a live Q&A with Denis that followed a sneak preview of the film presented by Film Comment and IFC Films.

While great pipes and a cute face don’t always allow pop stars to instantly become leading men or ladies (witness 2003’s From Justin to Kelly), many musical artists do succeed in bringing a heady mix of charisma and raw talent to the screen. Be it in a bit part or carrying the whole show, these magnificent multi-hyphenates also offer a different type of star text to enrich and complicate their roles. In this episode, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca discusses the bright lights in the musician-actor galaxy with Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image, and Shonni Enelow, the author of Method Acting and Its Discontents: On American Psycho-drama and assistant professor of English at Fordham University.

In the college town of Columbia, Missouri, the True/False Film Fest has grown to become one of the world’s premiere showcases of cutting-edge nonfiction filmmaking. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold returned to moderate “Toasted,” the festival’s late-night wrap-up event in front of a live, very lively audience, abridged for clarity here as a Film Comment podcast. Rapold was joined by a superlative crew of critics, programmers, and filmmaking talent including Mara Gourd Mercado, general director of Montreal docfest RIDM; Tayler Montague, freelance critic and programmer; Chris Boeckmann and Abby Sun, programmers at True/False; Rok Bicek, director of The Family; and Ashley Clark, senior film programmer at BAMcinématek. The freewheeling discussion kicks off with Bicek discussing The Family before it moves on to Zhang Mengqi’s Self-Portrait: Birth in 47 KM, Reece Auguiste’s Twilight City and the Black Audio Film Collective retrospective, Khalik Allah’s Black Mother, Leilah Weinraub’s SHAKEDOWN, and many more documentaries.

In honor of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s retrospective of Lucrecia Martel’s work and theatrical run of Zama, we re-present this episode analyzing the film. Premiered in Venice and screened in last year’s New York Film Festival, Zama marks not only the long-awaited return of Lucrecia Martel, but also her first literary adaptation. Martel expanded on the first-person fever dream of the original 1956 novel by Antonio di Benedetto, whose fans included Roberto Bolaño and Julio Cortázar. This week’s episode of The Film Comment Podcast ruminates on Zama’s novelistic origins with the help of literary translator and CUNY professor Esther Allen, who produced the first English translation of Zama in 2016, for which she won the 2017 National Translation Award in Prose. Allen is joined by Dennis Lim, Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and Violet Lucca, FC Digital Producer and podcast host, to discuss the subconscious presences Martel might imply beyond the edges of her frames.

With the ostensible arrival of spring comes the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA’s New Directors/New Films. In this year’s crop the traditions of various genres and national cinemas plays out in often spectacular fashion, as well as up-close-and-personal narratives. FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca is joined by Nicolas Rapold, FC Editor-in-Chief, and Devika Girish, contributor to the magazine, to reflect on those films that caught their eyes, including Our House, Closeness, Good Manners, The Great Buddha +, and more.

Just in time for Easter (and a new series celebrating Al Pacino at The Quad), this episode honors an often-misunderstood subcategory of star: hams. Ranging from the amusing to glorious to cringeworthy, these actors call attention to themselves in ways that can overtake and redefine the films they’re performing in. FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca is joined by Ashley Clark, senior programmer of cinema at BAM, and Michael Koresky, editorial director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, to chew over these over-the-top performers who produce a certain joy that a subtler actor can’t. From cops pontificating about posteriors in Heat to Maine put-down artists in Dolores Claiborne, this gammon-fueled chat is one for the ages.