The Film Comment Podcast

In our May-June 2020 issue, the scholar Aboubakar Sanogo wrote of Med Hondo, the late, great Mauritanian-French filmmaker: “For Hondo, decolonization and independence were not simply a matter of regime change from colonial to postcolonial, but rather a radical geopolitical and avant-gardist project. The cinema had its part to play in the realization of this emancipatory vision by liberating itself from all varieties of dominance, including those of form and tradition.” Hondo’s brilliant and idiosyncratic ouevre is a testament to that emancipatory vision. From his debut feature Soleil O to the grand anti-colonial musical West Indies; from the collaborative immigrant documentary My Neighbors to the anti-police noir Black Light, Hondo’s films are both formally ingenious and politically audacious. On March 22, Anthology Film Archives will kick off a weeklong retrospective of Hondo’s works, including some brand-new restorations. The series is organized by none other than Aboubakar Sanogo, who joined us on today’s episode to discuss Hondo’s life and legacy.

It’s once again that time of year: that’s right, the Academy Awards are just around the corner. Before the winners are revealed on Sunday, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute teamed up with some colleagues from Tinseltown—the editors of the Los Angeles Review of Books—to preview this year’s nominees. Eric Newman, editor-at-large at LARB, and Annie Berke, the publication’s Film & TV editor, joined us for a special collaboration with their podcast, the LARB Radio Hour. We had spirited debates about all the Best Picture nominees—from Oppenheimer to Killers of the Flower Moon to The Holdovers—and also talk about trends, surprises, and snubs. The Los Angeles Review of Books is a reader-supported online magazine and quarterly print journal that publishes incisive, rigorous, and engaging writing on contemporary literature and culture. If you’re interested in supporting their mission, consider becoming a member at lareviewofbooks.org/membership, where you can get access to LARB’s exclusive book club, featuring members-only chats with editors and luminary authors, in addition to a subscription to their quarterly journal.

The 2024 Berlinale wrapped up on Sunday, February 25, after a fortnight of buzzy premieres and fraught political controversies. The Film Comment crew was on the ground throughout the festival, reporting on each day’s goings-on via daily Podcasts, dispatches, interviews and more. On the final Friday of the festival, FC Editor Devika Girish gathered critics Jordan Cronk, Giovanni Marchini Camia, and Beatrice Loayza to discuss a last haul of films from the lineup—including Encounters prizewinner Direct Action, Generation 14plus prizewinner Who By Fire, Victor Kossakovsky’s Architecton, Kazik Radwanski’s Matt & Mara, Christine Angot’s A Family, and Travis Wilkerson’s Through the Graves the Wind Is Blowing. Catch up with all our other Berlinale coverage on filmcomment.com—there’s more coming this week!

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2024 Berlinale kicked off on February 15. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Bruno Dumont, Hong Sangsoo, and many more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter here to stay up-to-date. On today’s episode, our fifth from Berlin, FC Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Ela Bittencourt and Frédéric Jaeger to talk about their recent viewing, with a focus on the German cinema at this year’s edition. They discuss Eva Trobisch Ivo, Julia von Heinz’s Treasure, and Andreas Dresen’s From Hilde, with Love, among others, before turning to a selection of films directed by women, including a retrospective of films by Helke Sander, and new films including Christine Angot’s A Family, Nele Wohlatz’s Sleep with Your Eyes Open, and Anja Salomonowitz’s Sleeping with a Tiger. Stay up to date with all of our Berlinale coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/berlin/

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2024 Berlinale kicked off on February 15. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Bruno Dumont, Hong Sangsoo, and many more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter here to stay up-to-date. On today’s episode, our fourth from Berlin, FC Editor Devika Girish is joined by an international cadre of programmers and critics made up of Jonathan Ali, Frédéric Jaeger, and Antoine Thirion to talk about Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’s Pepe, Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs, Malaury Eloi Paisley’s L’homme-vertige, Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex, Victor Kossakovsky’s Architecton, and Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell’s Direct Action. As if that weren’t enough! This episode also features a special, short interview by FC Publisher (and President of Film at Lincoln Center) Lesli Klainberg with super-producer Christine Vachon of Killer Films, the production company behind two standout hits of 2023, Past Lives and May December. The two dig into the contemporary and historical importance of the Berlinale for American independent film and how Christine is able to adapt her business to ongoing changes in the industry. Stay up to date with all of our Berlinale 2024 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/berlin/berlin-2024/

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2024 Berlinale kicked off on February 15. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Bruno Dumont, Hong Sangsoo, and many more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter to stay up-to-date. One of the early and most anticipated premieres of this year’s festival was Olivier Assayas’s new film Suspended Time. It’s a kind of companion piece to his 2008 movie Summer Hours, not to mention his recent TV series Irma Vep, although Suspended Time is the filmmaker’s most direct foray yet into autofiction. The film is based on the time that Assayas spent during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 confining with his brother Etienne—and their two partners—in their childhood home in the French countryside. The film stars Vincent Macaigne as a thinly veiled onscreen surrogate for Assayas (as in Irma Vep) and features dramatized scenes of the two brothers bonding, clashing, and reminiscing on the ways in which this house and home shaped them as artists and as men. Assayas also weaves interludes throughout the film, narrated by the director himself, in which he reflects on the objects and the landscapes of his youth, and how they’ve influenced his cinema. On today’s Podcast, FC Co-Editor Devika Girish interviewed Assayas about the making of the film, his thoughts on the genre of autofiction, and his relationship with his leading man, Vincent Macaigne, who he describes as an “agent of chaos.”

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2024 Berlinale kicked off on February 15. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Bruno Dumont, Hong Sangsoo, and many more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter here to stay up-to-date. On today’s episode, our second from Berlin, FC Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Erika Balsom, Giovanni Marchini Camia, and Beatrice Loayza to talk about the political situation in Germany and how it’s affecting the festival, before digging into films including Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Other Land, Dimitris Athiridis’ exergue – on documenta 14, Bruno Dumont’s The Empire, Ruth Beckermann’s Favoriten, and Diop’s Dahomey. Stay up to date with all of our Berlinale coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/berlin/

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2024 Berlinale kicked off on February 15. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Bruno Dumont, Hong Sangsoo, and many more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter to stay up-to-date. On today’s episode, FC Editors Devika Girish is joined by critics (and FC stalwarts) Jordan Cronk, Jessica Kiang, and Jonathan Romney to talk about the festival's change in leadership, before turning to the cinematic haul of the first couple days, including Tim Mielants’s Small Things Like These, Assayas’s Suspended Time, Alonso Ruizpalacios’s La Cocina, Nicolas Philibert’s At Averroes & Rosa Parks, P. S. Vinothraj’s An Adamant Girl, and Ruth Beckermann’s Favoriten. Stay up to date with all of our Berlinale coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/berlin/

The Finnish filmmaker Ilkka Järvi-Laturi, subject of an ongoing retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, made only three features in his life, each of which is maverick in its own right. His 1989 debut, Homebound, is a gritty realist film about a young man struggling to escape a cycle of violence; City Unplugged sets a heist in the wake of Estonia’s independence in the 1990s. And History Is Made at Night, the strangest of the bunch, is an international, star-studded spy-thriller-slash-screwball-comedy set between New York City and Helsinki. The films together represent a unique creative vision—one that combines genre ambitions with a defiantly indie sensibility and unexpected sense of humor. To learn more about Järvi-Laturi’s career, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Steve Macfarlane, one of the curators of the MoMA retrospective, and Hannu Björkbacka, a Finnish critic, to the join Podcast. And if you live in New York, don’t miss the screenings this week at MoMA.

Last week, FC Editor Devika Girish attended the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)—a Dutch festival that, since its inception in 1972, has become known for showcasing independent and experimental cinema by both emerging and established filmmakers. This year was no exception, with a lineup that spanned feature debuts like The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire by Madeleine Hunt-Erlich; wacky American indies like Dream Team; Mario, a new documentary by L.A. Rebellion luminary Billy Woodberry; as well as a robust shorts selection, including Frank Sweeney's Few Can See and Valentin Noujaïm's To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion. To discuss these highlights and more titles to look out for in the coming months, Devika is joined by critics Jordan Cronk and Beatrice Loayza.