We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our second podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by local critics Adam Nayman (The Ringer, Cinema Scope, and elswhere) and Saffron Maeve (Cinema Scope and elsewhere). They kick things if with a focus on Canadian films, including Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, Chloé Robichaud’s Days of Happiness, and Michael Snow’s Standard Time, before expanding their scope to encompass Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, Pedro Almódovar’s Strange Way of Life, and Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023.

We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our second podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Adam Nayman (The Ringer, Cinemascope, and elswhere)and Chloe Lizotte (MUBI Notebook and elsewhere) to talk about festival selections Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Evil Does Not Exist, Dumb Money, and The Boy and the Heron. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023.

We’re reporting this week from one of the major film events of the fall: the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 7 to 17. Throughout this year’s festival, we’ll be on the ground, covering all the highlights (and lowlights) from the lineup with a rotating crew of critics and special guests. For our first podcast dispatch from Toronto, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish is joined by Film at Lincoln Center programmer Madeline Whittle and critic Mark Asch to talk about Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, The Human Surge 3, Laberint Sequences, God Is a Woman, and The Mother of All Lies. Watch this space for more podcasts from TIFF 2023!

Film Comment just happens to be next-door neighbors with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, whose film and video collection is filled with treasures. On August 31, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited our neighbors over for a special, Labor Day–themed screening of 16mm shorts from the NYPL’s collection. The program was curated by Elena Rossi-Snook, the film specialist at the library, who chose four fascinating shorts that captured microhistories of labor organizing across different industries in the ’60s and ’70s. The films offered a window into the history of the American labor movement and also spoke to the worker struggles currently roiling the film industry. To dig into the films and these themes, Devika and Clint sat down after the screening with Elena and filmmaker Brett Story, who reflected on her own experience making a forthcoming film about unionizing efforts at an Amazon facility in Staten Island. For more on the films screened, check out the event page, here: https://www.filmlinc.org/events/film-comment-live-labor-day-with-the-nypl/

At this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Film Comment participated in a fascinating experimental event called “A Long Night of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence.” Curated by Rafael Dernbach in collaboration with the Università della Svizzera italiana and Locarno Film Festival BaseCamp, the event began at sunset on August 9 and ended at sunrise on August 10, and involved a series of talks and workshops about the many connotations of “intelligence,” how A.I. is changing our relationships to ourselves and the world, and how dreams may offer up keys to our future. The event was co-hosted by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This week’s episode is an excerpt from her moderating shift, featuring a conversation with A.I. scholar Andrea Rizzoli and critic Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts, about the history of artificial intelligence, and its limitations and possibilities vis-à-vis art. Check out last week’s episode for another excerpt from “A Long of Dreaming About the Future of Intelligence,” featuring Stanford University scholar Shane Denson on the brave new world of “post-cinema.”

At this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Film Comment participated in a fascinating experimental event called “A Long Night of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence.” Curated by Rafael Dernbach, a researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana, the event began at sunset on August 9 and ended at sunrise on August 10, and involved a series of talks and workshops about the many connotations of “intelligence,” how A.I. is changing our relationships to ourselves and the world, and how dreams may offer up keys to our future. The event was co-hosted by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This week’s episode is an excerpt from her moderating shift, featuring a lecture and Q&A with Shane Denson, a Stanford University scholar who explores the terrain of “post-cinema”—the brave new world of digital images untethered to classical notions of time, space, and reality. Check back next week for another episode from “A Long of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence,” featuring A.I. scholar Andrea Rizzoli and critic Kevin B. Lee.

Over the course of his storied career, filmmaker Steve James has delved into the many ways in which individuals—frequently residents of his native Chicago—are subject to the whims of history, society, and life itself. Whether detailing the struggles of young athletes in his watershed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams, the heroic efforts of anti-violence activists in 2011’s The Interrupters, or the daily experience of high schoolers in his 2018 series America to Me, James has combined sharp social analysis with striking warmth and sympathy for his subjects. His latest documentary, A Compassionate Spy, might seem on the surface to be a departure. The film tells the story of Ted Hall, a physics prodigy who, at age 18, was invited to join the Manhattan Project. Perceptive beyond his years, Hall found himself haunted by the implications of his work and, in 1944, made the decision to share nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union. As compelling as this tale of espionage is, James’s film becomes, in the director’s words, “a love story,” with Ted’s widow Joan taking center stage as she recounts their life together, sharing the burden of her husband’s secret. For today’s episode, Film Comment editor Clinton Krute called up the director to discuss the impetus behind A Compassionate Spy, the film’s surprising use of recreations, and how Ted Hall’s fascinating story might complement—or offer a counter to—the themes of a certain summer blockbuster about atomic weapons. (Hint: it’s not Barbie.)

If you’re a follower of contemporary world cinema, chances are, you’re a fan of Franz Rogowski. Known for his distinctive screen presence and extraordinary physicality, the German actor has blazed a trail through some of the most well-regarded movies of the last few years, including Michel Haneke’s Happy End, Christian Petzold’s Transit and Undine, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, Angela Schanelec’s I Was At Home, But…, to name only a few. His latest role is as the lead in Passages, a new film by Ira Sachs. Rogowski stars Tomas, a diva-esque filmmaker and very indecisive queer man, who vacillates erratically between his husband, played by Ben Whishaw, and a new love interest, played by Adele Exarchopoulos. It’s a role of chaotic contradictions that seems made for Rogowski: Tomas is self-absorbed, brilliant, repulsive, sexy, vulnerable, and malicious all at once—and Rogowski brings to him a truly unselfconscious, combustible sense of humanity. For today’s episode, Film Comment co-editor Devika Girish called up Rogowski on Zoom to chat about his inspirations as an actor and how he crafted his firecracker performance in Passages. Please note that because Rogowski is not a member of SAG-AFTRA, he is not currently on strike.

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer, a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the key leaders of the Manhattan Project, has sold out movie theaters all over the country. With its three-hour runtime, notoriously large 70mm IMAX reels, and star-stuffed cast, it is nothing less than an epic. The film spans nearly four decades, from Oppenheimer’s days as a physics student in Europe, to his time teaching at UC Berkeley during World War II, to his days developing the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos Laboratory, and, subsequently, to the investigation into his possible communist ties during the McCarthy era. Amid all that plot is plenty of awe-inspiring spectacle and musings on the ethics of war and the perils of genius. On today’s episode, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute are joined by Film at Lincoln Center programmer Madeline Whittle and critic Mark Asch for a discussion about Nolan’s opus. The group was evenly split between fans and skeptics, and the result was a lively conversation—which, of course, is what the movies are all about.

Last February, the magazine The New Republic invited a host of film critics to participate in a new poll, curated by esteemed critic and longtime Film Comment contributor J. Hoberman: a list of the 100 Most Significant Political Films of All Time. Not best or favorite political films, mind you—most significant. The New Republic unveiled the results of the poll on June 22, along with an essay by Hoberman analyzing the results. Topped by The Battle of Algiers, the final list is both a fascinating snapshot of what political cinema means to critics today, and the limits of such exercises in ascertaining consensus. On today’s podcast, we invited Jim for a deep-dive into the impetus behind the poll; the surprises, disappointments, and notable entries in the list, from The Birth of a Nation to La Chinoise to Hour of the Furnaces to All the President's Men; and how notions of political cinema have changed over time. For show notes and a list of the movies discussed, go to filmcomment.com/podcast.