The story of Black Americans is, in many ways, the story of America itself. Though the African American experience has long been relegated to the margins of the big screen, a vital cinematic legacy endures thanks to the work of pioneers like Oscar Micheaux (WITHIN OUR GATES), Charles Burnett (KIL...

Outlaws and outcasts populate the films of Argentine Brazilian director Héctor Babenco, an artist of rare empathy born eighty years ago this month. First finding success (and notoriety) in Brazil with his incendiary thriller LÚCIO FLÁVIO—the true story of an infamous bandit that doubles as a pote...

When Dag Johan Haugerud’s exquisite coming-of-age portrait DREAMS won the Golden Bear at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, it marked the culmination of a remarkable trilogy of stand-alone but thematically connected films—alongside LOVE and SEX—exploring the complexities of intimacy, desire, gender, ...

Formalized in 1989 to foster a new wave of Sudanese filmmaking free from censorship, the Sudanese Film Group sought to create a distinctly homegrown cinema that reflected the experiences of ordinary people and challenged entrenched systems of power in a country shaped by decades of colonialism, c...

Two recent documentaries by filmmaking duo Anupama Srinivasan and Anirban Dutta, made in far-flung corners of the world, reveal a shared commitment to patient, empathetic observation. FLICKERING LIGHTS follows villagers on the India-Myanmar border who have spent decades awaiting electricity, capt...

Raw, nightmarish transmissions from the unholy depths of the New York City underground, the films of revered cult auteur William Lustig are thrillingly intense, shockingly visceral plunges into the darkest chasms of urban existence. Pulsing with kinetic energy, his grindhouse opuses MANIAC, VIGIL...

Though his piercing blue eyes and tousled hair made him a defining sex symbol of swinging-sixties Britain, Terence Stamp was more than just a pretty face—he was a transfixing screen presence who brought an unmatched elegance, restraint, and existential gravity to works by some of the defining dir...

With a wit as dry as the martinis she famously loved, celebrated writer Dorothy Parker was a legend of the Jazz Age New York intelligentsia. Less well remembered is the time she spent in Hollywood as a screenwriter, where she brought her bitingly satirical voice and gift for delightfully dagger-l...

The barrier between waking and dreaming dissolves in the ecstatic, trancelike films of Maya Deren, a legend of the avant-garde who rewrote the rules of cinema in the name of uncompromising personal expression. Combining symbol-laden imagery, intricately choreographed camera movements, time- and s...

Uniquely unguarded glimpses of some of the twentieth century’s most captivating personalities, these probing portraits of legendary actresses unfold as intimate exchanges between director and subject, offering rare behind-the-scenes access to their inner worlds. Capturing vulnerable, unpredictabl...

As his acclaimed latest THE SECRET AGENT comes to theaters, catch up with the bold, gripping, and fearlessly political cinema of Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Fusing slow-burn suspense with incisive social commentary, his features NEIGHBORING SOUNDS and BACURAU (the latter codirected ...

The exquisitely textured, sensorially immersive films of Chinese Canadian artist and filmmaker Jess X. Snow are works of immense heart and healing, opening up a compassionate, imaginative dreamspace in which queer Asian American characters seek liberation from social and familial trauma through e...

The expansive, wintry landscapes of rural Iceland and Denmark provide the majestic physical and psychological backdrops to the breathtaking films of director Hlynur Pálmason, whose acclaimed latest, THE LOVE THAT REMAINS, comes to theaters in January. Whether capturing the rift that forms between...

In his acclaimed short films, Caribbean American director Dwayne LeBlanc has shown himself to be a rising talent already in full control of mood, tone, and visual texture. His mesmerizing CIVIC and its gorgeous follow-up, NOW, HEAR ME GOOD, each center on a young man named Booker (played by Barri...

A story so beloved it’s been brought to the screen again and again, A STAR IS BORN is a timeless parable of fame, ambition, sacrifice, and the inner workings of the Hollywood machine as seen through the eyes of an up-and-coming actress torn between her burgeoning career and her love for her self-...

“Sexual perversion, and any inference to it, is strictly forbidden.” Thus spoke the Hollywood Production Code, the system of censorship that defined the limits of the permissible during the studio system’s golden age from the 1930s to the ’60s. According to such dictates, queer people simply didn...

With her landmark debut feature WILL, pioneering cameraperson turned filmmaker (and all-around Renaissance woman) Jessie Maple became one of the first Black American women to direct an independent feature film, bringing unflinching honesty and stirring emotion to an endearingly tough and tender p...

Emerging from the creative rebellion of the New Queer Cinema movement, Todd Haynes has remained one of American independent cinema’s most daring and subversive voices, a master stylist who uses his command of the language of classic melodrama to reveal the hidden fears, anxieties, and hypocrisies...

On the occasion of the theatrical release of his highly anticipated third feature RESURRECTION, journey into the mesmerizing world of Bi Gan, the Chinese auteur whose labyrinthine, dreamlike narratives and immersive, mind-bogglingly epic long takes have rapidly established him as one of contempor...

Raw, gritty, intensely angry visions of individuals pushed to the brink by a corrupt society, the films of Hong Kong action renegade Ringo Lam scorch the screen with an anarchic fury. His action classic CITY ON FIRE offered Chow Yun-fat one of his meatiest roles and inspired Quentin Tarantino’s R...

Among the politically committed African filmmakers who emerged in the postcolonial era, Mauritanian-French firebrand Med Hondo stood as one of the boldest and most provocative voices, forging a fiercely experimental style all his own to examine the historical toll of colonial oppression on genera...

With six features—including his acclaimed latest, SENTIMENTAL VALUE—to his name, Norwegian auteur Joachim Trier has established himself as one of the most virtuosic directors working today, a humanist who brings novelistic depth and insight to his intimate portraits of people grappling with every...

Dynamic, handsome, and intense, Tatsuya Nakadai (1932–2025) was the last great star of Japan’s cinematic golden age. He was convincing whether playing a mercenary lone wolf or a heartsick love interest, a hero or a villain, in a sleek suit or samurai robes, and just as comfortable blending in to ...

In a career studded with acclaimed collaborations with auteurs like the Coen brothers, Denis Villeneuve, and Gus Van Sant, Josh Brolin has brought a rugged grit and grounded authenticity to his committed portrayals of complex, conflicted antiheroes. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, Br...