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...

As his Palme d’Or–winning latest IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT comes to theaters this fall, revisit the vital, self-reflexive, slyly perceptive films of the brilliant Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi, whose every work is an act of resistance. In his first two films, the neorealist revelations THE WHITE BALL...

Since the birth of cinema, Indigenous people have been staple subjects of documentary—until a new generation of Native American filmmakers emerged in the 1980s who insisted on becoming its authors too. Forged in the social upheavals of the midtwentieth century and abetted by the emergence of acce...

In the last decade, Vicky Krieps has quietly emerged as one of contemporary cinema’s most compelling actors, a luminous presence capable of navigating the most delicate emotional terrain with precision and depth. With her breakthrough role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, Krieps more tha...

Graced with warmth, sensitivity, and indelible, richly realized characters, the films of Nancy Savoca eloquently evoke the inner worlds of women who challenge patriarchal norms in their quests to define themselves. Both built around luminous performances from Lili Taylor as young women on complex...

Fiercely independent voices in American cinema, Rob Nilsson and John Hanson make films that capture the grit and resistance of ordinary Americans on the front lines of class struggle. Through their groundbreaking dramatic feature NORTHERN LIGHTS and the revelatory documentary shorts known as the ...

A living legend of Indian cinema, Adoor Gopalakrishnan is a major auteur whose psychologically penetrating films often take the form of parables or enigmas exploring the relationship between the individual and society—in particular the conditions of life in his home state of Kerala. Taking inspir...

Among the most fascinating chapters of cinematic history is that of the so-called “race films” that flourished in the U.S. between the 1920s and ’40s. Unlike the “black cast” films produced within the Hollywood studio system, these films not only starred African Americans but were funded, written...

A true trailblazer of independent cinema, Charles Burnett has brought images of Black American life to the screen with authenticity, empathy, and stirring poetry. Bringing together landmarks like KILLER OF SHEEP and TO SLEEP WITH ANGER, lesser-known gems such as THE GLASS SHIELD and THE ANNIHILAT...

Edward Yang made films on a monumental scale, bringing novelistic depth to sprawling stories of human connection, alienation, and self-discovery set in a rapidly changing Taiwan. Capturing intricate webs of criss-crossing social relationships with his masterful long takes, Yang’s films—including ...

Few filmmakers have forged a voice as singular and uncategorizable as that of Ukrainian iconoclast Kira Muratova. Working on the margins of Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, she withstood decades of censorship to realize her uncompromising vision in fascinatingly fragmented, expressionistically heig...

Dreamlike, hauntingly atmospheric visions of sex, blood, and existential ennui, the poetic-erotic fantasies of French art-horror master Jean Rollin exist on a hypnotic wavelength all their own. Frequently employing the figure of the female, often lesbian, vampire as a vessel for Rollin’s symbol-l...

A master of cinematic spectacle whose genre-bending films incorporate sumptuous period detail, exhilarating fantasy, martial-arts mayhem, and theatrical artifice, Hong Kong cinema titan Tsui Hark dazzles viewers with his colorful, richly imagined worlds drawn from myth and legend. Whether blendin...

Vivid, stirring portraits of San Francisco’s gay life and psychedelic counterculture, these documentaries from director David Weissman—made in collaboration with Bill Weber—tell essential stories of queer community, creativity, and resilience. A joyous celebration of the eponymous gender-bending ...

The complex dynamics between mothers and daughters is at the heart of these beautifully understated shorts by Colombian director Sofía Camargo. In BY THE RIVER, an unspoken grief hovers in the household of a newly single mother and her two daughters, while in NOSTOS, a young girl acts out in defi...

One of the most exciting emerging voices in African cinema, Congolese French filmmaker Alain Kassanda makes immersive, thought-provoking documentaries that connect the lived experiences of everyday people to larger social and political questions. Turning his observant camera on both his grandpare...

Tackling some of the most urgent questions of our time with a formidable formal and intellectual sophistication, the richly observed documentaries of Brett Story invite us to see, with fresh eyes, the social and political structures that shape our lives. In THE HOTTEST AUGUST, interviews with a w...

Built around her ineffably plaintive voice, the music of ANOHNI speaks to the soul like no other, entwining aching human emotion with a cutting political edge. Curated by ANOHNI herself, this selection of music videos—presented alongside TURNING, a performance-art concert film by Charles Atlas an...

Tantalizingly surreal, dreamily erotic, and wickedly subversive, the films of Polish provocateur Walerian Borowczyk are symbol-laden existential reveries rendered in painterly soft focus. Made in the midst of his most notorious period, the grief-suffused psychosexual drama LA MARGE and the blasph...

With the passing of Michael Roemer earlier this year, American cinema lost one of its most eloquent voices, a long-unsung independent trailblazer whose profoundly humanist, unfailingly truthful vision had only in recent years come to be properly appreciated. A Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi Germ...

A prolific and masterful stylist whose work spans many genres, Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To is most celebrated internationally for his virtuosic action thrillers. Pulsing with kinetic intensity, these movies blend choreographed violence and moral push-and-pull, transforming the heroic-bloodshed ge...

Beginning her career as an editor for Martin Scorsese and Hal Ashby, Amy Holden Jones soon proved her own skill as a director with the Roger Corman–produced cult classic THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, a uniquely sophisticated, subversive take on the slasher genre in which she made brilliantly econom...

One of the essential but long-neglected voices of the French New Wave, Jacques Rozier was a comedic master whose small yet rich body of work remains ripe for rediscovery. Starting with his feature debut, ADIEU PHILIPPINE, Rozier was determined to explode conventional story forms, combine seemingl...

Chilling, unblinking confrontations with the void of modern existence, the films of Michael Haneke dare viewers to reckon with the links between media, violence, capitalism, and inequality in an increasingly sterile, alienated world. With his first three theatrical features—THE SEVENTH CONTINENT,...