The aesthetically dynamic, shape-shifting films of artist and filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary combine everything from heavily processed 16 mm archival materials to TikTok videos and woman-on-the-street-style interviews to put Black women and their lived experiences, past and present, in dialogue with one...

William Klein’s explosive New York street photography made him one of the most heralded artists of the sixties. As an American expatriate in Paris, Klein also made bold, challenging cinema in a filmmaking career that spanned more than forty years. In his three colorful, surreal fiction features—W...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...