The French Dispatch
Episode 0: An introduction
Welcome to the first ever Animus podcast.
Elena Lazic
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I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Aleksandar Petrović, 1967)
Released in 1967 like Dušan Makavejev’s Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator — which I wrote about on the Substack a few weeks back — Aleksandar Petrović’s I Even Met Happy Gypsies was a hit both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Nominated for the Palme d'
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Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967)
The formal inventiveness and freedom of much of 1960s cinema is so striking, and has been so influential, that it can be easy to forget about the bold experiments with storytelling that also boomed during that period. On top of being a pioneering film shot on the streets of Paris
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To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)
William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) starts off in a delightfully silly mode, similarly to other unhinged cop movies from the era (Russell Mulcahy’s 1991 film Ricochet comes to mind). But that goofiness later goes awry and everything breaks down, specifically around the time
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Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
The question of whether there is a God guiding Bess, the protagonist in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, is the central mystery structuring the film. From the opening wedding scene right until the film's violent conclusion (in which we finally get a pretty conclusive answer about
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Irony vs. Cynicism – Director João Pedro Rodrigues on ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’
Faced with the consequences of climate change and at odds with his awful relatives, the son of a rich bourgeois family decides to become a firefighter. Providing most of the heat however aren’t forest fires but a hot new colleague, and the two embark on a torrid affair that
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The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival is at risk
Following a shocking decision by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (Clermont ISFF) in France has just lost more than half of its 2023 funding from that council, per a press release from the collective Sauve qui peut le court-métrage. The reputation and value of Clermont
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Three Colours: White (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994)
It is tempting when writing about the work of Krzysztof Kieślowski to trade in very big concepts, which ultimately tell us little about the films themselves. A Kieślowski film cannot simply be a love story, it is about love. It isn’t that his films don’t invite this kind
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The Unguarded Moment (Harry Keller, 1956)
This strange film begins like a slasher, four years before Hitchcock’s Psycho. A woman is found dead, killed in some unseen but brutal fashion by a man. A policeman on the scene talks of waves of such killings, which come and go without rhyme or reason. Though no one
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Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)
In M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, gay couple Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff) and their young daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) have barely arrived in an isolated cabin in the woods when they are attacked by four strangers, who claim that if the family does not
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Justin Kurzel at the Marrakesh Film Festival
At the Marrakesh Film Festival, I took the opportunity to talk to Australian director Justin Kurzel, who was enjoying his first ever festival jury experience there, watching films alongside jury president Paolo Sorrentino, actors Vanessa Kirby, Diane Kruger, and Tahar Rahim, and filmmakers Nadine Labaki and Laïla Marrakchi. We talked
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Flamingo Road (1949) and The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)
Flamingo Road (1949) is a film noir / melodrama starring Joan Crawford as a woman who, through factors largely outside of her control, finds herself climbing the echelons of social life until she becomes what Joan Crawford always becomes: rich. But there is a price to pay, and this is a