Longform writing is the raison d'être of Animus. These free-to-access essays, by writers from around the world, cut through the noise and are guaranteed to be worth your time.
Essays
On Charles Vanel's Dans la nuit Charles Vanel was one of the most prolific French actors of his or any time. His career spanned more than 75 years (1910 to 1988) and comprises nearly 200 credits, though he is perhaps best known for his role in Henri-Georges Clouzot’
Essays
On Samuel R. Delany's The Orchid Writer and philosopher Samuel R. Delany has long envisioned a utopia, stemming from the unique potential of cities as sites of radical egalitarian communion. A constellation of concrete, glass and humanity that’s like a counterpoint to what has, typically, been prophesied
Essays
On Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers and Barbara Loden's Wanda At its heart, The Honeymoon Killers is a love story. This heart is black, and this love story twisted — defined by manipulation and violence more than anything else — but director Leonard Kastle goes to great pains
Essays
On Gerald Kargl's Angst For all its brutality, Angst isn’t above having fun. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man — let’s call him The Psychopath — approaches a home, a woman answers the door, and The Psychopath shoots the woman. He flees and
Essays
On Juraj Lerotić's Safe Place, Florian Zeller's The Son and the Netflix series Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story tw: discussion of depression and suicide This Be The Verse By Philip Larkin They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to,
Essays
Artwork by Neven Udovičić Any list of the best films of all time suggests the idea of consensus. Yet so much of creativity, both in terms of writing for the journalists voting in polls, and for the filmmakers who make the films being voted for, is about resisting consensus to
Essays
Director Daniel Goldhaber on his film How to Blow Up a Pipeline In August of 2003, a few months after George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, the Pentagon’s Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, an anti-guerilla task force, circulated a flier to officers and civilians advertising a
Essays
Several recent attempts to deconstruct American megachurches and televangelists fail to grasp what truly makes institutionalised evangelicalism so insidious One glance at the news can provide an immediate insight as to why American society is currently living in decidedly faithless times. In the wake of a pandemic that has ravaged
Essays
Directors Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret on their feature debut The Worst Ones When does a fascination for colourful characters fall into condescending and morbid curiosity? Where is the line between being given a chance and being used? Such questions of ethics and respect have always animated documentary filmmaking, but
Essays
American director Paul Schrader on his film Master Gardener, controversy, Facebook, Taxi Driver and more Marrakesh was one of the locations for Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist — “not a film I should have made,” according to Paul Schrader, who was back in town for the Marrakech Film Festival to accompany
Essays
The Lynchian, existential sequel celebrates its tenth anniversary Already embedded within the concept at the heart of the Universal Soldier franchise is an acute bitterness about the American military’s treatment of the men who do its dirty work. In the first film, soldiers thrown into the meat grinder that
Essays
Artwork by Neven Udovičić The films discussed in this issue all, to some degree, use provocation to fulfil their goals. Speaking to Mark Asch, Daniel Goldhaber explains that his film How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn’t designed to advocate for a specific politics, but rather to shake up