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Touch Grass: Louise Courvoisier discusses Holy Cow (2024)
An unexpected box office success in France, this debut feature shot in the countryside challenges strict divisions between the popular French comedy and the arthouse drama.
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Reviews, interviews, rants: these articles do not fit into any specific category on the site, but they still had to be written.
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In a Minor Key: On Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia (2024)
A heady potion, Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia possesses a very subtle derangement.
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Prévert for Perverts: A Glossary of Dirty Discourse in Café Flesh
As Stephen Sayadian's cult post-apocalyptic film Café Flesh premieres in a new 4K restoration, Daniel Bird offers a guided tour through some of its most memorable lines.
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Angry Horror Thoughts
On The Monkey, Heart Eyes, and Companion
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Coming of age at Sundance 2024
Elena discusses four highlights from the festival
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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