Advertisement

Maria Garcia

In the belly of the beast: Andrey Zvyagintsev's acclaimed 'Leviathan' depicts one man's fight against corruption in modern Russia

In the belly of the beast: Andrey Zvyagintsev's acclaimed 'Leviathan' depicts one man's fight against corruption in modern Russia

Andrey Zvyaginstev’s Leviathan begins with a series of long shots, landscapes and seascapes of the forbidding Barents Sea coast of Russia. It is summer, and the music from the last act of Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten plays on the soundtrack. Another series of similar long shots appear at the end...
Film Review: Two Days, One Night

Film Review: Two Days, One Night

Uncharacteristically, this new movie from Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne moves rather slowly, and mostly consists of the hero having similar conversations with a number of her colleagues, yet a good cast and the Dardennes' understanding

MoMA's "Filmmaker in Focus: Nuri Bilge Ceylan": A Retrospective

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep, set in Cappadocia, Turkey, had its New York premiere this week at MoMA. (Photo courtesy of Museum of Modern Art.) by Maria Garcia At Wednesday night’s first public screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, the standby line at New York's Museum of Modern...

Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour" at the New York Film Festival on October 10th

Emmanuelle Riva and Eijii Okada in a newly restored print of Hiroshima Mon Amour, a Rialto Pictures Release. (Photo courtesy of The New York Film Festival.) On Friday, October 10th the New York Film Festival will screen a beautiful, newly restored print of Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (19...
Film Review: Rocks in My Pockets

Film Review: Rocks in My Pockets

A Latvian family’s history of depression and suicide attempts is vividly brought to life in animated form in Rocks in My Pockets, from New York-based Latvian animation artist Signe Baumane....
Film Review: Closed Curtain

Film Review: Closed Curtain

The largest presence in Closed Curtain is not a curtain. It is the abyss. And, in the film as well as in real life, it lies just outside the barred windows of Jafar Panahi’s beach house.The Iranian writer-director’s previous movie, This Is Not a Film (2011), was shot entirely inside his Tehran...
Caught in the middle: Hany Abu-Assad's 'Omar' follows plight of a young Palestinian

Caught in the middle: Hany Abu-Assad's 'Omar' follows plight of a young Palestinian

Last October, Hany Abu-Assad attended the New York Film Festival press screening of his latest movie, Omar, Palestine’s entry for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. Afterward, he fielded the usual questions from film critics about his visual style, the challenges of shooting in occupied...
Girl with a bike: Haifaa Al Mansour's inspiring 'Wadjda' is first feature filmed entirely inside Saudi Arabia

Girl with a bike: Haifaa Al Mansour's inspiring 'Wadjda' is first feature filmed entirely inside Saudi Arabia

Wadjda is a peek behind the black veils of Saudi Arabian women and girls. If its eponymous and irreverent hero is a surprise, she is also irresistible. Ten-year-old Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) listens to rock music, wins videogames against her dad, and dismisses anything that smacks of convention,...
Beneath the veil: Atiq Rahimi's 'Patience Stone' charts an Afghan woman's awakening

Beneath the veil: Atiq Rahimi's 'Patience Stone' charts an Afghan woman's awakening

When director Atiq Rahimi applied for a permit to film in his native Kabul, he told Afghan authorities he was making a documentary about quail fighting, a popular and longstanding pastime among the city’s male population. Actually, he was on location for The Patience Stone, the story of a woman...
Deadly superstition: Harry Freeland's 'In the Shadow of the Sun' exposes plight of African albinos

Deadly superstition: Harry Freeland's 'In the Shadow of the Sun' exposes plight of African albinos

In his documentary, British filmmaker Harry Freeland follows a charismatic human-rights activist, Josephat Torner, and a young man, Vedastus Zangule, who are albinos born in Tanzania. Victims of extreme prejudice in many parts of Africa, albinos are hunted for their body parts, which may then be...