The Film Comment Podcast

In today’s dispatch, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, curator of film at Museum of Moving Image, and Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), to talk about all things documentary at Cannes. They discuss Wang Bing’s bold and boundary-pushing eight-hour Dead Souls, the place (or lack thereof) for nonfiction cinema at the Croisette, and the influence of fake news frenzy on documentary filmmaking today.

Following the high-profile “82 women” red carpet protest, FC and Artforum contributing editor Amy Taubin joins FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to discuss the festival’s failure to find (good) films by female directors. Plus: Jafar Panahi’s Three Faces; Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun; Vanessa Filho’s Angel Face; Alejandro Fadel’s Die, Monster, Die; Lukas Dhont’s Girl; and more thoughts about Godard’s The Image Book.

Amidst the jubilance of a French wedding, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image and FC columnist, and Christina Newland, writer for Sight & Sound and Little White Lies, on the top of the Palais to discuss a few films from up-and-coming directors they’ve enjoyed at the festival: Ognjen Glavonic’s The Load, Luis Ortega’s Angel, and Camille Vidal-Naquet’s Sauvage.

It’s Cannes day four! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Film Society of Lincoln Center Director of Programming Dennis Lim and FC columnist Jonathan Romney to discuss a few of the most anticipated films of the festival: Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book, Jia Zhangke’s Ash Is Purest White, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War, and Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s Diamantino.

FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Otros Cines critic Manu Yáñez Murillo sit down in the Palais to discuss the day’s films: Jaime Rosales’s Petra; Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s multigenerational, Godfather-esque cartel drama Birds of Passage; Ali Abbasi’s sweet, oddball Border; and Paul Dano’s emotionally charged Wildlife.

FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, Curator of Film at the Museum of Moving Image and FC Columnist, as they reflect on day two of Cannes from the roof of the Palais. As a newcomer to the festival, Hynes recounts his first impression—from the grandeur of the red carpet to the banality of waiting in line—and the two discuss both the second feature of this year’s competition, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto, as well as the opening night film of Un Certain Regard, Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass.

It’s Cannes, day one! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Amy Taubin, FC contributing editor and Cannes veteran, to discuss the films they’re excited to see at this year’s edition (Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree, Alice Rohrwacher’s Lazzaro felice) and a few they’re anticipating with some trepidation. The two also discuss the opening night film, Ashgar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows. Plus: an incredible anecdote about Lucrecia Martel and Marvel.

Acting dynasties—like any kind of dynasty—rarely produce talents as great as Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie’s daughter, who ended up a sui generis figure in cinema history herself. Writer Andréa R. Vaucher and David Bloom joined Chaplin at the Panama Film Festival to discuss her incredible career; working with David Lean, Carlos Saura, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, and J. A. Bayona; her teenage years as a ballerina; and, of course, her father. A few of Paul Newman’s best pranks also crop up. A Words & Deeds production; produced, engineered, and directed by David Bloom.

The incomparable French director Claire Denis returns with Let the Sunshine In, a romantic comedy of sorts that stars Juliette Binoche. Denis’s fluid vision and singular sense of timing mixed with Binoche’s endearing performance make for a thoughtful glimpse into a woman’s quest for love on her own terms and, as Andrew Chan explains in his cover story about the film, “shows us not how we feel about love but how we look at it and talk about it—how it appears to us when experienced by others.” In this episode, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca is joined by Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to discuss Denis and Binoche’s film; then stay tuned for a live Q&A with Denis that followed a sneak preview of the film presented by Film Comment and IFC Films.

While great pipes and a cute face don’t always allow pop stars to instantly become leading men or ladies (witness 2003’s From Justin to Kelly), many musical artists do succeed in bringing a heady mix of charisma and raw talent to the screen. Be it in a bit part or carrying the whole show, these magnificent multi-hyphenates also offer a different type of star text to enrich and complicate their roles. In this episode, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca discusses the bright lights in the musician-actor galaxy with Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image, and Shonni Enelow, the author of Method Acting and Its Discontents: On American Psycho-drama and assistant professor of English at Fordham University.