The Film Comment Podcast

On this week’s Podcast, Boots Riley joins to discuss his new film, I Love Boosters . The director of 2018’s Sorry to Bother You and the 2023 streaming series I’m a Virgo has returned with a movie that provides a new, invigorating riff on the theme that runs through all his work: the destruction of capitalism by an organized working class. I Love Boosters , which opens in theaters later this month,...

Next week, on Monday, April 27, Film at Lincoln Center honors George Clooney with their annual Chaplin Award . Clooney has been a shining star in the American media firmament since the 1990s, from his breakout role on E.R. , through innumerable hits, like O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Michael Clayton (2007), The Descendants (2011), just to name a few—to Noah Baumbach’s r...

For more than two decades, Melissa Anderson has been one of New York City’s most important film critics—and one of Film Comment’s favorite writers. From her start as a freelancer in the 2000s, through her editorships at Time Out , The Village Voice , and most recently 4Columns, she has regaled readers with her peerless wit, her attunement to desire, especially queer desire, and her facility for wr...

On October 30 of last year, we lost one of cinema’s most daring auteurs: the British director Peter Watkins. Starting out in television in the 1960s, Watkins developed an utterly unique and militantly political mode of filmmaking. In works like Culloden (1964), The War Game (1966), Punishment Park (1971), and his magnum opus, La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000), he cast nonprofessional actors in enact...

It’s that time of year again: the Academy Awards are just around the corner. In anticipation of the winners being revealed this Sunday, Devika and Clint teamed up with some colleagues from Tinseltown—the writers and editors of the Los Angeles Review of Books—to scrutinize this year’s nominees. The publication’s Editor-at-Large Eric Newman, Senior Humanities Editor Annie Berke, and Contributor Eliz...

Set in Nigeria in 1993, Akinola Davies Jr.’s elliptical, atmospheric My Father’s Shadow is a portrait of a country on the cusp of a political crisis. We experience these events through the eyes of the film’s young protagonists, two boys who spend a day in Lagos with their father. They’re thrilled at the prospect of some quality time with their often-absent old man—but they also sense that there’s...

Across his contributions to Film Comment and other publications, and his programming as the Curatorial Director of the Criterion Collection, Ashley Clark has established himself as one of the smartest, sharpest taste-makers in the film scene in New York and beyond—particularly through his championing of underseen films by people of color. So we were very excited by the announcement of his new book...

It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew has been on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the past week, we’ve gathered the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast....

It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. F...

It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. F...

It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. F...

It's late January, and the intrepid Film Comment crew is on the ground reporting from an extra special edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the last to take place on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah, the festival's home since 1981, before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. For the next week, we’ll be gathering the best critics on the scene to talk about each day’s premieres on the Podcast. T...

Every January, as we ring in the new year, we take a moment to take a look at some of the major new releases of the holiday season. This year, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited critics Beatrice Loayza and Mark Asch to focus on a select handful of titles that have recently graced the marquees of multiplexes, and which continue to stir up discourse. The group kicks things...

On December 11, 2025, as part our annual winter list extravaganza, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute were joined by esteemed critics Amy Taubin and Bilge Ebiri for a real-time countdown of the films topping our year-end critics’ poll. The evening featured a lively discussion (and some hearty debate) about the films as they were unveiled—and now it’s available in Podcast form, fo...

This week’s Podcast features an in-depth interview with Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose latest feature, The Secret Agent, is in select theaters now. The film was a highlight of both this year’s Cannes, where Mendonça won the Best Director prize, and this fall’s New York Film Festival. The Secret Agent is set, like many of the director’s films, in his Northeastern Brazilian hometow...

This week, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute sit down with writer-director Noah Baumbach, whose new feature, Jay Kelly, is in select theaters now. The movie stars George Clooney as an aging Hollywood star reckoning with the choices he’s made on his way to the top. The action unfolds on a trip Jay takes to a tribute to his career in Tuscany, trailed by an entourage of handlers (p...

Last week, Devika returned from the Tokyo International Film Festival, which ran from October 27 to November 5 in the Japanese capital. As one of the major festivals in Asia, the event is a great showcase for new and restored films from the region, as well as Japanese specialities like animation. While there, Devika recorded three Podcasts exploring the lineup with a stellar rotation of guests. On...

Last week, Devika returned from the Tokyo International Film Festival, which ran from October 27 to November 5 in the Japanese capital. As one of the major festivals in Asia, the event is a great showcase for new and restored films from the region, as well as Japanese specialities like animation. While there, Devika recorded three Podcasts exploring the lineup with a stellar rotation of guests. On...

Last week, Devika returned from the Tokyo International Film Festival, which ran from October 27 to November 5 in the Japanese capital. As one of the major festivals in Asia, the event is a great showcase for new and restored films from the region, as well as Japanese specialities like animation. While there, Devika recorded three Podcasts exploring the lineup with a stellar rotation of guests. Fi...

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another has been the talk of the town since its wide release last month—from critics to filmmakers to audiences, the reception has been nothing short of euphoric. Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the film opens in an unspecified present, detailing the activities of a militant group led by a Black revolutionary (played by Teyana Taylor). Y...

As the 63rd New York Film Festival drew to a close last weekend, it was once again time for Film Comment’s Festival Report, our annual live overview of the NYFF that was. FC Editor Clinton Krute was joined by critics Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman, and Beatrice Loayza for a spirited wrap-up analysis of the highlights and lowlights from the NYFF63 lineup. In front of a lively audience, the panel discus...

One of the highlights of this year’s New York Film Festival is the latest feature by the nonfiction master Gianfranco Rosi, known for documentaries like Sacro GRA (2013), Fire at Sea (2016), and Notturno (2020), which paint both lyrical and urgent portraits of places that function as thresholds—between land and water, life and death, heaven and hell. His new cinematic essay, Below the Clouds, brin...

Three films in this year’s NYFF lineup explore the intersections of quotidian life and the arts, following artists whose efforts to make time and space for their creative passions are thwarted or frustrated by the grind of the everyday. In Kent Jones’s Late Fame, adapted from an Arthur Schnitzler novella, a once-upon-a-time New York poet (and now a postal worker) is intoxicated by the sudden atten...

“That’s the majesty of rock / The mystery of roll / The darning of the sock / The scoring of the goal / The farmer takes a wife / The barber takes a pole / We’re in this together…and ever.” These lyrics ring as true today as they did back in 1992, when Spinal Tap penned them for their song “The Majesty of Rock,” from the classic album Break Like the Wind. Centering around the core trio of frontman...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from the picturesque shores of the Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place each year. This year's edition features new films by many major auteurs, including Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Laura Poitras, and more. For our sixth episode from the city of canals, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish invited critics Guy Lodge and and Öykü S...