The Film Comment Podcast

This week, Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute is in the Czech Republic, reporting on the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Located in a picturesque spa town, the fest has long been the home of hidden gems in its Competition sections, as well as a mid-summer stop for major films making the international circuit. This year’s edition features many of both, as well as an excellent retrospective sidebar...

This week, Film Comment Editor Clinton Krute is in the Czech Republic, reporting on the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Located in a picturesque spa town, the fest has long been the home of hidden gems in its Competition sections, as well as a mid-summer stop for major films making the international circuit. This year’s edition features many of both, as well as an excellent retrospective sidebar...

Listeners might know John Early as a very funny comedian and actor—but last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, John debuted a new role: an auteur. His first feature, Maddie’s Secret , takes cues from TV movies, PSAs, erotic thrillers, internet videos, Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls , and more to craft a movie that, despite all these influences and parodic touches, feels wonderfully origi...

On May 15, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish moderated a panel at Cannes Docs, an industry sidebar dedicated to nonfiction filmmaking. Titled "Breaking Borders," the conversation examined how, even as the film market has become increasingly globalized, traditional professional networks and production infrastructure are still structured around exclusionary ideas about countries and continents. Devi...

Cannes 2026 wrapped this past weekend, but the Film Comment crew has not slowed down one bit as we continue to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. For our final Podcast from the Croisette, FC Editor Devika Girish gathered three of our favorite critics—Justin Chang ( The New Yorker ), Tim Grierson ( Screen International ), and...

Cannes 2026 is nearing its close, but the Film Comment crew has not slowed down one bit as we continue to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition has been packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For ou...

Cannes 2026 is in full swing and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, cutting through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our sixth Podcast from the sun-dapple...

Cannes 2026 is in full swing, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Pedro Almodóvar, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our fifth Podcast from the Croise...

Cannes 2026 is in full swing, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Pedro Almodóvar, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For our fourth Podcast from the Crois...

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Pedro Almodóvar, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. For the third of our daily Podcasts from t...

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year's edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. On the second of our daily Podcasts from...

Cannes 2026 has arrived, and the Film Comment crew is on the ground, ready to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year's edition is packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers. To kick off our daily Podcasts from the...

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...