The Film Comment Podcast

This week sees another episode of our Movie Gifts podcast. It’s like Secret Santa but for movies—each participant picks a title for another that the recipient hasn’t seen. It’s a fun way to share enthusiasms and gain new insights on old favorites. For this round, Film Comment co-deputy editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited FC contributor Nathan Lee and former FC editor Gavin Smith, two l...

Today’s podcast is spurred by something Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish wrote in her dispatch from Cannes a few weeks ago: “the undeniable thrills and pleasures of Top Gun: Maverick … are not entirely separable from the American-exceptionalist fervor of its narrative or the military resources poured into its making. It isn’t “a good film but with bad politics”; it’s a good film in part...

Two episodes in, Olivier Assayas’s new, mind-bendingly metatextual HBO series, Irma Vep, has already proven to be catnip for cinephiles. An audacious expansion and reinvention of Assayas's 1996 film of the same title—in which an aging French filmmaker attempts to remake Louis Feuillade’s classic silent serial, Les vampires, with Maggie Cheung as the criminal vamp Irma Vep—the eight-part series fea...

Léa Seydoux had an enviable and prolific 2021 with standout turns in Cary Fukunaga’s No Time to Die, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Ildikó Enyedi’s The Story of My Wife, Bruno Dumont’s France, and Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception. At this year’s Cannes, she continued her streak with starring roles in two excellent, very different movies: One Fine Morning by Mia Hansen-Løve, where Seydoux plays a...

With Cannes 2022 winding to a close, the last stretch has proved especially rich with standouts. On today’s podcast, FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish sat down with Dennis Lim (artistic director of the New York Film Festival), Jean-Michel Frodon (critic and former editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinéma), and Antoine Thirion (curator and critic) to discuss the festival that was. They talk about Kelly...

With Cannes 2022 beginning to wind down, the last stretch has proved especially rich with standouts. One of these eleventh-hour highlights is Albert Serra’s latest feature, Pacifiction. An epic yet elliptical political thriller, the film follows a high commissioner in French Polynesia, played by Benoît Magimel, as he snakes his way through a dense, sensorially overwhelming landscape, schmoozing wi...

With Cannes 2022 winding to a close, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film industry’s grandest annual event with the help of our on-the-Croisette crew of contributors. On today’s podcast, FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish talks to FC Podcast superstars Jonathan Romney and Jessican Kiang about the festival’s denouement, touching on Baz Luhrmann’s batsh...

With Cannes 2022 in full swing, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film world’s grandest annual event. For today’s podcast, Devika sits down with critic Mark Asch and Miriam Bale, artistic director of the Indie Memphis Film Festival, for an conversation that gravitates, like a mosquito to a well-toned ab, toward the festival’s thirst traps, including Da...

With Cannes 2022 in full swing, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film world’s grandest annual event. On today's podcast, Devika is joined by Justin Chang, film critic of the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s “Fresh Air”, for a conversation about about David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider, Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N., Park Chan-wook...

With Cannes 2022 kicking off this week, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film industry’s grandest annual event with the help of our on-the-Croisette crew of contributors. On today’s podcast, FC Publisher Eugene Hernandez sits down with Arianna Bocco, President of IFC Films, to take the temperature of Cannes, mid-way through. The two talk about her his...

With Cannes 2022 in full swing, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film industry’s grandest annual event with the help of our on-the-Croisette crew of contributors. On today’s podcast, FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish was joined by FC contributors Jordan Cronk and Giovanni Marchini Camia to discuss some recent highlights from the fest, including James...

With Cannes 2022 in full swing, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film industry’s grandest annual event with the help of our on-the-Croisette crew of contributors. On today’s podcast, FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish was joined by Inney Prakash (programmer and founder of the Prismatic Ground Festival) and Vadim Rizov (director of editorial operations...

With Cannes 2022 kicking off this week, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film industry’s grandest annual event with the help of our on-the-Croisette crew of contributors. On today’s podcast, FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish found a quiet corner to chat with frequent FC contributors Jessica Kiang and Jordan Cronk about their hot takes from the first t...

With Cannes 2022 kicking off this week, Film Comment is on the ground, reporting on all the cinematic excitement at the film industry’s grandest annual event with the help of our on-the-Croisette crew of contributors. On today’s podcast, Film Comment Publisher Eugene Hernandez sits down with Lizzie Francke(producer and Editor at Large at the BFI) to provide an inside-the-industry take on this year...

Cannes 2022 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. First up, we welcome FC contributing editor Jonathan Romne...

Everything you always wanted to know about Hong Sangsoo… but were afraid to ask! To celebrate Film at Lincoln Center’s two-part retrospective of the films of Hong, we hosted a special live conversation with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim about the playful, profound, and soju-soaked filmography of one of world cinema’s most influential and ingenious artists.  Dennis, the author of a forthcoming...

This week's special two-parter episode spotlights a pair of upcoming must-see programs in New York City. In the first half, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute chat with the critic, scholar, and former Cahiers du Cinema editor Jean-Michel Frodon, who has curated a revelatory series for the Museum of Modern Art, “Forgotten Filmmakers of the French New Wave.” In an enlightening conversatio...

After 2019’s Portrait of a Lady of Fire, we were eagerly awaiting Céline Sciamma’s next feature. Her new film, Petite Maman, is now finally in theaters, and it’s something of a surprise: a sweet, magical-realist story about a little girl who meets and befriends a younger version of her grieving mother. It’s a more modest film than the swooning period romance of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but Peti...

Every year, Film at Lincoln Center honors a luminary of the film industry with the Chaplin Award. This year’s recipient, the 47th, is an actress who has essayed some of the most iconic performances of the last quarter-century, and whose nearly superhuman versatility is matched by the consistency of her craft: Cate Blanchett. In an in-depth tribute essay, the scholar Amy Herzog writes that “Blanche...

For this week’s podcast, Film Comment co-deputy editor Clinton Krute sat down with filmmakers Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer, the duo behind the 1979 documentary The Wobblies. The film tells the story of the Industrial Workers of the World, the radical labor union that nearly brought American industry to its knees in the early years of the 20th century. With The Wobblies, Stewart and Deborah pai...

We look forward to the Art of the Real festival every year, and 2022 is no exception. In fact, a spotlight on the work of French filmmaker Alice Diop makes this year’s roundup of groundbreaking nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking especially exciting. Diop’s We (2021),  a perceptive and beautifully wrought exploration of national identity, was a highlight of last year’s festival circuit. Her previous...

With Ahed’s Knee, the rawest, most autobiographical entry in Nadav Lapid’s blistering filmography (The Kindergarten Teacher; Synonyms), the director crafts a stylized and self-lacerating portrait of an Israeli filmmaker railing at the censorship, hypocrisy, and violence of his government. Last week, we welcomed Lapid for a Film Comment Live Talk exploring Ahed’s Knee and the questions it raises ab...

The ongoing horrors of war in Ukraine have raised questions for art communities around the world: How can we meaningfully respond to this crisis? How can we support and defend artists and art in the face of cultural and material destruction? And how can art, and cinema in particular, help us grapple with our collective past and present? To delve into these questions, Film Comment editors Clinton K...

A common term in nonfiction filmmaking and criticism, “point of view” connotes a number of different meanings: a perspective on the world, a camera position, an assertion of subjectivity. Last week, at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, FC co-editor Devika Girish led a special Film Comment Live Talk with filmmakers Reid Davenport (I Didn't See You There) and Joe Hunting (We Met in...

The work and legacy of the late Jonas Mekas have been on our minds even more than usual, with a recent retrospective of his films at Film at Lincoln Center and an ongoing exhibit at the Jewish Museum. So, for today’s podcast, Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish wanted to discuss a form of which Mekas was a true master: the Diary Film. Devika and Clint welcomed Anthology Film Archi...