The Film Comment Podcast

Kelly Reichardt’s latest feature, Showing Up, is a delicate, witty, yet deeply profound film about the messy ways in which living and surviving can get in the way of art-making. The film follows a ceramics artist, Lizzy (Michelle Williams), who prepares for an upcoming gallery show while wrangling family issues, the interpersonal politics of her day job at an art school, and problems with her land...

Every spring the New Directors/New Films festival at Film at Lincoln Center and MoMA puts on an exciting showcase of movies by the best emerging filmmakers around the world. It’s always a reliable sign of the trends to come and the talents to look out for—past editions have featured early films by Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, Kelly Reichardt, and others. Over the past few years, Film Comment has...

This year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema festival (March 2-12), Film at Lincoln Center’s annual showcase of contemporary French filmmaking, was something of a Louis Garrel convention—the French actor and director appeared in three movies in the lineup. He directed and stars in The Innocent, a comedy inspired by his own life, about a young man whose mother marries a heist robber newly released fro...

Last weekend, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish was at the True/False Film Festival: an annual documentary festival in Columbia, Missouri that has, over the years, become an exciting site to discover the latest developments in nonfiction cinema. This year, a prominent trend in the lineup was personal filmmaking—films in which directors drew upon on their memories, families, and relations...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently winding down. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today’s episode, FC co-editor Devika Girish is joine...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today’s episode, FC co-editor Devika Girish is joined by...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today’s episode, FC co-deputy editor Clinton Krute sat d...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today’s episode, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today’s episode, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today's episode, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton...

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection.  A couple days ago, before the festival kicked off, FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish attended the opening conference of the Berlin Critics’ Week—an autonomous sid...

With an award-winning filmography that includes the epochal Civil Rights series Eyes on the Prize, 2020’s MLK/FBI, and 2021’s Citizen Ashe, among many others, documentarian Sam Pollard has changed the way we read history. Pollard is also an editor and producer, working with filmmakers like Spike Lee and Bill Gunn. Simply put, the guy is a legend. Which brings us to his latest film, the new two-par...

On our final podcast from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, FC co-editor Devika Girish talks to filmmakers Deborah Stratman, Mary Helena Clark, and Mike Gibisser about their fantastic new films, which premiered in the festival’s New Frontier section. Stratman’s Last Things explores the history of our universe through the point of view of rocks. She combines stunning images of rocks with intervie...

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Dessane Lopez Cassell (SEEN), Poulomi Das (The Playlist), and Jessica Kiang (Variety) join FC’s Devika Gi...

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Miriam Bale (Indie Memphis Film Festival) and Abby Sun (International Documentary Association) return for...

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish talks to critics Justin Chang (The Los Angeles Times and Fres...

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment’s Devika Girish talks to Vadim Rivov(Filmmaker Magazine) and Dan Sullivan (Film at Lincoln C...

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment’s Devika Girish talks to Miriam Bale (Indie Memphis Film Festival) and Abby Sun (Internation...

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment’s Devika Girish invited FC friends and critics Alissa Wilkinson (Vox), Sam Adams (Slate) and...

With the Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returning to in-person screenings this year, your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering each day's new highlights and lowlights. To kick things off, FC editor Devika Girish invited Abby Sun (International Documentary Association) and Alissa Wilkinson (Vox) to talk about so...

Last week, ThousandSuns Cinema, an online screening initiative by the Media City Film Festival, launched a unique virtual series devoted to Indigenous cinema. Co-presented with the artist-run collective COUSIN, the program brings together a vibrant selection of short and feature-length works by Indigenous filmmakers—all of which are free to stream online until January 30. The series features landm...

Every January, to ring in the new year, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute take a look at some of the major new releases of the holiday season. This year, they were joined by critics Sam Adams and Nicholas Russell to run down some of the blingier titles that have recently graced the marquees of multiplexes and streaming sites alike, including Avatar: The Way of Water, Babylon, Gl...

Happy new year to our listeners, and thanks for joining us for another year of writing and talking about movies. We’ll dive into the new year’s new releases very soon, but today’s podcast is about one of 2022’s late but great entries: No Bears, the latest meta-fictional masterwork from Jafar Panahi. In the film, Panahi plays a slightly fictionalized version of himself, as a controversial filmmaker...

Last night, we sat down with a panel of special guests—Alissa Wilkinson (critic, Vox), Bilge Ebiri (critic, Vulture), and Inney Prakash (curator, Maysles Documentary Center and founder, Prismatic Ground film festival)—for a real-time countdown of the results of our year-end critics’ poll. The evening featured a lively discussion (and some hearty debate!) about the films as they were unveiled—now i...

A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away... Well, actually, just a few weeks ago, right here on the good old internet, our esteemed colleague, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, tweeted out two simple words: TÁR WARS. He was referring, of course, to the swirl of controversy around TÁR, one of this year’s most talked-about films. The movie, directed by Todd Field and featuring a central performance...