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In 2022, experimental documentarian Ben Russell approached the filmmaker and visual artist Guillaume Cailleau about making a documentary, set in ZAD

While the Venice film festival is widely treated as an awards platform for starry auteur-driven dramas, its little-known secret is a modest but strong nonfiction selection. Even without counting the Wang Bing film in competition, which screened too late for many critics (including this one) to cover, this year’s crop was remarkable for the breadth and variety of the nonfiction approaches.

What happens when three’s a crowd in a marriage? One possible answer, as Elizabeth Lo finds, is to sneak in a special fourth person. In her sophomore

When good intentions meet bad assumptions on the film festival circuit Editor’s Note: The writers are the co-directors and executive producers of The

Turbulence: Jamais Vu gracefully handles the balance of embodiment and empathy in its exploration of the feeling of disassociation that happens during

The intimacy and intricate care that BlackStar puts into the organization and accessibility of its annual film festival make it feel like a deeply considered project brought together by so many experienced and attentive organizers. The ability to facilitate joy and safety in a gathering can create exponential space for growth, a bending of space-time that gives folks true time to be free and travel across waves of distant visions. Amidst all the vibrancy and energy of the people of BlackStar, I tried to see as many films as possible and will mention here films that I saw for the first time with audiences. Like the talks, the focus of many of the films was survivorship—they asked how we propel ourselves through truth and ethical pursuit in an age of disintegration and global instability.

For so long, much about Russell Tyrone Jones, known to the world as Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Ason Unique by others, earned both public awe and

Ten years ago, on July 30th, 2014, the celebrated German filmmaker, writer, and artist Harun Farocki passed away. Farocki’s output spans short

Martha Coolidge made her mark in Hollywood directing films like Valley Girl, Real Genius, and Rambling Rose, but before all that, she was breaking

Now, while there may be greater attention to filmmakers’ proximity to their subjects and a push for more diverse directors, co-directors, producers, and crew members, there’s also a rise in what some call “cover-your-ass” hires over meaningful collaborations. If the U.S. industry, then, has accepted that documentary projects benefit from having creatives from similar races, genders, sexualities, or nationalities as their subjects, they might be included—but are they actual partners?