Anyone who has spent any amount of time with a paramedic will know that it is a career path made for those who are not only physically at their peak, but also willing to handle the mental strain that comes with this profession. It’s quite obvious that saving lives can take a psychological toll on…

It’s always a peculiar experience to sit through a film that dramatizes events that you saw unfolding in real life since it almost feels redundant (and we often forget that films aren’t solely made for the present generation, but also for those that are still to come, with the contemporary dramas of today being the…

The sight of a young woman walking through the pastoral winelands of rural France remains one of the most enduring and complex images in the history of cinema, and is the foundation on which Agnès Varda builds Vagabond (French: Sans toit ni loi), which remains one of her signature films, and one that has come…

Misery loves family – and you’ll find few families whose entire existence is more propelled by sheer conflict than the Giddens, who spend their days bickering about the future, genuinely believing it is their birthright to be the embodiment of wealth and affluence, to the point of causing a range of crises within the family…

Growing up, I was surrounded by friends and family who were generally agnostic to the idea that there is any real difference between governmental candidates and carried a general distrust of politicians, particularly those who seemed to be driven less by serving their constituents and more the ego and agenda tacked onto whatever campaign they…

As writers, there are two general guidelines that we are inclined to follow when discussing art – we are supposed to be objective as far as possible, as well as exercise enough restraint to make our arguments nuanced and detailed, using our words to explain why certain work is particularly intriguing. However, there are some…

In a career that has allowed him to explore various genres and stories, Gus Van Sant has proven himself to be extremely versatile at handling a diverse set of narratives, which are usually intrinsically tied to the concepts that fascinate him as a storyteller. Whether working with original material or adapting the work of others,…

A single individual creating art is a beautiful process, but there is something even more remarkable about a group of creative collaborators coming together to share their gifts and produce something extraordinary. Music in particular has been an art form that has allowed for some of the most fruitful collaborations between artists, going back to…

It isn’t very often that we find a filmmaker whose entire purpose seems to be to redefine the margins of what cinema can be and represent. Ryūsuke Hamaguchi has been working for the better part of a decade (with films like Asako I & II and the arthouse masterpiece Happy Hour drawing a small but…

From a distance, we observe a group of people talking and drinking on what appears to be a relatively pleasant evening in one of Vietnam’s central urban hubs. Off-screen, a crash is heard, followed by a cacophony of screens, and the characters begin to retreat out of frame. The camera follows them, but it’s slightly…