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…

“Lisbon is a city of countless revolutions” Anyone who has ever visited the capital of Portugal is struck by several different features – it’s narrow, winding alleyways that weave steep downhills that eventually meet the ocean, with centuries of architecture scattered liberally throughout what was initially only supposed to be a small seaside town, but…

For decades, we have seen filmmakers chasing the spectre of Douglas Sirk, whose melodramas like All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life defined their era and have stood the test of time, being as appreciated today as they were when they first emerged nearly seventy years ago. One director that has successfully managed to…

Despite usually being associated with the carefree days of youth and the lack of proper responsibilities placed on us, childhood is not a particularly easy time, and the moment we start to take notice of the world around us is when our journey towards realizing some of life’s most challenging obstacles are waiting for us,…

“How do you thank someone, who has taken you from crayons to perfume?” – Lulu’s quietly confident voice poses this challenging question in a song that has been prominent on compilations of easy-listening hits for over half a century now, to the point where it sometimes feels like it is almost seen as a parody…

A quick glance at the overall premise of Society of the Snow (Spanish: La sociedad de la nieve) may mislead you into thinking that this is a very conventional story of survival. However, as we have come to learn, J.A. Bayona does not make conventional films, so when he sought to tackle the story of…

Jonathan Glazer has always been something of an enigma when it comes to looking at his artistry – a director who has mastered the art of short-form filmmaking who moves into directing longer projects, but who takes considerable breaks between films, making him one of the more elusive directors of his generation. In nearly a…