John Schlesinger had a way with humanity. In all of his films, he demonstrated how he had a firm pulse on the nature of existence, an intricate understanding of the human condition that very few filmmakers, even those who dedicated their entire lives to realism, were ever able to convey. While remembered mainly for Midnight…

Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is a young man living in a small town in working-class Texas. He’s  a quiet boy, normally spending his days driving his pickup truck, attending school, playing sport and finding solace in one of three local institutions that become like home to him – a pool-hall run by the enigmatic but sympathetic…

Marie (Charlotte Rampling) is an English teacher who goes on holiday with her intellectual husband, Jean (Bernard Cremer). While she sunbathes, he goes for a swim – and never returns. Suddenly confronted by his mysterious disappearance, Marie is thrown into a quandary, where she wonders whether he drowned by accident, committed suicide, or left her…

If there is one way to describe The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (German: Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter), it would be as a film the perpetually occurs at intersections – whether being constructed at the crossroads of genre, narrative conventions or nation, this is a film that borrows heavily from a variety…

The experience of growing up is one that has been represented on countless occasions across all forms of artistry, with many launching themselves into the past to creatively comment on some of the intricacies of our formative years. Bill Douglas was one of the many filmmakers who set forth to explore his own childhood through…

There exist two versions of the play Proof by David Auburn – one of them is the critically-acclaimed stage production that brought out themes of identity and grief, both for the loss of a loved one, and the impending loss of your own abilities. The other is the film adaptation, directed by John Madden, who sought…

From the outset, there are two aspects of Red Psalm (Hungarian: Még kér a nép) that you immediately notice: its glorious surrealism and its striking beauty. This seemed to be the pivotal element behind Miklós Jancsó’s daring social drama, a tale of class struggle in the Hungarian countryside in the late 1800s. What starts as…

Diane is a tough film, but also a necessary one. This is a film made for anyone who has felt the crushing despair that comes in times of tragedy, when we fall as if our lives are falling apart, and there is nothing we can do, no matter how hard we try to hold it…

The title is certainly not the only provocative element of Jean Eustache’s magnum opus, the daring social odyssey The Mother and the Whore (French: La Maman et la Putain). A deeply fascinating investigation into issues facing the French youth at the time, such as sexual identity, gender politics and the role of of the individual…

A few years ago, I went through a period of intense interest in the work of Diane Arbus, captivated by her ability to capture reality in a way that was most beautiful but grotesque, simple but layered with meaning, all portrayed through the most gorgeous photographs I’d ever seen, which spoke to me unlike anything…