Gooey, splattery, fleshy nightmares of contagion and transformation, the audacious cinematic transgressions of David Cronenberg—whose latest film, THE SHROUDS, infects theaters this April—are not so much watched as experienced in a visceral, full-body wave of can’t-look-away revulsion and fascina...

One of the most innovative and enigmatic directors of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette approached filmmaking as a kind of choose-your-own-adventure of the imagination, crafting sprawling, immersive works that unfold as labyrinths, games, and puzzles to be deciphered. Blurring the boundaries b...

Specializing in tender, sensitive explorations of queer and Asian identity, writer-director Ray Yeung has carved out a unique place in contemporary Hong Kong cinema to tell intimate stories of gay love finding a way in the face of repression and prejudice. Shot in New York City, FRONT COVER is a ...

Prolific, Australian-born director John Farrow was one of studio-era Hollywood’s great unsung craftsmen, consistently elevating what could have been routine, B-budget genre fare through stylish visuals and a vivid feeling for place and character. It was in the realm of noir that he made his great...

Focused on pivotal moments in the lives of women, the films of trailblazing feminist director Joyce Chopra were among the first in American cinema to give authentic expression to the intimate experiences of female adolescence, sexual awakening, and motherhood. Presented in conjunction with the re...

Of all the rebellious talents to emerge from the Japanese New Wave, Masahiro Shinoda (1931–2025) may have been the most versatile and elusive. From his early contributions to the New Wave’s counterculture eruption (YOUTH IN FURY) and his brooding breakout thriller PALE FLOWER to his subsequent pe...

Whether they’re neonoir thrillers or gripping historical dramas, the films of Michael Mann pulsate with visual adrenaline. Through a propulsive fusion of image, sound, and movement, he creates worlds that feel both heightened and intimately real, with light- and color-saturated frames, unforgetta...

To mark the release of his acclaimed latest, MISERICORDIA, we’re revisiting the daring, dreamlike, darkly comic, and defiantly queer films of director Alain Guiraudie, who has carved out a distinctive place within French cinema through his transgressive explorations of sex, desire, death, and ali...

A writer turned director whose literary background lends his films their novelistic weight, South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong has made some of the most searching and emotionally devastating works in contemporary cinema. Suffused with all the beauty, pain, and tension of real life, his films look...

In their urgent and empathetic documentaries, husband-and-wife team Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson explore issues of identity, injustice, and activist resistance in the Black diaspora. From AMERICAN PROMISE, an intimate chronicle of two Black boys (one their own son) navigating the pitfalls ...

Though best known today for his scorching 1950s melodramas, Douglas Sirk’s subversive sensibility and powers as a baroque visual stylist also served him well in the sinister world of noir. Trading lavish Technicolor for deep, black-and-white expressionist shadows, this trio of atmospheric thrille...

One of contemporary French cinema’s most intriguing auteurs, Axelle Ropert employs an alchemical blend of narrative classicism and subtle expressionism to create nuanced explorations of human relationships and the division between the worlds of children and adults. Particularly concerned with the...

Arguably the greatest comic genius of the silent era, Buster Keaton turned the adage “less is more” into slapstick gold, using his perpetually passive, poker-faced visage to wring laughs from the most absurd situations. A child of vaudeville, he transferred the knockabout style of physical comedy...

One of the leading figures of the LA Rebellion—the new wave of Black American independent cinema that emerged from UCLA’s film school in the 1970s and ’80s—Billy Woodberry created one of the movement’s defining works with his neorealist masterpiece BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS, an aching portrait of...

A true cinematic revolutionary who used the camera as her tool in the fight against oppression in all forms, the Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez brought the stories of ordinary Cubans to the screen with a bracing immediacy and insight. Drawing on her background in ethnography, Gómez became her co...

One of the greatest American filmmakers to emerge in the 1970s, Joan Micklin Silver drew on her background as the daughter of Russian-born Jewish parents to write and direct beautifully bittersweet portraits of women, immigrants, and marginalized communities. With profound empathy, her films vivi...

As his latest film, the Palme d’Or–winning ANORA, continues to garner acclaim, we’re revisiting the early work of Sean Baker, who for more than twenty years has carved out a distinctive place within American independent cinema exploring the lives of characters on the margins of society with a com...

Extravagant, dazzlingly stylish visions of decadence and decay, the films of Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino train a cunning eye on the worlds of wealth, celebrity, and power to reveal the moral rot lurking below their seductively glittering surfaces. All made in collaboration with his regular le...

Originator of the hugely popular ZATOICHI and LONE WOLF AND CUB franchises, Kenji Misumi was a master of the chanbara (“sword fighting”) genre who brought thrilling stylistic flourishes and unique psychological and emotional depth to his many classic films. Among his finest achievements, the thre...

The great prickly humanist of British cinema, Mike Leigh has forged a body of work unique in its concern for the struggles of ordinary people and the social fabric of working-class London. Famously born from a process of extensive improvisation with his powerhouse actors, Leigh’s films inhabit a ...

Steeped in Irish history and lore, the films of Dónal Foreman are searching, shape-shifting explorations of place, cultural memory, and national identity. Working across narrative, documentary, and experimental practices, his three features to date—the vivid Dublin-set youth portrait OUT OF HERE,...

Shattering taboos with her unflinching, often shocking explorations of female sexuality and pleasure, Catherine Breillat plunges fearlessly into the corporeal realms of eroticism and violence. The two are inextricably linked in her daring body of work, which encompasses controversial coming-of-ag...

To celebrate the release of his acclaimed latest, EMILIA PÉREZ, we’re revisiting the intense, visceral films of French auteur Jacques Audiard, whose masterful crime dramas infuse genre conventions with new freshness through their empathetic focus on the marginalized and oppressed. From his early ...

With his very first film ON THE BOWERY, Lionel Rogosin forever changed the art of nonfiction filmmaking in America, bridging narrative and documentary practices to portray life on New York’s skid row with an unvarnished authenticity and immediacy steeped in the spirit of neorealism. Born one hund...