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Tag: Film

Browse our essays and reviews on film and TV.

Bertrand Tavernier’s daring documentary about the Algerian revolution sought to break the silence in France.

Jonathan Kirshner

Polish director Agnieszka Holland's new film exposes the violent contradictions at the heart of EU border policy.

Paul Hockenos

A long line of films tracks the solidarities that arise when prohibition makes friendship too perilous.

Judith Levine

Fifty years ago, the American Indian Movement occupied the site of a historic massacre. They won real gains in the face of brutal counterinsurgency tactics.

Joel Whitney

The novel Kindred reminds us—emphatically, gruesomely—that white supremacy is us too.

Junot Díaz

Thelonious Monk lost (and found) in Paris.

Robin D. G. Kelley

From street demonstrations to song, dance, film, and poetry, women are advancing a long legacy of struggle against authoritarianism in Iran.

Nojang Khatami

Its illegitimacy goes far beyond the war on drugs.

Stuart Schrader
A “woke” remake that peddles in symbolic representation is not the film Puerto Ricans deserve.
Éric Morales-Franceschini
Amazon’s Tales from the Loop has introduced a new audience to the speculative worlds of the Swedish artist, whose books depict worlds in which humanity has, in one way or another, run afoul of technology.
John Crowley

On the uncanny relationship between film and reality.

Francey Russell

Recent works depict the agonies and rage of being a low-wage housekeeper or nanny. But all fail to identify capitalism itself as the culprit.

Sophie Lewis
Porn performers have a unique vision for labor justice and erotic fulfillment, but they face draconian regulation and exploitative work conditions.
Joseph J. Fischel

The director’s life reflected both the feats and the failures of the postwar U.S. experience.

Jonathan Kirshner

In the 1974 cult-classic teleplay Penda’s Fen, the past holds the key to escaping the catastrophic present.

Andy Battle
The Netflix series Dead to Me suggests that we might get closer to justice by forgiving each other and ourselves for the sometimes literally fatal flaw of being human.
Judith Levine
The award-winning documentary ‘Honeyland’ sets out to offer a timeless environmental parable, but in the process it also explores misconceptions about the region’s culture and history. 
Daniel Petrick

Ron Howard’s Netflix adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy continues a long tradition of seeing hillbillies as a symbol of pristine American whiteness.

Ellen Wayland-Smith

Current contempt for age gap relationships serves to strip both men and women of their agency. 

Jessa Crispin

Virology is often confused with the invisible workings of capital.

Mark Bould

Alternate histories like Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America—newly adapted by HBO—force us to imagine a different America.

Matt Gallagher
Jordan Peele's ‘Us’ depicts the terrors faced by black mothers in a way that owes as much to Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ as it does to classic Hollywood horror. 
Tao Leigh Goffe

A timely new documentary celebrates Morrison’s novels but downplays the enduring power of her work as an editor and essayist.

Joy James

Amazing Grace, the long-lost film of Franklin’s gospel album, offers a lesson in the deep connections between gospel and soul music.

Ed Pavlić

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