Faces and fruits flourish in the resplendent Tunisian ensemble piece “Under the Fig Trees,” from French-born director Erige Sehiri, which maps the interpersonal relationships, mostly romantic ones, among the men and women informally hired to harvest figs by hand over the course of a single workday. Located a short ride from a small town, where […]
Fran (Daisy Ridley) is the central character of “Sometimes I Think About Dying”. She doesn’t speak until 22 minutes in. Not one word. The first thing she says is matter-of-fact to an extreme: “I’m Fran. I like cottage cheese.” There’s no mystery behind why she says it. She’s at an office meeting where everyone is […]
The one constant of life is change, and our own individual relations to the place we grew up, or came of age, in are invariably complicated not by just the alterations in the landscape but the way our perspectives shift. Shortly before his death, the great filmmaker Orson Welles wanted to shoot a film based […]
The coming-of-age story has a fairly consistent structure: A young person living a difficult home life must learn to grow past certain obstacles, including possibly forgiving their parent(s), if they hope to reach maturity. Two films in Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Competition are trying to retool the genre through different eyes. In the case of “Didi,” […]
Music docs have become an increasingly prominent part of the Sundance landscape, but it truly felt like the programmers for 2024 intentionally sought out films about people pushing the boundaries of the form this year. Far more than the one-hit wonder label that’s often incorrectly applied to them, Devo altered the music landscape, and not […]
The 2024 U.S. Dramatic Competition program at Sundance this year featured the expected variety of voices from the independent film scene, stories from different backgrounds, classes, races, and genders. The three films from the program in this dispatch could all be called character studies, but what’s invigorating is how wildly different these characters are, and […]
by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent There’s a reason Poor Things starring Best Oscar Actress nom Emma Stone with 11 Oscar nods charts so high among big movies, Oppenheimer with 13 nods, Barbie with eight, and Killers of the Flower Moon at 10 nominations. After #metoo and #timesup, we are officially in the Post-Ingenue Era […]
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announces “Oscars Season at the Academy Museum,” running January 28-March 31, which invites the public to celebrate the 96th Oscars® and immerse themselves in Academy Awards® history through rich and expansive one-of-a-kind Oscar®-centered events and activities. “Oscars Season” will see the Academy Museum campus activated for visitors to experience […]
The short film jury awards of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival were announced during the Shorts Awards Party in Park City. The Festival, which kicked off on January 18 and runs through January 28 in person and across the country online, has long been known as the premiere showcase of short filmmaking talent. The Short Film Grand […]
