Director Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest offering, L’avenir (2016) aka Things to Come, essentially revolves around Rousseau’s maxim, “If happiness fails to come, hope persists.” Rousseau — and philosophy in general — plays a big part in the film, as it follows ...

French writer and director Lucile Hadžihalilović is one of the more fascinating, if elusive figures of contemporary French cinema. Perhaps best known for her collaborations with her partner, Gaspar Noé — including producing, writing, and editing credits on his films ...

It would be difficult to name a filmmaker who has had a hand in as many genres, industries, and national cinemas as Ted Kotcheff, yet somehow his isn’t quite a household name. But you would also be hard-pressed to find someone ...

In 1975 Pier Paolo Pasolini executed the final blow of his long career as an artist, intellectual, journalist, philosopher, poet, and filmmaker before himself being brutally murdered: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975) aka Salò, or the 120 ...

Thanks to the mainstream cinematic releases of the last few decades, the phrase “comic book adaptation” doesn’t exactly scream “cult film,” and certainly doesn’t imply plots teeming with sex, violence, hedonism, or sadomasochism. Enter Italy. Long known for their astounding ...

  In the first part of this essay series, I looked at two of the most influential, if controversial postwar films, Visconti’s The Damned and Bertolucci’s The Conformist. Their depictions of wartime political (and personal) corruption paired with themes of ...

Critic, writer, and actor — not to mention screenwriter, director, social worker, postal agent, newspaper seller, night watchman and that’s just skimming the surface of the dizzying number of career fields he touched upon over the years — Michel Delahaye ...

So far in my Ken Russell column, I’ve covered a number of his early films for the BBC program Monitor — particularly his artist biographies like Elgar and The Debussy Film — and this later documentary, Always on Sunday (1965), ...

Over the last few decades, but especially since her role as a masochistic music teacher in Michael Haneke’s La pianiste (2001) aka The Piano Teacher, petite powerhouse Isabelle Huppert has proven herself to be one of the giants of contemporary ...

This year, the Philadelphia Film Festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary, so it seemed like the time was ripe to talk to long-time festival alum and artistic director Michael Lerman, a Philadelphia native who currently divides his time between programming ...