Bryan Fogel

Kim Gordon

Taylor Russell

Ed Lachman

Chai Vasarhelyi

Andrew Haigh

Rachel Kushner

Kitty Green

Karyn Kusama

Ethan Hawke

Duke Johnson

Lukas Dhont

Pablo Larraín

Sophie de Rakoff

Sebastián Lelio

Ari Wegner

James Gray

Kimberly Peirce

Reinaldo Marcus Green

Mike Mills

Senegalese musical superstar, activist and occasional politician Youssou N’Dour is the subject of this engaging documentary from future Oscar-winning director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. N’Dour is widely celebrated as one of Africa’s prime cultural ambassadors on the world stage, but this film chronicles the scandal around his 2004 album EGYPT, a Grammy-winning hit in the U.S. that was boycotted in Senegal for controversially blending music with devotional lyrics steeped in Sufi Islam. Following the singer on tour at home and abroad, Vasarhelyi delivers a rich musical feast, but she also touches on deeper fault lines running through the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape.

Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Immortalized in Alek Keshishian’s hugely successful documentary MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE (1991), the blockbuster Blond Ambition tour catapulted seven young dancers from New York’s “vogueing” underground into the superstar limelight. With STRIKE A POSE, co-directors Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan hit upon the inspired notion to revisit these performers 25 years later, chronicling how their lives subsequently played out. There is triumph and tragedy here, notably the lethal legacy of HIV-AIDS, plus mixed feelings toward Madonna, who appears only in archive footage. But Gould and Zwaan mostly draw moving life lessons from their bittersweet study of overnight fame, survival and queer liberation.

Strike a Pose

A hard-bop trumpet prodigy who played with Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and other legends, Lee Morgan died at the age of 33, gunned down by his long-time romantic partner, Helen, at an East Village jazz club in the depths of a blizzard. Interweaving frank audio interview clips with Helen, memories from Lee’s fellow musicians, and exquisitely assembled archive footage, Swedish director Kasper Collin’s documentary untangles this knotty tale with a sensitive, lyrical touch. Unfolding almost like cinematic jazz, I CALLED HIM MORGAN manages to find sympathy for both players in a tragic, toxic love story.

I Called Him Morgan

Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson’s archive-heavy documentary condenses hundred of hours of vintage 16mm footage from an incendiary period in American history, originally filmed by Swedish television crews and then largely forgotten for more than 30 years. Featuring interviews with radical icons like Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE covers the birth of the Black Panthers, anti–Vietnam War protests, the Attica prison riots, the devastating effect of heroin in Black communities and more. Featuring a superb soundtrack, plus contemporary commentary from Davis, Questlove, Erykah Badu and others, Olsson’s cinematic history lesson is rich, fascinating and admirably complex.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Using the life and work of celebrated Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes as a rich canvas, this dreamlike cine-essay by British visual artist and experimental filmmaker Isaac Julien is a ravishing, erotically charged celebration of America’s secret Black queer history in the early 20th century. Blurring past and present, dramatized fantasy with documentary material, LOOKING FOR LANGSTON is marbled with quotes from Hughes and other African-American icons, including Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Essex Hemphill. Sumptuously filmed in black and white, it also features stunning portraits of Black male nudes by legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Looking for Langston

An impressionistic portrait of a largely African American community in Alabama, filmed over half a decade in the 2010s, director RaMell Ross’s nonfiction feature debut subverts convention by allowing its subjects to shape the narrative with a collective, multi-person viewpoint. With creative input from Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Laura Poitras, this poignant, sporadically transcendent documentary won multiple accolades, including an Oscar nomination and a prestigious Peabody Award. 

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Lost in limbo for years, Charles Burnett’s sophomore feature was only completed after the trailblazing indie director earned belated acclaim for his classic debut KILLER OF SHEEP (1978). Once again shot around South Central Los Angeles with a nonprofessional cast, including several members of the director’s family, MY BROTHER’S WEDDING stars Everette Silas as Pierce Mundy, a humble dry cleaning worker whose loyalties are sorely tested when his brother, Wendell (Monte Easter), announces plans to marry his haughty lawyer girlfriend. Despite limited resources, Burnett and his team deliver a sophisticated dissection of how class, race and family ties intersect.

My Brother's Wedding

Djibril Diop Mambéty only completed two full-length features in his short life; both are stylish, darkly satirical gems. Walking a tightrope between farce and tragedy, HYENAS transposes Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1956 drama The Visit to modern-day Senegal, adding a postcolonial dimension to the cautionary critique of greed and corruption. Ami Diakhate plays a wealthy but vengeful woman who returns to her home village promising riches to its inhabitants in return for killing the storekeeper (Mansour Diouf) who left her to marry another woman.

Hyenas

Revisiting French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s audacious 1974 tightrope walk between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, British director James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary has the pulse-racing urgency of a real-life heist movie. MAN ON WIRE blends archival footage, contemporary interviews and dramatized reconstruction to capture the courage and poetry of Petit’s daredevil feat. Despite breaking the law, his headline-grabbing stunt ultimately gave a promotional boost to the WTC, which was still under construction and not widely liked at the time. Post 9/11, Marsh’s film unavoidably plays like an elegy for the twin towers.

Man on Wire

Set in Communist Poland in 1962, this emotionally devastating period drama considers the tragic secrets of postwar Polish history through the eyes of a trainee Catholic nun (Agata Trzebuchowska) and her hard-drinking libertine aunt (Agata Kulesza). Drawing on his Polish-Jewish ancestry, writer-director Paweł Pawlikowski invokes the minimalist cool of the French New Wave with monochrome cinematography and a knowingly retro 1.33:1 aspect ratio. An elegantly concise modern classic, IDA was the first Polish feature to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Married directing duo Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (a Galerie curator) and Jimmy Chin first met while working together on this visually spectacular, award-winning documentary, which chronicles a perilous attempt by Chin and his fellow climbers to scale the towering Shark’s Fin rock face of Meru Peak in northern India. MERU is an immersive, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride, thanks not just to its majestic scenery but also its close-up examination of the compulsive risk-taking that almost proves fatal for several of the climbers. Vasarhelyi and Chin have since collaborated on numerous acclaimed features including Oscar-winner FREE SOLO (2018), THE RESCUE (2021) and NYAD (2023).

Meru

Australian New Wave cinema pioneer and future DRIVING MISS DAISY (1989) director Bruce Beresford earned breakthrough global acclaim with this flinty, high-stakes courtroom drama about a controversial true story of British colonial war crimes. Edward Woodward gives a riveting performance as Harry “Breaker” Morant, an arrogant lieutenant during the Second Anglo-Boer War, who was sentenced to death for murdering enemy prisoners and unarmed noncombatants. Deemed a scapegoat of the British empire by some Australians, Morant enjoys folk hero status today. But Beresford’s timeless history lesson never disputes his guilt, only the murky ethics of guerilla warfare and the wider complicity of military commanders.

Breaker Morant

British writer-director Andrew Haigh is best known as a meticulous chronicler of LGBT love stories on big and small screen, but here he dissects the dynamics of long-term heterosexual marriage with an equally sharp eye. Veteran Britfilm icons Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling co-star as an aging couple whose settled routine of comforting certainties is suddenly rocked by long-dead ghosts from the past. Teasing out the gnawing doubt and latent unease lurking just below the placid surface of suburban domestic life, Haigh’s forensically observed psychodrama won multiple prizes and accolades, including an Oscar nomination for Rampling.

45 Years

An ambitious long-term experiment that paid off handsomely, Texan writer-director Richard Linklater’s formally bold coming-of-age drama was filmed in small installments across 12 years, with key cast members growing from children to adults across the span of the shoot. Just 7 when filming began, Ellar Coltrane is a real discovery as Mason Evans Jr., a wide-eyed boy navigating the eventful emotional journey from first grade to college. Patricia Arquette gives a richly detailed, Oscar-winning performance as Mason’s mother, while Linklater regular Ethan Hawke radiates soulful authenticity as his flawed but loving dad. Tender, bittersweet and beautifully observed, BOYHOOD is a Great American Novel onscreen.

Boyhood

Boldly staged and formally daring, Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary shines a light on one of the semi-forgotten atrocities of the Cold War: the state-sponsored mass execution of Indonesian communists and other dissidents following the failed coup of September 1965. With jaw-dropping audacity, Oppenheimer and his codirectors persuade their key interviewees, unpunished and mostly unapologetic killers, to reenact their crimes on camera in the style of gangster and Western movies. Boasting Werner Herzog and Errol Morris as executive producers, the film won international laurels and spawned a 2014 sequel, THE LOOK OF SILENCE.

The Act of Killing

Before embracing English-language productions with THE LOBSTER (2015), THE FAVOURITE (2018) and POOR THINGS (2023), Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos scored his international breakthrough with this absurdist drama about a deeply dysfunctional Greek family. Christos Stergioglou and Michele Valley play strictly controlling parents who raise their three children in domestic prison, shielded from the outside world, until adolescent sexual curiosity leads them to mutiny, incest and violence. Shot with great visual brio, this Cannes prizewinner is boldly surreal and hypnotically weird, garnering an Oscar nomination and approving words from David Lynch.

Dogtooth

A powerful behind-the-scenes documentary about KHABAR LAHARIYA, an Indian news platform run by women from the socially ostracized Dalit underclass, WRITING WITH FIRE offers an inspirational portrait of courage, determination and grace under pressure. Co-directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh also give this politically charged story a personal dimension, exploring how the publication’s impressively tough editor and two junior reporters wrestle with domestic and family pressures while pursuing high-risk stories about murder and corruption. This Sundance prizewinner became the first ever Indian Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature.

Writing with Fire

Chronicling the ominously tense relationship between a mother and son, which builds inexorably from subtle mind games to homicidal violence, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s third feature is a riveting adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s emotionally wrenching hit novel. Tilda Swinton gives an intense, award-winning performance as long-suffering mother Eva, while Ezra Miller radiates diabolical charisma as the teen version of her sociopathic son, Kevin. Ramsay’s deft use of flashbacks and nonlinear structure preserves Shriver’s devastating final twist, but this timely thriller is less a suspense-driven exercise than a slow-burn psychological horror movie that taps into every parent’s worst nightmare.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

An inspirational underdog sports documentary, this Sundance Film Festival prizewinner charts the gladiatorial clashes and Paralympic aspirations of the U.S. quad rugby team, a charismatic gang of athletes in wheelchairs fighting for glory in the adrenaline-pumped, bone-crunching game nicknamed murderball. Achieving a strong visual aesthetic despite their minimal budget, directors Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro shoot the hyperkinetic sports footage with exhilarating close-up intensity. But the film’s main focus is on the big personalities of the players: their mental struggles, backstage rivalries and private challenges—even their sex lives—all covered with a refreshing frankness.

Murderball

Playing like a real-life true-crime thriller, Oscar-winning director Bryan Fogel’s gripping documentary chronicles the gruesome killing of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, a Mafia-style execution seemingly ordered by the kingdom’s ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Adding emotional depth and forensic detail to a widely reported news story, THE DISSIDENT features interviews with key players in this harrowing case of state-sponsored murder, including Khashoggi’s bereaved fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and former CIA chief John O. Brennan. Fogel also widens his focus to profile other brave media campaigners challenging the Saudi regime’s bloodthirsty censorship war against its critics.

The Dissident

Impressed by subject Alex Honnold’s incredible El Capitan climb, Bryan finds the risk-taking of filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi just as extraordinary. “The way they crafted the narrative made that journey so compelling.”

Bryan Fogel on Free Solo (2018)

“Five minutes in, I couldn’t believe what I was watching,” says Bryan of S.S. Rajamouli’s sprawling historical epic, which won an Oscar for Best Original Song. “It’s everything that a film should be, elevated to a level of complete and total insanity.”

Bryan Fogel on RRR (2022)

Bryan puts the Coen brothers’ burnout classic at the very top of his favorite-films list: “That’s number one.”

Bryan Fogel on The Big Lebowski (1998)

I CALLED HIM MORGAN

AMÉLIE

FLOW

INCIDENT

CONCLAVE

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

GODS OF MEXICO

SPOTLIGHT: CRAFTING INTIMACY

LET'S TALK ABOUT ROM-COMS

Infamous in his native South Korea for provocation and controversy, director Im Sang-soo’s prizewinning erotic thriller is a lethally intoxicating cocktail of sex, glamor, class and power dynamics. Iron-willed maid Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon) is hired to work for a superrich couple, businessman Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) and his pregnant wife, Haera (Woo Seo). But Hoon’s sexual advances toward Eun-yi ignite a war between servants and masters that spirals into an orgy of bloody revenge. THE HOUSEMAID is a loose remake of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same name, a Korean cult classic and key influence on Bong Joon Ho’s PARASITE.

The Housemaid

Samantha Morton gives a magnetic star performance in Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s prizewinning second feature, a playful suspense drama based on Alan Warner’s cult novel. Morton plays the eponymous antiheroine, a frustrated young woman who steals her dead boyfriend’s unpublished novel, calmly passing it off as her own work as she embarks on a hedonistic road trip to Spain with best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott). With its time-scrambled, loopy rhythms and cleverly integrated mixtape soundtrack, MORVERN CALLAR is a highly original work of uncompromising beauty. Coming after RATCATCHER (1999), it confirmed Ramsay as a major new cinematic voice.

Morvern Callar

Paris is purgatory in BASTARDS, a relentlessly bleak contemporary thriller which plunges French director Claire Denis deep into film noir territory. Drawing on William Faulkner’s controversial 1931 novel SANCTUARY, this dark revenge saga stars Vincent Lindon as Marco, a landlocked sea captain investigating his brother-in-law’s apparent suicide. In defending his sister, Sandra (Julie Bataille), and niece, Justine (Lola Créton), against reptilian businessman Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor), Marco is sucked into a nightmarish netherworld of betrayal, incest and sexual violence. Shooting in digital for the first time, Denis wrings harrowing performances from a strong ensemble cast, carefully avoiding lurid melodrama.

Bastards

After a run of more controversial, sexually explicit films, director Catherine Breillat took an outwardly more conventional turn with this sumptuous historical romp about a 19th-century Parisian libertine (Fu’ad Aït Aattou) torn between his hot-blooded Spanish mistress (Asia Argento) and his virginal new bride (Roxane Mesquida). But the veteran provocatrice of French cinema has little time for convention, transforming a costume drama into a no-costume melodrama full of bodice-ripping lust, gender-twisting power games and lingering female-gaze shots of Aattou’s ripe, androgynous beauty. Freely adapted from Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s scandalous 1851 novel, THE LAST MISTRESS takes carnal pleasure in its juicy perversions and dangerous liaisons.

The Last Mistress

Driven by knockout performances from Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz, CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA is a highly atmospheric behind-the-scenes psychodrama written and directed by Olivier Assayas with a knowing nod to Fassbinder. Binoche plays a superstar actress sequestered on a remote alpine retreat while she weighs up an offer to revive one of her career-making stage plays—this time in the older female role. Stewart co-stars as the personal assistant who works as the diva’s counselor, confidante and sometime sparring partner. Cast and crew won multiple prizes, including a César for Stewart, the first female American to earn the honor.

Clouds of Sils Maria

“A film only works if there is something underneath that is saying something a little bit deeper than what's on the surface.” Reflecting on his career journey, Andrew unpacks his childhood film inspirations and explains how they informed the directing choices for his 2023 feature, ALL OF US STRANGERS.

Andrew Haigh The Scene: All of Us Strangers

Kimberly Peirce’s debut feature BOYS DON’T CRY hinges on a pivotal love scene. Up to the point of making that film in 1999, the director had not seen many authentic depictions of queer intimacy on film. Informed by core film references, including the heterosexual power dynamics of Federico Fellini’s 8½ and Hal Ashby’s COMING HOME, she created an original moment that felt true to her characters' own identities and love story.

The Scene: Boys Don't Cry

Revisiting the begonia fields in Belgium where his 2022 coming-of-age film was shot, Lukas details the production process behind the flower-planting scenes.

The Scene: Close

Ari takes us through her process for THE WONDER (2022), from initial meetings with director Sebastián Lelio and rigorous script-based preparation to the painterly details—the shine and topography of a wall, long-lens shots in vast panoramas, the precise diffusion of light through a window—that set her work apart.

The Scene: THE WONDER

Catholic Taste

Pixar's Unlikely Rival

Getting Lucid with Richard Linklater

An austere but strikingly beautiful drama about grief, crime, poverty and broken families in the Mississippi Delta, BALLAST is the highly assured debut feature of writer-director Lance Hammer. Micheal J. Smith Sr. plays Lawrence, a man wrestling with suicidal depression following his twin brother’s death, which forces him into a complicated reconciliation with his sister-in-law (Tarra Riggs) and her 12-year-old son (JimMyron Ross). A terrific cast, mostly Black and non-professional, helped improvise their own characters and dialogue from Hammer’s spare script. This humane, quietly powerful family saga won the Best Directing and Best Cinematography awards at Sundance.

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