Review: “WTO/99”

Astonishing, incendiary, and eerily prescient, Ian Bell’s documentary WTO/99 may depict one single event in American history, but does so in manner that reveals the ripple effects that globalization and anti-environmental, anti-labor practices— far from mainstream, hot button issues at the brink of the new millennium— have had on our current climate, economic, and human […]

Review: “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk”

Sepideh Farsi couldn’t enter Gaza. From Cairo, where she traveled in the hopes of crossing the Egypt/Palestine border to document the ongoing war in Gaza, an Israeli-imposed blockade obstructed all paths. But while speaking to Palestinian refugees in Cairo, Farsi met a man who suggested that she speak to Fatma (Fatem to those close to […]

Review: “Percy Green: Man of ACTION”

I’m not from St. Louis, but I’ve lived here long enough that it feels egregious that I’d never heard of activist Percy Green before. And I wonder how many other St. Louisans possess that same gap in their knowledge of local history. It’s a hole that director Joseph Puleo seeks to fill with his documentary […]

Review: “Trains”

Trains opens with a quote by Franz Kafka: “There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope…but not for us.” Those are characteristically bitter words from the Jewish Czech writer, attributed to a conversation between Kafka and his writer friend Max Bond when the latter asked the former his thoughts on hope outside the […]

Review: “Chain Reactions”

What more can you say about a movie so iconic that there’s seemingly nothing new to be said? That sentiment doesn’t deter Alexandre O. Philippe, whose essay films encompass cinematic topics ranging from the obvious (David Lynch’s obsession with The Wizard of Oz, Kim Novak’s role in Vertigo) to the niche (the iconography of Monument […]

Review: “Megadoc”

“I built my career following Francis,” George Lucas states in new interviews conducted by Mike Figgis for his documentary Megadoc, a fly-on-the-wall chronicle of director Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis, his decades-gestating, self-financed dream project that— following a lengthy and fraught production— finally premiered at Cannes last year to largely critical pans and mass confusion. […]

TIFF 2025: “Aki”

You won’t hear a word of spoken dialogue in Darlene Naponse’s Aki, an observational documentary depicting life in the indigenous Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory of Northern Ontario. But the movie is far from silent. Naponse— a native of the region— uses her connection with the community to craft a sonically and visually rich story of the […]

Venice 2025: “Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence”

Three complete features, two shorts, and four fragments are all that survives of the 160 movies Elvira Notari, Italy’s first female filmmaker, made between 1906 and 1930. She was incredibly prolific, even founded her own studio based out of Naples, Dora Film. And yet, you’ve likely never heard of her, the loss of nearly the […]

Venice 2025: “Kim Novak’s Vertigo”

The enigmatic black-and-white portrait of its subject that Kim Novak’s Vertigo opens with speaks louder than words. Its date is uncertain, but based on her appearance, the footage originates from somewhere in the vicinity of the peak of her success in Hollywood, the girl who made a detour to Tinsel Town for fun while touring […]

Venice 2025: “Ghost Elephants,” “Nuestra Tierra,” “Cover-Up”

In this dispatch from the Venice Film Festival, I’m looking at three terrific documentaries from established auteurs that premiered out-of-competition at the fest: Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants (which the director received a lifetime achievement award in conjunction with), Lucretia Martel’s Nuestra Tierra, and Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’ Cover-Up. On a remote plateau in the […]