Film
Audrey Diwan’s Happening
By Nolan KellyAdapted from a relatively obscure semi-autobiographical novel by the French author Annie Ernaux, Happening (2021) is director Audrey Diwan’s second feature. Happening is a deeply affecting encounter with illegal abortion—specifically Ernaux’s, which took place when she was twenty-three, in 1960s France.
Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
By Payton McCarty-SimasReplete with kidnappings, superfan and superspy antics, and references to Cage’s filmography that only the most dedicated Cage acolyte will be able to catch, the film is designed as a love letter to, as Cage himself describes in the film, the actor’s “contribution to one of the oldest professions: storytelling and mythmaking.”
Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes’s The Tsugua Diaries
By Caitlin QuinlanWhat if days could last forever? In the month of August they certainly come close, as summer light lingers into late evening and time seems to warp in the heat. It is this sentiment that Fazendeiro and Gomes explore in their cryptic yet deceptively simple film, unwinding the lazy, hazy month backwards (as the Tsugua, August written backwards, in the title suggests).
Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing
By Kamayani SharmaIn the opening scene of Payal Kapadia’s Oeil d’or-winning documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), a group of students at the state-funded Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) dance exuberantly against the backdrop of a giant screen on which a film plays.
