Nous

Take the B Train

February 23, 2022 | By Heidi Ellison | Film

Good intentions do not a good movie make, as demonstrated by French director Alice Diop’s latest film, the documentary Nous (We).  Diop is strongly committed to showing onscreen the lives of the “little people,” perhaps better described as ordinary humans, … Read More

Le Daim

French Davy Crockett Goes Berserk

July 7, 2021 | By Nick Hammond | Film

When a French movie is described as a “comedy” and has a July release date in Paris, it almost invariably means that (1) it’s a generic film about a chaotic summer holiday with families/groups of mature male friends/bands of teens … Read More

Adolescentes

Five Years of Teen Trauma

September 23, 2020 | By Heidi Ellison | Film

Director Sébastien Lifshitz is a brave man. For five years he embedded himself and his camera in the lives of two adolescent girls in the French provincial town of Brive, recording the traumas and joys of that fraught stage of … Read More

Lourdes

Believe It or Not 

May 22, 2019 | By Heidi Ellison | Film

Ever wonder what really goes on at Lourdes, aside from a roaring trade in bottled holy water, statuettes of the Virgin Mary, rosaries and a multitude of kitschy souvenirs? The new documentary Lourdes, by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai (both … Read More

Pau

In Search of the Lost Father

February 27, 2019 | By Heidi Ellison | Film

How do you make grief visible onscreen? Showing a character crying or looking sad for the length of a feature-length film is, of course, out of the question. A very young French-American filmmaker, Alexandre Leter, who was only 17  when … Read More

Sauvage

Wild Child

September 26, 2018 | By Nick Hammond | Film

We may all have had our fill of movies about a tart with a heart, but Sauvage is something different. The central character, Léo (Félix Maritaud), is a 22-year-old gay male prostitute who, despite being obliged to perform degrading acts … Read More

Transit

History Repeated?

May 2, 2018 | By Heidi Ellison | Film

The French-German production Transit, directed by Christian Petzold, is an odd bird of a film. It takes place in present-day France (oddly, no one has a cellphone, however), where unidentified “Fascist” occupiers are moving through the country arresting foreigners. The … Read More