CPH:DOX 2024: Breaking Out! The Liberating Force Of Documentary Maria Giovanna Vagenas May 2024 Festival Reports Those visiting Copenhagen for the first time to attend CPH:DOX, the country’s leading international documentary film festival, which ran from the 13th to the 24th of March this year, may be looking for its head...
Groundbreaking Cinephilia: A Conversation with Julien Rejl, Artistic Director of the Directors’ Fortnight Maria Giovanna Vagenas November 2023 Interviews With a gaze that radiates a dreamy but determined freshness, the beautiful Leonor Silveira in Manoel de Oliveira's Abraham's Valley (Vale Abraão, 1993) graces the poster of this 55th edition of the Directors’ F...
The Klezmer Project (Adentro Mío Estoy Bailanado): A Conversation with Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann Maria Giovanna Vagenas August 2023 Interviews In the maze of a major festival event such as the Berlinale, The Klezmer Project, a debut feature by Argentinian filmmakers Paloma Schachmann and Leandro Koch, which premiered in the Encounters section, emerged...
Here: An Interview with Bas Devos Maria Giovanna Vagenas May 2023 Interviews With Here, his fourth feature film and winner of the Encounters and the Fipresci Award at the 73rd Berlinale, the Belgian director Bas Devos creates a luminous, delicate, and subtle film that inspires awe. Thro...
Afterwater: A Conversation with Dane Komljen Maria Giovanna Vagenas March 2023 Interviews Afterwater, conceived, directed and edited by Dane Komljen, is both as limpid as the water of the lakes that appear in it, and as complex as their, often, unfathomable depths. With an inventive, sensitive appro...
Piaffe: Interview with Ann Oren Maria Giovanna Vagenas January 2023 Interviews Piaffe, Ann Oren's astonishing first feature film presented in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2022, bestows us with that same enchantment that early cinema viewers must have experienced going to the movie...
Love Dog: Conversation with Bianca Lucas Maria Giovanna Vagenas October 2022 Interviews Intimate, sensitive and poetic, Love Dog, Bianca Lucas' surprising first feature film, shot in Natchez, Mississippi, portrays John, a young man mourning the sudden loss of his partner; a personal grief meaningf...
The Plains: Conversation with David Easteal Maria Giovanna Vagenas July 2022 Interviews In The Plains, David Easteal’s astonishing feature debut, we are invited to virtually take a place in the back seat of the car of the protagonist, a middle-aged lawyer named Andrew Rakowski, a real-life person,...
Thessaloniki International Film Festival: Rewriting the Rules of the Game Maria Giovanna Vagenas February 2022 Festival Reports Inventive and sassy – one of the best in a long time – 2021's TIFF poster featuring Mrs. Tependris in her pink overall, kicking off the event with a clapperboard, perfectly evoked the spirit of this 62nd editio...
Towards New Horizons: The 74th Locarno Film Festival Maria Giovanna Vagenas October 2021 Festival Reports This summer the Locarno Film Festival and its Piazza Grande finally got their colours back. The giant screen in the piazza lit up again and the public flocked enthusiastically to its legendary screenings under ...
Rediscovering the Forgotten Gems of a Decade: Austrian Auteurs of the 1970s at the Viennale Maria Giovanna Vagenas May 2021 Festival Reports The 2020 Viennale was an extraordinary and memorable event. Carried by the courage, conviction and tenacity of its director Eva Sangiorgi and her team, the festival was held in cinemas throughout the city of Vi...
Locarno 2020: The Open Doors Experience Maria Giovanna Vagenas October 2020 Festival Reports Because of COVID-19, the structure of the 74th Locarno Film Festival was rethought. Under the motto “For the future of films” and opting for a hybrid form, Lily Hinstin and her team proposed a limited number of...
Back to Basics: The New Spirit of Cinéma du Réel Maria Giovanna Vagenas July 2019 Festival Reports In Paris, during the grey and wintry month of March, dazzling colours and geometric patterns on the famous glass and steel façade of the Centre Pompidou announced the Vasarely exhibition on the building’s top f...
The Frame as a Border: Defining Cinema’s Political Territories at the 56th Viennale Maria Giovanna Vagenas December 2018 Festival Reports In mid-October, slender, elegant pink flamingos appeared on the walls of buildings in the monumental and austere centre of the Austrian capital, announcing the imminent opening of one of the city's most importa...