Author Sandra E. Lim

The first few minutes of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) are easy to miss. The Warner Brothers logo appears against a cotton-ball cerulean sky. A voiceover greets with “Salaam Alaikum,” and a congregation of voice...

In It Must Be Heaven (2019), Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman writes, directs, and stars as a version of himself, a character identified only by his initials, E.S., a reoccurring persona in all of his featur...

Das Weisse Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon, A German Children’s Tale, Michael Haneke, 2009) is set in the fictional village of Eichenwald in pre-World War I Germany. The now elderly scho...

Ruzi keh Zan Shodam (The Day I Became a Woman, Marzieh Meshkiny, 2000) is Marzieh Meshkiny’s debut film, produced by the Makhmalbaf Film House which was founded in 1996 by renowned Iranian film director Mohsen ...

Kahne-ye doust kodjast? (Where is the Friend’s House?, 1987), is the first of three interrelated films in Abbas Kiarostami’s “Koker trilogy”, named after the northern Iranian village where the films are set. Th...

Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) marked Vittorio De Sica’s eighth directorial credit in a prolific filmmaking career, which had included work produced within the dictates of Italy’s government-contro...

At the end of the American Civil War and during the height of the Franco–Mexican War, circa 1866, Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) and Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) make their way into Mexico looking to sell their services ...

In the opening titles, Red Hollywood (Tom Andersen and Noël Burch, 1996/2014) declares itself a compilation film. Compilation films are a form of historical and documentary practice, with roots in early Soviet ...

Revisiting Playtime’s Style of Comic Democracy Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) is the third of four films based on the character of Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati), which follows a self-effacing everyman as he vis...

Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941), is the story of down and out baseball player Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), who having never quite made it to the major league, has taken up the carefree life of a hobo, ...